Seyed Marandi warns a new US attack on Iran may be imminent, with potentially catastrophic global economic consequences
Glenn Diesen interviews Seyed Marandi, professor at Tehran University and former adviser to Iran's nuclear negotiation team.
Summary
Seyed Marandi, professor at Tehran University and former adviser to Iran's nuclear negotiation team, warns that a renewed US military attack on Iran may be imminent following the 39-day war and subsequent ceasefire. Marandi argues that the ceasefire has been fragile from the outset, with both sides preparing for renewed conflict, and that an attack could come as soon as the current weekend. He contends that Trump is incapable of accepting the off-ramps available to him, that the Zionist lobby and the Israeli regime remain the true driving force behind US policy, and that any renewed military action would trigger Iranian retaliation against both Israel and the Arab Gulf states — with potentially catastrophic consequences for global energy markets and the world economy. Marandi also addresses the significance of Iran's foreign minister meeting with President Putin in Russia, and what he sees as Iran's growing international standing following its performance in the 39-day war. The episode closes with the host drawing a parallel between Iran's approach and the pressure now building in Russia to move up the escalation ladder and restore deterrence, referencing a surprise attack on Russia's nuclear deterrent that occurred the same month Iran's war began.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Opening: The fragility of the ceasefire and the prospect of imminent attack
Glenn Diesen: Welcome back. We are joined again by Seyed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University and a former adviser to Iran's nuclear negotiation team. Thank you for coming back on the program. These appear to be quite troubling times. What I hear is that another US attack on Iran could be imminent, which could also have an additional component — that of a limited land invasion. I was wondering how you see it from there in Tehran. How stable is this ceasefire?
Seyed Marandi: Well, thank you very much for inviting me, Glenn. It's always a great pleasure being on your show. Since the ceasefire began, they've been preparing for war literally 24 hours a day. The assumption was that this is not over, especially since Trump is not the sort of person who will accept defeat. The 39-day war did not go well for the United States. It was a horrible war for the world and for humanity, but ultimately the Iranians won the war. The belief here was that that would not be acceptable for Trump, and that would not be acceptable for the Zionist lobby and the Israeli regime, which is the true force behind the war. As we recall, Joe Kent in his resignation letter said that this war is all about the Zionist lobby and the Israeli regime. So there's no reason to think that anything has changed in the last couple of months.
It is possible that we will have war. No one knows for certain in Iran, but it is possible we will have it this weekend, after the markets close — because apparently killing Iranians when the markets are closed is better, so that, God forbid, stock prices don't go down. It could of course be tomorrow morning, it could be tomorrow evening, or it could not happen this weekend. But I think the problem is that Trump is incapable of using an off-ramp.
We saw that earlier when the Iranians and the Americans had a ceasefire agreement. Netanyahu tried to wreck it by carpet bombing Lebanon, and so the Iranians said, "As long as he is violating the ceasefire deal, we won't allow those extra ships to go through the Strait of Hormuz." I should point out that the Strait of Hormuz was never closed by the Iranians. It was only closed to ships that were linked to Iran's adversaries. Iraq had no problem. The Russians, the Chinese, and of course Iranian ships never had any problems. But within the agreement, there was going to be more ships passing through — that included ships belonging to the Emirates, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Bahrainis, and others. Those extra ships would be going through, and because of Netanyahu, it didn't happen. Trump sided with Netanyahu, even though the Pakistanis pointed out clearly that the ceasefire included Lebanon.
But here's the point. When Netanyahu was ultimately forced to accept the ceasefire — even though now he's again killing Lebanese citizens 24 hours a day, as in Gaza — Trump could have chosen the off-ramp. Because when Netanyahu accepted that ceasefire, the Iranians said, "Okay, now we'll allow those extra ships to go through." Trump almost immediately afterwards said, "The Strait of Hormuz is open, it's never going to be closed again, the Iranians have promised," and he said a lot of nonsense, of course. But then he said, "I'm keeping the siege on Iranian ports and the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz in place." So he could have chosen that as an off-ramp. That was possible, especially since Netanyahu ultimately accepted the ceasefire, at least for a few hours.
