Norman Finkelstein: Trump is too humiliated to attack Iran again

---

Transcript and notes between brackets: Alain Marshal || Journalist: Good day. Welcome to another episode of “Unapologetic”. I’m your host Ashfaaq Carim, and joining me today again is Norman Finkelstein. Norman, welcome to the show.

Norman Finkelstein: Thank you for having me.

Journalist: Norman, you’re joining us the morning after Iran and the US — Trump and Iran — agreed to a ceasefire brokered by Pakistan. What’s your read on it?

A Victory for Iran

Norman Finkelstein: At first glance, it didn’t seem to me to be a victory for Iran — not that I really like to calculate in those terms. It clearly was not a victory for the United States either. If you look at the various goals Trump set over the past 40 days: he said at a certain point he would not settle for less than unconditional surrender — he didn’t get that. He suggested he wanted regime change — he didn’t get that. He hoped or expected to disarm Iran — that didn’t happen. So it can be said with certainty that Trump did not achieve any of his stated aims.

On the other hand, Iran had said it would not open the Strait of Hormuz until certain there would be no renewed attack after Israel and the United States regrouped for a next round, and that it would not open the Strait in exchange for a ceasefire alone [note: the Strait of Hormuz remains closed: passage requires authorization and payment, neither of which will be granted to US-Israeli vessels or their allies]. Iran wanted a robust final settlement, which it clearly did not get. It was said frequently that all Iran had to do to win was not to lose — and it did not lose. At that level, there is an argument to be made that it won.

It is also clear — and I said so when interviewed the previous evening — that China played a critical role in achieving this ceasefire. China is obviously heavily dependent on international trade and on Gulf oil, and it has allies among the Gulf States. China really has no enemies in its immediate environment — there is tension with Japan, Taiwan, and Vietnam, but generally China is simply in it for the money. Whether that is a good or bad thing is for philosophers to debate. China has no stake in military conflict. On the contrary, China knows it is an economic powerhouse — the global economic powerhouse — and that if military conflicts are kept in abeyance, it will win the battle for global dominance. So it does not want fighting. And in my opinion, the Chinese are correct when they say that Trump’s actions, this brutal resort to force, are the death pangs of a dying empire. When you have no other tool except violent force, it means you are in decline. The Chinese recognize these as tantrums thrown by a dying superpower. The constant resort to force, and the crudeness with which it is wielded, is an index of that decline.

China apparently pressured Iran to accept the deal. I cannot say the Iranians are omniscient or always exercise perfect diplomatic skill. Perhaps the Chinese were right to call a halt before the world crossed the precipice into the abyss. We have to factor in the Chinese intervention. Those who say “I predicted this, I knew it would happen” are talking complete nonsense. I belong to the Tolstoy school: there are so many unpredictable factors in war that you really cannot predict the outcome. How many commentators predicted that China would enter the scene and essentially tell Iran it had to sign? Nobody. It is one of those factors you cannot know with any certainty — which is why, as I said, Tolstoy was right [note: in our eyes, China is unlikely to pressure Iran into a ceasefire, let alone force it. Beijing has its own agreements with Tehran and stands to gain significantly from a US defeat. The Chinese Defence Minister’s remarks on Trump’s blockade speak for themselves: “Our ships are moving in and out of the waters of the Strait of Hormuz. We have trade and energy agreements with Iran. We will respect and honour them and expect others not to meddle in our affairs. Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz, and it is open for us.”].

Toppling the Islamic Republic: A U.S. Objective Since 1979

Having said that, I think there are a few important points to make. First, I do not believe this will happen again. Whatever comes of the negotiations, the war is over. Let me explain why. We now have an unusual situation in American history: a largely personalized presidency. Trump is aware of US national interests — and the US has always wanted to rid itself of the Islamic Republic of Iran, going back to 1979. That is why the US supported Iraq during the war of 1980 to 1988, and why it has imposed brutal sanctions on Iran ever since. There was a brief letup with the JCPOA [the Iranian nuclear deal], but it did not last long. When the Biden administration had the opportunity to reverse Trump and return to the JCPOA, Biden and Secretary of State Blinken opposed it. So, with a relatively small exception, it has been a consistent US national interest, as defined by the ruling elites, to rid itself of the Iranian “menace.”

