Pepe Escobar on US desperation over Iran: bribery attempts, economic warfare, and nuclear rhetoric
Glenn Diesen interviews journalist and political analyst Pepe Escobar on the widening range of US failures in its confrontation with Iran.
Summary
Glenn Diesen speaks with Pepe Escobar about the rapidly deteriorating US position in its confrontation with Iran. Escobar reveals details of a covert US attempt to bribe IRGC commander Ahmed Vahidi — channelled through the Kurdistan Regional Government's Nechirvan Barzani, via a back channel originally established by Tulsi Gabbard — which was flatly rejected. Escobar notes the US was also approaching the wrong person: the figure who actually runs top IRGC operations is Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, not Vahidi. The Iranians relayed the details of the bribery attempt back through Pakistani intermediaries, exposing the operation entirely. Escobar argues that the US has now exhausted its military, diplomatic, and financial options, and that the Trump administration's announcement of sweeping economic pressure — what Escobar calls a "financial and economic Hail Mary pass" — will fail because Iran is deeply embedded in Eurasian overland and financial networks that Washington cannot sever. Most gravely, Escobar warns that voices within the US are beginning to normalise the idea of using tactical nuclear weapons against Iran, comparing this normalisation process to the way genocide in Gaza was gradually accepted without meaningful Western objection.
The transcript also features extended discussion of Pakistan's precarious position: deeply dependent on the IMF and therefore unable to fully break with Washington, yet serving as the key mediator between Iran and the US and deepening ties with both Iran and China. Escobar expresses frustration that BRICS continues to debate but not decide on alternatives to the Bretton Woods system, and argues that until the Global South escapes IMF dependency, its sovereignty remains constrained.
On the question of the Memorandum of Understanding, Escobar states that Iran is not demanding anything beyond what was already agreed — including sanctions relief and the commitment by the US and its allies to provide $300 billion to rebuild Iran. He argues Trump likely never read the MOU, pointing to a social media post in which Trump falsely claimed Iran had demanded reparations — a figure that appears in the very document he signed. Escobar also notes that the Supreme Leader Khamenei has been killed, along with much of his family and numerous IRGC commanders, and that these assassinations — together with the broader existential threat — have generated a consolidated popular mandate for resistance across all of Iranian society, from major cities to the Afghan border.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction and the IRGC bribery attempt
Glenn Diesen: Welcome back. We are joined today by Pepe Escobar, journalist and political analyst. Thank you for coming back on.
Pepe Escobar: My pleasure, Glenn. With you anytime.
Glenn Diesen: Appreciate it. We always see when the US goes to war it has many tools in its toolbox. Of course it has raw military power, it has economic sanctions, but a key theme is always that it seeks to sow divisions within a country. Often it takes the form of pretending to promote democracy and human rights. Other times it's just pure bribery — throw money at the right people. And there are now stories that the US attempted to do something similar in Iran, that is, buy off some of the IRGC commanders. How do you see this playing out? Because desperation appears to be setting in as the US is running out of options, including weapons.
Pepe Escobar: It's a pleasure to be with you as usual, and with our audience. This has "desperation row" written all over it. It's part of a story that Larry Johnson and I broke earlier this week. We needed extra confirmation, we finally got it, and last Wednesday we had the full story — the chain of participants, who was talking to whom, when, what they wanted, and so on. It's quite astonishing in a sense, but also very, very predictable. After all, this is the empire of chaos, lies, plunder, piracy, and bribing as well. We all remember that aspiring soprano Mike Pompeo on the record: "We lie, we cheat, we steal." He forgot to add "we bribe," which is what they do everywhere from Latin America to Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, everywhere else.
The short version of the story: there was a relatively dormant back channel established by Tulsi Gabbard when she was still in government, in May, between the White House and the Kurdistan Regional Government — Nechirvan Barzani, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan — essentially because they wanted to try to talk to Ahmed Vahidi indirectly, the head of the IRGC. Barzani was supposed to be the messenger. When they tried in May, not much happened. The channel was established. There was a secure line connecting the White House with Barzani, and then Barzani talked to Vahidi. At that time, nothing happened.