The belief is that Trump is incapable of moving in that direction and therefore he's going to continue falling into the escalation trap. That's why they believe that inevitably we're going to have another round, which will be devastating for the global markets, for global trade, and for the global economy. We're just seeing the tip of the iceberg. But even if there's some sort of agreement in a few weeks' time between Iran and the United States to allow more ships to get through and the siege on the Strait of Hormuz to come to an end, things will still be very bad. The real pain is still on its way.
But if there is war — and especially if they target Iran's critical infrastructure — Iran will do the same to the Israeli regime and to those Arab family dictatorships in the Persian Gulf. That will of course make far less oil and gas, energy, and fertilizer available for the global markets for a very long period of time, and lead to a global economic depression. If the war goes on like the 39-day war, we can be pretty sure that there will no longer be any oil or gas coming from this region for years to come. It will just be a very long-term economic depression for the world.
Even if it's a short war and some critical infrastructure is destroyed, it will lead to an economic depression for two reasons. One, because there will be less oil and gas available. The second reason is that any negotiations to partially open the Strait of Hormuz, to lift the siege, and to revive the ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon will be put back for many weeks because they'll be fighting. No one is going to be negotiating about ships going through the Strait, Iranian or otherwise, or a ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza. That will definitely be catastrophic for global trade, business, and the global economy.
Trump's narrative and the logic of renewed war
Glenn Diesen: The Trump diplomacy is quite strange, because besides all the propaganda and his efforts to control the narrative, we know some things for certain — that the US was getting into deep trouble and Trump was getting desperate. We know this from the numbers of interceptor missiles: this was not sustainable. They couldn't absorb the pain and they didn't have enough ammunition. So we knew things were going badly. They wanted a ceasefire. We also know this because otherwise the US wouldn't have accepted Iran's ten-point plan as a condition for ceasefire, whatever Trump says about Iranians begging him. But what happened thereafter is again a lot of deception. He walked away from those ten points and never talked about them again. Then he offers an extended ceasefire as if he's doing the Iranians a favor. So sometimes he can be good at controlling the narrative, and sometimes he stops being believable. That's why it's a bit strange that after finally getting the guns to go silent, he wants to start this thing up again — which would make you think that they have something up their sleeves, something they would do differently this time around. From your perspective there in Tehran, what do you think the US would do differently? As you suggest, they could invade or attack over the next few days. What do you think they're planning?
Seyed Marandi: Well, the only thing I can think of is that they will continue to do the same as they did before — assassinate, bomb infrastructure, terrorize the population — and also probably go more after critical infrastructure, as Trump had threatened to do before. But the problem would be that the Iranians will strike back. We've heard just today from a very senior Iranian MP who is part of the delegation in Islamabad that if any assassinations take place this time around, Iran will take out the leaders of the Arab regimes in the Persian Gulf — meaning Kuwait, Bahrain, the Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. He said they are complicit. Without them, this war can't take place. So if they start murdering our leaders, then they will destroy their palaces. And I would assume that would also mean destroying not just their critical infrastructure, but their intelligence agencies and their defense ministries and that sort of thing.
Iran will take its retaliatory violence to a very different level. Iran has already said that attacks on critical infrastructure will be responded to by striking critical infrastructure in the Israeli regime and also in the region. It's not a situation where the Americans will win. We already see that Iranians are defiant. People are on the streets. They see the United States as the aggressor. The world sees the United States as the aggressor. I don't see how this will do Trump any good. It will just make things a lot worse for him, because at the end of the day Trump is going to be answerable to Americans for their economic hardship.
One of the disturbing things we often hear in the United States is that there are people who are sincerely anti-war and who are against the murder and slaughter of innocent people — who care about the children in Minab who the Americans massacred on day one. And there are others who don't really care about that, but they talk about jobs and inflation and American lives. Both groups of people, their voices are going to grow louder — whether those who see the United States regime as aggressive and barbaric and doing all of this for the sake of Zionism and a genocidal regime, or those who are going to say that you're ruining our livelihood, our farms are going to go bankrupt, our businesses are going to get ruined, American lives will be lost, the US economy will suffer, and the deficit will grow. These two forces combined, though completely unrelated to one another — one is moral and the other is simply selfish — are going to make Trump suffer enormously as a result of the war. It's not a situation where he can win.
