US-Iran talks, sabotage?
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00:00All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is happening in Iran.
00:04I believe we had the third round, the third meeting of talks between the U.S. and Iranian officials.
00:16And the part that a lot of people are talking about is that while these talks were taking place,
00:24there was a huge explosion at a southern port, Bandar Abbas, I believe is the port's name, a massive, massive explosion.
00:34Some journalists are saying, analysts are saying it wasn't one explosion.
00:38It was three explosions.
00:39Hard to confirm any of this.
00:42We don't really have much information at all as to what happened.
00:48This does remind me of the explosion that happened in Lebanon.
00:52Remember that explosion?
00:53Yeah.
00:53I forgot the time that that happened a couple of years back.
00:57But a very big explosion.
01:00Iranian authorities are investigating what's going on or what happened.
01:05The reports that we're getting from the Iranian port authorities is that there were some chemicals in storage,
01:17I believe they said, that caught fire and they were mishandled.
01:21But you also have Iranian authorities saying that there were no chemicals used for fuel, for weapons fuel or anything like that, that were stored in this facility.
01:32So, they put out a message saying to journalists, do not talk about some sort of weapons fuel at this facility because that's fake news.
01:42It's hard to get an understanding as to what happened, a lot of people are pointing the finger at Israel as this sabotage.
01:55But it's worth noting that the IDF has said that they had nothing to do with this.
02:02So, they actually came out with a statement and said they had nothing to do with it.
02:04That's the situation right now with this massive blast at this port.
02:08What are your thoughts on it?
02:10Well, I think most people who follow the user, at least a lot of them, are going to assume that it was sabotage.
02:18I'm not convinced that it was.
02:20I mean, I don't know for a fact that it was.
02:22And I think a few things do need to be said here, which is that Iran has been under intense sanctions pressure for years.
02:29It's likely that this has had an effect, a fraying effect, on the operation of Iran's infrastructure.
02:42It is not impossible that, you know, chemicals were mishandled, that there generally was negligence, and that this resulted in this enormous explosion.
02:55The trouble is that, you know, you can say this and you can make a very plausible case that this was actually an accident.
03:03And the Iranians are not saying that it was anything else at the moment.
03:07But I know an awful lot of people are going to say, look, almost certainly it was Israeli sabotage.
03:14Because, of course, we've had a very, very long history of Israeli sabotage against Iran, going all the way back to the Suxnet virus that was inserted into Iran's nuclear and other facilities back in Obama's time,
03:31to all kinds of assassinations that had been carried out on Iranian territory, including, by the way, the assassination of the political head of Hamas,
03:44if you remember, at the time when President Pej Zeshian was being inaugurated.
03:49And one of the other features of a lot of these Israeli sabotage attacks on Iran is that regularly, routinely, the Israelis deny involvement.
04:06And then sometimes years later, we discover that they were involved at some level.
04:11And the Iranians also deny involvement, that they deny that the Israelis were involved.
04:19They also say, you know, this wasn't really sabotage or happened because of these other reasons,
04:27because they don't want to admit that their security systems have been penetrated.
04:34So, I'm afraid you can't trust the denials.
04:39And there are possible explanations.
04:43And, you know, I want to stress, it's all very hypothetical, because we, as you correctly said, we really don't know.
04:50But there are possible explanations why there would be a sabotage attack at this time.
04:57First of all, the negotiations between the United States and Iran, the ones that have been conducted by Whitgoff and Arachi, do appear to be making some progress.
05:10We don't know how much, but it does look as if some kind of progress is happening.
05:16Now, and we can get some sense of what the outline deal or agreement might be, which is that Iran transfers its nuclear material, its enriched nuclear material to Russia.
05:32Now, Lavrov gave a long interview on Face the Nation, the United States, which he said, you know, absolutely, Russia is prepared to help in any way that it can to facilitate this process.
05:46And the idea of transferring nuclear material to Russia was brought up over the course of this interview.
05:54And Lavrov said, yeah, absolutely.
05:56You know, we did this in 2015.
05:59We would be prepared to do this again.
06:01So, Iran's nuclear material is transferred to Russia.
06:05Russia agrees to supply arms to Iran and the Iranians have been coming out and they've been giving us details of what arms the Russians would be prepared to supply to Iran.
06:17Or, in fact, they wouldn't be prepared, have already agreed to supply to Iran.
06:22These include Sukhoi-35 fighter jets, Yak-130 ground attack aircraft, and also Mi-28 helicopter gunships, you know, powerful weapons.
06:36And as on top of that, almost certainly the Russians would take steps to sort out and build up Iran's air defense system.
06:46There's reports that the United States, in return for Iran giving up its nuclear material, would lift or at least relax sanctions.
06:57The Russians are already, in effect, ignoring most of the sanctions.
07:02But anyway, that's that's the idea.
07:05By the way, I ought to say Russia is now itself exporting natural gas to Iran.
07:11Iran is a major gas producer, but because of the chaos within its industry, the way its industry has become very run down, it is short of gas for its own domestic market.
07:24The Russians are stepping in and are now starting to supply Iran with gas.
07:30And presumably, over time, there would be major cooperation between Russia and Iran to step up and redevelop Iran's natural gas industry.
07:40But anyway, moving forward, the Russians would take the nuclear material, they'd supply the weapons.