The channel was reactivated by the White House again a few days ago because Trump wanted once again to talk to Vahidi using the good offices of Barzani. Many of our audience know that Iraqi Kurdistan may be a nest of vipers infested with MI6, CIA, Mossad — you name it. But also the Iranians have good relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government and with the Barzani clan, as well as with the Talabani clan, the other clan that controls Iraqi Kurdistan.
The story gets completely nuts on a James Bond level as well, because what Trump wanted to do — and this is how Barzani contacted Vahidi, and then Vahidi explained what happened to the members of the Supreme National Security Council, and this got all the way to Leader Khamenei — was to bribe Vahidi to the tune of billions of dollars, unspecified billions, not only Vahidi but other members of the IRGC. This was a revamp of the Venezuela playbook: provoke, divide and rule from the inside. They couldn't win the war, so they were trying to destabilise the IRGC from the inside in the usual way — suitcases full of untraceable cash. It's what they have done all over the Global South.
Vahidi obviously told Barzani absolutely no way. Not only that, he told the rest of the IRGC, the Supreme Council, and this got to the Leader as well. Then the office of the Leader authorised members of the office to pass this information back to the Pakistanis, because before this there had been an attempt to recruit Field Marshal Asim Munir — because Munir and Trump, they are on speed dial, both sides. That didn't work, and this was Plan B via Barzani in Iraqi Kurdistan. So the information was relayed back to the Pakistanis, and that's how we learned the details, including the chain of communication and how this back channel was reactivated a few days ago.
So — major failure for the Trump administration again. And on top of it, they were talking to the wrong person, Glenn. Instead of talking to the guy who actually runs everything, including top IRGC operations — Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, personal representative of Leader Khamenei — they went to Vahidi. So they thought that Iran was Venezuela, which once again demonstrates the degree of cultural stupidity on an intergalactic level of these people in the Trump administration, thinking that they can bribe people who fought the Iran–Iraq War and are essentially at the vanguard of defending Iran against an existential threat from a superpower. These people are not bribable. Forget it. But once again, it reeks of desperation. Desperation row written all over it. And this is the Roy Cohn mafia school of doing business, which is the only school that Donald Trump ever studied in his whole life.
US economic warfare and Iran's Eurasian resilience
Glenn Diesen: Well, part of the desperation though — it kind of makes sense. They don't have a clear diplomatic off-ramp. They burned a lot of bridges. The last one they burned was the MOU, which they finally got in place and then walked back immediately. They also don't have a clear military pathway to victory — they already began exhausting their military resources and it will take ages to replenish them. But it appears that Trump is now going for a third option: scale back the military and go for economic pressure. He announced this economic D-Day. But the success of it depends on the US being able to uphold this wall of steel, this double blockade on Iran. It's premised on the idea that Iran will simply sit back and accept economic strangulation. Do you see anything in Iran in terms of preparedness to go on the offensive and punch a hole in this blockade?
Pepe Escobar: Well, punch many holes in every kind of blockade — maritime and financial. The underlying logic from the Trump administration's point of view, and that absolutely ghastly Scott Bessent — a Soros asset, by the way — is that they are able to strangulate Iran financially and economically and isolate Iran not only from their partners across Eurasia but from any other partners across the Global South. The degree of stupidity in this kind of assumption is once again intergalactic. But from these players, this is what you expect.
Look at the map. You know it very well — you are a specialist in Eurasia. If you look at the map of Eurasia, who is at the centre in terms of connectivity corridors, historically? Iran. So are they going to be able to block all the channels of communication, especially overland, that Iran has with its neighbours? No. Are they going to be able to block financial transactions bypassing the US dollar with several players, especially with China? No.
