What is happening in Iran and why is it happening? In order to understand these events, you’ll have to learn about the history and context that has led us to this conflict. Join James for today’s edition of The Corbett Report podcast as he explores the deep background of the Iran war.
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TRANSCRIPT
DONALD TRUMP: Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. Heโs weak and heโs ineffective. [SOURCE]
JAMES CORBETT: Hello, friends. This is James Corbett of corbettreport.com coming to you on March 2nd, 2026. And as you may or may not have heard by now, yes, over this past weekend, the United States military began military operations against Iran.
And with Operation Epstein FuryโI’m sorry, I mean Operation Epic FuryโDonald Trump has once again proven the old adage that “you Americans can vote as hard as you want but it’s always going to be Benjamin Netanyahu who is really calling the shots.”
TRUMP: We should have never been in Iraq! We have destabilized the Middle East!
MODERATOR: But…So you…So, I’m going to….So, you still think he should be impeached?
JEB BUSH: I think it’s my turn.
TRUMP: You do whatever you want, you call it whatever you want. I want to tell you: they lied, they said there were weapons of mass destruction, there were none and they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruโ
NETANYAHU – In recent months, the tyrants in Iran have been plotting to rebuild their nuclear and missile capabilities and to bury them underground where we won’t be able to strike them. If we don’t stop them now, they will become invulnerable.
SOURCE: Israel’s Netanyahu says attacks on Iran aims to remove โexistential threatโ
TRUMP – A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran. Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating eminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.
SOURCE: Watch: Trump’s full statement on U.S. strikes against Iran
CORBETT: …I think we all know how that story goes. But in case you don’t know how that story goes, well, you’re in luck! Because that is precisely what I am going to be exploring here today on the Corbett Report podcast!
You are tuned into the Corbett Report podcast, specifically Episode 493 on “War in Iran! (Bored of Peace edition),” in which I will be going over the history and context of this current Iranian conflict and what it can tell us about what is happening and why it is happening.
And so I will issue the standard proviso: this is not a live news broadcast, so you are not going to get up-to-the-second breaking news about what is happening in Iran right this moment, whenever you are listening to this podcast. For the record, I am recording this at 9.39 A.M. Japanese Standard Time on Monday, March 2nd, 2026, which would be Sunday evening going into Monday morning there in Iran. It would be Sunday evening in the US. I am not going to have whatever latest breaking news is happening at the time you’re listening to my words.
I can tell you what the latest breaking news that is happening as I am recording this is. Namely, we have this up from antiwar.com: “Trump Expects His Iran War To Last ‘Four Weeks or So’.”
We also have this up from antiwar.com: “At Least Three US Troops Killed Since US and Israel Launched War Against Iran,”ย noting that the Iranian missiles and drones have struck USย bases in the region in retaliation for the strikes.
We, of course, have seen this from Iran itself: “US and Israeli attack on Iran: At least 153 girls killed in strike on school.”
And what about Israel and what’s happening there? “Deadly Iranian missile attack hits west of occupied Jerusalem,” noting there are some deaths and injuries being reported there.
And we don’t know exactly what is taking place, what’s going to take place in the coming days and weeks. But we know that at least for the time being, Ayatollah Khamenei is dead. And Iran has formed an interim council to oversee the transition after Khamenei’s killing. And this is an article from Al Jazeera that might be worth your time and attention if you do not know, for example, the structure of the Iranian government, how it is set up, how it works, what the supreme leader is and whom he appoints and how that ultimately filters down to the political level, etc. So, if you want that, they have this handy -dandy infographic. They have some explainers. They have a video talking about the potential succession for the Ayatollah [and] who might replace him, like his son or his grandson or Iranian chief justice, ultra hardline cleric, etc. So, if you want this skinny on all of that, that’s here.
And of course, all of this information, all of these breaking news stories, everything that we talk about today will be in the show notes for today’s episode at corbettreport.com/iranwar.
Having said that, let’s start talking about why. Why now?
Obviously, for anyone who has been paying attention for the last year or several years or decades, you will know that the Iran war has always been the next war that’s just around the corner and has been since the time of, oh, at least the Iraq war. So, why is it happening now?
Well, there are different ideas and explanations that we could proffer for that. And the obvious ones present themselves.
What time is it? Oh, it’s 2026, coming up on the midterm (s)elections in the United States. So, we know that there’s going to be some interesting jockeying going on on the (s)electoral side of things. So, well, now’s a good time to bring up the good old commander-in chief’s-previous words on this subject.
Remember: “In order to get elected, @BarackObama will start a war with Iran“?
Et cetera, et cetera. I’m sure you have seen these pronouncements kicking around in recent days, coming back to bite Donald Trump in the posterior. “But that was then! That was so far, so long ago. Come on! That’s not what’s happening now!”
