Tehran Prof Marandi: Israel WILL Restart Iran War

So, for more on the war from the Iranian perspective, we are glad to be joined this morning by Professor Mohammad Morandi. He is a professor at the University of Tehran and actually was part of the delegation in Islamabad recently. So, very grateful to have you this morning, sir.

Good to see you, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you both. Yeah, of course. So, wanted to get your reaction to some comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth this morning. He said in a press conference, if Iran chooses poorly, then they will have a blockade and bombs dropping on infrastructure, power, and energy. How are you viewing these negotiations?

Do you think this is another US ruse? Do you think they are just trying to prepare for a new escalation? Or do you think that they are serious about doing what it takes to achieve some sort of a deal?

I think the Iranians from the very beginning believed that the U.S. was not serious. And the United States backed down from its initial position of unconditional surrender to the 15-point plan to ultimately accepting Iran's 10-point plan as the framework for discussion. But Iran knew that the United States was never going to move in that direction, and that Netanyahu and the Zionist lobby, they would prevent that. But Iran wanted to show the world and its own people that politically the United States,

under Trump, was floundering. And since the ceasefire, the Iranians have been preparing themselves for the next round of war. And I think the Iranians believe that it could be quite soon.

Interesting. So, sir, one of the things that we are curious, because we are trying to decipher all of these moves from here in Washington. We've seen the Iranian enclosure of the Straits of Hormuz, now this U.S. blockade of the blockade of the Straits of Hormuz. We also saw yesterday a threat from Iran to close the Red Sea.

I'm curious from your view and some of the talks maybe that you observed in Islamabad what the seriousness of the blockade is having in terms of the thought process inside Tehran?

Well, the Iranians, when they went to Islamabad, the negotiators had full authority. Before leaving, the Speaker of Parliament, who was the head of the delegation, spoke extensively with Ayatollah Khamenei, the leader. But the U.S. side was obviously very different. Vance obviously had no authority. He was constantly making phone calls, including to Netanyahu.

And later we learned that Netanyahu said that Vance reported to him, which is a strange word to use, and that other officials also report to him, U.S. officials, which is also strange. But the blockade from the Iranian perspective is intensifying the pace in which the global economy is moving towards collapse. And the belief here is that the United States, by intensifying the blockade and the Israeli

regime by violating the ceasefire agreement and attacking Lebanon, is pushing forward the collapse even faster than before. So basically, Netanyahu, by blocking the ceasefire and preventing Iran from allowing more ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, and Vance by failing to have authority to have an agreement because of Netanyahu, because of both acts of Netanyahu, the belief here is that the global economy will collapse much sooner than expected, and that Trump, out of desperation, will launch an attack pretty soon.

Professor, I was also curious for you to contrast these negotiations, especially in terms of the American technical expertise or lack thereof brought to the table, versus you were also involved in the negotiations of the JCPOA under the Obama administration, which included a lot of highly technical experts who were negotiating all of these elaborate details. If you could compare and contrast, because I think that's important, too, to understand whether or not they're actually serious about coming to some sort of a deal at this point.

Well, I don't have the details about the American side, but the difference between the JCPOA, which I, where I accompanied the foreign minister Zarif in Vienna to help with media, just like in Islamabad. I'm not in government, but they sometimes ask me to help them with interviews. Back then, the US government was serious about a negotiated deal. Now, whether that was a good deal for Iran or a bad deal, that's a big debate. It's always been a big debate in Iran.

But the US was serious, and so the negotiations ultimately bore fruit. What we've been seeing before the 12-day war and before this war where we were negotiating was that the United States was not serious. Iranians knew that. Iran knew that the US would attack before the 12-day war. They knew before this war that the U.S. would attack.

But Iran was negotiating so that the international community and the Iranian people would see that Iran is there to solve the problem, and so that after they launch an attack, they won't say that, well, if Iran had negotiated, maybe this wouldn't have happened, but also to see if Trump wanted an off ramp. But Iran knew there would be an assault last year. They knew there would be an assault before this Ramadan war, the 40-day war.

