- 1 day ago
Mohammad Marandi has warned the United States against launching a ground operation in Iran, cautioning that American troops would “get stuck,” become bogged down, and face heavy costs. In an exclusive interview with India Today's Geeta Mohan, Marandi dismissed reports of ongoing negotiations between Iran and the United States, asserting that Tehran will not accept a ceasefire. He described the situation as the second war imposed on Iran by the US and Israel in less than a year, claiming earlier diplomatic efforts were deceptive conspiracies.
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00:02This is the fiercest war that we've seen between Iran, the United States of America and Israel
00:07on the one side and Iran on the other.
00:10But there's also a massive misinformation, disinformation campaign.
00:14And through the fog of war, Professor Mohamed Marandi is going to walk us through what is
00:19actually happening in Tehran.
00:22Professor Marandi, thank you so much for joining us.
00:24Let's just begin with what we see right now.
00:27President Trump constantly reiterating that there are talks that are underway between
00:32Iran and the United States of America.
00:35What's the truth?
00:39No, there are no talks.
00:42The United States sent a message to Iran and Iran said that it is a nonstarter.
00:49Iran will not accept a ceasefire because this is the second war.
00:56war that the United States and the Israeli regime have imposed on the people of Iran in less
01:01than a year.
01:03Nine months ago, we were negotiating and it became clear that that was just deception.
01:09And the Trump regime and the Netanyahu regime were conspiring against Iran.
01:15They did it again as we're negotiating before this war that they imposed.
01:20And again, they were conspiring against us.
01:23So if there's just a ceasefire, the only thing that will happen is that Trump and Netanyahu
01:27will go and rearm and regroup and attack again.
01:32So Iran is saying that that is out of the question.
01:35The facts on the ground have to change so that in future, the people of Iran are secure from
01:41these genocidal fools.
01:4615-point proposal versus the five conditions that Iran is laying out.
01:51Before I come to that, the conversations that they're saying that they have spoken to a few
01:56Iranian leaders, so on and so forth, even if they're reaching out and sending word to,
02:02who are they sending word to, Professor?
02:07Well, Iran has a leader, according to the Constitution.
02:11It has a president.
02:12It has a parliament.
02:14It has a judiciary.
02:16And it has a Supreme National Security Council.
02:19All of the elements of the state, in accordance with the Constitution, are there.
02:26So there's nothing, there's no question about who he would address it to.
02:30It is addressed to the state.
02:33But you have to keep in mind that sending a letter is not called negotiations.
02:38We get messages from the Americans all the time.
02:42For the past few decades, the messages constantly go back and forth.
02:46Sometimes it's through Oman.
02:49Sometimes it's through the Russians.
02:51Sometimes it's through Qatar.
02:53But nothing extraordinary has happened, and there have been no direct communications between
02:59the two sides.
03:00There are no negotiations taking place.
03:02And is there a window for negotiation?
03:05I ask this is because right now we see Iran is in a position of advantage.
03:11Is this the room, the window?
03:13I was asking a few days ago, I was speaking to you, the spokesperson of the foreign ministry
03:18of Iran, and I asked him the same thing, Mr. Bagai, that is this a window?
03:21Is this a window where Iran can really push America to a corner?
03:27I'm not saying Israel over here, because their agenda is very different from what I see in
03:31Washington.
03:31But is this a window for Iran with Trump?
03:35The facts on the ground have to change, and it seems that Trump is not the person who's
03:41in charge.
03:42It's Netanyahu who's in charge, and it's the Zionist lobby.
03:46And they don't care about the global economy.
03:50They don't care about the American people.
03:52They don't care about the Indian economy.
03:54They launched this war simply because of their own selfish and brutal interests and because
04:02they're a genocidal regime.
04:04And now the entire world is suffering due to the actions of the Israeli regime.
04:11But Trump is not in a position to do much about it.
04:14His own economy, the U.S. economy, is beginning to suffer.
04:18The consumers are beginning to suffer.
04:20So the question for Iran is, who is going to negotiate anyway?