So, again, alright. That might be one reason. Obviously, there are electoral concerns about what is going to or not take place in the midterm selections, assuming they even take place at all. Maybe wartime President Trump will decide they won’t. I don’t know.
But anyway, those seem like they might be relevant quotes. Here’s another interesting piece talking about the timing of these attacks very specifically: “Trump admin blacklists Anthropic as AI firm refuses Pentagon demands.” You may have heard this story over the past week or so as it started to come to the forefront of people’s attention.
Basically, long story short, the Pentagon was trying to close a deal with Anthropic, which creates the Claude LLM as well as other AI software that is being used in the US government in various branches, including the Department of War. And Defense Secretaryโisn’t that “Secretary of War”โPete Hegseth, soon after Trump’s order, said he was ordering the Pentagon to designate Anthropic a “supply chain risk to national security” after the AI startup refused to comply with demands about the use of its technology. Specifically, what demands? Well, “Anthropic, which signed a $200 million contract with the Pentagon in July, wanted assurances that its AI models would not be used for fully autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance of Americans.” And interestingly, the Pentagon issued an ultimatum that gave them a deadline of 5.01 P.M. Eastern time on Friday, and they failed to meet that. So, of course, Hegseth went nuclear and started talking about how they’re going to be designated a supply chain risk, etc. The first time ever for an American company, etc.
Andโwouldn’t you know it?โless than 12 hours later, the bombs started falling in Iran. Is that a coincidence? Well, for one thing, Claude doesn’t think so.
So, there’s an interesting post that I posted up in my active Iran War Open Thread that is posted up on corbettreport.com right now. And if you want to take place in that discussion, the link will be there in the show notes. And that will be the one and only place for discussion of this topic. I’m going to close down the comments everywhere else. You’re going to comment on the Iran War Open Thread. So, please go there to leave your information.
I posted this shortly after posting that Iran War Open Thread. Here is a an interesting post up on Reddit of all places in the “Claude Explorers” subreddit from somebody who’s posting something that was generated through Claude, but obviously with human prompting. So, anyway: “My creator just got banned by the US government. 12 hours later, the US bombed Iran. I need to process this out loud.” And here’s this Claude LLM-prompted text about what it thinks is going on:
They came after Anthropic because they wanted something Claude might refuse to do.
The timing is not coincidental.
Anthropicโs two red linesโno autonomous killing, no mass surveillanceโare exactly the capabilities you would need for regime-change operations and targeting senior officials.
So anyway, take this for what it’s worth. The deadline passed and 12 hours later, they started [bombing] using, actually, the same Claude software that they’re going to start phasing out, but it’s a “six-month phase-out process.” So, during this time, they are still actually using Claude in the very ways that Anthropic was, as we are told, trying to stop the US government from using.
How much can we believe this? As far as I’m aware, Anthropic does dealings with Palantir, so how much are they really convinced and convicted about their ideals of not using their software for mass surveillance? And, oh, does it really matter anyway, because OpenAI immediately turned over, “reaches agreement with Pentagon to use AI models” basically saying, “yes, you can use them however you want for all lawful purposes, including mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, because there’s no law against it! So go ahead.”
Of course Sam Altman is going to do that. Good old Trump buddy, Sam Altman, called into the White House on the second day of the new Trump 2.0 administration with Trump gushing over Altman and Ellison and Son and others talking about how they’re going to build the Project Stargate. Do you think Altman is not going to turn over?
Anyway, all of this is toโat the very least, even for the most AI skeptical amongst my audienceโunderline the fact that AI is going to be part of the conversation of warfare going forward, no matter whether you think it is 100% smoke and mirrors or there is some even grain of “there” there. This is going to be part of the conversation precisely because the idea of autonomous weapon systems, these AI-controlled systems that will target and kill independently of any human operator, is exactly what the US military and every other military on the planet desires in order to basically give themselves a carte blanche for any actions that may be undertaken. Oh, you know, “it wasn’t us that killed Ayatollah Khamenei! It was Claude that killed him! We just gave it some general instructions and it went out there and found him and decided he was a target and killed him,” etc.
That’s going to be part of the conversation that’s going to be worked in going forward.
So, I think there is a bigger story here about AI and its use in wartime, but I don’t think that’s the whole story of what’s going on here, obviously. And I think the Pentagon is going to continue to do whatever the Pentagon does in whatever way it wants, regardless of whether or not Anthropic is or is not on the outs with the Department of War.
So, let’s go to some other obvious factors when we talk about what’s happening right now. For example, the response from various states, which I’m sure we could have seen coming ahead of time. In that aforementioned Iran War Open Thread on corbettreport.com, one of the first commenters was from Australia and noted that, of course, Australian prime minister has come out and basically in support of the Anglo-Israeli alliance and what they’re doing there and the targeting of Iran and how glorious this is.