I don't even believe that the Israeli regime will win. After two and a half years, we've seen what has happened to the image of the Israeli regime across the world — it's despised. People are watching now what's going on in Lebanon, even though Western media is not reporting it and Western journalists are quiet about it, or they're misrepresenting it, trying to portray it as Hezbollah targets, and they're ignoring Gaza. But people across the world are still seeing these images in a much-censored social media. It's still coming through. And in addition to that, as people's personal lives become much more influenced by the global economic catastrophe heading our way, they're going to blame Israel. They're going to blame Zionism. They're going to blame Netanyahu. They're going to blame Trump. I don't see how the Israeli regime benefits from this. The only person who would probably benefit would be Netanyahu, who thrives on crisis, at least for now, and the fanatics in his coalition.
Iran's escalation options and military capabilities
Glenn Diesen: With the usual Iranian response — what's been interesting in this 39-day war has been this tit-for-tat, where they've been able to essentially follow the Americans up the escalation ladder, denying this advantage to the US, which is quite important. But what is interesting is the assassination of Iranian leaders — we never saw the Iranians doing this in kind. And also the attacks on Iranian nuclear plants — this is also something we didn't see the Iranians doing either. Do you think it's possible that Iran will go further up that escalation ladder this time around?
Seyed Marandi: Well, I think what the MP said about the Arab regimes would basically mean that the chances of those regimes collapsing altogether would be much greater. Because if the United States starts targeting Iranian leaders — and the Israeli regime as well, this escalating coalition as I like to call it — and alongside that they start targeting Iran's critical infrastructure like power stations, then these Arab leaders and the elites around them will be targeted too, and then their critical infrastructure will be targeted. And that will be at a time — and this I think is very important — that we are nearing the hot season in the Persian Gulf region and in the Arabian Peninsula.
The month of May is a transition month. By the end of May it gets very hot, and in the middle of May it is getting hot, and then the sandstorms and the humidity — all of that combined becomes very difficult for anyone to work in these countries unless they have electricity, unless they have the ability to stay cool. If they lose their electrical power plants, it is going to be very difficult for — I don't know — fifty or sixty thousand American troops stationed there, and there may be extra troops now because they've brought in a lot of equipment for a ground attack. It's not a great thing for morale. And the population too — if their leaders are being targeted, their kings and princes are being targeted, and they also lose their electricity, and the heat and the humidity are going through the roof, I think it would be catastrophic not just for the global oil and gas markets but also just for being in these countries.
The Iranians have warned them. The Iranians don't want to target anyone. The Iranians are far more humane than any of their antagonists. When they fired missiles at the Israeli regime, they didn't target schools and synagogues. When they did the same in these Arab regimes, they didn't target civilians either. Iran has something like 3,400 martyrs. The five Arab regimes that were targeted — American assets targeted, American bases targeted, retaliatory targets, infrastructure linked to the West — despite all the damage in these five countries, only a handful of people were killed. Something like ten to twenty people died. Compare the 3,400 to 3,500 Iranians who died with a handful of people who died in all these countries, and the same is true in the Israeli regime. So Iran does not want to kill people. Iran has been very careful not to kill people, has been very careful to fire at targets and installations in a way in which ordinary people don't die.
But people will have to leave. If Iran's critical infrastructure is struck and their critical infrastructure is struck, the weather in those countries is far worse than in Iran. Right now in Tehran, you've been to Tehran, in the mountains we have snow. It would be difficult if they start targeting our critical infrastructure, but there it would be just completely intolerable. And if the ruling families are targeted, that would mean the collapse of each of these regimes. I don't think that the United States is thinking this through. Maybe in their arrogance they're saying that we'll just hit them and they'll collapse, like they thought before the 12-day war and before the 39-day war. But I still think that this exceptionalism they have, and the sense of superiority, perhaps leads them to believe that this time we'll make the so-called regime fall apart.
What signals suggest an attack is coming?