When Trump launched the attack on Iran in collusion with Israel, he was not acting against US national interests, manipulated or duped by Israel. That argument is foolish. You would have to have completely blinded yourself to 30 years of history to forget that ridding the Middle East of Iran has always been defined by the ruling elites as a national interest. In fact, going back to 2003 and the attack on Iraq: Iraq was supposed to be a stepping stone to Iran. The only difference between the US and Israel at that point was whether Iran would come first — Israel’s preference — or last, after Iraq and Syria — the US preference. But there was complete agreement that Iran had to go. There was all the same talk about “mad Mullahs” and regime change in 2003. And this was not Israeli-orchestrated. It came from two very homegrown Americans: Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. They were not acting at the behest of Israel. They were acting on what they understood to be US national interests [note: the fact that Israel has long been a US pawn and that Washington always calls the shots is unquestionable; but Trump is stupid enough to be manipulated by his own puppet, Netanyahu, as Professor Finkelstein later explains].

Now, I said something is different about the Trump presidency: it is highly personalized. The background music is the national interest, and Trump is a member of the ruling elite — his instincts are always in harmony with national interest. But in the particular moment, he acts on very personalized interests. We have not really had a president like that before. US presidents in general have been responsible to the ruling elite. Clinton had his silly sideshow, but never lost sight of the national interest. Carter was preternatural in his commitment to it. Obama and George W. Bush had no real interest in politics, but they appointed people in senior positions who were very cognizant of US national interests.

That is not Trump. Trump went into this war because he thought it would be another moment of grandeur for him. It was very personalized. He had those seeming victories in Gaza where he quote-unquote “ended the war” and thought he would win the Nobel Prize, and then the immaculate coup in Venezuela. He was suffering from an excess of hubris. Then came two major defeats: the Greenland debacle, where he said he was taking Greenland — no question, no debate — and it ended in failure [note: the Greenland issue is far from over; Trump may well revive it to make the world forget his debacle in Iran]; and the domestic defeat in Minnesota, when he said ICE was going to take over — it did not. He had to retreat. After those two defeats, he wanted to restore his grandeur. The decision to go into Iran was very personalized, even though it was not contrary to US national interests. Trump had been told by the Israelis it would be a cakewalk — that Iran was on the precipice, that it just needed a little jolt and it would fall. He believed it.

There the Israelis did play, in my opinion, a critical role. Trump had assembled an administration of sub-mediocre yes-men. But the thing is, he knew they were sub-mediocre yes-men — that is in fact why he chose them. And so he did not trust their judgment. He did not defer to them. Cheney and Rumsfeld trusted their own judgment and ignored others — but that was because they had very good judgment. They were wrong on Iraq, but in general they were extremely competent, very smart and very conscientious in their service to the national interest as they perceived it. Trump simply had sub-mediocre yes-men, and so he deferred to Israeli judgment.

Trump’s Incompetence and Netanyahu’s Trap

The Israelis filled the informational void that Trump himself had created by appointing people like Hegseth and Rubio and envoys like Witkoff and Kushner. I do believe the Israelis tipped the balance. They told Trump he would emerge a triumphant figure like Caesar or Napoleon. Trump believed it. They told him it would be a cakewalk — exactly what Rumsfeld and Cheney thought about Iraq in 2003.

So in my opinion, because it is so personalized, the national interest is there, but it is not Trump’s priority. He will not do it again. It was a disaster. It is exactly what happened with Greenland: once it did not turn out as he hoped, he walked away. How many people talk about Greenland now? He is basically an agent of chaos — as a megalomaniac, he loves the headlines, loves to be in the limelight. It did not turn out as he thought it would, just like Greenland, and he will simply walk away and forget about it. A responsible statesperson would not do that, because they would reckon it a loss for the national interest. They would think many times before a decision like that. I do not believe Trump thinks twice, because the national interest is not first in his mind. It turned into a disaster. He knew he had to end it somehow, and now, in typical Trump fashion, he is just going to walk away.

There is going to be a big problem for Trump with regard to Netanyahu, because the first instinct of everyone is to blame someone else. In Trump’s mind, Netanyahu misled him. “You said it was going to be a cakewalk. You said Iran was on the brink. You said the people would rise up. You said you had agents all over Iran ready for a popular insurrection. None of that happened.”

