Jeremy Scahill

But what they're trying to do is utterly smash it so that it has no defensive capabilities.

And I don't think the U.S.

much cares who comes into power there.

I think what we're witnessing right now is an attempt to turn Iran into a failed state so that it's malleable, so that it can be always under the kind of punishment regime of Israel if it steps out of line.

I really think that that's a huge part of what we're witnessing right now.

Thank you.

Right.

Can I mention one thing that maybe people aren't familiar with?

Because one of the things that I do that unfortunately has become uncommon in American media, it used to be much more common, but it's uncommon, is I've been talking to Iranian officials, not just since the bombing began, but also going back to when these negotiations were happening earlier in February between Steve Witkoff, the president's special envoy, Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, and the Iranian side.

And it was being mediated by the Sultanate of Oman.

There was also a British nuclear expert.

who was present for some of these meetings and what he has revealed is that the US didn't even bring nuclear experts to these negotiations.

I really want people to understand what I'm about to say because it shows you what a fraud this entire thing was.

So you have someone who actually was a true expert on these issues.

He's there and he's saying that the Iranians put on the table a remarkable set of concessions when it came to the nuclear issue.

I was talking to Iranian officials, this is before the war started,

And they were saying to me, we believe the Americans were stunned by what we said we were willing to do in these negotiations and that our strategy in this was to go in knowing that we don't have a nuclear weapons program to put everything on the table and to make an offer that extends beyond what Barack Obama was able to get, because we understand that that's important to Trump, that he wants to be able to say, I did better than Obama.

And so it's not that the Iranians had any illusions about who they were dealing with, but I had Iranian government sources who were saying, we feel like we've put everything possible on the table and we have cautious optimism that maybe they will see the light, that we're actually serious about this.

I spoke to Rob Malley, who was one of the senior negotiators under Barack Obama of the original nuclear deal in 2015.

And he said, based on what he understood about what the Iranians put on the table, it went far beyond what the US was able to get in 2015.