What could they do in terms of applying extra pressure? The Chinese companies — people in China who are in business — they are not worried. Even Chinese banks, because the new directives from the central powers in China to Chinese companies is: look, you don't respect and you don't follow American direct sanctions or secondary sanctions. You have to respect Chinese law. This is what matters. So the banks understood the matter, and Chinese banks are helping not only Iran but Pakistan as well in all sorts of transactions. Plus there are transactions using the Islamic financial system, which is basically one telephone here, another telephone on the other side, and money is transferred without actually moving. Iran does that with several partners everywhere — companies, individuals, you name it.
In terms of overland connections, the Americans are not yet blocking them, and they couldn't find a way to block them without frankly throwing Pakistan into China's lap like 150%. Pakistan is already in China's lap around 80 to 90%. Pakistan still has ties with the international financial system and on top of it depends on an IMF loan, which is the worst thing that can happen to any country anywhere in the Global South. So the Pakistanis are not free. For instance, if they were members of BRICS or if they were members of the BRICS bank, the NDB, an arrangement with the Chinese could go through the NDB for the ten billion dollars they need so badly. But they still depend on the IMF.
Which brings us to the whole discussion everywhere across the Global South: how to get rid of the Bretton Woods system. As long as this does not happen, we cannot talk about an independent Global South. This is what is discussed at BRICS. But it's an infernal blah blah blah that goes on forever. I've been following this story for years and after a while we are exasperated, because they talk, talk, talk and there are no decisions. And as you know, Glenn, next month is the BRICS summit in India. Don't expect any breakthroughs on that, unfortunately, especially because it is hosted by India.
The Americans will try to interfere in trade and commerce via the overland corridors between Pakistan and Iran — six of them. They will try to interfere in Balochistan, and they can use the CIA, MI6, Mossad, and so on. They have been there even before 9/11. We can have, for instance, NATO drones attacking Iranian ships in the Caspian Sea — anything is possible. The Caspian Sea is essential for Iran because it is the Russia–Iran corridor. And of course they could try to attack the China–Iran railway from Iran all the way to Xinjiang via Turkmenistan and Central Asia. But they cannot — and this was the theme of one of my columns this week — whatever they do, they cannot turn Iran into an island. Iran is hyperconnected with all its neighbours, especially Central Asia and South Asia and all the way to China. The Americans cannot do anything against that.
On top of it, Russia and China have got Iran's back, and they will find other ways. They already transact with Iran bypassing the US dollar. So there's nothing Bessent and company can do against that.
But you're right — we are now on the next stage, and it is very, very nasty. It is total war, economically and financially, against Iran. But when you follow what is being discussed in Iranian media, they're not worried. First of all, because they're already expecting it. Second, they have so many different mechanisms with all the partners all across Eurasia. For instance, they will be discussing this in their bilaterals at BRICS. Expect big things — not at the BRICS summit itself, but in the bilaterals between Iran and Russia, Iran and China. These are going to be quite something. And the number one question is: okay, how can the three of us bypass the Americans?
So this is where we are at the moment. Yes, it's very, very hard. The Pakistani position is very precarious because they are on the razor's edge. They cannot antagonise the Americans because they need the IMF, and at the same time they cannot break their relationship with Iran, especially after these past few months in which they built trust. They were the mediators between Iran and the US. There are delegations from Iran and Pakistan visiting each other literally every week. So they are in a very, very complicated position. But that's the problem when you are a Global South country and you depend on the Bretton Woods system.
The interconnected Eurasian front and US strategic overreach
Glenn Diesen: I think a key problem for the United States now, though, is that as you said, Iran is already a geographically quite central power, but it's also tied into industrial cooperation as well as financial cooperation with the other Eurasian giants — primarily China and Russia — who are willing to push back against the United States. The problem for the US is they went after everyone at the same time. If they had only gone after Iran and tried to find some way of accommodating Chinese and Russian interests, it would be one thing. But launching an economic war against China, launching a proxy war against the Russians, and then a direct war against Iran — all of them now standing back to back, the western, southern, and eastern parts of the Eurasian continent all having their survival essentially reliant on cooperating with each other and finding ways of avoiding US sanctions. It's quite foolish. In the past, the Chinese might have accepted limiting a bit their trade with the Russians, which they did, or limiting trade with North Korea. But now that the US has essentially gone overboard, the Chinese have to dismiss America and accept punishment on some issues — so why not on all of them? I think the US really overplayed its hand. It's quite extraordinary that this was predicted by many and they did it anyway.
