Chas Freeman: Israel Sabotaging the US-Iran Deal – Netanyahu Wants Trump to Keep Bombing Iran

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Well, I think there is a great deal of tension between Netanyahu and Trump. Um Netanyahu basically talked Trump into this war. It's gone very badly. U it now looks as though it will end in uh a number of possible ways. Um um none of which is good for uh Netanyahu. none of which uh achieve the objectives uh he has. Um so the ways in which the war could end um you know the in many ways the politically uh cleverest way for Trump to get out of this would be to allow the Congress to um vote vote an end to the war. Um, and to say, well, you know, I was on the road to victory, but they stabbed me in the back and I was betrayed by the Democrats and apostate Republicans and rhinos, Republicans in name only and so forth and so on. I could see him doing that.

[00:01:06]Um, that is one way of getting out of this. It does that leaves Israel high and dry. And indeed any uh exit from the war uh invalidates u the US partnership with Israel against Iran. Uh that is to say no no no future president is going to do what Donald Trump uh did. But um uh at the moment what we have is a memorandum of understanding apparently a one-page document which is not a piece not not an agreement but it's an agreement to negotiate and we have the ironic statement from Donald Trump uh who went to war with no negotiations and used uh diplomacy as a cover for surprise attack that you know well we have to exhaust diplomatic means before we resort to force. Um I guess he learned something from the first round uh where he didn't apply diplomacy at all. Um it looks like Mr. Whit and Mr. Kushner have been removed from the process which is uh now being run by professional diplomats uh and leaders from Pakistan and Qatar uh who are attempting to mediate this.

[00:02:30]Um the immediate reaction to Donald Trump's statement that we're close to an agreement which seems to be a characteristic overstatement on his part. There's been some progress evidently made along in some areas. Um but the immediate reaction in from Israel was oh no um great uh headlines, you know, about um Trump selling out Israel and so forth and so on. The Israelis are in an election mode so that they're a bit subdued in their criticism of Trump because of course he could turn around and do to them what he's done to uh everyone every uh one who's crossed him in the United States and or in Europe or elsewhere. Um namely um try to trash their reputation.

[00:03:24]People who are running for office don't like that. So they've held their fire a bit. Um that is I think they've been quite tough. Netanyahu has been quite forceful in private on telephone conversations with Donald Trump but he's not um publicly that based him. On the other hand, uh Israel's faithful um stooges in the United States um people like Lindsey Graham and so on, Ted Cruz and others um um uh have u have pulled out all the stops.

[00:03:59]Um uh this is a sellout. Uh we need to, you know, go back to war, finish the job and so forth and so on. Uh the problem for Donald Trump is u uh he's basically cornered. Um on the one hand he has Netanyahu putting pressure on him. Um his Jewish donors uh Israeli donors Miriam Hlesen is an Israeli. Um $250 million donation is not trivial. Um they're both ganging up on him. U part of his own Republican base is in rebellion.

[00:04:37]um and his military are telling him, you know, you can't there's no real military option. Uh you can't we can't hope to succeed. And and they may even have asked him to give them an order in writing, which is what the military do when they're being asked to do something they know is infeasible and uh want to be able to levy blame on whoever it was that issued the order. I want that order in writing. Uh is is the characteristic response in those circumstances.

[00:05:14]Uh the other possibility of course is that um this thing just sort of peters out and uh it goes on and so and so on.

[00:05:25]But the elements of the of the alleged um uh deal which is not a deal but uh a uh framework for negotiating deals on the key issues. Um the essence of it is is essentially um that the straight of Hormos will be open. Of course it is open if you do a deal with Iran. Um uh so um I'm not quite sure what that means. Um uh it's claimed that there would be no tolls levied. Um I don't believe that for a minute. Um that Iran has agreed to that.

[00:06:02]Uh it's very clear that Iran is demanding sanctions release of the sanctions relief and release of the frozen funds that number in the tens of billions of dollars um that it has been deprived of.

