00:00Moving to Pakistan, General Asim Munir, the de facto head of the Pakistani state, he was in Washington last week or so and he had extensive meetings with the US administration and then he had met Donald Trump also.
00:17So I would like to have your view on it, what was actually discussed in those meetings. And secondly, I would like to have your comment because there have been media reports that Pakistan would help Iran and Turkey nuclear assistance if there is a conflict between Israel and Iran.
00:38I just want to give my point of view, Larry. I have grown up in this country. Whatever you want to call Pakistani security establishment, you might call them greedy, you might call them corrupt. You can debate about it.
00:56But one thing I know, they're not stupid because giving off nuclear assets to Iran or Israel would make Pakistani military a pariah state and I think they won't afford this kind of hostility with the West right now.
01:16So what's your take on these two issues with Pakistan, Larry?
01:18Well, actually, I was going to ask you. So, for example, Iran and Pakistan do have a natural relationship, a degree of cooperation in dealing with the problem of the Baluchis, correct?
01:34To some extent, yes, correct. To some extent, it's correct. There is a hostility between Iran and Pakistan, you know. There is a hostility due to the relations to the ethnic mix and the religious differences.
01:47You know, Pakistan is predominantly a Sunni state, as you know, whereas Iran is predominantly a Shia state.
01:53So there is a kind of hostility with that. And secondly, there never has been a very brotherly relationship between Iran and Pakistan for various reasons.
02:03For instance, there has been an understanding that Iran would provide Pakistan gas, but due to pressure from the West, Pakistan hasn't been able to buy the Iranian gas, which would be a natural conduit for energy, for an energy-staffed country like Pakistan.
02:19But they have never got that because of the pressure. So there's always been a kind of hostility.
02:23So my opinion, I personally don't feel it would be very easy for a Pakistani establishment to provide nuclear assistance to Iran.
02:31So I would like your thought on it, because you had a different perspective in looking at this problem.
02:36Well, no, I start from the premise that Pakistan officials, both the intelligence and military communities in particular,
02:47they are going to pursue, first and foremost, what is in the interest of Pakistan.
02:55They have been played in the past by both the West, by both the United States and Brits.
03:02But, you know, I've always found, you know, I did, I was teaching, oh, good Lord, 20 years ago, the Senior Crisis Management Seminar for State Department.
03:16And so when the Pakistani delegation would show up, and it was usually comprised of senior police, diplomatic personnel, but no military.
03:25I was always impressed with the fact that your average Pakistani spoke better English than your average American, okay?
03:35So a level of high intelligence.
03:40But, you know, Pakistan has also pursued sort of its own intelligence objectives.
03:46The, I don't know if you're familiar with the Awan family.
03:50They were contractors to the U.S. House of Representatives and the Democratic National Committee controlling the servers.
04:02Now, I believe, and I had a friend that did some investigation for me in Pakistan, that they were ISI assets.
04:12And, you know, kudos to the ISI that, you know, they're an excellent intelligence service.
04:18But I also believe that the ISI was probably the one implicated in the death of Seth Rich, the DNC staffer who linked the information to WikiLeaks,
04:30because, you know, I think ISI feared correctly that this could possibly expose Pakistan's hand in that.
04:38So my only point is, Pakistan has been pursuing its own agendas at times independent of the United States.
04:45But the U.S. will come to Pakistan and ask the Pakistanis help.
04:51And it wouldn't surprise me at all if they had also enlisted Pakistani help in trying to infiltrate personnel into Iran to kill or identify Iranian scientists.
05:03So I thought Pakistan's verbal support of Iran was important.
05:09I think it was more tactical than actually substantive.
05:16But, you know, this is, we're living, you know, you're growing up, you know, you're younger than I am.
05:26You're probably the age of my son, I suspect.
05:28And, you know, you're going through, you're watching a transformation of the world that is going to, you know, really shape the future.
05:40The era of the United States' control and domination, it's coming to an end.
05:46And that doesn't mean it necessarily ends peacefully.
05:50The United States is going to struggle, fight, you know, like a drowning passenger on the Titanic flaying about and will try to drag others down with us.
05:59But our rule is coming to an end.
06:03And what we've seen now exposed is actually the weakness of America's military.
06:09It's limited what it can do.
06:11And that was particularly illustrated by, here's Iran that's been building missiles for, you know, 30 years, storing them underground.
06:20So Western intelligence really doesn't have a clue how many they have.
06:23And so they fire, they fire a ballistic missile.
06:27Let's say it costs $500,000 or it costs a million.
06:31Let's do a million.
06:33Every ballistic missile that Iran fired at Israel forced the Israelis to shoot off an Aero-2 or an Aero-3 missile.
06:42Those each cost three to four million dollars.
06:46And they got to fire two for every one missile at least.
06:49And we saw in some cases they fired 10 to 12.
06:52Well, just do the math.
06:54You got a million dollar missile coming in and you got six to ten million dollars going up.
07:01They can't sustain that.
07:03Or the United States has the theater high altitude air defense system THAAD.
07:10Those missiles go for the cool sum of 12.9 million, 13 million dollars a piece.
07:15Again, it is the defense systems are so much more expensive.
07:22But here's the other problem.
07:24Israel, those Aero missiles, you know, so it's shooting off two to ten at a time, only produces about 50 a year maximum is the estimate.
07:33Just do the math.
07:35They had run out in a week.
07:39And that's what they were facing.
07:40The fact that they were likely going to run out of air defense missiles, which is why there was such insistence to get the ceasefire in place.
07:48Because without that ceasefire, Iran would have decimated Israel.
07:54I know Iran's got its own reasons for making the deal.
07:59If I was in the Iranian general staff, I would say, no, no deal.
08:03Let's petition Russia and China to get air defense systems in here as quickly as possible.
08:09Let's get their support, their help to stop what the Israelis are doing to us.
08:13And let's eliminate the Israeli military and intelligence network.
08:19Let's eliminate it.
08:20I think they could have done that, so they may live to regret not doing that.