But I did want to ask you about the military pressure. If there are no more military options, where can the US go from here? I ask because we do hear some rumours, and I want to be very specific. There are rumours that as desperation grows in Washington, we hear talk from people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and from other corners as well — talk in the US about considering the use of nuclear weapons, supposedly tactical nuclear weapons, not strategic. Tactical nuclear weapons are essentially battlefield nukes; strategic nuclear weapons are essentially city killers. But they are nuclear weapons nonetheless. So if this is correct — and I have to say "if" — it is quite dramatic and would open up Pandora's box. The world wouldn't be the same afterwards. How do you see this? Is this likely? Because if you have a great power like the United States that has linked its security to hegemony, knocking out Iran would be a stepping stone to weakening the Russians and the Chinese. This war is everything. If they fail it, the regional presence falls apart, the petrodollar could disappear. The Americans have a lot to lose here. And when you have a great power with a lot to lose, locked into an all-or-nothing scenario, expect them to do some foolish things perhaps.
The normalisation of tactical nuclear weapons
Pepe Escobar: The most terrifying aspect is that the Americans are starting a campaign to normalise the use of tactical nuclear weapons. This is as terrifying as it gets. Don't forget that what we can describe as the Absentee Syndicate — they normalised the genocide. There was not a peep from the collective West that really mattered. The Global South was horrified, but there was nothing the Global South could do to prevent it. And now it's the same thing. It starts with informal discussions at the White House, at the National Security Council, extrapolated to a few think tanks, and treating it like going to a street corner bar and buying an ice cream. Absolutely normal. And that's the terrifying part. It's the banality of evil that we used to know as it was codified in the 20th century. And the banality of evil in the 21st century is much, much more hardcore. It now includes normalising a genocide and the use of nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear country, unprovoked. And it's discussed like an after-dinner conversation.
This is the most serious fact of it all. And obviously, because people are so anaesthetised by this bombardment of information from everywhere — they cannot tell what is real, what is fake, and what makes sense — this enters the public discourse by accident and nobody even takes it seriously. But they will do something like this, of course they will, especially now because they have their backs against the wall. And as you described very well, this is the clash of the 21st century. One way or another, either the Americans are able to make Iran fold, conquer Iran, transform Iran into a new colony — and that will be the first step towards getting deeper into the war against Russia and later against China — or we have the integration of Eurasia led by these three powers: two superpowers, China and Russia, and one middle power which is ascending very fast and is now one of the most important powers not only in Eurasia but across the Global South. That's it. This is the clash of the 21st century, and there will be only one victor. There is no draw in this clash, unfortunately for all of us literally.
And of course, considering that the current concourse of circumstances has given us a psychopathic toddler as the messenger of these elites, as president of the United States — we have the real American elites terrified of the immediate future. If — no, when — they have to absorb two strategic defeats in a row: one in Ukraine because of the proxy war, and another one in Iran. The whole geopolitical architecture of the planet is going to change because of these two strategic defeats. For them, this is beyond anathema. They will use anything in the playbook, including now this pathetic total economic and financial war against Iran, which came out of their magician's hat in a matter of days. They never planned this before. There's no planning behind it. It is a Hail Mary pass — a financial and economic Hail Mary pass — by people who have no idea how business is conducted in this part of Eurasia, or across Eurasia for that matter.
So that's how serious the whole thing is. Even if for the moment these discussions are not in the public eye, they are being normalised, so that when they come to public scrutiny the decision has already been made and they will go for it with no scruples, because they have no scruples. This is as serious as it gets.
