Google Speech-to-Text API Automatic Transcription (Chirp). Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:13of of
00:00:24on the ropes and its infrastructure being destroyed, the American administration
00:00:27makes an energy deal with Russia, while NATO Brass
00:00:31gathers in Kiev to assess the damage they have brought about. Also,
00:00:35can the Mecca Defense Alliance save the House of Saud? Is
00:00:39new order coming about in the Middle East? To
00:01:03the breaking news, um, an energy deal
00:01:07to bring
00:01:07of Russian diesel to the United States has been announced, um, the
00:01:11shagrin
00:01:12of of the Ukrainians and Europeans is obvious, it
00:01:15is a major
00:01:17of reversal of
00:01:18in sorts,
00:01:19of um, if anything it's a campaign gimmick, uh, it will
00:01:22have any kind of impact on diesel prices
00:01:26worldwide or in the United States remains to be unseen, but
00:01:30"my estimation, looking at the numbers, maximum,
00:01:34I mean going into next year, would
00:01:37of basically cover about
00:01:38of nine days of US consumption, now maybe on the
00:01:41margins it might help, but it's not a solution, the solution is to end this
00:01:45conflict, but that's
00:01:49yeah, so obviously this deal has been in the works for some
00:01:54of time, um, after the CIA director
00:01:56Daniel came to Moscow
00:01:59of with threat." "it was followed up by the uh Chuckle brothers
00:02:03of Witkoff and Kuschner who came to Moscow
00:02:07and uh asked for an energy
00:02:10ceastfire and Russia said no, and then well how about an energy
00:02:14ceastfire and Russia said no, well how about letting some
00:02:18debel
00:02:18in diesel onto the global markets, that that would play well with Trump's
00:02:22voters back home and Putin said tell
00:02:26me more. um so that appears to be..." what
00:02:30has happened? Trump is primarily
00:02:32of concerned here
00:02:33in with his political survival in the U.S. going into these
00:02:36mid-term elections, if the
00:02:38of democrats win, he could be facing impeachment battles for the next
00:02:42two years of his administration, and he's rightly
00:02:45terrified of that, so um, he
00:02:49needs to
00:02:51of ameliate, or at
00:02:52of least appear to ameliorate the sharp rise in
00:02:55diesel prices in the US, which is leading to
00:02:59prices of general inflation across the US
00:03:02economy, of course, Europe is being hit even harder
00:03:06of by all of this. um, and Russia, historically,
00:03:10of and in fact earlier this year, was still the second largest
00:03:13exporter of diesel to the world, but because of
00:03:17Kiev regime CIA attacks on Russia's oil
00:03:21refineries, uh, Russia felt the need
00:03:24to um uh ban exports of diesel
00:03:28for several months to make sure they
00:03:30of had enough for their own domestic uses going into harvest season and
00:03:34of course for the special military operation. um,
00:03:38but now uh with uh Trump's request that
00:03:42Putin
00:03:42of has
00:03:43of acceded to, Russia has agreed to partially lift that
00:03:46of of ban. I agree, it's most of this
00:03:49of diesel is not going to go to the US, it's going to be released to the global markets, this is
00:03:53for optics, this is for optics
00:03:55and what's the quid pro
00:03:59qu, what? did the Russians get out of it,
00:04:01of George? Well, it's very hard to say, I mean, I, I think
00:04:05one obvious uh, win for the Russians is
00:04:09Trump's real fury, directed
00:04:13first to against Ukraine, in
00:04:15a general and Zelensky in
00:04:17of particular, of but also against the Europeans, because these are
00:04:21looking really very foolish, uh,
00:04:23you know, they say sanction, sanction, we're going to put more pressure on
00:04:27Putin, you
00:04:28no, it's the only way we can get Putin
00:04:29in on the neg'. waiting table and so on, I remember just few weeks
00:04:33ago they were all rejoicing over the the
00:04:37passage
00:04:37of the Lindsay Graham sanctions bill, well
00:04:40of this kind of makes that look
00:04:43absurd, so that I think is very much a part
00:04:47of it, in other words with zelenski
00:04:50immediately announced that he will continue to
00:04:54attack refineries, now it was clear during the
00:04:57meeting that Zelensky and Europeans that had in
00:05:01Miami with Kuschner and
00:05:04Witkov is that they with Zelensky was
00:05:08told don't hit
00:05:11of refineries and and and Trump then said this, we've said that we've told Zelensky over
00:05:15and over again, don't hit the refiners, six times,
00:05:19George,