[00:06:20]Uh it's also very clear that Iran is not going to um uh do anything unless it gets something first. Iran has no confidence at all in the United States, having walked away from the JCPOA, the joint comprehensive plan of action and nuclear deal in Trump's first term, having watched um the United States reneg on various commitments in negotiations with Ridkoff and Kushner, having seen the United States repudiate treaties with others, and of course um uh so uh you know, I Iran will demand uh payment upfront before it does anything.

[00:07:03]Uh and that's going to be very hard. Uh so this is as I said once before on your program, this is this is uh immobilization. Um anything Trump does causes him defeat uh and the United States defeat. This is a ridiculous situation to have gotten into. Uh so basically um um Iran um u is not going to release the enriched uranium to any third party certainly not the United States by order of the new supreme leader Mutama K. Uh it is not going to give up control of the state of Hormuz.

[00:07:54]uh it is not going to make uh compromises to appease the United States. It has achieved escalation dominance in effect uh with the Israelis.

[00:08:07]Uh and um it's demanding that um any deal include a real as opposed to a phony ceasefire in Lebanon. Which brings me to the final point. if there actually is a deal, Israel is in a perfect position to sabotage it and will do so.

[00:08:27]So, um uh you know, as usual, uh Glenn, when we talk about these subjects, it's all gloom and doom u that comes to mind.

[00:08:38]There's no happy, there's no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow that I can see.

[00:08:45]>> Yeah. Well, as you said, there's no good options left. And I think this is the problem for Trump. That is if he goes back to fighting Iran, then uh there's limits for how long he can fight, it's unclear if he will be able to get a ceasefire once he's out of ammunition.

[00:09:01]And uh so also can't can't win on the battlefield. But if he pursues peace, then the Iranians do not want to go back to the old status quo. So they will make sure that they hold on to the straight of her moose to make sure well create incentives for countries not to host bases or put sanctions but so you can't do one can't do the other but also just waiting is also not ideal because uh >> the global economy is tanking so one has to one has to end the current well not not not ceasefire. Yep. Let me let me um make a point here and that is that um Trump and his administration are paying a price in domestic politics for having uh misdescribed reality and that is to say they have been claiming levels of victory over Iran which are utterly implausible and which don't hold up to scrutiny. And for example, um, you know, on the question of going back to war, the United States is busily deferring or cancelling contracts to supply all sorts of equipment uh to allies and um protected states.

[00:10:21]um the the $14 billion deal with Taiwan, which Trump has yet formally to decide can't happen because there's no equipment to be provided. Um uh the uh some of the Baltic states have been informed that they will not get the weapons they paid for on the schedule they imagined. Um uh the same is true obviously of of others equipment has been moved out of Japan and South Korea.

[00:10:56]Um there's anyway you know so so um administration's been bravely putting on a uh a show claiming that there was no depletion of weaponry or defensive capability uh as a result of this ridiculous war.

[00:11:17]Um but the facts that they're behaving entirely in in in conformity with the fact that it did h did happen. So you know you can listen to them or you can watch what they doing and I think it's more instructive to watch what they're doing. They're in a box. Um and uh the drive the summer driving season is upon us in the United States. This is the time when people take vacations and move around and um the price of gasoline uh is well $455 or so nationally now. Um the price of oil just went down again. Um oil traders it turns out are terminally stupid and keep falling for the same uh absurd tricks of market manipulation.

[00:12:09]Um so um Brent uh went down substantially uh and um uh but that won't hold and um so and it certainly won't be benefit if uh if kinetic uh action against Iran has is stepped up. And there's another point here and that is uh militarily it's not just that we've depleted our capabilities and we're causing a great deal of operational uh wear and tear on our forces. Uh but um Iran has used the six weeks of the of the effective truths um uh to reconstitute its armed forces and um the intelligence community has totally um contradicted the administration's claims of the levels of damage done to Iran's inventory of missiles. Iran is back producing drones and in high volume. Uh, it may even be getting some drones from the Russians, although the Russians uh are using their own drones against Ukraine pretty forcefully.

[00:13:24]So, um, uh, you know, there's just nothing here that, um, uh, that justifies any optimism really.