And now they also believe that the United States will attack, but they're still negotiating. But here, the feeling on all three occasions, before the 12-day war, before the 40-day war, and now, that the U.S. intention is not a negotiated solution.

So sir, with respect then, why did the Iranian government agree to a ceasefire? Why did they agree to a ceasefire if they are so sure that the war is going to resume? Because from here in Washington, the consensus is that the Iranian government agreed to a ceasefire because they couldn't take the pain anymore. Washington, the Pentagon, did a press conference this morning saying that they're reloading. Why would you permit the enemy to reload if you never believed that this was going to

happen?

Well, there are three reasons, and let me give you an example first. During the 12-day war last year, where the U.S. and Israeli regime carried out an assault on the country, after about six days the tide turned in favor of Iran. And after eight days or so, it was Netanyahu who was seeking a ceasefire. And after 12 days, Iran agreed to halt for a cessation of hostilities. Some were saying, well, why didn't Iran continue then? Iran saw that during that 12-day war it had major issues that it had to deal with.

It had to—there were shortcomings in the way in which we had planned war, in which the defensive and offensive capabilities of the country were arranged. So they, and they knew that if the war continued, the United States would enter. So they thought that they would use this time to improve their capabilities. And during the eight months, we've seen how everything has changed despite the immense

US firepower, which is much greater than that of the Israeli regime, which would be defeated in a fight against Iran. Iran has performed much better. So it was because of the experience of the 12-day war. Right now, the Iranians are rearming. They're preparing. But also, like before, but also every single day that goes by, the Strait of Hormuz is

more or less closed. And that is putting more pressure on the United States under Trump. And the belief in Iran is that Trump does not make the decisions. It is the Israeli lobby, the Zionist lobby, and Netanyahu. And so the only way for to force the United States to make a decision that benefits its own people is to increase the economic pressure so much that the United States under Trump or the leadership ultimately says,

well, here we have to prioritize our own interests over that of Netanyahu. So each day that goes by, we're approaching, sadly, a global economic catastrophe, which will probably lead to a world economic depression. But Iran is preparing for war. Iran is also negotiating in order to be seen by the international community as participating

in negotiations. But and also Iran achieved something big in these through these through the ceasefire. And that is that everyone saw that on day one, the United States demanded Iran to submit and accept defeat. That didn't happen. And after 40 days, the United States accepted Iran's conditions, the 10-point plan, as the

framework for discussion. Now later on, the spokeswoman for the White House said, we threw it in the bin, but that's not important. What is important is that everyone saw the evolution of the U.S. demands from unconditional surrender to, okay, we'll accept talking within that framework of your own. And that, I think, was a sea change or created a sea change in perceptions of the war across

the world.

Very interesting. So, this morning in this press briefing, which I don't know if you've had a chance to see because this just happened, we're just getting these quotes in in kind of real time at this point, but you not only had Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, you also had General Dan Kaines, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he announced effectively an escalation of the U.S. blockade tactics.

He said that the U.S. Navy in the Pacific would be called upon to intercept ships moving to resupply Iran, broadening that naval blockade beyond the Middle East. Do you expect the Iranian government to respond with an escalation of their own by closing the Bab-el-Mandab Strait or other actions?

Oh, absolutely. That will happen quite soon. And I think that basically what Trump is doing out of desperation is that he's dragging down the entire global economy because he is incapable of pursuing policies that are in the interest of the United States. Basically, it is Netanyahu who wants this war to continue and the Zionist lobby. And since Trump is incapable, for whatever reason, for whatever reason, I mean, there's speculation as to why, but for whatever reason, Trump is incapable of pursuing US interests.

So what is happening is that Trump is dragging down the entire global economy, including the US economy, because he is obedient to the Zionist lobby.

