00:00We go deeper into the matter. We invite now the Puerto Rican professor at the University of California in Berkeley,
00:06Ramon Grossfogel.
00:07Hello Ramon, can you hear me?
00:10Yes, thank you, thank you.
00:12Welcome to From the South.
00:14Following the death of the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the first question that we would like to ask you is,
00:22how could this event reshape alliances and rivalries across the Middle East?
00:30Well, I think that the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is a violation of the international law.
00:41It's a crime against humanity, this aggression against the Iranian people.
00:47I think that right now we're living in a moment of piracy and gunboat diplomacy.
00:54You know what happened on January 3rd in Venezuela, the kidnapping of a president, democratically elected, and now we see
01:03the same patterns going on in Iran.
01:06I don't think that the alliances of the U.S. in the region will be sustainable because Iran has been
01:16attacking all the military bases located in countries that are supposedly allies of the U.S.A.
01:23and that now are thinking twice if to continue having this military operation from the territory.
01:32Right now Iran is demolishing Tel Aviv and other cities in Israel and is demolishing the military bases of the
01:41U.S. around the region.
01:43So I think that this kind of war is going to be a long-lasting war.
01:53I don't see this finishing soon.
01:55Iran and the U.S.A. and the U.S.A. and Israel, the danger that we're facing is in
02:00the face of defeat, in the face of military defeat, they might now consider the use of nuclear weapons against
02:10Iran.
02:11And I think all the people around the world have to mobilize in front of U.S. embassies to stop
02:19this genocide going on against the Iranian people.
02:25Ramon, how are Iran's regional allies and proxy groups reacting to the laws of the Ajatollah, the Supreme Leader, under
02:33these circumstances?
02:35Well, I think that the regional allies are now ready to enter the fight.
02:43By the way, the Houthis have already entered the fight.
02:48Hezbollah have announced it will enter the fight, too.
02:51So we're going to see a regional war and maybe the beginning of a third world war, because we have
03:02seen there's been also conflicts in South Asia, where India is siding with Israel, while Pakistan is siding with Iran.
03:12And right now there are threats, a change of threats, going on between the two countries, including Afghanistan is being
03:19pulled into this fight, in this case, pulled to the fight between Pakistan and India.
03:31And I think that we can see easily the escalation from a regional war to a world war.
03:39So we need to pay attention to what is going on.
03:43We should mobilize everywhere to stop this aggression against the Iranian people and try to stop this war as soon
03:50as possible.
03:51Exactly.
03:52What does this situation reveal about the limits of international laws?
03:59I think international law is over.
04:01I think that we should not continue, you know, expecting anything from the UN or from international law.
04:11International law is being violated at a moment of imperial decadence, such as USA is a decadent empire.
04:19They're now violating all the laws, all the institutional institutions that they themselves put together after the Second World War.
04:28But those institutions, as well as international law they put forward after the Second World War, they themselves were the
04:36ones pushing for this and the ones who institutionalized the international system that we have today.
04:41But they are also, right now, the same ones that are destroying it because it doesn't work for them anymore.
04:48That institutional system, they developed it at a moment when they were at the top of the world in a
04:56hegemonic position.
04:57Now they are in a weak position internationally, and so they're just going back to international piracy and to gombo
05:09diplomacy.
05:10If you remember, gombo diplomacy was rehearsed in the first half of the 20th century in Latin America, and they're
05:19coming back to that everywhere.
05:21That is not just in Latin America, they're doing this everywhere now.
05:25And, Ramon, how can we connect these attacks within U.S. broader policy of expansion and destabilization of internal order,
05:33especially in Latin America?
05:36Well, I think that, first of all, this war is a Sinus war.
05:41It's not an agenda, let me put it this way, it's not in the interest of the U.S. to
05:49have this kind of war with Iran.
05:50They can solve this very easily.
05:56They were very close to have an agreement on Friday.
06:04This was communicated by the Oman Minister of Foreign Affairs, who came to the U.S.A. Friday, the day
06:13before the attacks, saying that they were very close to come to an agreement.
06:18Iran was ready to give up the process of uranium, even for civilian reasons, you know, even for civilian use,
06:27which is legal in the international arena.
06:30They've always been against building a nuclear bomb, but this is just a pretext that they're using to just attack
06:40Iran.
06:40They've been doing this for a long time, and now they're using this against us as a pretext to attack
06:47Iran.
06:48And in fact, the whole negotiations were a funny negotiation because they came to the table of negotiation saying, we're
06:57not going to, you know, you need to surrender and give up all your missile program, everything.
07:04And Iran said, no, we're not going to do that, but we're ready to negotiate the nuclear deal, you know,
07:09and they negotiated.
07:11They gave up something very important that they never gave up before, which is giving up the process, the processing
07:17of uranium in Iran.
07:19And still, a few hours later, when the Iran for a message, you know, he was the mediator between USA
07:27and Iran, he came to a few hours later when he talked to the vice president of USA, and he
07:34went to the press to talk about this advancement in the negotiation.
07:39They began the war because they don't want to have a deal.
07:42They just want to destroy Iran.
07:44They want to change the government.
07:46That's what they're looking for.
07:48This is an imperialist aggression to put a new colonial elites there at the service of the Zionist and U
07:57.S. empire.
07:57So, and then in terms of the U.S. internally, there's going to be turmoil about this because the MAGA
08:05movement that put Trump in the office, in the White House, they are all now against him because he promised
08:15to be a peaceful president.
08:16And he's just doing what every other U.S. president has been doing, which is, you know, subordinating to the
08:23interests of Israel's agenda and to Israeli pro-Sionist wars.
08:29And USA is putting the money, is putting the resources, is putting the blood of the soldiers, while Israel has
08:38been so far staying away from all this war in the 21st century, there are Zionist wars.
08:44And so the people are outraged.
08:48Trump has no support in the U.S. for this war.
08:51He's completely isolated, even from his own MAGA movement.
08:55They don't want this war.
08:57Nobody wants this war in the U.S.
09:00So he's like trying to submit to the Zionist agenda for other reasons.
09:07It's obvious that he's under pressure because the Zionists were the ones who paid for his electoral presidential campaign and
09:18put him in the chair with that money in exchange of going into war against Iran.
09:26That was the agreement.
09:27And he is delivering it right now, despite having no support, not even from the Republican Party.
09:34He's been doing this also without congressional approval.
09:38He's going beyond that, you know.
09:40And in terms of Latin America, I think that we have to, in a sense, mobilize in support of Iran
09:50with, you know, because a victory of Iran in this war will be like the victory of Vietnam in the
09:571970s.
09:58It will push the empire away from military aggressions, at least for a while.
10:07And this happened after the defeat in Vietnam.
10:10And this will happen after the defeat of the empire in Iran.
10:16So after the defeat in Vietnam, you remember they just backed off from the international arena and they began to
10:24think twice about intervening again militarily.
10:29And that's the same thing will happen now.
10:31And that's why we should all be on the side of Iran in this struggle for peace, because Iran has
10:40been struggling for peace.
10:42What they're doing now is defending themselves from an unfair aggression against their people and their country.
10:50Thank you very much, Professor Grossbogel, for your time with us.
10:56Thank you for the invitation.
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