00:05:19I think six times, six times and and then yes of course it is
00:05:23true that it was Trump who initially thought this was be a wizard
00:05:27idea to hit refineries in Russia, that was back in
00:05:302025, he he he was
00:05:32the he personally gave the go ahead, but now he he he needs
00:05:36some kind of a break, now the real question, what do the Russians get out of it, well
00:05:40if this antagonism... between the US and
00:05:44Ukraine continues, then they may get something
00:05:48out of this,
00:05:49that that I mean
00:05:49that is, this is a little different from what happened in
00:05:53February of 2025 following that Acremonious
00:05:55oval office meeting, this time at Trump
00:05:59is his back is against the wall, then he was kind of
00:06:02exuberant returning to office, his back is against the
00:06:06wall, he may actually, at least that's the Russian
00:06:09calculation, he may decide finally to bring this. thing to an
00:06:13end and end the key part end the intelligence
00:06:17sharing with Ukraine, that is that came up, that came up
00:06:21in the meetings a threat to Zelensky, knock it
00:06:24off or there won't be any intelligence sharing, my take,
00:06:28Mark at the end the day is the number one, the Ukrainians
00:06:32are humiliated, the Europeans are
00:06:35humiliated, and the administ American administration is
00:06:39humiliated because can Donald Trump tell... CIA
00:06:43to stop helping the Ukrainians? It looks like me like there's
00:06:47there's only one winner on all of this and I don't
00:06:50know according to some reports and we're living in the fog of
00:06:54war of so much fake news right now, a tanker already suddenly arrived
00:06:58in the United States, I don't know if that's true, but I tend to think by
00:07:02this time next week we're
00:07:03not even going to be talking about this, Mark. Yeah, the
00:07:07whole thing smacks of rather maliforous
00:07:10political theater to
00:07:15because if Trump is really
00:07:18furious over
00:07:20continued, low level, but but still
00:07:24annoying attacks on Russia's oil refineries, including one
00:07:28on Rostof Nadano since uh
00:07:31this deal was announced, he ought to be
00:07:35furious at Trump, because the K
00:07:38simply lacks the military and technical capabilities to...
00:07:42out these attacks without active CIA help, and we know that
00:07:46because the CIA, under Trump has bragged about it on the front
00:07:50pages the New York Times and the Washington Post on multiple
00:07:54occasions about how they are not only providing
00:07:58intelligence, but directing these attacks down to the
00:08:01point of directing which part the
00:08:04refineries the drones attack to cause the maximum
00:08:08amount of downtime before Russians uh repair it.
00:08:12so I I think Trump ought to really be furious at
00:08:16himself or at least at his director the CIA,
00:08:19and you raise the question, does Trump actually
00:08:23have power within the United States government to change
00:08:27US, he
00:08:28did in his first administration, we all know that and it's well
00:08:32documented, you know, George, um, another story that didn't get
00:08:35in much much air time because there's so much going on right now,
00:08:39but um, the military heads of uh single
00:08:42NATO country, I don't know if the US and participated, went
00:08:46went to Kiev, what would they talk about? I mean, this
00:08:50is like four and a half, almost five years in, I mean, wouldn't you think they'd do
00:08:54that in the beginning the conflict, and what expertise do
00:08:58any these generals have in fighting a
00:09:01war? I don't think anything right now, I mean, what a
00:09:05waste of tax payer money, which is probably the calling card of this
00:09:09entire conflict in the west, George, well, I think the... trying
00:09:13to express solidarity, mean that's
00:09:15what that
00:09:24the europeans responded to trump's
00:09:27announcement the the diesel deal,
00:09:31enraged comments from Andy Burnham,
00:09:35from from the EU, kayak jalas and
00:09:39said, well, their response, we're going even intensive. by the
00:09:42sanctions, we're going to meet on Monday and we're going to hit
00:09:46Russia with the harshest sanctions ever, every every sanction packet
00:09:50is the harshest ever, so it's all of this
00:09:54is expecial solidarity, but to go going back to Mark's
00:09:58point, i think that is very good question, how much control
00:10:01does Trump have over his own administration, he says
00:10:05over and over again and he's been saying it for a long time, no strikes on
