George Friedman
speaker
3,185 appearances
9 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 13 Aug
George Friedman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 9 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 4.
Appearances
They were selections.
This war in Iran should be looked at that way.
This is not a threat to the United States except with one dimension, which is the fundamental reason that President Trump is saying we're going to war, which is their nuclear capability.
As I've said before on this podcast, one of the reasons of the war was the fear that if the Iranians developed a nuclear weapon, the possibility of a nuclear 9-11, the ability to send a false flag ship, a nuclear weapon into New York Harbor was possible.
Al-Qaeda's remnants, it's a shattered regime, but the remnants are given, they were the ones who did 9-11, they're given sanctuary in Iran.
So we look at the Iranian relationships with these people, and we look at their ideology, the fear is not completely irrational.
So in that sense, if they gained a nuclear weapon, they would pose an existential threat possibly to the United States.
Thus, if you hear everything that Trump is saying, he's constantly talking about the nuclear capability.
So at this point, it's not an existential war.
In other words, we are not going to collapse because of this war.
The economies may be troubled and so on, but we will not collapse.
On the other hand, if we simply leave them to develop nuclear weapons, I think is the president's view of it, at some point it may become existential.
So this is an attempt to head that off.
Well, no, when you talk about existential, you mean survival.
But you also mean catastrophic events, okay?
So let's say that the United States survived in a world where Japan and Germany were the fundamental powers.
and we had lost the war, that would be existential in the sense that the way we existed would be dramatically shifted.
It might be death, but it would be catastrophic.
In the same way that a single strike at New York, for example, with a nuclear weapon would not destroy the country, but it would have massive impacts on how we live and everything else.
So when you take a look at the question existential, it's not merely the life or death of the country, but the profound impact it would have.
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