Sir, I'm curious for your view here on the streets of Hormuz and what the future will look like. Can we put C3 up here on the screen? Recent report here from Reuters that one possible way that this could go is that Iran has offered a proposal allowing ships to exit the Oman side of the Hormuz free of attack. Now obviously that would downplay significantly one of the Ten Point Plan proposals, which

is that Iran would retain total control of the Straits of Hormuz. So since you've spoken with many of the people who are in government, do you foresee any future where Iran would agree passage of the Straits of Hormuz without collecting some sort of monetary payment?

No. The Iranians have made the decision that they will control the Strait of Hormuz. And it didn't have to be like this. We were not controlling the Strait of Hormuz before this war was imposed upon us. The regimes, the family dictatorships in the Persian Gulf, they are complicit in this war. Their U.S. bases in these countries were used.

Their airspace was used. Their territory was used to fire missiles. They have a lot of Iranian blood on their hands. The first wave of attacks included the slaughter of 168 little schoolchildren, mostly girls at an elementary school, which Iranians believe that it was intentional because always in war the first wave, the first set of targets are very carefully vetted for weeks, if not

months. And that school was on every app, it was on every map, and it was there for many years. And the belief here is that since many of the school children were the children of military officers, of naval officers, that the US wanted to teach them a lesson. And some people in the United States may have skepticism about this, but they've been bombing hospitals in Iran.

They've been bombing schools. They've been bombing ambulances. Trump has said he's going to wipe out a civilization. No one in the Western media has complained. In fact, the Washington Post, when we were going to Pakistan, said in an opinion piece that they should slaughter the negotiators,

which meant us. And on our way back to Iran, we were all expecting to be killed and our plane to be shot down. Although to the credit of everyone on the delegation, no one wanted to stay behind and everyone got on the plane. But this is the mentality that exists in Washington today. And no one should be surprised about the slaughter. And we saw what happened in the genocide in Gaza.

And we see a genocide unfolding in Lebanon. And right now, Western media is trying to portray the genocidal strikes in Lebanon as Hezbollah targets, Hezbollah strongholds, in order to whitewash the crime. So people should not be surprised that the Iranians believe that these strikes on children are intentional.

Let me get your reaction to some recent comments from Vice President J.D. Vance. This was speaking at a relatively poorly attended TPUSA, Turning Points USA, conservative activists group event, where he says that what President Trump is looking for is a grand bargain with Iran. Let's take a listen to that.

Now we are negotiating to make sure that very thing happens. And here's what's interesting about this is, what's interesting about this is that we have this ceasefire that's in place. I think it's six or seven days old. Right now, the ceasefire is holding. And what you're seeing is the president wants to make,

he doesn't want to make like a small deal. He wants to make the grand bargain. And what he's basically offering to Iran is very simple, and frankly, it's something that no president has, I think, has had the ability to offer. He said that if you're willing to act like a normal country, we are willing to treat you economically like a normal country.

He doesn't want a small deal. And that's one of the reasons why, one, I'd say in Pakistan we made a ton of progress, but the reason why the deal is not yet done is because the president, he really wants a deal where Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon, Iran is not state-sponsoring terrorism, but also the people of Iran can thrive and prosper and join the world economy.

And that's the trade that he's offering. He's saying if you guys, he's saying if you guys commit to not having a nuclear weapon, we are going to make Iran thrive, we're going to make it economically prosperous, and we're going to invite the Iranian people into the world economy in a way they haven't been in my entire life. And that's the kind of Trumpian grand bargain that the president has put on the table.

So the key quote there is he says, if you're willing to act like a normal country, we are willing to treat you economically like a normal country. What do you think, from the U.S. perspective, it means for Iran to act like a, quote, normal country?

Well, we know from Joe Kent's resignation letter that this is nonsense and that the United States knows quite well that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon, and it never was pursuing a nuclear weapon and it never was pursuing a nuclear weapon. And all of this is basically a tool to put pressure on Iran, like the human rights issue, like the terrorism issue, all of that, the violations that the West and the United States carry out with regards to human rights, all we have to do is look at Lebanon today and Gaza and the schools that were bombed in Iran.