Glenn Diesen: The genocide issue — I remember with Gaza, first the discussion was, "Oh, is it really genocide or is it just some collateral damage?" And then slowly, "Okay, it's genocide, but what are you going to do?" And then suddenly you ended up with it normalised. The same with Iran — this rhetoric of "we're going to annihilate this civilisation" is becoming okay now. Not a peep from any of the capitals. So it is becoming normalised. But in terms of nuclear weapons, at least ever since Obama's presidency there's been a lot of literature on how to make nuclear weapons more usable — arguing that we can develop lower-yield nuclear weapons with a smaller explosive yield that can make nuclear weapons seem more proportionate, a limited military objective, so not destroying the world. You see the rhetoric always going there.
It's quite extraordinary, though, because I wish there was a conceptual idea in the US for an acceptable multipolar system as a possible off-ramp. Because so far the only game in town appears to be: finish off the Iranians, Russians, and Chinese, and we can go back to the 1990s. But in the 1990s they had all power concentrated in the collective West, and it didn't lead to perpetual peace — thirty years later we are where we are. I don't see how they're going to go back to this. They're now forty trillion dollars in debt, they have massive economic inequality at home, society is exhausted, there is political polarisation. Is this really the only game plan? I wish the Americans would show up at a BRICS meeting or something, just to find out if there is some way of coming together to find an off-ramp — some political settlement based on the existing international distribution of power, instead of looking at how to knock out rivals in some absurd Game of Thrones. But there's nothing really there.
What would be the purpose then of a tactical nuclear weapon? Is this to shock Iran into capitulation?
Pepe Escobar: Exactly. That's the game. You nailed it. In the minds of these very mediocre functionaries of the Trump administration, they still think they can make Iran fold, capitulate, surrender. They tried everything. It didn't work. Economic strangulation — they know it will not work. But okay, a few bombs and they will capitulate. No, that's not how it works.
First of all, because if we come to this terrifying scenario, the Arabs on the other side of the Persian Gulf will be equally affected and will be part of the Iranian response. The GCC will disappear. Period. Because Iran is going to bomb everything inside it. So no more oil, no desalination plants — you name it. You'll be back to being a desert with some camel caravans, if the camels survive. That's what it was in the past.
So, number one: will it disaggregate the top of the Iranian government? No, because there is now a solidified pact involving all these elites. They are defending the nation against this existential threat and they are going all the way. And on top of it there is a popular mandate, which is exactly what we saw during the funeral ceremonies of Ayatollah Khamenei. The number one motto all across Iran — from the big cities to the countryside, all the way to the Iran–Afghan border — is revenge. This is the popular mood everywhere in Iran. We can talk about 90 million people who will not settle for anything less than revenge, or to go all the way against the Americans and to expel the Americans from West Asia. When you read the fine print of what Iran is demanding for a solution to the war, it is basically to expel the US from West Asia. And they are on their way, because most of those bases are practically devastated or virtually devastated. There's not much left. The Americans had to transfer most of it to Israel. So the Americans are in a box inside Israel, which from an Iranian point of view is fantastic. Now it's over. Geographically and territorially it's a very small part of West Asia. Perfect. They can concentrate all their firepower on Israel depending on what happens next.
And it's impossible — Glenn, as an academic who has studied Eurasia in detail, what we see in your books, which I loved and wrote about — you explain in detail how Eurasia works with the different actors and the limitations of the Americans and Israelis to impose this completely unilateral, ideologically demented vision and system of power over everyone. It will never happen. But of course they will die trying, literally. So that's why it's still so dangerous.
They finally found an enemy that is not running away, not dissolving in the first few days, not accepting suitcases full of cash, capable of fighting back and fighting back fiercely. They never had that since the end of the Second World War. So that's why they are like cockroaches in the desert, literally. And that's why, as you mentioned in the beginning, there's no strategy for anything. They have some tactical ideas that may last one day, two days, one week, three weeks, and then it's over. There's no strategic thinking. Nobody in that national security–industrial military complex can think strategically, apart from one or two people who are not in top positions of power.
