NewsX World Report: US troops Middle East | Israel Iran war

Earlier today I wrote about the questions put to me by News X World for an interview that took place at 12.30 Brussels time. These questions prompted me to organize my thinking about Sergei Lavrov’s latest remarks on how the Iran war may be expanding outside the Middle East and poses a great danger to world peace, and also to think about the Ukraine drone strikes that yesterday seriously damaged Russia’s oil export installations in Ust-Luga, Leningrad oblast. The drones arrived from Estonian territory and the question arises: what if anything Russia will now do to retaliate against Estonia.

I have just received and am pleased to share the link to this podcast: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDuAfVEKS0Y

I use the opportunity also to share one other podcast link which I just received from my good friend Ray McGovern. This podcast contains the presentation he and colleagues made in the National Press Club, Washington, D.C. last Thursday, 26 March about the lies and deception that the Pentagon and intelligence agencies have fed to the American public to justify never ending wars going back to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Ray comes on in minute 15. Special attention is given to what motivated Donald Trump to launch the war against Iran on 28 February 2026. Within his talk, Ray put up on the screen a pre-recorded 10 minute message from fellow member of the activist group VIPS (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity) Karen Kwiatkowski that is engrossing.

An interview with Professor John Mearsheimer that I highly recommend to the Community

As readers of my website know very well, I very rarely use this platform to promote articles or podcasts of others. Today I make an exception and strongly urge the Community to watch the interview with Professor John Mearsheimer conducted by Judge Andrew Napolitano on Judging Freedom in the past hour. Watch to the very end, please, since the discussion goes beyond analysis of Trump’s desperate self-inflicted situation or of the chances of success of the land invasion of Iran that Trump is now threatening. It goes where others fear to tread: here Mearsheimer speaks of the absolute silence of America’s liberal minded professoriate with respect to the US-enabled genocide that Israel has been conducting in Gaza, to their absolute silence about the gross violation of international law that the United States has committed in its savage war of aggression on Iran that it did not even bother to justify by reference to some real or imagined provocation.

I salute Professor Mearsheimer for courageously pronouncing what I have been thinking for some time but hesitated to say publicly: namely that if a Nuremberg style tribunal were to be conducted to hear the case of the foregoing offenses of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, both would be sentenced to death by hanging.

Bravo!

Discussio

Trump tells Zelensky to give up all of the Donbas now if he wants to get US security guaranties

Dear readers, you probably have not heard the news that I have posted above as the title for this brief essay, but then you are not in the press pool of NewsX World and I am doing your listening for you there.

Similarly, you did not hear previously and probably do not even know today that yesterday a Russian state-owned widebody jet landed in Kennedy Airport in New York carrying a delegation of Russian parliamentarians from the State Duma headed by Vyacheslav Nikonov, a veteran legislator, consummate diplomat with extensive foreign experience.  This trip may be called a ‘timid exploratory mission’ reestablishing ties between Russian and American medium level politicians that were long ago broken off by the American side per Dmitry Peskov’s description of it earlier today. This may not be newsworthy in the same sense as a president-to-president summit, but it is a promising development nonetheless, a straw in the wind.

And which way is the wind blowing?  For that, let us return to my headline above. Quite remarkable news if true. And it would appear to justify President Putin’s insistence in the face of substantial opposition from his own foreign policy establishment, including his Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that it pays to negotiate with and to draw closer to Donald Trump however repugnant, however contradictory the man may be.

Make no mistake about it: the Russian establishment now considers Trump to be the fool’s fool. They see his conduct of the war of aggression on Iran as disastrous and likely to go very badly for him if indeed he attempts to put feet on the ground on Kharg island or elsewhere in Iran.

I note in passing, that the Russian political establishment, like its American counterpart points to Trump’s reliance on Mossad, on Israeli intelligence for setting his expectations when he decided to embark on his Iran war. What we see here is that despite its reputation as being the most competent as well as bloodiest intel operation in the world, despite its demonstrated ability to blow up hundreds of its enemies with explosive pagers and the like, this same Mossad is worthless for political and military analysis, for setting strategy against chosen enemies.  Worthless! 

Of course, if Trump proceeds with his threat/promise to Zelensky and the Ukrainian president agrees to leave the Donbas, that will drive an enormous wedge between the United States and Europe, between and among Member States of the EU itself.

NB – the podcast of The Bulletin program on News X World which we recorded 20 minutes ago will likely become available later today and I will post it here at that time.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2026

Breaking News:  Trump raises the white flag, surrenders to Iran

Do not be put off by the several minutes at the start of this podcast without video image only sound. The producers were obviously in a great hurry to prepare the podcast for uploading on the internet and sacrificed a bit of visuals. Be assured that I am speaking from the very start.

My nearly 20 minute long interview with News X World this morning was prompted by the breaking news coming from Trump – that, in his words, the latest productive talks with Iran have shown that a deal may be possible and accordingly he has suspended for 5 days his most recent threats of ‘obliterating’ Iranian power generating plants if they do not open the Straits of Hormuz to normal tanker traffic within 48 hours.  Meanwhile, the Iranians deny that any talks have taken place with the United States.

What are we to make of this?  As I say in the interview, I believe this is a surrender by Trump which he tries to mask in the language of successfully negotiating a deal, suggesting that he remains in control of the situation even when he does not.

Of course, with Trump you never know what is real and what is illusion.  It is also possible that he is just buying time until more US forces arrive in the region and he can proceed with his attack on Iran, saying then that the negotiations failed.

Nonetheless, I stick with my interpretation of a surrender. If Trump declares that U.S. objectives of degrading Iranian defenses worked and there is no longer a threat of their building a bomb or continuing production of their missiles then, logically, he can accede to the most important concession which Iran is demanding of the US today, namely that the more than decade long economic sanctions be lifted. This would provide the country with a big inflow of export earnings, all the more so that their strikes on neighboring Gulf States and their restriction of tanker flows through the Straits of Hormuz have significantly raised the price levels and demand for their hydrocarbons. Thus, Iran could earn its own ‘reparations’.

Quite exceptionally, the News X World host asked for my advice to investors and I offered my thoughts on gold, stocks and Certificates of Deposit under present volatile conditions.  I can foresee numerous comments from readers on that issue.

Republic TV (India): Debate with Arnab – Trump Isolated on Hormuz Coalition

I was surprised and pleased to be invited onto the panel of debaters from India, the USA, China brought together by India’s widely known host Arnab Goswani to discuss Trump’s apparently failed initiative to form a joint naval force to open the Straits of Hormuz and also the question of America taking or destroying Iran’s export installations on Kharg Island.

I was fortunate to be the second panelist to speak coming on at about minute 18 on this podcast. Moreover, I was allowed to speak my mind to the end without interruption.  However, I expect that the Community will find nearly all of this podcast to be of interest because of the behavior of the host, Goswani, who is distinctly unfriendly to, contemptuous of Trump and by extension of the USA.  This is a 180 degree shift in position from what I experienced during my first appearance on this Indian channel when all but one of the panelists was very pro-American.