Everyone knows who violates human rights. We all know who created ISIS and Al Qaeda. We know that Jake Sullivan told Hillary Clinton in an email that Al Qaeda is on our side in Syria. All that is clear for everyone today. The masks have fallen.

Iran's problem has always been its independence for the last 47 years and its opposition to ethnic cleansing, ethno-supremacism in Palestine. And of course, the crushing of the people of Cuba and so on. This is the Iran, the real sin of Iran. The United States has imposed three wars on Iran. In the 1980s, they supported Saddam Hussein,

the West gave him chemical weapons. I survived two chemical attacks. Never has the German government or any Western government apologized to us or paid reparations to the many victims, Iranian and Iraqi. And then last year and this year.

What the United States wants is what Netanyahu wants, and that is to destroy our region. Remember what the US ambassador to the Israeli regime said to Tucker Carlson, that if the Israeli regime takes the entire region, that's fine.

And of course, they are the most moral army in the world. So that means that genocide after genocide after genocide can take place and they can have the entire region. That is the plan. What Vance is saying is just nonsense, but it didn't have to be this way. There's a very good book that I would propose that you read called Going to Tehran written by Flint and Hillary Leverett. They worked in the White House under Condoleezza Rice

and Flint Leverett resigned over the Iraq war. Highly educated academics, they were in government and they dealt with many of the myths that exist about Iran, but they also proposed a way forward that the United States,

how the United States could have rapprochement with Iran. The real sort of rapprochement, not the fake rapprochement with Iran, the real sort of rapprochement, not the fake rapprochement of Vance and Trump. But what happened? Everyone in Washington antagonized them and they chose the policies of the Zionist regime, which I believe is an enemy of the American people, an enemy of the Jewish people, and working against U.S. interests.

If they had not chosen the Zionist route, the Netanyahu route, today we would probably have ordinary relations with the United States. One very interesting thing is just during the last days of the war, the Israelis bombed a synagogue in Tehran and completely destroyed it. Why? Because it wasn't a Zionist synagogue.

Sir, I'm also curious, you seem virtually certain that the war will restart. I saw your tweet this morning, you will attack the Persian Gulf, you will continue to escalate. You were at the negotiations. So how common is that view? Is there any dissenting view within the negotiators or within the security apparatus which does want to see some sort of successful ceasefire?

In other words, how united are people inside the decision making? You have quite a bit of a view into that, into your view that the war is virtually certain to restart.

Well, no one here wants war. We did not start the war which Saddam Hussein at the best of the Western encouragement launched against us. I was a volunteer in that war to defend the country. We did not launch last year's war. We did not launch this, the Ramadan war, the 40-day war.

And we did not escalate. Every time the United States and the Israeli regime escalated, we responded in kind. So we do not want war now. But what we're seeing is the United States building up its forces. We see that the Israeli regime is slaughtering people in Lebanon against the ceasefire agreement. And the Pakistani leaders have insisted that the United States accepted Lebanon as a part

of the ceasefire. And Trump's denying it is just dishonesty. And if the Pakistanis are dishonest, then why is Trump still working through Pakistan? So it's clear that that was a part of the ceasefire. Netanyahu wants more war. He wants the global economy.

He doesn't care about the global economy. He doesn't care what happens in India or Indonesia or anywhere else. See, their economies can crash as far as he's concerned. He wants more war. So he destroyed the ceasefire agreement.

So no move was taken by Iran to facilitate more ships leaving the Strait of Hormuz. And in Islamabad, the US was not serious. In advance, it was clear that he did not have authority. So no one wants war, but we are seeing what's happening before our eyes, and that's why

we're preparing. And that's why if war happens, Iran is going to have to retaliate. Those Arab family regimes in the Persian Gulf, they are complicit. And so Iran will strike back. And we are approaching summer, and it is going to get very hot in the next few weeks in the Persian Gulf.

