Google Speech-to-Text API Automatic Transcription (Chirp). Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:00to the large scale violence that we've seen in decades gone by. The
00:00:04question then is can the peace last, can these political
00:00:07agents can these politicians find a way on the negotiating
00:00:11table to make things work, to come
00:00:14of together and to work for the sake
00:00:15of the banga
00:00:16of people. That's what they've been saying that their aim
00:00:18of is after
00:00:19a all. The US house speaker is pushing back
00:00:23against growing warnings over the risks posed by artificial
00:00:26intelligence. Echoing President Donald Trump's claim that fears. about
00:00:30AI are hoax. Mike Johnson says the real threat isn't
00:00:34AI itself, but allowing China to pull ahead in the race to
00:00:37dominate the technology. His comments come as pressure builds on Congress
00:00:41to act after insiders at Open AI
00:00:44of and Anthropic warned AI could
00:00:47of pose an existential threat. They
00:00:51can self-police, they can self-regulate. They don't need the government to tell them to slow
00:00:55it down. If they want to slow it down they should, but we cannot exactly. We cannot
00:00:59have a more. moratorium on the development of AI, okay, because then
00:01:03we will lose our edge to China, and that has serious national security
00:01:06of implications for every American family. But in a striking
00:01:10political crossover, progressive senator Bernie Sanders and former
00:01:14Trump strategist Steve Bannon
00:01:16of have found common ground on AI. The
00:01:19of unlikely allies appeared together a so-called pro-human event in
00:01:22Washington, warning that unchecked AI could bring potentially
00:01:26catastrophic consequences.
00:01:30be very clear, a super intelligent AI that
00:01:34escapes human control will not
00:01:37simply be an American problem, it
00:01:41of will not be a Chinese problem, it
00:01:44will be humanities problem, and
00:01:48that is why I hope very much that at
00:01:52their AI summit next week, President Trump will
00:01:56negotiate a comprehensive treaty with President Chi.
00:02:00to establish pause on advanced AI
00:02:03development and a ban on super
00:02:07intelligence, so why are we letting the Chinese country's
00:02:10party drive us, oh we have to this or China win, we have to do this or China win, we have to
00:02:14do this or China is going to
00:02:16of win. We should quarantine
00:02:20now every aspect
00:02:24of the ecosystem of artificial intelligence
00:02:27away from the Chinese Communist Party. day we should cut
00:02:31them off
00:02:32of of all, and that's the
00:02:36news for
00:02:36in now, straight talk is
00:02:37next.
00:02:46of
00:02:55of
00:03:00The Iran war has
00:03:01of shaken the Middle East, exposing weaknesses in America's regional security
00:03:05order, as Washington considers reducing its military
00:03:09footprint, questions are growing over the future of US leadership in the
00:03:13of of region. Is American dominance giving way to new multipolar
00:03:16world? I'll break it all down here on Straight
00:03:19talk.
00:03:38Hello and welcome to Straight talk. I'm Yusuf Farm. The Iran war has raised
00:03:42fundamental questions about the future
00:03:45a of the Middle East, global energy security
00:03:46a and American leadership. The war's fallout has exposed
00:03:49vulnerabilities in the U.S. Led security order. Iran has severely
00:03:53damaged American
00:03:57in of bases across the Gulf, threaten Washington's regional allies and disrupted shipping. through the straight of
00:04:00Hormus, and now America's decades long military presence
00:04:04in the Middle East is being rolled back. U.S. forces have left
00:04:08their
00:04:08of major bases in Syria are withdrawing from
00:04:11a Iraq, and
00:04:12of the Pentagon is even considering abandoning some gulf
00:04:16of facilities battered by Iranian attacks. Amid that
00:04:19uncertainty, new alliances are emerging: Turkia, Saudi
00:04:23Arabia, and Pakistan
00:04:25in have in formed the Mecca defense alliance, pledging to treat attack on one
00:04:29as attack on. Meanwhile, Turkey Israel
00:04:32of tensions are deepening as Israel strengthens military ties with
00:04:36Greece through a 3.5 billion dollar deal. So as
00:04:40old alliances are tested and new power centers emerge, what does
00:04:44the future hold for American influence, and what would a truly
00:04:48multipolar Middle East and World look like? Formore,
00:04:52joining me now from Washington DC is
00:04:54of Political Scientist George Friedman. He's also the chairperson
00:04:58of geopolitical futures.