Iran’s Unprecedented Popular Mobilization

I will tell you the truth: I did not know which way it would go with the population. I spoke to many people who know Iran inside out. There were two possibilities. The first was the Venezuela possibility: the leader leaves, the people do not care. Maduro was very unpopular — you have to be honest about that [note: the claim that Maduro was “very unpopular” is dubious at best; we see no evidence of it, but rather signs of collusion to betray him]. The second possibility was the Soviet Union scenario. The Soviet Union had just gone through the brutal collectivization — tens of millions killed — and then the purge trials of the 1930s, which eliminated the entire military and political leadership. When Nazi Germany invaded Russia, the first months were a cakewalk: they swept in. But the Germans made one catastrophic mistake. They wanted Lebensraum — living space — which meant getting rid of the population. They embarked on a war of extermination, and that proved to be their disaster. Notwithstanding the brutality of Stalin’s regime, the people embraced the Great Patriotic War and defeated the Nazi army largely on their own — forget the nonsense you read in the West. That was the second possibility, and it is what happened. The more Trump turned it into a war of extermination — “destroy the civilization” — the more the people rallied. It was the Soviet Union’s Great Patriotic War a second time.

And so the expectations… You remember the famous line by Trump — not that he has any famous lines, as he is a retarded ape, but we can quote him. He said: “It’s your country. Rise up and take it.” That is not what happened. They rallied. They rallied around Iran, the civilization. You know the famous line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “What a piece of work is man.” There are moments in humanity — moments of sublimity, of genuine human courage and character. The scenes of Iranians massing around their bridges, the bridges of their civilisation, surrounding the power plants and energy sources of their civilization… I received an email today from a friend in Iran who has been chronicling events for me. He described how he and his two grandchildren stood by a bridge in the freezing cold, all ready to die. That is deeply moving. It reaches the deepest recesses of the soul and the spirit. It rises way, way above the “mad Mullahs” and all of that. It is about something far more profound. The same thing comes through when you read Tolstoy’s War and Peace on the war against Napoleon — how those moments reveal something truly profound and sublime about the human spirit. They did not predict that.

What is Netanyahu? In his youth, he was probably smart — I will not take that away from him. But today he is just a talented used car salesman. If you look at his face, it is so hollowed out, and his physical stature has shrunk. That comes with age, but with him it is more dramatic. If you know the play Death of a Salesman, he is not like Willy Loman. He is such a pitiful — I do not pity him — but such a pitiful, pathetic sight: the used car salesman, holding up his diagrams from a Looney Tunes cartoon. It did come as a shock to them. Even a retarded ape like the person currently occupying the Oval Office recoiled at the images flashing across his screen — bombed bridges with people surrounding them. As they say, not a good photo op.

Trump Moves On

So there is going to be a falling out [Laughter] between Trump and Netanyahu, along the lines of: “What the f*** did you tell me? You said all the people would rise up. You told me your agents were everywhere. You told me this and you told me that.” He will be furious, for sure.

As for those who keep harping on the fact that Trump has agreed to negotiate on Iran’s 10-point peace plan: I consider that meaningless. Do you think this man is even capable of reading the peace plan? I am serious. He has no mental discipline to read 10 points. And second: do you think he cares? Can anyone be so naive as to believe he cares about a peace plan? Like his (Gaza) “Board of Peace” — he just creates these instruments for spectacle and grandeur. He does not care about the details. He is a 78-year-old man. His term ends in three years. His main interests are money, golf, and of course women. Peace plans, boards of peace? And then these idiotic, moronic pundits pondering these things as if they have any consequence whatsoever when it comes to President Trump.

If you mentioned Jimmy Carter to me, I would say: yes, he cared. Jimmy Carter was a micromanager. I have read volumes on his presidency, his presidential papers. He would fill the margins of memoranda with the most minute details and write “But check this.” And I am not exaggerating — there are topics I know very well, and I was shocked at his level of knowledge of detail. Same thing with Clinton. It was said, and I believe it, that by the end of the negotiations at Camp David in 2000–2001–2001 being Taba — Clinton said: “I knew every street in Jerusalem.” I believe that is true. But Trump? No. Those who think it is a victory that Trump said he would consider Iran’s 10-point peace plan: I find that simply ridiculous.