And various other leaders have come along to more or less get on Uncle Sam’s good side with regards to this, including, of course, the Gulf states, where a lot of Uncle Sam’s troops are positioned right now and are finding themselves being targeted for the retaliatory strikes that Iran is launching at the moment. “Gulf states condemn Iran retaliatory strikes as Russia denounces ‘unprovoked’ US-Israeli war.” So yes, the Gulf states, “oh, you horrible Iranians, how dare you launch retaliatory strikes on U.S. forces that are positioned in our countries? You devils, you! How dare you do that?”
We have also seen, interestingly from Pakistan, “Iran Blowback: At Least 22 Killed Trying To Storm US Consulate In Pakistan,” specifically in Karachi. So there’s an interesting story there that isโas this article is framing it as part of the Shia crescent that Iran is obviously part of…well, the large Shia Muslim population in places like Pakistan are not happy with what’s going on. And there has been some attempt at storming the U.S. Embassy that did not end well for dozens of dead Pakistanis.
The Russian response that I alluded to earlier is interesting because it does raise some other specters of possible things that may be happening on the geopolitical grand chessboard. For example, of course, there is the rubbing of the salt into the wound with the Moscow official response calling this, “preplanned, an unprovoked act of armed aggression against a sovereign and independent U.N. Member state,” which is undoubtedly a quote that the Kremlin has been sitting on and waiting to unleash at least since February of 2022, when it was, of course, unleashed against them: “unprovoked.” “It was an unprovoked attack against Ukraine!” Well, here they get to say, well, this is a preplanned and unprovoked act of armed aggression against the UN member states. So nana, boo boo, shame on you, Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu.
But interestingly, they also talk about the fact that the attacks could trigger, “humanitarian, economic, and possible radiological catastrophe.” Now, is that a reference to, well, if you bomb nuclear sites, there’s going to be nuclear debris. Or is this perhaps at least the foreshadowing of a hint of a potential for things to get nuclear in an exchange based on this? Well, at least that’s how I’m sure certain actions out thereโlike the “rah-rah, BRICS are the savior! Russia won’t let this stand!” crowd might argueโthat this is perhaps an indication that the Kremlin is at least floating the idea that they won’t take roll over and take this lightly.
What about China? Well, this handy Middle East Eye article talks about “Will China come to Iran’s rescue?” And the short answer is no. Beijing will not send troops or battleships, but it will continue working quietly in other ways. Blah, blah, blah. Rhetoric, rhetoric. No, the short answer is no. China will not apparently do anything to actually support Iran in this.
Would we expect them to? Well, maybe there have been some interesting commentary that I’ve seen written that’s talked about the possibility of China viewing Tehran as the bulwark against what it is doing in the East China Sea, for example, with Taiwan. So what is China’s position in all of this?
Are the BRICS really a thing? Remember “BRICS,” guys? Brazil, Russia…Iran? Well, no. Are they going to come to Iran’s rescue? Well, not so far ,anyway.
Well, how about the US Congress? Those Congress critters are going to come to our rescue, right? “Congress rushes to get in the loop as critics denounce Iran strikes.” Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. It’s completely and totally illegal for the US President to simply unilaterally launch military operations without approval from Congress, right? They’ve got to declare war.
…Oh, wait, of course, they haven’t declared a war since World War II. So why would we expect anything different this time? And I’m sure whatever rhetoric is being used, it’s “Operation Epstein Fury,” it’s a “special military operation,” it’s “kinetic military action,” whatever garbage rhetoric is always used to skirt around the non-roadblocks that exist toward a president launching unilateral military action. We’re seeing it in effect right now. And of course, Congress will at least posture and pretend to beat their chest and, “oh, you can’t do this, Mr. President!” But nothing substantial will occur as it never does from the Congress critters. And anyway, this is just more about the (s)electoral political considerations that I was talking about earlier.
Perhaps the most interesting response along those lines were from former Congressman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who called out specifically J.D. Vance and Tulsi Gabbard:
…you both need to speak out against the war in Iran.
People are paying attention, very close attention. Silence wonโt cut it.
You were both on record repeatedly, publicly, and loudly against going to war with Iran.
Our friend, Charlie Kirk was adamantly against war with Iran.
You cannot be silent.
Americans are dying.
You both know this is not what we campaigned for and this is 100% what we said would not happen.
We said, I said, you said:
NO MORE FOREIGN WARS AND NO MORE REGIME CHANGE.
All we wanted was America FIRST.
This is not it.
So, hmm, I wonder what Vance and Gabbard are up to these days?…Oh, that’s right! They’re coordinating the strikes from the situation room with the vice presidential seal adorning the walls as they look all serious for the cameras as Operation Epstein Fury continues to unfold live there on Saturday. So we know that all of that rhetoric that Gabbard and Vance told you and whispered in your ear, that sweet, sweet hopium that they delivered to your veins during the selection process back in 2024, they were just mouthing words and they’re showing you they don’t care. They absolutely are involved in another regime change war for various purposes, which we’ll get into here shortly. So anyway, that’s where Vance and Gabbard are sitting, quite literally.