00:10:09refineries, and then they continue, i would assume Trump
00:10:13does want to stop the attacks from the refineries because the diesel
00:10:16prices are hurting him, I mean no question, they are really
00:10:19hurting America's farmers, he says, he says this in
00:10:23truth the truth. "our farmers and ranchers are are
00:10:27in pain, so therefore you assume he wants this uh
00:10:31stop, but he obviously he doesn't have the power to do so, or
00:10:35he may be afraid, he may be afraid of uh
00:10:38defying the the hidden state
00:10:41or the the deep state, because otherwise
00:10:44you know, mean it is case, if you want to stop these
00:10:48refineries, you have to get Radciff into your office and tell him,
00:10:51don't do it or you're fired, but trump doesn't..." to do
00:10:55that, yeah, Mark, I mean, if if uh, the United States
00:10:59and and Russia can come to deal on diesel, why can't they come to
00:11:02de to deal on other things? I mean, there's a
00:11:06precedent here right now, I mean, I thought this war was supposed to be
00:11:10over before Trump was inaugurated for the second
00:11:13time, I
00:11:14mean it, it just, it just shows an enormous inability of
00:11:17leadership, Mark, yeah, um, I, I don't, I think actually the
00:11:21US president always has very limited.
00:11:25with uh agency and power over US foreign and
00:11:29military policy, it's largely written in the orthodoxy the
00:11:33institutions that comprise the US government. if
00:11:36you don't want to call it the deep state, you want to call it the blob as ben roads
00:11:40did or the purement of bureaucracy, that's fine, but at the end the
00:11:44day John Bolton was very clear about how Trump is
00:11:47manipulated and controlled on such things in his
00:11:51memoirs of his time in the first administration, you come and you put present
00:11:55set of policy options that aren't really very different from
00:11:59each other and you say you choose a, b, c, and d, none
00:12:03the above is not an option, and that's that's the way you control,
00:12:07let's face it, rather ignorant president in
00:12:10particular, who gets his news from fox news like Donald
00:12:14Trump, but as for the NATO generals, their big
00:12:17expertise is as dogs, they are there as a
00:12:21symbolic to urinate and mark over...
00:12:25Ukraine as their territory, we flipped this country in
00:12:292014, and you're not going to get it back, they
00:12:32said immediately after the Russian foreign
00:12:35ministry put out a declaration for
00:12:39the second time that Western and all foreign
00:12:42diplomatic missions should leave Kiev because it's
00:12:45no longer safe. That was their show of defiance and
00:12:48symbolic support that Ukraine is de facto NATO
00:12:52territory, but we'll see about that.
00:13:02being pummeled right now, night after night after night, again i why
00:13:06did these NATO generals code there, I mean
00:13:08um, they can call it theirs, but they can't defend it, I mean
00:13:12it, it it's a force on so many different levels, finish up,
00:13:16Mark, George, go ahead, well, it is being pummeled, and you
00:13:20would think the the rational thing to do would be
00:13:24bring this. to an end um because it is
00:13:27Ukrainians who are getting killed, but that's not the way they're thinking, they want
00:13:31this to continue, the the and that's why all their
00:13:35blustery statements that come out of Europe is
00:13:39we need to keep this going for you
00:13:42indefinitely without ever presenting
00:13:45any coherent peace plan or anything at all other
00:13:49than well Russia must essentially call for
00:13:53immediate cfy. other words a capitulation, so yeah, but
00:13:57Georgia, don't you think also, I mean to finish off here, I mean, it's very
00:14:01interesting this, the the European position is to spite the Russians
00:14:04and equally spite the president the United
00:14:08States, I cannot see how that's a winning strategy, all right, gentlemen, I'm going to
00:14:12interrupt myself, we're going to go to a short break, and after that short break, we'll continue our discussion
00:14:16on some real news today with
00:14:17RT,
00:14:23what if everything you think? you know is only part the
00:14:27story. bold economic moves, high stakes battles on the world
00:14:31stage, war and peace, the very future
00:14:35of America. the headlines are loud, the debates are
00:14:38fierce. now it's time for closer look. know the
00:14:42policy, understand the impact. america first, the
00:14:45scotty nell
00:14:46you.