The one thing Trump counts on — which is probably true — is that the news cycle passes so quickly. All he has to do is create a new scene of chaos and everything will be forgotten. Does anyone even remember Minnesota? ICE — does anyone remember it? How many people remember Greenland? He counts on that because he figures most people’s attention span is about the same as his. That is what you get from surfing the web too much: you reduce and reduce and reduce your attention span.

He will probably walk away, try to forget about it, change the subject — another day, another scene of chaos. That is Trump. If you look at the New York Times homepage now, roughly 70% of the articles are Trump this, Trump that. And that is all he cares about: the attention, the fact that the whole world fears him. Two nights ago he had the sense of power — but also the sense of dread. He had gotten himself into a mess. The Israelis had a hand in that. What they did was tip the balance: Trump did not know whether to do it or not, because he knows nothing about anything — except golf, money, and that third thing. He did not trust his advisers because he knew what they were. Marco Rubio: when Rubio goes to the bathroom, he carries a GPS to find his anal cavity. A complete zero. I do not like her, but Hillary Clinton was highly competent. Anthony Blinken — very competent. Rubio and then Hegseth? Hegseth — you cannot tell if he sees himself as Secretary of War or Secretary of Hair Gel. I am inclined toward the third option. And if you look at his female appointments — Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem, Karoline Leavitt the press secretary — they all look like their last job was at Hooters [a restaurant chain employing young women in revealing outfits; the name references both its owl logo and a slang term for women’s breasts]. Then Jared Kushner — he looks like he has been on puberty blockers for the last 30 years. Somebody ought to tell Jared it is time to grow some facial hair. His face looks like a porcelain vase. And Witkoff: if I am playing golf and have to choose between a wood and an iron, Witkoff’s advice would be quite useful. Otherwise, no. Trump is smart enough to know he appointed idiots — and so he deferred to the Israelis.

Rumsfeld and Cheney would never have deferred to the Israelis. They knew the Israelis have their own agenda, not ours: we are not taking their intelligence, which is all cooked anyway, and we are not listening to what they say. But Trump, because of the administration he created — an informational vacuum — the Israelis filled it.

Here is a simple test. There is an informational vacuum — we all agree on that. Trump turns to the Israelis and asks: “Should I attack Iran?” If Netanyahu had said “Don’t do it — it’s going to be a disaster, too many unpredictable factors, stay away, it could be a debacle,” I have no doubt Trump would not have done it. The Israelis tipped the balance. If Trump had succeeded, wouldn’t the entire ruling elite have said “This is a huge victory — we’ve rid the Middle East of the mad Mullahs”? Of course. So it was in the US national interest as perceived by the ruling elites — but the Israelis tipped the balance this time, in my opinion, and it turned into a disaster.

Journalist: Thanks, Norman. You mentioned the Israelis tipping the balance. They have also, from their perspective, once again devastated southern Lebanon — which is obviously horrific for the people there. The Israeli instinct to weaken Iran and create regional chaos will still be there, even if Trump personally retreats from this loss. How do you see those two things working out — the devastation of southern Lebanon, and the Israeli impulse to derail the ceasefire and create more chaos?

The Attack on Iran: The Most Brazen Act of Aggression in History

Norman Finkelstein: We have to remember how the situation in Lebanon began and how it unfolded. Let us start with the basic facts. Iran was the victim of probably the most brazen, flagrant, egregious breach of the UN Charter in modern history — a war of aggression launched against it. There is no comparison, even before the Charter. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, they fabricated a border incident — it was fake, but they knew they needed some justification. Even the Nazis recognized that. You know the expression: “Hypocrisy is the compliment that vice pays to virtue.” They recognized they needed a pretext. When the US escalated its involvement in Vietnam with ground troops, President Johnson fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident. A North Vietnamese vessel was claimed to have attacked an American vessel — it turned out to be false. But it triggered a major escalation, enshrined in what was called the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. They needed a pretext.

There was no pretext in the case of Iran. None. The assault was so brazen, so flagrant, so egregious. At that point, the laws of war had gone. I had already written in November 2025 that when the UN Security Council handed Donald J. Trump the deed to Gaza — which is what Resolution 2803 did; very few people have read it — I wrote: “The UN is now a rotting corpse.” When the US and Israel launched their war of aggression against Iran, if you read or listen to the emergency Security Council hearings, as I did, they were breathtaking. It was as if Iran were the aggressor. The Russian representative said it was as if the British and the French were living in a parallel universe — going back to Alice in Wonderland, it was as if through the looking glass. Completely insane: you are blaming Iran for the most brazen breach of the UN Charter in modern history. At that point, there was no longer a rule of law. We had returned to what 19th-century philosophers called the state of nature — where everyone is responsible only to themselves to preserve their life against what Locke called the wild beasts. Iran was attacked by two wild beasts, unconstrained by law or morality.