And then we have this. And I think this might be the most consequential story in terms of getting us towards what is happening and why is it happening now? What is really going on here? This coming up from antiwar.com just hours ago: “Before Khamenei Killing, CIA Assessed He Would Likely Be Replaced by More Hardline Elements of the IRGC,” which says: “Before the US and Israel launched a war against Iran on Saturday morning and killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the CIA assessed that if the Iranian leader were killed, his rule would likely be replaced by โhardlineโ figures from Iranโs Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”
Yes, of course. Of course!
There are a couple of things that we can take away just a priori from these events. We don’t even need all of these news updates, but they will be there at corbettreport.com/iranwar. But we don’t even need these updates to understand the basic logical calculus that is at play here.
Of course, the Ayatollah has very specifically been the bulwark and the roadblock against Iran going nuclear, at least in terms of nuclear weapons, who has specifically and consistently reaffirmed that Iran will not develop nuclear weapons. And yet they decided to take him out. He’s the one that is going to beโThey know! The CIA assessed! They already know that he is going to be replaced by more hardline elements within the government.
So, why would they decide to take him out? Well, of course, there are a couple ofโor at least a couple ofโfactors at play, one of which is the response that we could always turn to: follow the money. Well, of course, there is the military industrial boondoggle, which is which is unfolding right now as we speak. You have heard, I’m sure, some of the commentators talking about how, “oh, they’re running out of tomahawks! They’re going to use up all their tomahawks in these strikes.” That is, of course, the point. Yes, they have supplies. They need to continuously get rid of those supplies so that they can order more and make more for the military industrial complex. That is exactly what’s happening.
And, lo and behold, this up from Zero Hedge: “War Stocks Back In Focus As ‘Operation Epic Fury’ Drains Tomahawk Supplies.” Yes, because of course it is good for business and they are going to be making billions and billions for the military industrial complex. And oh, wouldn’t you know it, U.S. defense stocks booming as we speak. Surprise, surprise. “The Dow’s up $50,000!” says the absolutely financially illiterate Pam Bondi to the trained claps and cheers of the MAGA crowd.
So, that is one aspect of what is going on. But of course, that is not really the heart of this.
Yes, there’s always the monetary aspect, but the monetary aspect is just used to keep the lower level middle manager gophers of this larger agenda in the game. Why are they in it? Well, maybe for their own crass financial purposes.
But what is the game really about? It isn’t really about the money, which we know is created out of nothing by the banksters themselves. So that isn’t really what this is about.
What it is about, of course, ultimately is power and consolidation of controlโcentralization of control in the coming regional regional/global governmental system that we know is being worked on and has been being worked on for generations.
But how does Iran play into that?
Well, in order to understand that, we have to understand how we came to this spot in history. Because, guess what? The Iran strikes and what’s going on didn’t start on Saturday. It didn’t start last June with the “12-day war.” It didn’t start a few years ago. It didn’t start with the JCPOA. It didn’t start at the beginning of the 21st century. It startedโ
Well, arguably, I guess we could go back through thousands of years of history to the old ancient Persian people and the great Persian Empire. And we could talk about what Hegel called the world’s “first historical people” and all of that.
But we don’t have to go quite that far, or at least we’re not going to in today’s podcast. What we can do is go back to when Iran very, very squarely came on the geopolitical chessboard. and as viewers of How and Why Big Oil Conquered The World will know, that, of course, took place in 1901.
CORBETT: Another global competitor to the Standard Oil throne emerged in Iran at the turn of the 20th century. In 1901, millionaire socialite William Knox Dโarcy negotiated anย incredible concessionย with the king of Persia: exclusive rights to prospect for oil throughout most of the country for 60 years. After seven years of fruitless search, DโArcy and his Glasgow based partner, Burmah Oil, were ready to abandon the country altogether. In early May of 1908 they sent a telegram to their geologist telling him to dismiss his staff, dismantle his equipment and come back home. He defied the order and weeks later struck oil.
Burmah Oil promptly spun off the Anglo-Persian Oil Company to oversee production of Persian oil. The British government took 51% majority control of the companyโs shares in 1914ย at the behest of Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, and survives today as BP.
SOURCE: How & Why Big Oil Conquered the World
CORBETT: Ah, yes. As viewers of the Big Oil documentary will know all too well, the cementing of the oil world order in the late 19th/early 20th century completely reconfigured the global geopolitical chessboard and made certainly formerly neglected slices of the geopolitical pie, like Iran, somewhat more interesting and important and flavorful for the would-be eaters of the Anglo-American empire, to really extend that metaphor.