And then what they do — they draft the national security strategy. When you read the national security strategy, it's exactly what we're talking about: how to defeat Russia, China, and Iran. And of course North Korea, which is a nuclear power. You cannot defeat North Korea. North Korea is a nuclear power and they will use their nuclear power. Nobody messes with them. So there's no strategic thinking, no strategic way out. The desperation mounts. They come up with one fancy idea after another. Every week we have the cartoonish vitrifications of the president of the United States and nobody pays attention to them anymore. People essentially mock them everywhere — from a favela in Brazil to a slum in Cairo. The number one butt of jokes on the planet is the president of the United States.
But as we all know, as our audience knows, they are getting more dangerous by the minute. It's not only the forty trillion in unpayable debt. It's not only that they pay more in interest than the whole budget of the Pentagon. The money that they don't have — they have to run the printing presses for that green toilet paper they print all the time. They are desperate because most of the buyers in the world are refusing to buy US Treasury bonds, and soon nobody will buy US Treasury bonds except the US Treasury itself. And of course the petrodollar is on the way out — slowly still, but surely.
So my question to you, Glenn: do you see any way out or off-ramp for the empire at the moment, realistically, in realpolitik terms?
The Brzezinski warning and the absence of a diplomatic off-ramp
Glenn Diesen: No, I don't see any. That's why I thought — if there's no ability to strangle the Iranians economically, no military path to victory — you would assume they would go for a diplomatic option. But you see the same assumption they went with Russia back in 2022. They assumed: okay, we can defeat them on the battlefield if we send enough weapons, we can strangle their economy — the ruble would be rubble — and we can isolate them completely in the international system. Now we see the same with Iran. We can suffocate their economy, we can't beat them militarily, and we can also isolate them internationally. No. If anything, Iran's connections with the rest of the world are stronger now than they were before.
There's a lot of miscalculation. But a common theme in all of the US miscalculation appears to be the assumption that Iran can be bullied into submission either by military or economic means. Every country has its breaking point. But why is it that they're not able to break Iran?
Pepe Escobar: Because they don't understand the Shiite ethic of resistance, of affirming sovereignty, of self-sacrifice, of suffering for their own ideals and values. The spirit of Karbala. Can you imagine anybody in the Trump White House or National Security Council who has actually studied the birth of Shiism, who knows anything about Imam Hussein? Of course not. And this is the Shiite spirit — the ethics of resistance. They didn't even understand what moved the Islamic Revolution in the first place. It was an anti-colonial movement. It was a Shiite movement of resistance and also an anti-colonial movement, because it was against Iran being a colony of the United States during the Shah, which it was at the time. And that spirit, that ethic, united everybody — united secular students and the clerics as well.
What happened afterwards is a very complicated story, but the original drive and push for the Islamic Revolution was to correct a historical wrong and to eliminate the status of Iran as a mere gendarme of the Gulf, as it was described by the US at the time. Apart from everything that went wrong with the Islamic Revolution — that's a long discussion — they were attacked frontally by the United States in two wars in practically in sequence, and their whole leadership was assassinated. Almost everybody, from Soleimani in the beginning of what I call the Raging Twenties — the twenties started with a murder, the murder of General Soleimani on January 3rd — to Ayatollah Khamenei and a great deal of his family, all the commanders that were assassinated in the past.
So there is a new era in Iran, and the way this new era started was with popular support. Even if they have an invisible leader — Mostafa Khamenei was invisible from the beginning, he still is, he cannot appear in public for security reasons — he is in control according to our best sources. But he cannot appear anywhere. So people all across Iran are devoting their respect and belief to the leadership of an invisible leader, and the people who are around him or in contact with him — the political vector, Ghalibaf and others, and the IRGC military vector — they are now the guardians of Iran.
And the way it's being interpreted all across the Global South — I heard this from people in Africa, in Brazil, in parts of Asia — they are the vanguard of the Global South, defending the Global South from this empire on the loose. So this is how serious the whole thing is. Iran has found a new status as a huge Global South power, now at the vanguard of defending the Global South as a whole from these extremely dangerous lunatics, which we could describe once again as the Absentee Syndicate. That's another long story, but it's a pretty good definition — only two words, it explains almost everything.