Glenn Diesen: I want to go back a bit to the possibility of the United States attacking. What makes you suspect that an attack could be coming? Have you seen significant shifts in troop levels? What kind of weaponry are you seeing? And what do we know about the whereabouts of these troops in terms of what they might go after? Are they going to invade some islands in the Strait of Hormuz? Are they going to go after Yemen? Obviously, because of the troop levels, it can't be some kind of full-scale invasion as they did to Iraq, but surely there's something else — a smaller, limited invasion, I'm assuming.
Seyed Marandi: They've brought in a lot of equipment for ground troops. They've also brought in ammunition for their planes and so on. But from what I've been told, most of these flights have been to prepare for a ground war. I don't know the details, but two places that I've heard have large contingencies practicing, training, or at least ready for fighting: one is in Kuwait and one is in Bahrain. There are large numbers — I don't know, maybe there are more now in the Emirates and Saudi Arabia too — but these are the two countries I've heard of specifically. In Bahrain they were practicing, and in Kuwait they're there in large numbers.
The expectation is that it could play out in two ways. Either the Americans want to go for a long war again, which I personally don't think they can. Or they may go for a short war, as we've been hearing — where they would strike very hard and fast. But the Iranians will retaliate, and there could be, and probably will be, some sort of land offensive and also attacks deep inside Iran, like the attempt that was made near Isfahan before.
But again, regardless of the fact that the Iranians are going to retaliate — and Iran has missile and drone bases across the country — the Iranians will definitely allow them to come in if they carry out a land attack, and the Iranians will then pound them. The Iranians are not going to sit there and let them take territory. They're going to play smart. They're going to let them come in and then hammer them for days and weeks and months if necessary.
But more importantly, in the broader picture of things, any attempt, any move to ease tensions and open up the Strait of Hormuz is going to be delayed for many, many weeks because the fighting will take weeks to finish, then to die down, and then to have some sort of deal. So it is going to make the global economy definitely move towards a depression, regardless of how much critical infrastructure is destroyed. Any violence will put the global economic situation in a much worse position. And this, I think, Trump does not comprehend.
Iran is not controlling the Strait of Hormuz from the shores. It's not the 19th century. It's not even the 20th century. The ability to control the Strait of Hormuz comes from hundreds of kilometers inside the country and from many different locations. And Iran's capabilities near the shores of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz are also unknown to the United States. That is also major. They miscalculated on Iranian missiles and drones and anti-aircraft capabilities. It's definitely the case that they're going to miscalculate on Iran's other capabilities. Iran has not shown them and has not used them. They're deep underground in the mountainous areas around the Persian Gulf and all the way up to the border of Iraq and into northern Iraq. It's all mountainous territory and the terrain is very difficult, and lots of Iranian installations are hidden in these different areas. When the time comes, the Americans will have to deal with things they know very little about.
The reason why the Americans have made so many miscalculations about Iran's missile and drone capabilities is that the factories themselves that produce them are underground. The bases are underground. The factories are underground. So the Americans think they know the numbers, but they have no idea how many missiles and drones Iran has. As you and I are speaking, Iran is making missiles and drones and other military hardware, because everything of great significance is deep underground.
Iran's economic resilience under siege
Glenn Diesen: Trump recently made this comment that Iran is at the state of collapse — that everything is falling apart, that they're begging for a deal, and that this naval blockade is tightening every day and suffocating Iran. But if this is the case, if the economic war on Iran is so successful, one would think that time would be on the side of the Americans, which begs the question: why go to war with Iran? It doesn't fit their narrative. If they're so successful at this economic war, why go to war? So it does seem — well, there's been dishonesty from the beginning, so let's not be too surprised — but how do you assess this economic attrition warfare? Both the Iranians and the Americans are taking pain. How do you see time being on Iran's side?
Seyed Marandi: Well, this is very similar to the argument that the Iranians are deeply divided and that the leadership is in chaos. I always stress in interviews that no, they're not. That doesn't mean there aren't differences. There are 90 million Iranians and 90 million different views, and I'm sure that when political leaders and military leaders and security leaders are sitting around the table among themselves, they have very different opinions. But that is very different from a division in the decision-making process. The decision-making process is clear. You have a Supreme National Security Council. You have a leader. They've designated the speaker of parliament to be in charge of negotiations. He makes the decisions. So it's clear that there's no division. Saying that it's chaos and there's division either serves someone's interest as propaganda or it's serving some other purpose.