00:14:56When all truths seem wrong, when old
00:14:59rules just don't hold, and new world is
00:15:03yet to shape out, disdain becomes the
00:15:06eticat, and engagement equals
00:15:10betrayal. When so many find
00:15:14themselves worlds apart, we choose to look for common
00:15:17ground.
00:15:35news is what the heck is going on with Saudi Arabia
00:15:38because as you and I noted before uh we conven here today there's an
00:15:42enormous amount of conflicting information and I must say from some
00:15:46sources that I tended to trust and now trust a
00:15:49lot less because there there seems to be uh
00:15:53um um top dollars out there when it comes to uh
00:15:57trying to uh manipulate um how people perceive the the
00:16:01conflict the multiple conflicts going on now in Saudi Arabia
00:16:05Yemen and of course the US Israeli war against
00:16:08Iran, what is going on here in do the Mecca
00:16:12Alliance pact here have any meaning whatsoever? is that just more
00:16:16fog of war? mark? yeah, um, Saudi Arabia is getting pummaled
00:16:20too um by the Ansar Allah movement, the
00:16:24Houtis and Saudi infrastructure and Saudi
00:16:27airports uh have been hit repeatedly uh
00:16:31over uh the last two weeks uh and most recently
00:16:35the east-west uh oil pipeline uh to
00:16:39the red sea uh that is Saudi Arabia's
00:16:42bypass uh uh over the straight of hor
00:16:46moves um that has been hit for the second time taking out
00:16:50another uh pumping station and stopping flow of that pipeline
00:16:54again for the second time uh a month
00:16:57uh and the refineries have been hit again and again uh
00:17:01also on the ground the hoothis continue to press
00:17:05and take uh uh territory uh
00:17:08from the saudi proxy regime in Yemen. Now this
00:17:12war has history, right? It's been going on for over
00:17:16decade, it entered into a frozen phase uh, and
00:17:20it has now reignited after Saudi Arabia's attack
00:17:24on Yemen's airport in Sana, but it's
00:17:27best understood now in the context of a subset
00:17:31the US-Israeli war on Iran, right, because
00:17:35Saudi Arabia, a proxy the... united states and the hoothies here, if you want to
00:17:39call them a a proxy of Iran uh, but Saudi Arab, the
00:17:43US can't defend Saudi Arabia just like it can't
00:17:46defend uh Keyev uh from these long distance attacks
00:17:50because it has it's achilles heel has always been air
00:17:54defense um so the saudis have looked
00:17:58really everywhere right they've been trying to bring in the French of promised to send
00:18:02troops now they're turning to their new Mecca defense alliance with
00:18:05Pakistan and Turkey. and it's unclear um
00:18:09both them have sent troops to Saudi Arabia to stand
00:18:13around and pretend to um uh provide air
00:18:17defense. well let me let
00:18:27pact, but my theory the case
00:18:30is it's not necessarily to protect Saudi Arabia, it
00:18:34is to protect NBS in the royal family that... what their mission
00:18:38is, it's defensive, and Mark and I again, before we convene
00:18:42here or uh commenting on um uh the
00:18:46reports that Pakistan was using its air force against the unsar law,
00:18:50which I alarm bells went off with Mark and with me and I said no,
00:18:54that's not possible, it looks like it's not here, their mission
00:18:57is um to protect the existing order in
00:19:00Saudi Arabia, which depending on who you want to ask, Chas
00:19:04Friedman, former ambassador uh to Saudi
00:19:08Arabia, and I thought it was an interesting insight, he
00:19:11said, um, people have been predicting the end of Saudi Arabia since
00:19:141934, so we should keep that into perspective, but then
00:19:18nonetheless, the the the current royal family is not
00:19:22necessarily the the the favorite topic the month in Saudi Arabia itself,
00:19:26if you can't defend the country, what right do you have to rule,
00:19:29George? Well, I think it is very good point that Saudi
00:19:32Arabia's demise has been predicted many, many times, I
00:19:36mean it's it's... uh, it it just seems like
00:19:40such an unstable uh structure. what is
00:19:44remarkable though is that Saudi Arabia actually has
00:19:48very powerful military, it has very large armed forces,
00:19:51it's been trained for years and years by
00:19:55western uh military advisers, pakistan has