And of course their delirium — "we'll be able to control everything" — and in the case of the American elites: "we cannot lose the free lunch that we've had since 1945." Can you imagine, if you are a superpower with unlimited power since 1945, you never want to lose your free lunch. But this is exactly what's happening now. How psychologically can you adapt to that? It's impossible. And that explains to a large extent this non-strategic behaviour of cockroaches in the desert — one tactic out of nowhere coming every week, one after another, leading nowhere, and failure after failure.
Glenn Diesen: It's quite interesting that the US initially wanted to sell this war as ridding Iran of nuclear weapons or liberating women — essentially fighting a rogue state. And somehow they've messed this up so much that it's now widely seen around the world as an anti-hegemonic struggle where the Iranians are essentially fighting a similar fight as all of the Global South. It's quite extraordinary how they lost the soft power and the narrative control over this.
Also, I sometimes think about Bismarck — in the late 1880s he wrote to the British Foreign Secretary that the danger of going to war with Russia was that whenever a serious war would threaten its national independence and integrity, the whole country would just come together and millions of men would pick up arms. So the message was essentially: don't do that. But they didn't take their own advice a few decades later. You do see something similar with Iran. Not everyone in Iran has been comfortable with the Islamic Revolution, and there are people who have problems with the government, like any other country. But if the government ever needed a legitimacy boost, America delivered it. Quite extraordinary.
Pepe Escobar: Yes, absolutely. I'm very curious retrospectively, Glenn — I wish Brzezinski was alive and we could both ask him directly: how do you see the fact that now the United States is fighting not only one peer pressure, as you qualified in the Grand Chessboard in 1997, but a strategic alliance of peer pressures, and on top of it a rising power in Eurasia? The US is fighting this triad at the same time. I would love to get his answer for that.
Glenn Diesen: Well, in his defence, in his 1990s book on the Grand Chessboard, he did warn that the way the US would sustain its unipolar moment would be to keep the adversaries divided and the allies dependent. And he defined the worst scenario as being the Russians, Chinese, and Iranians finding common cause to balance the US. So there was some recognition that this is the worst possible thing the US could do — which it did.
The MOU, the petrodollar, and Iran's conditions for negotiation
Which brings me to my last question. If the US doesn't really have any more good military options besides a nuclear strike, and doesn't have a good way of putting more economic pressure — I know they just announced economic D-Day — and the bribery in order to split or divide the Iranians from within is also failing, the logic would seem to be: go back to the negotiation table. But how do you see that working now? They've spent their diplomatic capital as well. There's no trust anymore. The Iranians would always talk if there's a good deal — why not take it? But what are the conditions of the Iranians now? The Americans are suggesting that the Iranians should wave the white flag. But given that the Americans signed the MOU — which was more or less a declaration of surrender, an admission that the Iranians are on top — what would the Iranians demand in this round, given that the Americans walked back yet another deal?
Pepe Escobar: They are not demanding anything that is not in the MOU, Glenn. For instance, the Chinese, a few weeks ago — maybe between one and two weeks ago — basically said again: there is no renegotiation of the MOU or another treaty or whatever. Everything is in the MOU. It's a matter of fulfilling commitments. It was signed by both presidents. The Iranians were starting to follow everything, and then the Trump administration blew it up again. They are non-agreement-capable. Everybody now knows that — even camels in the Sahara know that the United States is non-agreement-capable.
So everything is in the MOU, and if you read the MOU it's very, very harsh. One wonders why the president of the United States actually signed it — of course, because he knew he would break it later. He didn't even read it. Trump cannot explain what's in the MOU, starting with "end of all wars," which is already in paragraph one. This includes obviously Israel against Lebanon — he didn't do anything about it. All the follow-the-money questions — there was a little beginning with Qatar involved, and then the Americans blocked it. Sanctions relief — there was not even an attempt at sanctions relief. You name it. Everything is there, and the Iranians are saying: look, it's all there, we signed it, the commitments are bilateral, we have to follow the fourteen points.