Hezbollah’s Duty of Solidarity

In that situation, Iran of course had the right of self-defense — that is not even a matter of dispute among rational individuals. And Hezbollah, the Party of God, had every right, and arguably every responsibility, to come to the defense of Iran, which was being assaulted by two wild beasts. In the late 1990s there was the doctrine called R2P — Responsibility to Protect. It was a liberal doctrine, and it essentially meant that when international institutions failed in their responsibility to defend countries from genocide and aggression, it falls to others, to individual countries, to protect. That is what Hezbollah did. It fulfilled its responsibility to protect the civilized country of Iran against the wild beasts assaulting it.

However — and it is more of an “in addition” — that right, and I would say responsibility, to come to Iran’s defense is plain as day to me. But there is the political consideration: if you do so, Lebanon will be destroyed, and they knew it. During the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Sayed Nasrallah desperately tried to carve out a middle path. He wanted — and I believe it was sincere, not just strategic calculation — to defend the people of Gaza from the genocidal assault, but he knew that if he went just a little too far, Lebanon would be levelled. He could not find that middle path. He was a brilliant military tactician and a deeply serious political actor — probably the most serious political actor on the world stage at that point. He was in an impossible dilemma. Once he was assassinated, Hezbollah ceased its operations in defense of Gaza [note: Hezbollah’s operations only ceased after the November 2024 ceasefire agreement]. This time, it looked like the moment of truth for Iran — to live or to die. Hezbollah chose to accept total devastation, knowing a middle path was not possible. That is where we are now.

Israel: A State and Society Gripped by Genocidal Frenzy

Israel is a madman. It did not get its way with Iran and so it is flailing. It’s in a state of catatonic lunacy. I heard this morning that Lebanon is being totally destroyed. I have said for many years that Israel is a lunatic state — and that view now seems to be reaching consensus. I reached that conclusion after spending a large part of my adult life reading the human rights reports on that country. But I have to make one qualification: it is not just a lunatic state. It is a lunatic society. Very different.

The MIT professor Ted Postol, an expert on ballistic missiles and anti-missile defense systems, described Netanyahu twice in one interview as a homicidal maniac, because he believed Netanyahu was leading Israel to complete destruction. Postol also said that Iran was in fact very close to a nuclear weapon — not far away at all — and that he feared Israel would use nuclear weapons and Iran would retaliate. But that is, in my opinion, only the trivial part of the story. It is a nation of homicidal maniacs. Look at the levels of support for the Israeli government during the genocide in Gaza: throughout two and a half years, only 5% of Israeli Jewish society thought the government was using too much force. 40% thought it was not using enough.

At least the Germans under the Nazi regime had an alibi — mostly fake, but they had it: they could say they did not know what was happening behind the walls of the death camps, that they lived in a totalitarian country with no alternative sources of information. And note: 50% of the Jews who were exterminated were killed on the battlefield — lined up and shot. The soldiers knew. But Israel does not even have that alibi. They post on social media what they are doing. A completely lunatic nation.

So Lebanon is going to be destroyed, because mad Israel is lashing out. Its homicidal maniac leader did not get his way. It is going to be tough for Lebanon. And I am not going to deny the anger of non-Hezbollah Lebanese at Hezbollah. They have a right to live. They did not want to sacrifice their lives for Iran, and they have a right not to want to. But Hezbollah had the right — and arguably the responsibility — to come to the aid of a country assaulted by wild beasts who declared they were going to end Iranian civilization [note: we strongly disagree. Hezbollah did not merely “come to Iran’s aid” — it finally retaliated after 15 months of Israeli violations of the November 2024 ceasefire, in order to defend Lebanon’s sovereignty and security, exercising its inherent right to self-defense against an aggressor and occupying power bent on genocide and the ethnic cleansing of southern Lebanon. The confrontation was inevitable anyway — better to fight back alongside Iran than alone — and it pre-empted an Israeli offensive, as in 2006. Moreover, Israel’s complete destruction of Syria’s military capabilities and its occupation of larger territories after Assad’s fall proves there is no safe refuge from this “mad dog,” which is bent on destroying every country around it — even nominally friendly ones — to achieve the Greater Israel project. More and more Lebanese understand this, even outside Hezbollah’s base. Shias are Lebanon’s largest community, and the Hezbollah-Amal alliance is the country’s main political force. See Naim Qassem’s first speech on this issue, especially the sections “15 Months of Israeli Aggression” and “Hezbollah is on the Defensive”].