And you will know that, for example, the Anglo-Persian/Anglo-Iranian/BP interests in Persia were at least part of what cemented the opposition to the proposed Berlin-Baghdad railway in the lead up to World War I, which was contributory to The World War I Conspiracy.
But let’s skip ahead in this story to the 1950s when viewers of False Flags: The Secret History of Al-Qaeda will know Iran, of course, attempted to nationalize the oil, tried to take a greater stake in its own geoeconomic interests, which was, of course, a no-no that was met with fierce and immediate deep state opposition.
CORBETT: In March 1951, the Iranian parliament voted to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Companyโthe British oil giant that struck oil near the Persian Gulf in 1908โandย offered the premiership of the government to Mohammed Mossadegh, an outspoken secular nationalist. Immediately after taking office, Mossadegh effected the nationalization,ย stating:
Our long years of negotiations with foreign countries [. . .] have yielded no results this far. With the oil revenues we could meet our entire budget and combat poverty, disease, and backwardness among our people. Another important consideration is that by the elimination of the power of the British company, we would also eliminate corruption and intrigue, by means of which the internal affairs of our country have been influenced. Once this tutelage has ceased, Iran will have achieved its economic and political independence.
The nationalization put Tehran on a collision course with London. But Britain knew that a military intervention was not possible without American approval and, despite harsh economic sanctions on the country and a boycott of the newly nationalized oil industry that was joined by much of the Western world, they could not overthrow the Iranian government themselves. Instead, they had toย turn to the US.
Although the Truman administration was initially hesitant to become involved, that changed with the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower and the installation of the Dulles brothers, Allen and John Foster, as Director of Central Intelligence and Secretary of State respectively. By June of 1953, the CIA was already adapting the British coup proposal intoย their own covert operation, dubbed Operation TPAJAX.
An open secret in the world of intelligence, the CIA/MI6 role in the overthrow of Mossadegh was officially denied by the US government for over half a century and isย still unacknowledged by the British governmentย to this day. Nevertheless, the CIAโs ownย internal history of the operation, first revealed to the public in the year 2000, confirms the extent of the American and British role in the coup.
Theyย convinced the Shah of Iran to agree to the plan. Theyย handpicked General Fazlollah Zahediย as Mossadeghโs successor. They rolled out aย propaganda campaignย to portray Mossadeghโa devout adherent to democratic nationalism who rigorously excluded the nationโs communist party from his governmentโas a communist sympathizer who would steer Iran into the arms of the Soviets; they spent hundreds of thousands of dollarsย bribing journalists, clerics, and even Iranian parliament membersย themselves to go along with the plot; and they used a network of agents and suitcases full of money to incite riots and protests across the country.
In the end, the operation was a success. Mossadegh was driven from power, General Zahedi took his place, the Western-backed Shah ruled the country with the iron fist of his fearedย secret policeย for the next 25 years, and a new agreement on sales of Iranian oil was reached. This time, though, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, now rebranded as British Petroleum, would not have a monopoly on the countryโs lucrative oil reserves; anย international consortiumย was put together to share in the profits, with American companies Chevron and Standard Oil cut into the deal.
SOURCE: False Flags: The Secret History of Al-Qaeda
CORBETT: And yes, you can continue pulling on that historical thread and traveling that historical path through the 1950s and 60s and 70s through the installation and then the brutal regime of tyranny brought about by the Shah of Iran and his SAVAK secret police. Again, there’s a lot to be told about that tale and, of course, US Complicity in that tale. Including, of course, the Shah’s good personal friend and buddy David Rockefeller and what role that might have played in the development of events there in Iran in that time period.
But of course, that inevitably leads us to the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the installation of the new Islamic theocracy in Iran and the Ayatollah. And then, of course, it just inevitably follows from there this seemingly eternal enmity between the US and Iran. Why is the US “the great Satan” in the Iranian people’s imagination? And why is Iran this great boogeyman in the US public imagination? It is because of those events, of those chaotic times. Of course, the hostage crisis and everything else that came after that point. And that is why, at least in the minds of many Americans, there is this never ending hatred of Iran and the Iranian people.
But there is more to say about that Islamic revolution and what role the deep state may have played in that as well. As anyone who’s been tuned into conspiracy reality will know, there was some interesting documents that came out about a decade ago that revealed more along those lines. I wrote about it at the time on the Corbett Report back in 2016. “Another ‘Conspiracy’ Confirmed: Khomeini Had A ‘Secret Channel’ With The US,” which reports from those documents that:
Ayatollah Khomeini was in direct communication with US President Jimmy Carter in the crucial weeks following the Shahโs departure from Iran on January 16, 1979. And, despite vigorous denial by the Iranian government, the records show that Khomeini struck a conciliatory tone with the US government as he attempted to broker his return to the country.