So if the Americans would ever follow the fourteen points, this would be an admission of their strategic defeat. We need to understand why they simply cannot accept it: because it's proven that they lost the war in every sense. And it would solve, theoretically, the Strait of Hormuz problem — but not for the US, because the Strait of Hormuz problem for the US is a petrodollar problem. It's not the strait per se. This was a war for oil, for the petrodollar, and a war about an oil choke point. And the Americans lost control of the Strait of Hormuz almost immediately. They were never going to get it back.
This means everything — including the birds that cross the strait — everybody is going to be outside of the petrodollar. That's it. And that's why they are absolutely terrified of the repercussions. They also know that alternative ways of exporting — for instance, via the Red Sea — can be blocked any time. The Yemenis can decide to block the Bab el-Mandeb for everybody, not only for Saudi oil tankers. It's very easy. They can do this in a flash. They already did it.
And in terms of connectivity corridors — one of my favourite themes for the 21st century — the 21st century is a sequence of wars for connectivity corridors, or between connectivity corridors. That's why Iran is so important, because Iran is part of the top two connectivity corridors in Eurasia: the New Silk Roads horizontal and the International North–South Transport Corridor vertical, right in the middle of everything.
And once again, because even American elites — they not only don't know history, they don't know geography. It's even worse. And they don't understand the interconnection between geography and history. No wonder they go into an unplanned war without studying history and geography. This is what you get. We should not be astonished by the situation nowadays. It's not only lack of planning — it's lack of going back to school.
Glenn Diesen: No, I agree. Well, they should know some of these corridors, because if you look at the International North–South Transport Corridor going from Russia through Iran down to India, it almost follows the exact same route the Americans used to ship weapons to the Soviets during World War II. So they should have been familiar with some of this logistics. But you don't see it.
It's interesting what you said about Trump not having read the MOU. It does sound like an exaggeration, but he goes on social media and actually wrote that the Iranians now demand reparations — "they never discussed any receiving any money in any of our meetings." But in the same MOU he signed, it lists that the US and its allies should provide 300 billion dollars to rebuild Iran. So I'm wondering — is he lying, hoping that people won't know? Or is he also lying to himself?
Pepe Escobar: Because there's this nice passage by Dostoevsky where he makes the point that you should never lie to yourself — if you start doing that, you don't distinguish reality from falsehood. And it could be that too many decades of being the champion of BS — which is what he's been great at, spinning narratives and all that — he simply believes what he's saying. Otherwise, it's hard to understand why you would post something like this when it can just be fact-checked.
But he doesn't read, Glenn. This is something we know from people who worked with him in New York. They all say the same thing: he never reads anything. Nothing. Not a book. You see the photos of his house — there is not a single book in his apartments, houses, or whatever. Mar-a-Lago or whatever. Everything is Fox News news bites. That's it, and they should not last more than one minute. So his attention span is minimalistic as well. No introspection, no self-reflection, no critical thinking, never admit a mistake. This is the Roy Cohn mafia school of doing business, which is the only school he ever attended in life, really. Everything he learned from Roy Cohn: never admit a mistake, always go on the offensive, destroy your critics with one or two foul words, and never go back on your actions. That's exactly what we're seeing in this non-conduct of a war.
It fits the main character — the absolutely pathetic main character. If there were some grandeur behind it, we could think: ah, maybe these are the elements of a Greek tragedy. No. Because the main character is as trashy as it gets. This is really a trashy novel at best. And we can never expect anybody around him to instil some sense — first of all because he doesn't listen. Another thing he learned from Roy Cohn: never listen to other people when they start contradicting you. There you go.
Glenn Diesen: Well, I guess these tactics did take him this far — giving him a second presidency. So now they've finally hit a brick wall and it's not working anymore. You can kind of appreciate the desperation which is definitely setting in, and how he's uncertain what to do. I don't know — I think Trump desperate could be a very dangerous animal, which is why I'm a little bit worried.
Pepe Escobar: Yeah.
Glenn Diesen: Anyway, thank you very much. I always appreciate and look forward to speaking with you.
Pepe Escobar: Always a pleasure. Thanks so much.