Journalist: Now that there is, as you mentioned, a forced retreat from Trump — he realizes he was losing — Iran’s response was to strike Israel, hit US assets in the region, and target key economic assets in the Gulf Cooperation Council. With hindsight, what do you make of that strategy?

Gulf Petromonarchies are Legitimate Targets

Norman Finkelstein: Let me start with the law, which I know fairly well. In 1996, the International Court of Justice issued a historic advisory opinion on a simple question: is the threat or use of nuclear weapons legal under international law? Let me break it down. Everyone knows that under international law you are not allowed to bomb indiscriminately — you may only target military sites and combatants; you must spare civilians and civilian infrastructure. A nuclear weapon cannot discriminate. It is inherently indiscriminate. So the question was: can nuclear weapons be legal under international law? The court’s conclusion was: most uses of nuclear weapons are illegal. However, the court said that if the survival of a state is at stake, it is not certain that the use of nuclear weapons would be illegal. In other words, it is possible that a state may use them.

Iran’s survival as a state was clearly at stake. The Israelis simply wanted Iran to disintegrate as a state — no concern for the day after, just the elimination of all obstacles to Israeli control over the Middle East. The US, by the end, wanted Iran destroyed — given what Trump was saying about returning it “to the stone age” and “ending Iranian civilization.” Under those circumstances, Iran did target some civilian infrastructure in the Gulf States — alongside military bases. That is way, way less than courting terminal nuclear war. And the ICJ said states may be allowed to use nuclear weapons. Iran did far less. So I think Iran was within its legal rights, as defined by the ICJ, to engage in those targeted strikes.

Why the Gulf States? I will be blunt. What did the Gulf States do for Gaza? Anything? I say to the Gulf States: cry me a river. Do you know the first thing they did after the US-Israeli attack? They announced they were going to increase the availability of oil — to facilitate the aggression by the wild beasts. They could have reduced the availability of oil to support the people of Gaza — the godforsaken people of Gaza. They did nothing. What they did was facilitate the US-Israeli aggression against Iran. Cry me a river [note: the Arab countries did worse than nothing — they actively helped Israel circumvent the Yemeni blockade, strengthening economic and military ties with Israel during the genocide. Professor Finkelstein does not mention the principal reason for Iran’s strikes on these countries: they are retaliating against the territories and airspace from which US-Israeli attacks were launched, which is legal under international law, and are reciprocating strikes against their own infrastructure by targeting US economic interests].

Is Trump Alienating His Own Base?

Journalist: You have touched on the fact that just before the ceasefire, Trump said he would destroy Iranian civilization, send Iran back to the stone age, there would be no coming back. There was also a tweet where he wrote “Praise to Allah” and declared “Thursday will be power plant day and bridge day” and used the phrase “Open the f***ing strait.” In response, Tucker Carlson — someone who was initially close to Trump but has been very critical lately — tweeted: “Who do you think you are? You tweeted the F-word on Easter morning. Hell is not a place — hell is a condition, and this is an example of that condition. You are not God, and only if you think you are do you talk this way.” Where does this leave Trump’s base? Do you think Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens — people criticizing Trump specifically for allowing Israel to capture US foreign policy — do they sufficiently move Trump’s base, or are they also just elites within the Republican Party?

Norman Finkelstein: Judging by the polls, Trump’s base has remained firm. It is a cult, and a cult leader can do no wrong — I know that firsthand. I was a Maoist in my youth, a follower of Chairman Mao, and Chairman Mao could do no wrong. That is how cults work. But I do believe a problem is arising. I mentioned that there was an informational void which the Israelis filled. There is also a kind of political void in the United States. There are some exceptions — Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York, and the fact that Bernie Sanders can still draw a crowd when he attacks the Trump administration. But in general, the left has no voice in the US, at least not in social media. Somebody sent me a diagram — a circle graph showing the biggest American podcasters and influencers. The biggest was Elon Musk, then people like Jackson Hinkle. The only person on the left who ranked at all was Mehdi Hasan, and he is an opportunist — occasionally he will say something that sounds leftist, then it is straight Democratic Party line. He is not a voice of the left.