04:26If the Americans have no authority, if Trump has no authority, then what is the point of
04:33negotiating?
04:35850 tomahawks, Professor Marandi, up until now.
04:38And they're sending an amphibious strike group.
04:42What are the plans?
04:43Are they looking at a ground offensive?
04:45Because Marco Rubio rejected those claims and reports completely yesterday on the sidelines
04:50of the G7 foreign ministers meeting in Paris.
04:53But then what is Iran's reading of what America is doing, sending these strike groups into the
05:00war theater?
05:02Since 9-11, the Iranians have been predicting that the Americans will ultimately one day
05:09attack our country since 9-11, 25 years ago.
05:14And basically, that's what's now happened.
05:18So Iran has been preparing itself.
05:20If there is a land invasion, the Americans won't succeed.
05:24They will fail.
05:26They will get stuck.
05:28They will be bogged down.
05:30And they will be very costly because Iran will escalate too.
05:34And the assets of the regimes in the Persian Gulf that are assisting the United States and
05:39the Israeli regime in this aggression, they will be destroyed.
05:43And the oil and energy and LNG crisis will get much worse.
05:50So the smart thing would be for Trump to back down.
05:56And we've already seen this major miscalculation.
06:01When the war began, they thought it would last a day or two.
06:04And it was obvious that it wouldn't.
06:06Then, after a few days, they said that they've destroyed Iran's missile and drone capabilities.
06:12Iran is hitting harder today than at any time during the past month.
06:17It's miscalculation after miscalculation after miscalculation.
06:22And if they attack on the ground, it will be another miscalculation.
06:26But it will only make the global economy get worse.
06:30But the real question is that, is the United States going to allow the Israeli regime to
06:37sacrifice the global economy or not?
06:40That's a very pertinent question.
06:42But before we delve into that, the 15-point proposal versus the five conditions laid by
06:48Iran, the two do not meet at all on any grounds.
06:52Where is the common ground over here?
06:54Even if there were to be conversations and negotiations.
06:57Are the five conditions non-negotiable?
07:00No, not at all.
07:02Because this is a fight for survival of an ancient civilization.
07:08The United States will not be allowed to regroup and attack Iran six months from now or a year
07:17from now at the orders of Zionists, at the orders of Netanyahu.
07:22So Iran will fight until the facts on the ground change, until the United States is no longer able
07:29to use the Persian Gulf as a platform to attack Iran.
07:34So the countries in the Persian Gulf can no longer be U.S. assets.
07:39They can no longer host U.S. bases from which they can start murdering children again.
07:45Iran's sovereignty has to be respected, and its allies across the region have to be respected.
07:52And reparations have to be paid.
07:53The regimes in the Persian Gulf will pay for all the children that they murdered and for all the destruction
07:59that they've helped create.
08:00They cannot pretend that they're neutral because they allowed the Americans to use their bases.
08:06They allowed the Americans to use their airspace.
08:09They allowed the Americans to fire missiles from their territory, and they even funded the Americans.
08:16They helped the Americans carry out these atrocities.
08:20So reparations will definitely have to be paid.
08:23And Iran is going to be steadfast because, as I said, this is a war of survival.
08:30For the Americans, it is a war of choice.
08:32It is that they chose to obey the Israeli regime and sacrifice the interests of the American people
08:38and the world for the sake of Zionism.
08:40Well, this again, you know, for our viewers, Professor Marandi, who do not really understand
08:45and outraged over the fact that GCC countries had come out and said that they would not allow
08:51their air, land, waters to be used against Iran.
08:55And then, lo and behold, Iran goes and retaliates and hits U.S. bases in the GCC countries.
09:05Please clarify for us.
09:07Were the GCC countries' land, soil, air used against Iran?
09:13And was the retaliation justified at all?
09:16Oh, they've been used from day one.
09:19And the Americans were preparing the attack from those territories and those bases.
09:24And they're also using areas outside those bases.
09:28Their soldiers are now stationed in hotels, and their missile capabilities and other capabilities
09:36have been moved to places outside of those bases, even in ports.
09:41So these regimes are complicit.