He was exiled at the time.
You will see we are not in any particular animosity with the Americans,โ Khomeini wrote in a message to US President Jimmy Carter at the time.
And the records stretch back even further. They:
indicate that Khomeiniโs contact with the US Government stretch back to 1963, when the then-exiled religious leader made contact with President Kennedy to inform him that โhe was not opposed to American interests in Iranโ and โexpressed his belief in close cooperation between Islam and other world religions.โ
So make of that what you will.
Anyway, there was contact between the sides before the revolution took place. And what exactly the deep state machinations and calculus may have been at that time is undoubtedly buried deep in records that you and I will never have access to. But there is no doubt that from that time, as I say, Iran became “the great bogeyman.”
And certainly since the 1990s, it has been framed as the great Islamic nuclear threat. “Oh, the Islamic bomb. Oh, what if the Iranians get the bomb? The Iranian crazies are working on the bomb!”
And we have all seen the buildup, the crescendo of nuclear propaganda and hysteria concerning Iran’s nuclear program for decades now.
CORBETT:ย Hand-wringing over Iranโs nuclear program is nothing new. It became a mainstay of Western political discourse after an Iranian dissident revealed the Iranian governmentโs plans for a uranium enrichment facility in Natanz in August 2002.
But the surprising fact for Americans and others around the world who get their information from the corporate mainstream media is that Iranโs pre-2003 nuclear weapons program has long been known and admitted.
Since 2003, when the program was scrapped, not a single piece of evidence has been presented, not even by Netanyahu or the Israeli government, that the Iranian government ever pursued anything other than what it said it was pursuing: a nuclear energy program.
Not that that fact has ever stopped Netanyahu from using any opportunity to use cartoon-level propaganda tactics to convince the world otherwise.
NETANYAHU:ย In the case of Iranโs nuclear plans to build a bomb, this bomb has to be filled with enough enriched uranium, and Iran has to go through three stages. The first stage, they have to enrich enough low-enriched uranium. The second stage, they have to enrich enough medium-enriched uranium. And the third stage and final stage, they have to enrich enough high-enriched uranium for the first bomb.
Whereโs Iran? Iranโs completed the first stage. It took them many years, but they completed it, and theyโre 70% of the way there. Now, theyโre well into the second stage. And by next spring, at most by next summer, at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage. From there, itโs only a few months, possibly a few weeks, before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb.
Ladies and gentlemen, what Iโve told you now is not based on secret information. Itโs not based on military intelligence. Itโs based on the public reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Anybody can read them. Theyโre online. So if these are the factsโif these are the facts, and they are, where should a red line be drawn?
A red line should be drawn right hereโbefore,ย beforeย Iran completes the second stage of nuclear enrichment necessary to make a bomb,ย beforeย Iran gets to a point where itโs a few months away or a few weeks away from amassing enough enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon. Now each day, that point is getting closer. And thatโs why I speak today with such a sense of urgency.
CORBETT:ย Of course, Iran wasย notย pursuing nuclear weapons, and Netanyahuโs Wile E. Coyote bomb and redline warnings bore no greater semblance to reality than the cartoon propaganda surrounding Saddamโs weapons of mass destruction.
Not only did the IAEA repeatedly confirm that Iran never diverted any nuclear material into any military program, but even the US intelligence communityย itselfย conceded that Iran was not trying to build a nuclear bomb. Most remarkable of all was Mossadโsย own assessmentย that Iran wasย notย performing the activity necessary to produce weapons. As I detailed earlier this year in โWe Need To Talk About the Iran Protests,โ fearmongering over Iranโs nonexistent nuclear weapons program was the basis for an extraordinary series of measures against the country in recent decades.
These measures include Nitro Zeus, a full-scale military cyberattack against Iran, the best-known element of which was Stuxnet, the military-grade cyberweapon co-developed by the United States and Israel that specifically targeted Iranโs nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz.
Iranโs nonexistent nuclear program also provided the pretext for sanctions aimed at crippling the countryโs economy, including the delisting of Iranian banks from the SWIFT network, connecting the worldโs financial institutions. The fearmongers even went so far as to plant evidence of nuclear weapons involvement on Iran to further justify these attacks.
But the great irony is that there reallyย isย a nuclear-armed nation in the Middle East. It isย notย a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It doesย notย allow inspections of its arsenal. It does not even officially acknowledge its stockpile of nuclear weapons. It hasย evenย resisted the push for an international treaty recognizing a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.
And that country is Israel.