The claim that Iran is falling apart and that the siege is working — first of all, it's quite interesting how they gloat about starving Iranians, just like they gloat about starving Cubans or Syrians. These people have no concept of humanity. But this is nonsense. Is the economy suffering? Of course it's suffering. They've bombed pharmaceutical factories, they've bombed many different factories, they've destroyed businesses. And when they block ships from coming and going to Iranian ports, of course it's going to have an impact, no doubt. But we're at war. And just like during the 39-day war and the 12-day war before that, the Iranians won the war not because they were not hurt, but because they tolerated the pain more than the Americans did. That's why, as you earlier pointed out, Trump accepted Iran's ten-point plan as the framework for negotiations — because he needed a ceasefire, whereas at the beginning of the war he said Iran must accept unconditional surrender.
Of course Iran is going to be hurt, and ordinary Iranians will face difficulty. But that's war. How about the other side? They keep talking about the siege and how effective it is. Well, that siege is intensifying the damage being done to the global economy through the very few ships that go through the Strait of Hormuz. Now fewer ships than even before are going through. So the global economy is going to suffer catastrophe faster than before.
One critical mistake that they made, Glenn, is that the Iranians at the beginning of the war expected a siege on Iranian ports and planned for it. They're implementing those plans to minimize the hurt — trade routes through neighboring countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Central Asia, the Caspian Sea to Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan. Iran has many borders: Armenia, Turkey, Iraq, and so on. But all that aside, the Iranians thought the Americans were going to impose a siege on the ports when they initiated their joint aggression with the Israeli regime. They didn't. And so the Strait of Hormuz was almost closed for a month and a half, and Iran was selling its oil at very high prices — and early on its petrochemicals too, before they targeted Iran's petrochemical plants — at very high prices. Only late in the day did they begin to implement this siege on Iranian ports. So Iran is way ahead of them.
Also, Iran has been selling — I don't know exactly how much, but between 150 to 200 million barrels of oil on the seas — and from what I'm hearing, it's almost finished. They have all that money, and they've sold that oil at very high prices. Before, they couldn't sell that oil; the oil was on the high seas. So they've sold all that oil at very high prices and they have that money now. It's a lot of money, and in times of war, expenditures do go down because the focus is on managing the war. So the Iranians have a clear advantage.
The Iranian economy has already been under siege. This nonsense about oil wells — that's just propaganda. Iran had its oil exports shut down under Trump during the first term. You recall as well as I that it was Trump's maximum pressure campaign. We were not exporting any oil except for very small amounts, and most of that was a debt we had to China for some project they did in Iran — Iran was paying them back with oil, like 100,000 barrels a day, a very small amount. So Iran knows how to deal with its oil situation. It's not like the Arab regimes on the other side of the Persian Gulf, who have never experienced sanctions. The entire Iranian economy has been constructed in an environment of sanctions. I'm not saying it's sanctions-proof, but it survives more easily. It sustains itself much more effectively than countries across the world that are now going to experience a crisis because they don't have that experience. Suddenly they're going to be facing a catastrophe thanks to Trump and Netanyahu that they don't know how to deal with.
So the siege against Iran began late. Iran has sold a lot of oil at very high prices. Iran's economy has been living under siege and sanctions for decades. And Iran's adversaries have none of those experiences.
What surprises might Iran have in store?
Glenn Diesen: When I hear this talk about another US wave of attacks against Iran and planning for a short war, it feels like they already made this mistake — why go down this route again? My warning would be that the US doesn't get to decide when the war is over. Also, as Iran showed the first time around, they're not able to dictate the terms of the war — claiming Iran can't shut down the Strait, claiming Iran can't hold the Gulf states accountable for participation. All of this was essentially very flawed. That's why I was wondering what possible surprises the Iranians might have, because it seems almost very predictable that Yemen would shut down the Red Sea, it wouldn't be inconceivable that Iraq could make a move against Kuwait, the Gulf states could lose their desalination plants and oil installations. It's going to be very hard to control all the variables to the point that one would feel comfortable confidently predicting how this war against Iran would go. It seems like a disaster. But as a last question, what surprises might the Iranians have up their sleeve? You're there in Tehran, you have a general idea of what cards can be played, and Iran has allies with their own autonomy. What do you expect?