00:05:00of George, thanks for joining me. I've read your books and consumed
00:05:04lot of your content, and someone I've closely followed over the years
00:05:08and I'm very happy to have you across from me right now to be
00:05:11of able to unpack. many issues, and I want to begin with the war
00:05:15in Iran and rather talk about event-based
00:05:18scenarios, I want to talk about where on the time, where in the
00:05:22timeline we are right now, are we at the beginning, the
00:05:26middle or the end of this conflict between the United States
00:05:29and Iran and Israel as distant third
00:05:32belligerant? well, when you take a look at the war uh,
00:05:36essentially it's about nuclear power, you've noticed that
00:05:40President Trump is constantly talking about about their nuclear
00:05:43capability for one reason that i don't think it
00:05:46world understands, al-qaeda, it's
00:05:50remnance, it's
00:05:51not an operational force, is given sanctuary inside of
00:05:55Iran, the nightmare the United States, this is the
00:05:59anniversary the 9/11 attacks, is the idea of
00:06:02nuclear 9/11 placing
00:06:06a ship, nuclear weapon sailing into New York
00:06:09Harbor, so I think this was... the
00:06:12motivations behind what Trump did:
00:06:16first he bombed their nuclear facilities,
00:06:20that failed to stop them, he's constantly demanding
00:06:24this as his course. i think this is the
00:06:27fundamental force that led the United States to do this, the
00:06:31fear of nuclear Iran, given its ideology and
00:06:35given harbor to, but
00:06:39if that's the case, why tear up the JCP?
00:06:43away and then leave a certain amount of time
00:06:47between a military intervention. I mean, you've kind of
00:06:50unsackled around to pursue a nuclear weapon, in
00:06:54that there's a couple years in between the military intervention and
00:06:58tearing up the JCPO, so I mean strategically, it's kind
00:07:02of like almost Trump is baiting Iran into getting a nuclear
00:07:05weapon. Well, the war
00:07:08began with a strategic error by the United States.
00:07:14"they thought that the government, the civilian government of
00:07:17Iran was the government of Iran, they destroyed
00:07:21it, they decapitated Iran, they thought this would create the
00:07:24chaos, the truth was that the
00:07:28IRGC controls the country and
00:07:32destroying the civilian leadership didn't do anything at it. now
00:07:36why Trump didn't know this? I don't know, whether the
00:07:40intelligence people told him that this was true or..." not, I don't understand what
00:07:43happened, but the war began with an assumption
00:07:47that was not true, and Iran has
00:07:50been able to resist to this point,
00:07:53and so this is a war that began
00:07:57with, I think a misunderstanding the nature of Iran, that is
00:08:00continuing, we're learning it
00:08:03now,
00:08:05so so what is the end of this war look like,
00:08:07is it is the end the war mushroom cloud over
00:08:10Tehran, is it?