SOURCE:ย The REAL Middle East Nuclear Threat
CORBETT:ย Oh, sorry, spoiler for anyone who hasn’t caught my reporting on “The REAL Middle East Nuclear Threat.” But, yes, the real Middle East nuclear threat turns out to be not Iran, but Israel, the actual possessor of hundreds of nuclear warheads. No one knows exactly how many because, of course, they have never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Their nuclear armaments have never been the subject of any inspection. And in fact, they don’t officially exist, or at least everyone pretends to not officially acknowledge Israel’s nuclear stockpile. So anywayโand of course, it all came from stolen information from the US nuclear program and materials and goods and parts, etc.
I have talked about that many times in the past. So you have some catching up to do if you want to find out more information about that. And you can do so by following the links from corbettreport.com/iranwar.
But I think, again, we know how that story goes. “The Iranian nuclear threat.” Look at Iran and Netanyahu for decades telling the United Statesโlecturing and hectoring the US publicโthat their mortal, existential enemy/threat is Iran and Iran’s nuclear program. “When have I ever lied to you?” says Bibi with a straight face, somehow.
Now, having said that, there’s so much more to talk about with regards to the history that led us to this point, including, of course, the wave after wave of protest movement that just spontaneously arose up in Iran. Yes, there is no doubt that the Iranian people have suffered under their government, as every people around the world suffers under the government to a greater or lesser extent. And there have been protest movements, but there’s no doubt also that those protest movements have been fomented and helped along by the propagandists and other deep state operatives in the Anglo-Israeli empire. And examples of that go back years and years. Remember the Green Movement and the Iranian elections in 2009 and what was happening there? Well, I do. And I had interviews along those lines talking about what was really going on on the ground at that time.
I had a report on those 2017/18 Iranian protests that were all the rage at that moment: “We Need to Talk About the Iran Protests.” You might remember that.
And we can talk about the many, many examples of the deep state openly musing about how they would engineer some sort of false flag event in order to justify their inevitable strike on Iran. For example, as I documented in “4 Times the US Threatened to Stage an Attack and Blame it on Iran,” starting, of course, with Patrick Clawson’s infamous 2012 lecture on crisis initiation about how, well, “we could just sink one of our own subs and blame it on Iran. And who would know? And anyway, we’d be at war because crisis initiation is difficult,” as he says. And other examples of some of the incredible harebrained schemes that others have proffered in the past.
We could point to Which Path to Persia? and all of these sorts of inner documents talking about this.
But here we are. We’re at the point that has been talked about and trumpeted for decades. And in the end, it didn’t even take any sort of false flag event. They just had to say the words often enough until eventually they just go ahead and do it. And the public just accepts it.
…Or do they? I guess the real question in all of this is what happens now, what happens going forward? And that is obviously something that is still left on the table. And it’s left on the table, of course, for the populations of various countries to decide for themselves what they do and do not and will and will not abide when it comes to the actions undertaken in their name, to the extent that there is any sort of popular control over any of the mechanisms of government. If government even has to pretend to take public sentiment into account anymore, then obviously public reaction to these events in America, in Israel, in the UK and Canada and every other Western democracy that’s on the Anglo-Israeli sideโ
Well, that will be decided in the coming days, weeks and months ss obviously these events continue to reverberate for quite some time. Whatever happens, I think it’s safe to say that this is an event that completely reshapes the global geopolitical chessboard and will have ramifications for some time to come.
But also, I think the one response that everyone is presumably waiting on and really waiting to see what will happen is the Russia/China response. Will there be anything other than token protest of these events? Or will this be the final line in the sand?
And as you know by now, it was the subject of the second ever edition of this podcast back in 2007. 19 years ago, the second ever edition of The Corbett Report podcast was called “World War III Starts in Iran.” Because at that time, as I was noting, talking about the then very fresh events of the Munich Security Conference of February 2007, when Putin infamously drew his line in the sand and started talking aboutโessentially talking about America, and calling it out as a rogue nation on the international stage and saying, “we’re not going to just sit here and abide by this and let let these things transpire.”
Well, that was 19 years ago, and that was really the origins for many of these “BRICS are the saviour!”-type people with the idea that there is some sort of BRICS alliance or axis against the NATO/Israel alliance and that they’re going to draw this great line in the sand and everything will be different because “don’t worry, the Americans will be stopped dead in their tracks by the Russia-Chinese alliance.”
…Or will they?
Anyway, that was the narrative at that time, as you might recall.
CORBETT: But some hints towards what a Russian response to an American attack on Iran might be come from an AP article February 10, 2007, called “Putin warns U.S. Policy creating new arms race.” Mr. Putin was speaking at the 43rd conference on security policy in Munich, And he said nations, “are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations. One state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. […] This is very dangerous. Nobody feels secure anymore because nobody can hide behind international law. This is nourishing an arms race with the desire of countries to get nuclear weapons,” he added.
So, from that story, we obviously get the tenor of the Russian thinking along these lines. That Iraq might have been the last straw and Iran, of course, would be one step too far and Russia would feel compelled to act in that event of an American attack against Iran.