The biggest institutional beneficiaries of the debacle in Iran will be Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and Candace Owens, all of whom said it would be a disaster. Credit where it is due. Tucker Carlson, not only when the aggression began but already a month before, had apparently visited the White House several times and strongly counselled against the war. He said it would be a disaster. He was right. To the victor go the spoils: his stock is going to go through the ceiling. He will become a prophet — P-H-E-T — and will also profit — F-I-T — handsomely from this. And I think that is a problem.

I do not want to question his religious convictions — I have no idea about them, and I will get killed by people on the left for saying it, but what Carlson tweeted to Trump was kind of touching. A person in power who actually cares about human life — very unusual. I will credit that. However, giving credit where credit is due does not extend to all his ideas.

The Death of the Left, the Rise of Influencers

This notion that the war on Iran was entirely “Israel’s war” — that the US had no stake in it, that the Israelis somehow convinced Trump that Iran was America’s enemy — no. That goes back 30 years. Iran was America’s enemy long before Netanyahu was involved. And Carlson went one step further, saying Israel dragged the US into the war because it wanted the US to be defeated, because Israel wanted to form an alliance with India. I honestly have no idea where that comes from. And unfortunately, these ideas will now gain currency, because when someone is anointed a prophet, people tend not to disaggregate his views — “He was right about Iran, so he must be right about everything else too.” But that does not follow. Most of these people are absolutely convinced the Israelis killed John F. Kennedy. Next you will be hearing that they assassinated Abraham Lincoln and caused the Civil War. I am serious.

I was alive during the Kennedy assassination — I was in fifth grade, I remember the teacher announcing it with a tear in her eye. I mention this not for listeners to marvel at my age, but for this reason: from the day of Kennedy’s assassination, there was a deluge of books on who did it. The most famous was by Mark Lane, called Rush to Judgment, and there was one by Harold Weisberg. I read many of them. Everybody was fascinated because it seemed so improbable that this one rather drab lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, had carried out what was made out to be — falsely — a world-historical event. JFK’s assassination was in fact pretty much meaningless. Kennedy was in office for three years. Nobody can name anything he did, except nearly bring the world to nuclear annihilation over Cuba in 1962. The rest was manufactured myth — what came to be called the myth of Camelot.

In all those hundreds of books, nobody ever mentioned Israel. They mentioned organized crime, Castro, Russia — various theories. Israel? In 1963, Israel was a backwater with the GDP of an African country, very poor and very simple, not a subject of conversation among anyone, least of all American Jews. But that is what these people believe now: that the United States is pristine and innocent, and that Israelis control and are behind everything. I receive emails from perfectly sane people absolutely convinced Israel is behind every event. Now that voice, because it was right on Iran, is going to be vastly amplified. And that is a problem.

It is going to be a very big problem for Jews. Jews have historically always feared the charge of dual loyalty — the claim that Jews are more loyal to other Jews than to their own country. It has a very long pedigree. Now these commentators constantly raise the question: are they loyal to their country or to another state? And if it is now being said that that other state wanted to weaken the US — as Tucker Carlson says — then those people are guilty not merely of dual loyalty, but of treason: aiding and abetting a foreign state to undermine your own country’s national security. So it is going to be a rough ride.

You know the famous line from All About Eve: “Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.” There will be problems for Jews. I am not happy about it, because I believe many of the underlying assumptions are factually incorrect. But in part, you have reaped what you have sown. Unfortunately, if you listen to the podcasts, the notion that Iran was “Israel’s war, Israel’s doing” is everywhere across the spectrum. People like Max Blumenthal, even Daniel Levy — a liberal Israeli — were all saying it was Israel. Yes, Israel tipped the balance. But the US had no interest? The US that had Iran in its crosshairs since 1979? The US that approved Saddam Hussein’s use of poison gas in his war against Iran and then concealed it? No — that claim is way off.