00:19:58been present in Saudi Arabia really for decades, I mean
00:20:02this going back to the 1960s, in fact I think there are some
00:20:06Pakistanis serving in the uh the Saudi armed forces, well
00:20:10isn't that just the point, George, it's a for foreigners fighting for Saudi
00:20:13Arabia, but it's foreigner, well that that's right, and and but you see
00:20:17in terms the numbers, you think, well that's quite a quite a sizeable
00:20:21army that Saudi Arabia has and it has up to date
00:20:25very sophisticated military equipment, I mean it's getting military equipment from the United
00:20:29States, gets military equipment from Britain from France it is
00:20:32very large, very well equipped
00:20:34military. "there's an
00:20:38image that is still in my mind, Mark is
00:20:41a unsarof fighter wearing sandals with
00:20:45one arm firing at forces, mean
00:20:49these people"
00:20:56how much money Saudi Arabia spends on military, of course they do, they actually pay a
00:21:00premium, um, but Mark, at the end the day, that's
00:21:04what's got in Saudi Arabia out of trouble is always they can pay somebody off,
00:21:08they've always got money to to um to to right away
00:21:11its worries, that's not the case now, and they're not getting
00:21:15any cash, and as matter of fact, they're looking for international loans, so
00:21:19money... isn't going to buy them out of this
00:21:28hail the fighters, the fremmen the Middle East. Saudi Arabia couldn't
00:21:31defeat uh, the the you know,
00:21:34the the flip, whether they've got flip flops or not, the lucky ones do, I guess,
00:21:38they couldn't defeat them in more than decade, and I don't think they can defeat them now, and you're
00:21:41right, their money can't buy them out of that. It's true that on
00:21:45paper, Saudi Arabia has rather powerful military with lots
00:21:49of... hardware from the US and other western countries, but
00:21:53in reality corruption is rife uh and
00:21:57the Saudi military tends to be a place
00:22:01where uh saudi uh shall we say nobility gets
00:22:05to reside uh in places of semi uh
00:22:08importance but but don't really have any military command
00:22:12authority or experience
00:22:14i think the Saudi military lacks a warrior ethos and
00:22:17certainly lacks any real experience
00:22:21uh, so I i have some real questions, which is why they've relied
00:22:25mostly on mercenaries uh in Yemen for more than
00:22:29decade that do not perform well uh, and why they're now
00:22:33looking outside, if the US can no longer provide
00:22:36security them, they're trying to learn to other other actors,
00:22:40and it's true, they've long had a strategic partnership with Pakistan,
00:22:44it's widely rumored that they financed uh Pakistan's nuclear
00:22:48program and that Pakistan. keep some nukes in reserve for
00:22:52them uh, and there's an open question of whether Pakistan is
00:22:56participating in this or not, the New York Times reported they were,
00:22:59and then they took back the story when the Pakistan government
00:23:03vociferously denied it. Uh, so as far as we know, they're just
00:23:06standing around in Saudi Arabia along with the Turks
00:23:10pretending to provide air defense, which they're not capable of doing
00:23:14anymore than the Americans, but Erdogan in
00:23:17Turkey, the cunning beast uh... while he has said he will
00:23:21not participate uh attacks on Ansar
00:23:25Allah, which is you know where the real fighting is, you, I mean, this
00:23:29is a war in Yemen with Yemen taking some strikes back against
00:23:32Saudi Arabia, uh, Erdogan evidently has been
00:23:36calling on, and the Saudis as well, on uh uh
00:23:40Erdogan's pet al-qaeda leader ruling over the ruins
00:23:44of Syria, al-gilani, al Shara, and he's got another
00:23:4810 or 20, spare jihadi head shoppers that he could
00:23:52send off uh to fight the hoothis and i think that's what's being
00:23:56negotiated yeah but you're talking about is the horizontal
00:24:00expansion of this war and george remarkably remarkably
00:24:04donald trump is very upset about the the the attacks
00:24:08on Saudi Arabia's airports and uh he's
00:24:11um pondering whether what to do meaning getting involved
00:24:15itself mean we had that with the biting administration we had that
00:24:19in the... beginning the Trump administration, they want to do it
00:24:22again?