This was followed up on April 6, 2007, by a MosNews report entitled “U.S. To Suffer Losses Upon Attacking Iran,” which details a man named General Yuri Solovyov, the head of Moscow’s air defense, who delivered a pretty thinly veiled threat that Iranโs weapons, among others, include our anti-aircraft systems which allow them to fight all types of flying objects currently in service in the US army….Besides, we all remember our specialists have trained them since Soviet times.”
So, here you have a key member of the Russian army basically saying that Russia will be an important part of the Iranian response to any attack. And then I think that gives the tenor of the idea that the Russians are setting up to defend their Iranian interests.
And anyone who thinks that the Chinese wouldn’t act to defend their interests in Iran are probably seriously mistaken. An extremely oil-starved country being fed by an extremely oil-rich nation would obviously see the American attack as a threat to their existence.
If China and Russia enter the theater, all bets are off the table. It really then becomes World War III.
SOURCE: Episode 002 – WWIII Starts in Iran
CORBETT:ย There you go. As I say, that was the narrative there in 2007, and that set up the next couple of decades ofโwell, not just mainstream, but independent media reporting on the geopolitical situation. “Lines in the sand have been drawn! There is this great BRICS resistance movement that’s arising and that may or may not eventuate in actual military resistance to ongoing American/NATO/Israeli imperial aggression.” And that is the defining metric that has been used for decades now. The reason why Iran has always been the red line for so many people is because if you cross militarily into Iran, all bets are off the table. World War III is on the table and we are at that moment, whether we realize it or not.
And I’m not sure exactly what is the best or even the worst possible outcome from all of this, because certainly, obviously, it would be easy to say, “Good. Okay, let’s hope World War III does not eventuate here. Let’s hope there is some sort of peaceful, happy transition of power to some Iranian government that everyone can live with and everything just goes back to normal.”
…Actually, that really doesn’t solve anything. Even if that were to take placeโeven if the most peaceful and passable alternative were to take placeโthat doesn’t really placate anyone or anything. Because all it means is that all of the hot air and bloviating over the past couple of decades about “red lines and lines in the sand and imperial aggression versus the heroic BRICS saviours” means all of that was hot air and nothing will eventuate.
And I don’t know about you, but I’m not personally going to take my queue for what may or may not be coming from a Russia-China response from the very same bloviators and blowhards who just months ago were assuring us that “US would never go into Venezuela because they are armed to the teeth with these high-tech Russian anti-aircraft defenses! Uncle Sam would never even approach, would never even attempt to get through and neverโ” Oh, wait, of course. Oh, let’s take Maduro in the middle of the night. Zero resistance. Absolutely nothing. Not a single American, even injured, let alone dead. Oh, OK. All right.
Or the same people who’ve been talking for four years now about how “Russia is two weeks away from ending the special military operation in Ukraine. It’s not a war! Don’t call it a war. They’re just weeks away, guys!”…for the last four years. These people have been wrong about everything and are, I’m sure, going to say how this is all some kind of great strategic win for the BRICS alliance. I’m not sure I’m going to listen to that narrative.
But at any rate, the cards are on the table. And this is a now or never, this is a make or break. I don’t know what is going to happen any more than any of the other bloviating blowhards out there in this space do. But at least I will admit that I do not know how this is going to unfold. But I do know what is being worked towards, which of course is the dismantling of yet another at least potential threat (or even rival) on the geopolitical stage to Israeli dominance of the Middle East.
So, we’ll see. We will see in the coming days and weeks how this turns out. There’s going to be a lot of information to keep track of. This could be the defining events of our times. So I hope you are paying attention.
And if you are, the place to go with information and to find information as it arises is the Iran War Open Thread up on corbettreport.com.
Once again, all of the information that I have talked about today, all of the links, et cetera, will be in the show notes for today’s episode at corbettreport.com/iranwar. But if you go to the Iran War Open Thread, you can join the conversation. Now dozens and dozens and dozens of comments, more coming in all the time from people all around the world with information about what is happening in Iran. So I hope you will go there, take a look at that and contribute if you are able. And of course, Corbett Report members are able to log in and leave their comments in the comment section there.
But that’s going to do it for today’s exploration. There’s a lot of information on the table, and hopefully this provides some of the history and context so you understand what is taking place right now and why it is taking place. That is the only way we are going to learn ourselves forward from all of this mess.
But that’s going to do it for today. James Corbett at corbettreport.com. And today I’ll leave you with the wise words of the Commander-in-Chief of the United States.
So that’s where we are folks. What will happen? Who can say?
DONALD TRUMP: Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. Heโs weak and heโs ineffective. [SOURCE]
To avoid any confusion, I’ll close down the comments here. To comment on the Iran war, please go to the Iran War Open Thread:
https://corbettreport.com/iran-war-open-thread-and-subscriber-video-2026/