00:08:16and where does that leave American presence in the Middle East? I mean, will
00:08:20these bases that have been hit quite hard in
00:08:24Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia,
00:08:27Jordan, are they going to be rebuilt or is America going
00:08:31to use this as excuse to downsize
00:08:35presence and finally do that Pacific shift that we've been hearing about for a couple
00:08:39decades? well, the fundamental interested. the United
00:08:42States is disengaging from the eastern
00:08:46hemisphere, for the past 80 years, the United States had the
00:08:50role of managing
00:08:54events
00:08:54in the eastern hemisphere, it fought many wars, many dead
00:08:58people from Vietnam to Iraq and so on and so forth,
00:09:02this is something any president would be doing trying to
00:09:05disengage from the exposure in the
00:09:09far east, at the same time it's not an easy. thing to achieve
00:09:13events happening and they're being drawing into it,
00:09:17so what I see that is happening is what I would
00:09:20know, we had expected to happen,
00:09:24disengagement, but disengagements are hard, and
00:09:28what the United States really wants to do is not to be responsible for
00:09:31Israel, not to be responsible for the Saudis, but is
00:09:35very happy, I think to see the evolution of
00:09:38Turkey and its allies in Pakistan. and
00:09:42in Saudi Arabia as new entity, so
00:09:46from my point of view, this is the most important evolutions that's taking
00:09:50place in your region, which is this
00:09:54new environment in which we
00:09:58will ask not what the Americans are going to be doing, but more as what the
00:10:01Turkish Turks are going to be doing, so so
00:10:05you
00:10:05see T the probably the biggest candidate to fill the American void
00:10:09in the region, I i want you to talk a little about that and
00:10:12also the Mecca Alliance, this newly formed
00:10:16defensive coalition between Turkia, Pakistan and Saudi
00:10:20Arabia, will that be playing a big role, do you for see that being
00:10:24a... successful endeavor that may be growing in the
00:10:27future, enormous,
00:10:31I predicted that the Turks and the
00:10:35Iranians and I should say, I
00:10:38predicted that the Turks and the Saudis would become
00:10:42allies. Turkey is very powerful military
00:10:46force, it needs economic support.
00:10:50Saudi Arabia is very powerful economic
00:10:53force. "it needs to be protected by
00:10:57Turkey, so when we take a look at the situation
00:11:01there, I knew there would be lions between
00:11:04Turkey and Saudi Arabia, I was
00:11:07surprised by Pakistan being included, but it was an excellent
00:11:11inclusion, now Iran is actually
00:11:13surrounded by Turkey
00:11:17and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, it becomes their
00:11:21problem, but the United States is not very good at disengaging.
00:11:25from problems, so this comes question, how does the United States
00:11:29disengage and allow the mecca
00:11:32alliance to expand to Egypt perhaps
00:11:36and to take responsibility for these
00:11:39things? well, how do you
00:11:42see the this handing the batan happening? mean,
00:11:46obviously it's going to be gradualer phase, mean america is
00:11:50not just going to pick up its bags and leave tomorrow, the mech
00:11:53alliance is... isn't ready to handle that burden
00:11:57right now either, it's still trying to build its mechanisms, how do
00:12:01you see that gradual shift and the actors
00:12:05inside the region, obviously Israel and iran two
00:12:09countries that when they look at the mech alliance probably are
00:12:13concerning uh, its presence is concerning to their own
00:12:16national securities, how do you think that's going to play out as
00:12:20well? well first
00:12:23Israel, okay? Israel is a profoundly
00:12:27weak country, it was created by the United
00:12:30Nations, it is 71 miles
00:12:33wide its widest point, it
00:12:37was faced by hostile nations and
00:12:41movements all around it, and it
00:12:43adopted a strategy of preemptive strikes
00:12:47constantly holding them off, in 73 it
00:12:51almost lost the war because it didn't do that,
00:12:55"this is no longer the reality in the region. It's very
00:12:58important to understand that Israel is now a very different
00:13:02position than it was before. It is now no
00:13:06longer simply the major military power in
00:13:10the region, Turkey is evolving, Pakistan has
00:13:13evolved, other nations are evolving, so very
00:13:17different Israel must emerge, and that's a political
00:13:21problem, but you had said before that the United States can simply..."
00:13:25leave, we simply left Vietnam, we left
00:13:28Iraq, we left Afghanistan, we have that
00:13:32ability to realize what the game is up to take
00:13:35actions, so I think one the things that
00:13:39the alliance has to be considering is the possibility
00:13:43that in the end, if the Iranians don't collapse, and they're a great deal of difficulty
00:13:47economically as well, if they don't reach an accommodation, the United
00:13:51States could leave, and then you must evolve your...