09:45And that is why when the Americans strike Iranian key infrastructure, or when the Israeli regime
09:51strikes key Iranian infrastructure, the Iranians strike the Israeli regime, and they strike
09:57the key infrastructure of these family dictatorships in the Persian Gulf, because they are a part
10:02of the war.
10:03They cannot escape the war.
10:05But what Iran has done is that it has chosen targets in these countries, in Qatar and Saudi
10:11Arabia and the UAE and Kuwait and Bahrain, where the Americans are shareholders.
10:17So wherever Americans are shareholders, the Iranians currently will strike every time their
10:23assets in Iran are struck.
10:27Another clarification, Professor Marandi, because we see that on the social media war, the narrative
10:36Tehran has run with that narrative.
10:38Clearly, you guys are way ahead.
10:41We do not know.
10:42And my team keeps asking me, you know, that I should ask the Iranians who's handling the
10:47IRGC social media, because you certainly are way ahead when it comes to setting the narrative
10:52on social media, but when it comes to statements that are as serious as President Trump saying
10:59Iran sent a gift of 10 Pakistani flagged vessels.
11:04What is that?
11:06Where is that coming from?
11:08Because either Pakistan betrayed Iran, or Iran knew about it, or there aren't any vessels.
11:15What is it?
11:15No, no, the Iranians have not given any gifts to Trump.
11:22As usual, he just makes things up.
11:25He's known for that.
11:27A very few vessels have left the Persian Gulf and passed through the Strait of Hormuz to
11:35countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and China.
11:39And the reason why they went through was because of direct negotiations between the governments
11:50in Tehran and the governments in those countries.
11:54None of these ships have anything to do with Trump.
11:58And I think all of those ships are accounted for.
12:01And their governments, they know quite well that they negotiated, including your own government.
12:07So all the ships are accounted for, and the 10 ships that Trump is talking about, because
12:13it's Steve Whitcoff.
12:14He's actually said, it's a message to President Trump from Whitcoff.
12:19Aren't they all misleading Trump over here?
12:21Is this co-op team misleading him?
12:23Because where would he get a number?
12:26Where would he get a country's flag?
12:28Where would he get all this information from?
12:30He actually turned to Steve Whitcoff and said, can I name the country?
12:34Can I say what the gift is?
12:35So what's happening here?
12:38You're right.
12:39And that is a question that people in Iran have.
12:41Is Trump actually receiving correct information from his team or not?
12:47Whitcoff, as we all know, is a Zionist.
12:50And his loyalty is to Zionism and the Israeli regime.
12:55Trump's son-in-law, Kushner, is a Zionist.
12:57And his loyalty is to Zionism and the Israeli regime.
13:00And Trump has surrounded himself by Israeli firstsers.
13:04And therefore, it is very plausible to imagine that Trump is being misled.
13:12But that may not be the whole story.
13:14There may be other issues.
13:17It may be that Trump knows things, but he chooses to lie.
13:20I don't have that insider information.
13:23But the reality on the ground, the reality that is visible for all to see, is that what Trump is
13:31doing is against the interests of the American people.
13:33It's against the interests of the people across the world.
13:37It is only in the interests of the Israeli regime and Zionists.
13:42And that is why we are in such a situation that we are today.
13:47The price of fuel is skyrocketing.
13:49The price of fertilizer is skyrocketing.
13:52Does the Israeli regime care?
13:54Does Zionists care?
13:55Of course not.
13:55For them, India, China, South Africa, Nigeria, Argentina, Brazil, they don't care about any of them.
14:03And therefore, this is the key problem.
14:06That even if Trump wants an off-ramp, even if an off-ramp is provided for him, will he even
14:14be able to use it?
14:16Will they allow him to use it?
14:17Can there be an off-ramp?
14:19Because he's headed to a midterm election, Professor.
14:23And Iran will have to understand that an absolute admission of defeat will cost him his election.
14:30He's not going to do that.
14:32So there has to be a way around where diplomatically both sides find space for America to retreat.
14:42Even, and should they want to, it seems like this is an act of desperation, the kind of statements that
14:48are coming from Washington.