Seyed Marandi: Well, just as Hezbollah has shown itself to be far more powerful than the West was expecting — they were saying how Hezbollah is a spent force, the West basically took control of Syria through al-Qaeda and ISIS, there's now a proxy of the United States, they installed puppets in Beirut, the prime minister and the president, and then you had the Israeli regime, so Hezbollah was supposedly finished — but now we're seeing that Hezbollah is hitting the Israeli regime hard. There's talk that they're removing some of their troops from southern Lebanon because they're so vulnerable. So imagine if those capabilities exist in Iraq or in Yemen — troops that can move beyond borders and do damage. That's one thing I can think of.
Second, when the Iranians start striking the Israeli regime again, the regime obviously does not have the surface-to-air missile capability that it would need. The last few weeks of resupply is not nearly enough to make up for what it needs. So if they continue down this path, Iran can swiftly begin striking targets within the Israeli regime without much difficulty, if any.
The third is that the Iranians would go after more sensitive targets in the Persian Gulf region. That could include ships. If they can start targeting the ships in the Persian Gulf, they can start targeting the critical infrastructure that they haven't destroyed yet. I think the commander of Iran's missile forces said that you shouldn't count on oil from the Persian Gulf for many years to come if there is war. So that could happen.
But also — and I'm speculating here — I heard something, I don't remember who told me this, it was during the previous war at the beginning, and I don't recall who told me, but it was so incredible. That person was saying that the Iranians have the ability to sink US ships, but they don't do so because that would require being higher up on the escalation ladder for Iran to do so. And as everyone knows, Iran did not start this war. Iran did not initiate any phase of escalation, whether against the Israeli regime or against US proxies in the region or US assets. Every time they escalated, Iran escalated in response. One good example was when they bombed Iran's gas installations in the South Pars field, and then Iran struck Qatar and the Emirates and somewhere else. And then Trump put out that Truth Social post saying, "I didn't know about it, the Israelis won't do it again." That was Iran's retaliation, and they hit very hard.
So Iran does not initiate escalation. And as I said earlier, Iran is very careful not to have people killed, and the numbers show that. But if Americans now go for critical Iranian infrastructure, that would be very high up the escalation ladder. And then I think that if Iran indeed has those capabilities to strike deeper than what it has now, Iran would start sinking US ships. There have already been statements made by senior Iranian officials that that is on the cards.
There are many things Iran could do. But also remember what I said earlier — the Iranians said that if assassinations are carried out, the leaders of these regimes will be targeted. A member of the delegation who was with us in Islamabad, a senior MP, a very well-known public speaker, said this as a fact, not his opinion: that Iran will take out these leaders because they are part of the war effort against Iran. Because without these five Arab regimes and Jordan, the United States cannot wage war against Iran. Logistically, it's not doable.
So there are all these options that Iran has. And again, the United States has brought in lots of weapons to the region, but Iran has been preparing itself during this time. For Iran, it's not that difficult. This is its own home turf, and it's been preparing for this war for two and a half to three decades.
We didn't have to be here. I spoke about this before on your show — the book Leverage going to Tehran. I advise all your viewers to read it. They deal with a lot of the lies and myths that Western media and Western think tanks and Western academia have been saying about Iran for all these decades. They also point out that if the United States doesn't move towards rapprochement, it will move in this direction. When they wrote this book, they were antagonized, demonized, and marginalized, and yet everything they said turned out to be correct. So now we have a global economic crisis, the lives of everyone will inevitably be impacted in a big way, and if we continue to go up the escalation ladder, then I think the catastrophe will be beyond imagination.