07:46There is report saying that the United States would then relax some sanctions.
07:52The Russians would then tell Iran that if the Americans went back on what they promised, they would return the nuclear material, the enriched uranium, to Iran.
08:02So all of the pieces are starting to fall into place with all of this.
08:06Arachid, who was the who's the Iranian foreign minister, went to Moscow.
08:12He had long discussions with Lavrov.
08:15He then met Putin himself.
08:18We haven't been told very much about that meeting, but apparently whatever it was, it went well.
08:24The Sultan of Oman, who is the mediator between the Americans and the Iranians, also visited Moscow.
08:34He, too, had a long and very, very friendly meeting with Putin.
08:39So you could see that the negotiations are moving forward.
08:44Now, as we know, there are a lot of people, both in the United States and in Israel, who don't want to see these negotiations come to fruition.
08:55They want instead an attack on Iran.
09:02They've been agitating and pressing for it for at least 20 years.
09:06They are now spreading the narrative that Iran is weaker than it's ever been, that the collapse of Assad's government in Syria exposes Iran to attack because Israel can use Syrian airspace to launch missile strikes closer to Iran,
09:29and that the Israelis in the military exchanges that took place in October destroyed Iran's S-300 air defense system.
09:41So, you know, these people want a conflict.
09:46They want, presumably, the negotiations to fail or collapse or be ended.
09:52So you can see how sabotaging a very important Iranian seaport, it's the port which is most important or was historically the most important seaport for exporting Iranian oil, just to say Bandai Bas, has a very long history.
10:14It's a major oil exporting port for Iran, launching a sabotage attack upon it.
10:22It's a major oil exporting, causing it massive destruction, will affect the Iranian economy in the short term, but it would also possibly goad Iran into taking some kind of counter reaction against Israel, presumably,
10:39which would wreck the whole negotiations and bring forward that moment when the attack on Iran took place.
10:46So I'm afraid, despite all that we've been told, that it was an accident, both the Iranians and the Israelis telling us it was an accident,
10:57there is a very, very plausible scenario whereby it was not and that it was a genuine sabotage attempt in order to lead to a conflict and to bring to a stop negotiations,
11:12nuclear negotiations, it's appear to be progressing well, but which powerful people, both in Israel and the United States, don't want to see happen.
11:22So that, unfortunately, is where we are.
11:26So if it was a sabotage, if it was a sabotage, maybe it wasn't so much about chemicals for weapons.
11:37Maybe that's a misdirection. And if it was a sabotage, maybe this was about damaging the Iranian economy.
11:44I mean, that's possible, right?
11:46Absolutely.
11:46I mean, it had nothing to do, because everyone's talking chemicals and rocket fuel and weapons and all of this stuff.
11:52That's what a lot of the analysts, social media, that's what they're talking about.
11:57But maybe this was just a sabotage on Iran's economy.
12:02Absolutely. To me, it looks like an attack on Iran's oil exports.
12:06I mean, Iran is a major exporter of oil.
12:09Its major customer, by the way, its biggest customer is China.
12:13China imports an awful lot of oil from Iran.
12:17So, I mean, there's been other times when Iran has exported oil to India, but mostly now it is China.
12:25And, of course, as we know, China is involved in a trade war with the United States.
12:31So, you know, disrupting Iranian oil exports at this time, you could say, serves two purposes.
12:39It puts pressure on China because it's not able to get all the oil it needs.
12:43And it puts enormous pressure on Iran because oil is what much of the economy of Iran is structured around.
12:53So, that's what it looks like to me.
12:56It looks more like an attempt to disrupt Iranian oil exports than to damage Iran's military.
13:09Just saying.
13:10Does this derail the progress made in the negotiations between the United States and Iran?
13:15Well, again, this is where it becomes very interesting because with the Iranians denying that it was a sabotage attempt,
13:24they're taking away the pressure on themselves if it was a sabotage attempt of having to respond.
13:33And something else very interesting happened because the moment this explosion took place,
13:37and we got all of these reports, the Russians, Putin contacted Iran, said, you know, we're terribly sorry about what has happened.
13:47Putin wrote a letter to Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, you know, expressing, you know, huge condolences for this.
13:55It's on the Kremlin's website.
13:57And the Russians rushed or said they're going to rush an aid to Iran to repair this damage.
14:04So, again, you can see that this works at various levels.
14:08On the one hand, it's telling the Iranians, look, for heaven's sake, don't be provoked.
14:13We will help you out of this.
14:16We will help you get this port back working again so that your oil exports can continue.
14:23And, of course, given that China is, you know, the biggest importer of Iranian oil, it's a nice gesture to China, too.
14:34All right.
14:35We will end the video there, theduran.locals.com.
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14:51One quick question before we exit, Alexander.
14:53Do you think we'll ever find out what happened to this port?
14:56Well, yes, actually.
14:58One of the things about this sort of thing is that eventually the people who do these things have an enormous initiative.
15:08If this was sabotage, they eventually can't resist telling us about it.
15:14So in one, two, three, five years' time, we'll be hearing the whole story.
15:19Of course, if it was simply an accident, then probably, you know, we won't hear.
15:25But if it was sabotage, at some point, we will probably find out.
15:30All right.
15:31Take care.