14:50But they would require that room politically.
14:53Is there a realization in Tehran about that?
15:02As I said, this is a war of survival.
15:06We are facing aggression from the superpower.
15:10It has mobilized all its forces, and it has brought all of its forces in Israel.
15:17And, of course, everything that Israel has is from the United States and the West.
15:20Israel is a tiny regime that has no strength of its own.
15:25Whatever it has is given to it.
15:26So this combined American capability has been attacking Iran.
15:33We will not allow that to happen again.
15:36Again, it's not important for us if Trump is humiliated or not humiliated.
15:42Our security, the security of our children, the security of elementary school girls in future have to be secure.
15:50So those five conditions are very reasonable conditions.
15:54Our country should not be attacked again.
15:56The facts on the ground should assure that because Trump's signature means nothing to us.
16:03Trump tore up the nuclear deal that Obama signed, a U.S. commitment.
16:09Trump negotiated with us but was secretly planning to attack us.
16:13Then he negotiated with us again and was secretly planning to attack us again.
16:18So his signature is worthless.
16:20The facts on the ground have to change.
16:23And after all the damage done, after all the damage done, of course, Iran will demand reparations.
16:29There is no doubt about that.
16:31If the Americans don't want to give it, these dictatorships in the Persian Gulf will have to give it.
16:36So for Iran, these five conditions are...
16:42Is there a number, is there an amount...
16:44For reparations?
16:45Up until now, yes, for the reparations.
16:47Well, the war is ongoing.
16:49The war is ongoing.
16:51So I don't think there are any assessments being made now.
16:55But each day that the war continues, the reparations will increase.
17:00And these regimes in the Persian Gulf know that the United States will have to leave.
17:05But Iran is going nowhere.
17:07We belong to this region.
17:08That's why it's called the Persian Gulf.
17:10Because we are here.
17:11And half of the Persian Gulf is Iranian.
17:15More than half, in fact.
17:17So they committed crimes against our people.
17:21Kuwait, the Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain.
17:26And they will have to make up for it.
17:29Okay.
17:30There's one thing that Trump did that the world can't go back to.
17:34And that's the changing the status of the Strait of Hormuz.
17:37Has he changed that status forever?
17:40Because the condition does talk about sovereignty over Strait of Hormuz.
17:44So is now every vessel going to be charged?
17:49Is that the price America will have to pay?
17:53All the countries will have to pay for what America has done for all times to come.
17:59The oil and natural gas and petrochemicals and fertilizer that come from the Persian Gulf, come from the countries alongside
18:13Iran and Iraq, come from the countries that have allowed this war to take place and that have facilitated this
18:23war.
18:23So, obviously, they're going to have to pay compensation.
18:27And the best way for forcing them to pay compensation is to make sure that their assets, when they're sold,
18:35Iran receives money as they pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
18:47In 1980, when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran with the encouragement of the United States, these same countries supported Saddam and
18:59gave him hundreds of billions of dollars.
19:00After the war, Iran forgave them.
19:04Then these countries began to support ISIS and al-Qaeda in Iraq.
19:13The drone that murdered General Soleimani came from the U.S. base in Qatar.
19:18They have hurt Iran many times over the past few decades.
19:22And now they've helped launch a war.
19:25Enough is enough.
19:26Iran will be compensated and Iran will make sure that in future the United States will not be able to
19:32launch another war from these countries.
19:34I think it's very simple and I think it's more than reasonable.
19:37It's the least that any sovereign country would demand.
19:42The second thing that Trump has done and maybe has changed how the world is going to look at the
19:49dollar.
19:50Has he, with this one act, reduced dollar dominance?
19:55Because what Iran is looking at is payment of millions of dollars, but in Chinese yuan.
20:01So is China the final beneficiary of what Trump has done?
20:08And all this he says he's done to contain China.
20:13I think he's done far more damage, Trump, to the dollar than even that.
20:20Basically, by encouraging these five countries in the Persian Gulf to be a part of this war, he has stopped
20:30their exports.