00:13:55organization much more rapidly than you're planning to,
00:13:59well what's in, mean obviously the as as
00:14:03we both agree, the united states can't leave, and there are examples of
00:14:07it just leaving, but again, leaving a country versus leaving region,
00:14:10especially region that's been so lucrative for the united states,
00:14:14mean the oil here uh the amount of money that's pumped into
00:14:18us treasury bills uh the investment in the united states
00:14:22that's not something that uh washington wants to just leave
00:14:26behind again, having a NATO member
00:14:30here filling that security void, that's important,
00:14:34but again that period of transition going to be tough, there's been a lot of
00:14:38friction between Israel and Turkey, obviously Israel
00:14:42very important for the United States, some would say it's closest sally, some
00:14:46would say ally that gets it into a lot of trouble as well at the
00:14:49same time, how's the friction between Israel and Turkia going to
00:14:53play out in? washington, will the
00:14:56us want to hand over to? is this something
00:15:00that the Israel influence and lobby in Washington will try to
00:15:04prevent? will will Israel to be the leader in this
00:15:08region? well, let's first understand why Israel became so important for the
00:15:11United States. its first support it was not the United States, it was
00:15:15France gave it weapons and so on. the problem
00:15:19was that the Soviets had become allies with the Syrians,
00:15:23with the Egyptians and
00:15:38"and that's not relevant,
00:15:41so the American engagement in the Middle
00:15:45East used to be security engagement trying to block the
00:15:48Soviets, at this point it's going to be more of economic
00:15:52relationship, it does not want the burdens of
00:15:56sending troops there, and its relationship with
00:16:00Israel, as you see in the United States, where Israel is
00:16:04widely supported, that support has declined. among the
00:16:08public and in the presidency
00:16:11itself, so I think we're seeing a fundamental change, I think
00:16:15Israel will survive, Israel will be
00:16:19there, but the most important nation from the
00:16:23United States point of view at this point in time
00:16:26is this mecca alliance and particular Turkey,
00:16:30that is going to emerge, as I said before, as the
00:16:34major power in the region, and Israel will have to learn... to live with
00:16:38that, otherwise it'll be disastrous,
00:16:41so things are changing, the realities the past
00:16:45that we were living with are obsolete, very different things are
00:16:49emerging. i want to talk a little about
00:16:53one the books that you wrote the next 100 years back in 2009,
00:16:57i believe it was published i when you take into account one or two
00:17:01years to formulate your thoughts and actually write the book, we can say it's
00:17:04about two decades old now, you look back at your
00:17:08predictions and you see the way it is
00:17:11now, what lines up,
00:17:15what is an overachievement, what is an underachievement compared to
00:17:19what you pictured at 20 years ago,
00:17:22well it's actually moving the way i thought, i said
00:17:26there were three countries, japan, poland
00:17:30and turkey, these would become major regional
00:17:33powers, that transition is happening
00:17:36now,
00:18:37marginalized in terms their power and so on and so forth, and to a
00:18:41large extent the turks
00:18:45will have to deal with that problem in time. what's what
00:18:49should turke's biggest concern be going forward or what could
00:18:53derail it from achieving uh the place that
00:18:57you predicted it would be in the next 100
00:18:59years? well the most important
00:19:03things that are in the region are the non-state actors,
00:19:07he's not. state actors are ideological, there are countries
00:19:11that are supporting them, particularly Iran, and they tend to
00:19:14destabilize the situation, not only for Israel,
00:19:18mostly for Israel, but also for other countries,
00:19:22so it's very difficult to have steady international
00:19:26relations within countries in the middle east, so long these are the non-state
00:19:30actors, so one the things that has to be
00:19:33done, these non-state actors were primarily against Israel,
00:19:38but also destabilizing the region as well, so the next step has to
00:19:41be a modification, not an elimination, a
00:19:45modification these non-state actors, then the
00:19:48nations the region can begin talking without looking over their
00:19:52shoulders. i want to ask you,
00:19:56there's been a lot of talk about us being now
00:19:59a multipolar order, are we a multipolar
00:20:03world, is there a multipolar order governing that multipolar?