00:24:39well, Trump has already twice said no to Saudi in
00:24:43treaties to bomb the hoothies,
00:24:47he mumbled that he may get involved. after the the
00:24:51attack on the read airport, but it was just mumble and he just he said,
00:24:54yeah, maybe we'll think about it, didn't sound like a commitment
00:24:58to do anything, so I have my doubts that he is actually going to do
00:25:02something, um, but I think the the case with Turkey and
00:25:06Pakistan is, they have made absolutely clear everyone to to
00:25:09the Saudis, we are here defensively, in others we will
00:25:13defend you here in Saudi Arabia, we are
00:25:17not going to engage any kind.
00:25:31maybe as you said at the beginning that it's all about trying to
00:25:34protect uh mbs
00:25:36and the the government in Riad but in the case of Turkey I mean they
00:25:40said well first of all the the Mecca defense back hasn't
00:25:43yet been ratified by the the parliament have you read it
00:25:47george have you seen it has anybody read? does anybody know what's in
00:25:51it?
00:25:52i don't think so, i think it's been released. yeah, that's right, and so
00:25:56so therefore, and turkey, turkey really does not want
00:25:59to
00:26:00get into any kind of offensive. "they don't want to
00:26:03antagonize Iran, they made clear that they don't want to antagonize
00:26:07Iran. Also, Turkey is rival of Saudi Arabias
00:26:10in as leader the Islamic world. I mean, that
00:26:14is very much Erdogan's program that it's
00:26:17Turkey, not Saudi Arabia, that's the leader the Islamic world, so
00:26:21there's no love loss between Turkey and Saudi Arabia, he's not going to
00:26:25antagonize Iran uh, for the sake of
00:26:28this, the government in Riat, and Pakistan is just..."
00:26:32"we're not really going much beyond what we do here, which is we're going to
00:26:35station some forces uh in Saudi Arabia,
00:26:39but we're not going to send them into any kind of combat role. you
00:26:43mark, the the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is just very much unloved in the
00:26:47world, isn't it? it it doesn't
00:26:51have many friends, it has lots of customers.
00:26:54um, in fact, you could argue, you could make you the
00:26:58argument that Russia has really one the best business-like
00:27:02relation." relationships despite long geopolitical
00:27:05differences in Syria and their cooperation on
00:27:09OPEC plus has continued and performed
00:27:13much better than most the
00:27:14of critics uh said it was, but I agree with
00:27:18with George, that the real problem here is the
00:27:21horizontal expansion of this conflict, always
00:27:25spreading outside Iran and bringing in more and more
00:27:29players, whatever their specific role, it also makes it much
00:27:33harder to end because Pakistan has been serving as
00:27:36a supposed mediator right um the
00:27:40US and Iran now how and the US has also
00:27:44attempted to subvert Oman over the past few months
00:27:47which was also playing mediating role now how can there be
00:27:51mediation between the US and Iran to end this conflict
00:27:55if both of those countries are being drawn into the
00:27:58conflict which makes the ending of it even more.
00:28:02difficult and improbable, well
00:28:06again we go back to the the origin story on
00:28:09February 28th, could anyone, well I think if we were
00:28:13asked, what would be the implications of it, I think we would have said,
00:28:17well it could easily spread, okay, it could bring
00:28:21a lot of people and you would be very difficult to control
00:28:24if not nearly impossible to end, but that's
00:30:21Donald Trump announces the cease fire on energy infrastructure
00:30:25between Moscow and Keeve just day after saying Ukraine
00:30:29needs a new leader. A while Russia has yet to come.
00:30:32Vladimir Zelensky is caught
00:30:34by surprise saying that Kiev will agree if
00:30:38Moscow does the same. The
00:30:41Europeans have given the Russians more money,
00:30:45they since the start of this war then they have given the Ukrainians because they
00:30:49cannot win themselves off Russian energy.
00:30:53Washington blast the EU's hypocrisy over Russian energy
00:30:57imports as German opposition officials.