The Collapse of Journalism and Exposure of the Machinery of Power

Journalist: Final question. There was a particularly appalling example of BBC reporting. They quoted an anonymous source named Radin, described as being in his twenties and living in Tehran, as saying: “About them hitting energy infrastructure, using an atomic bomb, or levelling Iran — my honest reaction is that I’m OK with all of these. [Or anything else they might have in mind]” The BBC subsequently corrected this to quote Radin as saying: “If attacking targets in the country brings down the Islamic Republic, I’m fine with that, because if the Islamic Republic survives through this war, it will stay forever.” Whether Radin exists, why the original quote would have been fabricated, the level of dehumanization involved — what is your reaction?

Norman Finkelstein: My reaction is that there obviously was a large number of Iranians who wanted to see the regime overthrown — just as there were in the Soviet Union. So at some point somebody may have said something like that [note: this quote is obviously fabricated, as Professor Finkelstein later acknowledges]. I was constantly asking people, “What do you think — will the people support the regime’s collapse? Will they try to overthrow it? Will they support it?” And as I said at the very beginning, the most knowledgeable people I know threw up their hands. Nobody knew. But it was clear from pretty early on — the huge crowds that came out — there was a lot of support. Even so, in a nation of 90 million, if one million people are in the streets, you do not really know whether that is all the support or whether it is representative [note: the West refuses to accept it, but the Islamic Republic of Iran — like Cuba — enjoys genuine, massive popular backing. Qassem Soleimani’s million-strong funeral is just one proof among many. We wish Professor Finkelstein had Iranian diplomats among his contacts, to get a clearer picture].

What clearly happened — and a friend of mine, the most knowledgeable person I know on Iran, Evan Siegel, whom I would like to publicly acknowledge, confirmed this — is that Trump and Netanyahu succeeded in uniting the people of Iran around their government. Exactly what happened with Stalin. By the middle of World War II, you know what they called Stalin? The little father. If the Nazis had not engaged in a war of extermination, the Russians might well have been defeated [note: this seems speculative and highly dubious]. Similarly here: had the Trump administration been more discriminating, there was a chance the people might have rebelled [note: this is ludicrous; Iranians support the Islamic Republic and are patriots — only traitors would side with aggression by the “Great Satan” and “Little Satan,” as Khomeini put it]. Hard to say for certain. But my friends who are totally fluent in Farsi and Iranian said it was possible — they did not know. What mattered was how it was carried out. They are, as I agree with Dr. Postol, homicidal maniacs. Trump is just an ape.

I have had occasion to read presidential papers — the collected memos, speeches, documents. They are generally of very high quality. Could you imagine — assuming the planet survives, which is a question mark — students one day reading Trump’s presidential papers? Ninety per cent of it consists of tweets. He is not capable of a paper. His speeches — the one he gave at Davos that went on for two and a half days — it is breathtaking, in its own way, what has happened.

So they achieved one thing: they united the Iranian people with their government [note: the very word “regime” is inappropriate — Iran is a full-fledged democracy, and its use simply parrots Western propaganda; though Finkelstein did, accurately, refer to the “Trump regime”].

Journalist: What is your comment on the initial BBC quote — that an Iranian in his twenties said he was “OK” with an atomic bomb being used on Iran?

Norman Finkelstein: I would say that is very implausible in that form. I have to say, though — giving credit where very little credit is due — I was struck by Starmer’s audacity in defying Trump. In my circle, we call him Der Stürmer [the weekly Nazi newspaper]. I was struck by Der Stürmer declaring: “There’s no question, you’re not using our bases.” And he repeated it [which was of course a lie]. And a few days before that, Macron came out and said, in effect, the man ought to stop contradicting himself every day [note: Macron’s comment in South Korea, April 2nd: “There is too much talk… and it’s all over the place… We all need stability, calm, a return to peace — this isn’t a show!… When you want to be serious, you don’t go around saying the opposite every day of what you said the day before. And perhaps you shouldn’t talk every day.”]. Like the Europeans in general, they have reached the point of being fed up. They are tired of defending a retarded ape.

I come from a family that suffered terribly during World War II, so one cannot laugh about war. It would be desecrating the memory of my family — not just those who died, but those who lived — to joke about it. But some things were revealed. About the nature of the system. The lickspittles. The grovellers before power. So pathetic and pitiful to watch them hail the chief.

Journalist: Norman Finkelstein, thank you so much for your time.

Norman Finkelstein: Thank you.