00:20:07world or are we still in the last throws the unipolar
00:20:11world? well, there was never a unipolar
00:20:15world, there was a bipolar world, the United States and the Soviet
00:20:18Union for 80 years faced each other, competed for each
00:20:22other in the former European empires that collapsed after World
00:20:26War II, and the Russians are no
00:20:30longer major power, that they could not occupy in
00:20:33almost five years Ukraine, means they are not,
00:20:37possibly going to
00:20:38go to war with europe, they're not a major power, their
00:20:42economy is split, the fundamental relationship at this
00:20:46point is between the United States and China. China has...
00:20:50a fundamental problem: it produces more products
00:20:53than it consume domestically. it is the world's second
00:20:57largest economy, but in terms of per capita
00:21:01income, the ability them to
00:21:04buy the goods, the number 71.
00:21:08the United States is their largest
00:21:12exporting partner, they need the United States, they
00:21:16cannot have hostile relation
00:21:17to the United States. the United States can not
00:21:20have be dependent economically on
00:21:24China so long as they might go to war with
00:21:28us, therefore the summits that are being held now are
00:21:32being based on two relationships evolving, the
00:21:35first the economic relationship, which is very
00:21:39important to China, the second
00:21:42is not having a military
00:21:45confrontation, so we're used to the idea of a
00:21:49Soviet America.
00:22:20hemisphere and therefore they're looking for, I
00:22:23think, leadership within the region. We've already said that
00:22:27NATO must be responsible for the region, so who is
00:22:31responsible
00:22:32for the Middle East? I'm talking to the people who are going
00:22:36to
00:22:36be responsible for the Middle East, along with the Saudis and others, so
00:22:40this is a fundamental change. We're thinking about the polar
00:22:44worlds, it's much more complex now.
00:22:48Yeah, it does look like inside. of that multipolar world, these
00:22:52middle powers are definitely going to have very, very big roles.
00:22:56i want to ask you about another prediction in uh,
00:23:002030s, the collapse of Russia, do you
00:23:03still see that happening with the current state the war in
00:23:07Ukraine, and if Russia does collapse, where does
00:23:11that leave NATO going forward?
00:23:14well, Russia already lost
00:23:18the... countries to the east of
00:23:22it, the those countries, it lost the
00:23:25south caucases, it lost western
00:23:28Europe, the country that was the Soviet
00:23:31Union is much reduced, this is
00:23:34why they invade Ukraine,
00:23:37so Hitler and st, Hitler and
00:23:41Napolian invaded Russia, they lost because of how
00:23:45deep it was, the Ukrainian border is about
00:23:49300.
00:24:20fear, a concept that this Russia is a great power, it's going to invade
00:24:24the Baltics or this or that, it's shown that it's not
00:24:28a great military power, and in that
00:24:31sense it has already collapsed it away,
00:24:34it is nothing like what we thought was, therefore
00:24:37NATO as an organization that was built to defend
00:24:41against Russia is going evolve into something else or
00:24:44collapse, so we're looking, we are living a period
00:24:48like the end of world. two where everything is changing in the
00:24:52world, definitely a very transformative period. i
00:24:56want to ask you about two more alliances, the bricks
00:24:59and the shanghai cooperation organization, how do you
00:25:03see these two alliances within the framework the
00:25:06future? well, in terms of military
00:25:09alliance, they're not much, okay, and they have hostile
00:25:13relation with each other, as
00:25:16economic evolution, the...