20:31And so the circulation of the dollar is already decreasing.
20:37In addition to that, the cost of this war is going to force him to print more and more dollars.
20:44He is hurting the U.S. dollar in an extraordinarily big way.
20:50These Arab family dictatorships spend a lot of their oil wealth and gas wealth on purchasing stocks in the U
20:59.S. stock market, bonds from the United States.
21:04All of that has stopped as we speak.
21:07So the damage that is being done to the dollar at multiple layers is going to hurt the United States
21:16a lot.
21:16And the United States has already been damaging the dollar for the last few decades.
21:22But this is going to increase the damage and it's going to further the transition away from the U.S.
21:31dollar as the lone international reserve currency.
21:36Professor Marandi, I know you have another engagement immediately after this.
21:40So I just have two more questions for you.
21:41One is that is Pakistan the go-between right now?
21:46They might not be directly hosting any direct talks between Iran and the U.S.
21:50because that has been rejected by Iran.
21:51But is Pakistan the real go-between?
21:54Are they the ones who are sending the message and taking the message?
22:00First, I have to stress that there are no negotiations taking place between Iran and the United States.
22:06And ultimately, it doesn't matter for Iran who sends the messages and how the messages are sent.
22:14Iran's conditions have to be met.
22:16Iran's security has to be preserved.
22:19Punishment for those who've caused all this damage to Iran has to be clear.
22:26And reparations have to be made.
22:29And Iran's allies across the region, they have to be secure as well.
22:33The United States has made a foolish war.
22:37It has murdered many children.
22:39It has murdered many, many innocent people.
22:43And we will not allow this to ever happen again.
22:48Secondly, Kaleba, his name keeps coming up these days.
22:53Where are these names really coming from in terms of negotiating with Iran and looking at maybe future leadership?
23:00So where are the names really coming from?
23:02Who is giving these names out?
23:05The fact that we've not heard the Iranian parliament speaker's name earlier, but now we are.
23:11And that's from the American side.
23:14Exactly.
23:15It comes from the American side.
23:16Trump needs everyone to feel that he's making progress.
23:20He wants to calm the markets.
23:22He's trying to buy time, either to find a solution or to expand the war.
23:30Either way, he is going to fail.
23:32If he expands the war, the oil and gas markets are going to get much worse much more quickly.
23:38But these names are given out by Western media at the behest of Washington and the government, the Trump regime.
23:48Iran negotiates with each and every country as it negotiated one year ago, two years ago, three years ago, ten
23:55years ago.
23:55We have a constitution, we have a leader, we have a president, we have a foreign ministry, we have a
24:00speaker of parliament, we have a Supreme National Security Council.
24:04State institutions are very well recognized.
24:08Your government knows them.
24:09All other governments know them.
24:12And any negotiations that take place will take place within that framework.
24:17Finally, before I let you go, Professor Morandi, Prime Minister Netanyahu said that Israel was going to, was two weeks
24:25away from a bomb in the 1990s.
24:28Iran still does not have a bomb.
24:30And Israel reportedly has tactical nuclear weapons.
24:34They say for them, Iran is an existential threat.
24:37Should America retreat?
24:39Should there be a ceasefire?
24:42What will then be the status of Israel?
24:45A country forever in, under threat, given the kind of enemies it's made across the region, particularly Lebanon as well
24:54now.
24:55The fact that they want to take over South Lebanon.
25:00Israel is, as you basically say, a genocidal expansionist regime.
25:05And it doesn't care about anyone.
25:07It doesn't care about India.
25:09It doesn't care about Pakistan.
25:11It doesn't care about Russia or China or anyone else.
25:15That's why they're willing to destroy the global economy.
25:19The Israeli regime has to be put under pressure by the international community to end these atrocities because they are
25:29sacrificing everyone.
25:32So countries across the world, for their own interests, have to put pressure on Washington, which is controlled by the
25:39Zionists, and the Israeli regime.
25:41And tell them that you're destroying the lives of billions of people through your aggression.
25:46And it has to stop.
25:48On that note, Professor Marandi, thank you so much for joining us here on the network.
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