And if there's war, that will basically mean that these regimes will collapse because no one will be able to stay there under those circumstances. And I think that that will really be the tipping point where the global economy collapses

in a way that will be much worse than 1929, in my opinion. And, of course, the Red Sea will be shut down as well. It will be catastrophic for the world. I don't want this. No one here wants this.

But Netanyahu is hell-bent on moving in that direction, and he's the president of the United States.

Let me put C2 up on the screen. This is my last question for you, Sagar. I may have more. But there was a Pakistani delegation that came to Tehran hoping to push for more U.S.-Iran talks. Do you think there is a possibility there will be renewed in-person talks in Islamabad,

very likely, before the ceasefire concludes?

I don't know the details. I'm not in government. I've never been in government. When I went to Islamabad, I was not paid or anything. I just went there as a volunteer, just like on previous occasions. And I give my opinions.

I don't know what is going to happen. I assume that the discussions that they had are now being studied by the decision makers in Iran. But the general sense is that the United States is unable to, or Trump is unable to use an off-ramp. He is not being allowed to use an off-ramp. And Trump cannot gain through negotiations what he failed to gain during the war. He lost the war.

And they can say how they destroyed us. They were saying they destroyed us from day one. And they were saying that we ran out of missiles from day one. But during the last 15 days of the war, Iran was striking harder than ever before. So obviously this was all a miscalculation or that or the United States or Trump himself believed the fake information that Moussad was feeding him in order to launch this war.

But whatever it is, it was a major miscalculation. We know that the United States is a brutal regime. We know it's a very brutal regime. We know when they say they will obliterate us and the media calls for the assassination of negotiators, that the political class in the United States,

the Epstein class, it has no moral compass. And that's why it likes to slander Iran and portray Iran as evil in order to legitimize its brutality. But Iran did not lose this war, and it's not going to lose the next war. It will be very painful for everyone.

And I think the collapse that is coming will affect the entire world in ways that we cannot comprehend. But Iran has no option but to fight, because for us, for the Iranians, this is a fight for survival. For the Axis of Resistance, this is a fight for survival. For Trump, either he's compromised or he's under heavily influenced, but this is a war

of choice. And I think that the last war, the last two wars, and even the last three wars, should have been enough to show the people around Trump that this is going to end in disaster for everyone but the United States as well.

My last question for you, sir, is on Lebanon. Why is Lebanon so critical to the Iranian negotiators? Why is it that they are so adamant? I believe the vice president said if it's their choice to blow up the negotiations over Lebanon that would be dumb, but you know, that's their choice. Why does it seem so critical by the negotiators to secure a ceasefire in Lebanon?

Well, Vance does not care about the slaughter of women and children that's happening day and night because he has no moral compass. The reality is that people across the world have woken up to the narratives on Iran. Iran is always the bad guy, but somehow it's only Iran that supports the Palestinian people against the genocidal policies of the collective West. Iran is evil, but somehow it is only Iran that stands up for the Lebanese people, despite

the support of the genocidal policies of the Israeli regime by the collective West. People are now seeing through everything, and the reality is now clear to all. Hezbollah and the resistance in Lebanon and those who support it, who are Christians, Muslims, and Druze, men and women, they are fighting against the Israeli regime because they wanted to draw forces. They fought against the Israeli regime because they wanted to draw forces away from Gaza

as the genocide was taking place. Remember, the Palestinians were Amalek, and Israeli leaders were saying there are no innocents. And as the genocide progressed, Hezbollah fought to save these kids, to save these men and women. These are the heroes of our era, people who sacrificed themselves, their women and children to spare to save another people.

And we will not relinquish the men, women, and children of Lebanon in the face of an evil force, an ethnosupremacist, master race force that is determined to create another Gaza and Lebanon.

Well, Professor Marandi, we are very grateful for your time and for your perspective this morning. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you, sir. Thank you for taking the time and for sharing that. you know, considering that we are currently at war with your people. We always think it's important to at least hear the perspective and to try and understand so that we can hopefully try and find some way out of this.

So we appreciate that. Thank you.

Thank you.

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