00:25:20evolve in various ways, so we must
00:25:23distinguish something we didn't distinguish in the cold war. in the cold
00:25:27war we were always looking at military power, now it's
00:25:30military power plus economic power, and these
00:25:34countries are united in certain
00:25:38ways, but they have very different interests, very different positions and so on
00:25:42and so forth, so a coalition these
00:25:45countries is as being effective is very hard to
00:25:48imagine. what one the major themes at
00:25:52uh the SCO and probably at the Ricks is the status
00:25:56of uh the dollar as the reserved currency, do you see
00:26:00the the future the dollar in? danger and if something does
00:26:04replace it, what could replace it?
00:26:08well, firstly, the United States became the world's currency,
00:26:11because the only valuable currency after World War II, the Britain
00:26:15Woods agreements and all these other agreements created a structure the
00:26:19world. One the things the United States
00:26:22did was rejuvenate
00:26:25Europe, okay? another thing it did was fight the
00:26:29soviets all over the former European empire.
00:26:33in the Congo as well, everywhere using foreign aid as
00:26:37a tool, these things are not really relevant
00:26:41to this point, so when we talk about the United
00:26:44States
00:26:45as the major currency, it's also a problem for the United States, so
00:26:49for example recently when Japan was having economic powers, the
00:26:52Americans had to go into
00:26:54Japan,
00:26:59this is always had a problem for the United States, but particularly. now that
00:27:03there are powers economic powers like Japan,
00:27:06like Saudi Arabia, all these countries, why should they notice
00:27:10bear the burden of being the primary
00:27:14currency? the primary currency is
00:27:17whatever other nations accept, it is the US
00:27:21primary currency because
00:27:22it is the most stable currency and the most
00:27:26capable in in the end of
00:27:29time other nations will emerge, other current. will
00:27:32emerge, so whether the dollar remains the
00:27:36fundamental currency, I'm not sure the United States is eager
00:27:40to see that happen, because many times the United States was drawn
00:27:44economic situations to stabilize
00:27:46it, if you could write a one
00:27:50chapter add-on to the next 100 years with 20 years of
00:27:54hindsight right now, what would that chapter be
00:27:57titled and what would the predictions in that chapter
00:28:00include? At this point,
00:28:03the most important question in the world is the future of
00:28:07Europe. The European
00:28:09Union, its
00:28:12GDP is larger than the
00:28:15Chinese. If Europe got
00:28:18together as nation state
00:28:21away, with provinces and so on, it
00:28:25would be a superpower. If it remains in this
00:28:28condition it's in, which is likely to remain, it...
00:28:33be victim the united states, china
00:28:36and other countries picking them off,
00:28:39so the most important geopolitical
00:28:42question is, will the europeans join
00:28:46together, and what happens is
00:28:49eastern Europe, maybe the seas alliance pull together or something
00:28:53like that, but the most important
00:28:57things that are happening now are in south america,
00:29:01which is devolving. rapidly economically, but also the
00:29:05middle east, when we see this first
00:29:08major Islamic alliance, I'll call it, that is
00:29:12formed, suddenly the possibility the Middle East
00:29:16becoming very wealthy, perhaps happy
00:29:20region is possible. George Friedman,
00:29:23fascinating discussion, thank you for doing
00:29:26this.
00:29:30And that's all for this edition of straight. talk with me Yusuf air, if you
00:29:34got any comments, please share them with us on x at
00:29:37straighttalt, also don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube
00:29:40channel where you can find more exclusive content. Until next time, take
00:29:44care and
00:29:45goodbye.
00:30:18fighting escalates in Yemen as Ansarolah Hothis and
00:30:22Saudi-backed forces trade fresh
00:30:24attacks. And the conflict is rattling
00:30:28oil markets. Saudi Arabia reportedly halts oil loadings
00:30:32at Hello and welcome
00:30:35to TRT World, live from Istanbul, I'm Oscar Sabakti,
00:30:39also ahead on the program, at least eight Palestinians are killed
00:30:43in Israeli attacks in Gaza despite a
00:30:45ceasefire, and US senator
00:30:49Bernie Sanders and Trump Ally Steve Bannon unite over calls for
00:30:53tougher oversight of
00:30:54AI.