The significance of Iran's foreign minister meeting Putin
Glenn Diesen: Let me squeeze in a last question. The Putin meeting — that is, the foreign minister of Iran met with President Putin in Russia. There's been a lot of talk about this. Apparently it didn't make Trump very happy at all, which led to a tense 90-minute phone call between Trump and Putin. What do you think is the significance of this? Because whenever one looks at this greater Eurasian chessboard, one always looks at these three powers — Russia, China, and Iran — getting closer. Of course, if you throw India into the mix, it's becoming Kissinger's worst nightmare. How can we interpret what happened there in Russia?
Seyed Marandi: I think many Indians are realizing — just before I respond to the first part of the question itself — many Indians are realizing that their economic suffering, and they've suffered a lot even though Iran has allowed a number of Indian ships and Pakistani ships and Bangladeshi ships to go through even though they belong to these regimes in the Persian Gulf that were complicit in the war — but the suffering of the Indians is at the hands of the United States and the Israeli regime, and they're increasingly recognizing that. So that may have a significant impact in the months and years ahead on how they deal with these countries.
But the meeting with President Putin apparently went very well. President Putin praised the Iranian people a great deal. That sort of reminds me of a book by one of our mutual friends — Alistair Crooke once wrote a book on resistance and the Islamic Revolution. The book is called Resistance, and the subtitle is about the Islamic Revolution and so on. That's also a good book to read.
The resistance of the Iranian people during this period — decades of sanctions and terrorism and three wars — but this particular war has made people across the world see Iran in a very different light. Iran has become very popular, and this is what people from across the world tell me, from Latin America. One of my Brazilian friends who's a Marxist and has very good connections told me that a very well-known Brazilian Marxist, one of the major figures in Brazil, said that if Iran wins this war, he's going to become a Shia. The way in which people are now viewing Iran is very different from what it was just a few months ago. Like Hezbollah, Iran and the axis of resistance — this is the exact opposite of the situation for Zionism and the Israeli regime and Trump and the United States, which people see in a much more negative light. So there's a big transition taking place in the way in which people in many parts of the world are viewing Iran. Even in the United States, Iran is gaining support from quarters that I would have imagined to be impossible just a while back.
But Trump — when he spoke with Putin, it was definitely linked to the trip. I would imagine the trip went very well, from the statements made by the foreign minister and from the statements made by President Putin and the Russian foreign ministry. I think two things happened here. One is that — and this I know for a fact — Iran outperformed Russia and China's wildest expectations. Even though many of us in Iran were not surprised, I think Iran did better than even I expected, and I expected Iran to win this war. Many of our friends have been influenced by Western narratives, even those who are in the non-Western world and those who are critical of the West, and they're in shock that the war ended this way.
So President Putin — I think this meeting went very well. But it's very different, because Trump when he won the presidency took all the swing states, won the majority of the vote, had a mandate, and said clearly many times on the campaign trail that he's going to end the war in Ukraine in one day. Well, it's a year and a half now and the war in Ukraine is still going on. They met in Alaska last year. Nothing came of that. They've had multiple phone calls. Still the war is going on. So I'm not quite sure that it's going to have much of an impact. I think at the end of the day, it's going to end on the battlefield, and probably with the collapse of the global economy, unfortunately.
Glenn Diesen: I think also Iran has created a bit of an uproar in Russia in this regard as well, because they've begun to question what they've been doing over the past few years. The US — they have a lot of similar experiences as the Iranians, that is, this fraudulent diplomacy, the deals which would never be followed through to begin with, and of course this existential threat based on efforts to degrade and weaken and try to collapse the country. Many people in Russia now, from what I hear, argue that they should have changed course already in June, when not just Iran but Russia also had this surprise attack — that was the same month the Russians had an attack on their nuclear deterrent, which was quite obviously not only Ukraine who carried that out. So now of course there's a lot of pressure on the Kremlin to do as the Iranians did — to be more prepared to go up the escalation ladder, restore deterrence, and accept that the emperor doesn't really have any clothes. Anyway, you've already given me a lot of your time. Thank you very much as always, and I hope to see you again very soon.
Seyed Marandi: It's a great pleasure being on your show always, Glenn. Thank you very much for having me.