Jeffrey Sachs

In 2012, there was already a bloodbath underway and a lot of people dying and a lot of civilians dying in a lot of ancient historic sites because this is the fertile crescent. This is the birthplace of humanity itself, of civilization being destroyed. And so a very senior global diplomat that I knew very, very well was tasked with trying to find peace. Peace, nice idea.

Maybe we don't need the bloodbath. And I met him in the spring of 2012, and he said it failed. And I said, why did it fail? He said, well, we had a full peace agreement, but it was blocked by one party alone. We had the different forces in Syria, we had the regional, but it was blocked by one Who was it blocked by? It was blocked by the United States government. Why?

Well, because their condition was that Assad must go on the first day of the agreement rather than a political process. Everyone else agreed on a political process, but the United States said, no, no, this is regime change. Assad must go on the first day. And that was not possible. So that was the end of the attempted peace. So we should understand this was an American operation.

Because every regime change operation we ever do, we have to make sure that the opponent is the worst villain since Hitler or Hitler reincarnate.

This is part of the psyops or the info war that goes along with regime change operations. This is completely typical. And we're told if we don't stop him now, it's only going to spread. He'll be in Des Moines. Exactly. The Nicaraguans were going to be in Harlingen, Texas, remember? This is standard fare. It's so pedestrian, such bad script writing, that you can't believe it's still rolled out.

Can I laugh when you mention New York Times? Because they won't cover any historical background of any conflict at all because all of this is aimed at a free hand for – the security state, a free hand for the military. But why would the New York Times be parodying the security state?

Well, I think that's a question that goes back decades, partly because it's staffed in part by probably people from the intelligence agencies. We've known that for years. Who worked at the New York Times? Who? Who? But we know in the past that CIA just had reporters on the payroll. I mean, whether they do or not now, I have no idea.

So I'm not making a current claim, but we know that that's a historic fact. We know historically that with very rare exceptions, the New York Times has just followed the – The unnamed official sources that this is the whole M.O., this patriotic newspaper follows what it's told to do, and it doesn't ask questions. It has not asked any questions about any of these wars in general.

recent memory, not about Ukraine, not about the wars raging throughout the Middle East. As I said, I think there was one full page actually about Operation Timber Sycamore in 2016. You would think that something that got us into a war of 13 years where we spent billions of dollars, where hundreds of thousands of people died,

Even at this stage, there would be a kind of page or a box explaining the historical background to this, but it didn't exist. I actually wrote, I have to say, I wrote to one of the reporters saying, couldn't you mention a little background? He said, oh, very interesting idea, Mr. Sachs. So I'm waiting. You wrote to an New York Times reporter. Well, I know these people for decades.

And by the way, not only do I know them, and some I like very much, by the way, and some have been classmates of mine a long time ago, and they know things that they don't report. And that's also important to understand that...

what they will say in private is the opposite of what their newspaper says and i mean literally the opposite so um that's very worrying to me because we operate foreign policy in secrecy we do not have any kind of democratic oversight of foreign policy there's no explanation of it There's no accountability for it. It's in very few hands. It's not in good or reliable hands. It's not explained.

We gave over Middle East foreign policy to Israel a long time ago, not to U.S. interests, but to Israel's interests. That is the Israel lobby. And.

We don't hear questioning of this at all, of course, not from the government, not from the Congress, not from oversight by any democratic institutions, nor does the mainstream media, which fewer and fewer people are interested in because they don't get any facts from it, look into these issues.

Well, there'll be continued war, and now the drumbeat is for war with Iran. Anything is possible. Netanyahu dearly wants the U.S. to go in and bomb Iran, probably. Some of President Trump's advisors will feel the same. The incoming administration is a mix of old school hardliners and people with a very different perspective.

So there will be an internal battle for the heart and soul of the new administration. But there will be some who say, yeah, now is time to carry on the war. Hezbollah and Hamas have been weakened syria has fallen the air defenses are gone now we can fly and do in iran of course all of this is a profound delusion and that's i think really important to understand

We've had six wars so far, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, and Libya, six out of the seven that were on the list shown to Wesley Clark, not one of them effective. has led to stability, to peace even, much less to geopolitical interests being solved. So it's not like we're finding solutions to anything. Yes, it has allowed at...

unbelievable cost Israel to hold on to the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and Gaza as if that's some kind of grand strategic aim of the United States or justifiable in the face of international law and nearly global opposition to such thinking. but it doesn't lead to any answers. And there's no way to quote, defeat Iran, even if we went in and bombed Iran, Iran has strong allies.

Iran has Russia and China as allies. Iran is part of the BRICS. Iran has a military relationship with Russia. Of course, we have even crazier people who think we're going to defeat Russia. But Russia has 6,000 nuclear warheads, of which 1,600 are deployed. It has its new hypersonic Ereshnik ballistic missile, which travels at Mach 11. It has other hypersonic weapons.

So, yes, we have people in the U.S. who, in their mental blindness. Think about continued escalation all the way to nuclear Armageddon. They really do. They're very ignorant people and they're around in high positions. And so when you ask what comes next, what comes next is whether President Trump can change course. This is the most important question facing the United States.