Operational Tactics of Hegemony

Today I am presenting the first webcast from the Institute for Political and International Studies in Tehran, and their first interview guest is Jeffrey Sachs! Key takeaways are the operational tactics of U.S. hegemony. America cannot tolerate sitting around a table with other world leaders and treat them as equals. They must always have dominance in every possible arena of action. Thus, on top of their continuous lying, they are further not agreement-capable because having any kind of agreement hands over some amount of power to others, which they simply cannot tolerate. So until someone breaks their "wizards staff," excises their voice so they can't bark orders and sentences them to mute existence walking among common people, denied access to halls of power, there will be no end to this scourge.

Jeffrey Sachs in conversation with IPIS - Sept 1, 2026

In the first episode of the new IPIS VideoCast, renowned economist and Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs joins the Institute for Political and International Studies for a wide-ranging conversation on war, peace, U.S. foreign policy, and the path toward ending conflict.

"The United States should come home."

From the future of the Middle East to the role of the United States in global affairs, Sachs challenges prevailing narratives and offers his perspective on what a different approach to international relations could look like.

INTERVIEWER- Over the past year, the international community has witnessed unlawful, unprovoked acts of aggression against Iran as a grave challenge to the principles of the United Nations Charter. But the significance of these attacks goes far beyond the borders of Iran.

They have exposed profound weaknesses in the existing international order and have raised fundamental questions about sovereignty, international law, the credibility of diplomacy, and the future of International order.

The issue before us, therefore, is not simply the war, it is the future of the whole world after these flagrant violations of the International law. While these aggression is still ongoing in different forms, the world is facing some very difficult questions:

Have we really been living a Law-based international order? Is it at least rules- based, as argued for decades by western powers?

Or it has simply transformed into an interest- based order which is applied selectively whenever and wherever the interests of some powerful actors demand and where concepts like "peace through strength" can be interpreted into a naked "hegemony through force" by the axis of terror.

When these principles are selectively applied or disregarded altogether the consequences go far beyond a single conflict. The credibility of the rules themselves begins to erode. And once international law loses its restraining power, we face an even larger question: The erosion of the international order itself. These aggressions have had had many victims. In addition to Minab's children and thousands of other Iranians. The US-Israeli aggression against Iran therefore needs to be examined not only through the lens of the immediate military confrontation, but as part of a broader transformation in international politics. So today, we want to look at this aggression from several interconnected perspectives: its causes, its strategic drivers, its political, economic, legal, and geopolitical consequences.

We want to understand not only what happened but what this conflict tells us about the international system that is emerging from it.

Is this another chapter in the cycle of endless wars? Or a turning point in the regional and global order?

What does it mean for international law when military force is used while diplomacy is still underway?

And what are the economics consequences of this confrontation for Iran, the Middle East, and the global economy?

To explore these questions, we are very pleased to have you with us today Professor Jeffrey Sachs, one of the world's most prominent economists and global policy thinkers, whose work has consistently examined the intersection of economics, international security, development, and American foreign policy.

Professor Jeffrey Sachs, I'm very pleased to have you with us today. Welcome to this special program from the Institute for Political and International Studies in Tehran.

Today, Professor, we are meeting again at a very critical juncture when the whole world and the region is experiencing a very important geopolitical uncertainty, where the Middle East is once again at the center of developments, whose consequences may extend far beyond this region. You are totally aware what has happened during last six months in this region, especially in Iran, when we experienced a very clear unlawful and illegal, unprovoked aggression against Iran by the United States and Israeli regime. There are so many discussions about their incentives and objectives to do this act of aggression against Iran, but I want to, first of all, to hear your reading about their incentives and objectives from this act of aggression against Iran and the region.

Jeffery D. SACHS- Thank you very much. It's really a pleasure to be with you. I think that there are both U.S. objectives and Israeli objectives. The U.S. objective is hegemony in the world, including a hegemony in the Middle East.

So the United States foreign policy is based on the premise that the United States should dictate terms to the rest of the world and that that should be the case in every region of the world, including in Western Asia and the Middle East.

So there's in a way nothing surprising about the U.S. action. The U.S. goes to war regularly.

It topples governments. It has a foreign policy based on regime change, and the aim of the United States is primacy or hegemony.

Iran committed a sin against the American empire, if I could put it in those terms from the American point of view, because Iran was within the U.S. Empire after 1953, when the United States toppled the democratic government of Prime Minister Mosaddegh overthrew the government and installed a police state.

And that lasted until 1979, after which Iran regained its sovereignty. But that's an unforgivable action from the point of view of a hegemon. And so this is a kind of war of retribution also to bring Iran back into American dominance. America has military bases throughout the region on the other side of the Persian Gulf. And Iran escaped from that in 1979. So this is partly the incentive.

Israel has the incentive of regional hegemony. This is absolutely explicit. The policy of Israel is to overthrow every government in the region that supports the Palestinian cause or that opposes Israeli hegemony. And Iran is therefore target number one.

But Israel has targeted many governments in the region over the last 30 years, including Iraq in 2003.

It talked the United States into the war in Iraq, including the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, which was a CIA operation with Mossad starting in 2011 with the incursions into Lebanon and so forth.

Iran has always been number one on the target list for Netanyahu. And he has said so. He said that this is his dream for 40 years.

I don't think that it's the case that it's simply Israel determining U.S. policy because the U.S. has its own hegemonic aspirations that go beyond Israel's.

But it's definitely a partnership. And so it's why there are mutually aligned reasons for this disaster.

But it is a disaster that was a premeditated act of aggression by both parties that have shared interests but also have their distinctive aims. INT- Thank you, Professor. You referred to some kind of partnership between the United States and Israel.

What we have been witnessing in the region, especially after October 7th, it is a kind of clear hegemonic tendency by Israeli regime over the region just to try to realize their dream of that greater Israel. And this is very clearly against the aspirations and the will of the nations inside the region. This has caused so many serious debates inside the political circles inside the United States.

The debate between Israeli-firsters and America-firsters, those who have been trying to argue that this is the, in fact, the cost has been imposed on the American taxpayers to pursue the Israeli interests in the region. How do you see these debates inside the United States alongside those mainstream idea inside the United States?

What are the other readings inside the United States these days? SACHS- Well, there actually wasn't much of a debate for most of the history of the last decades.

The American public opinion was overwhelmingly pro-Israel, and the American politics was overwhelmingly pro-Israel.

So while there was a debate, it was not really much of a debate. The U.S. foreign policy establishment, the political class, and the American people were all aligned strongly behind Israel.

And this is just a fact of our politics up until this decade. But things have changed decisively, especially after October 7.

First, more Americans came to understand that many of the wars that the United States has been engaged in have been wars on behalf of Israel's greater Israel agenda. This was not well understood in the United States. The Iraq war, for example, which is one of the major debacles of U.S. foreign policy, because it was a war completely based on lies a false narrative, and a knowing set of lies, was to a strong extent part of the Israel agenda. But I think the American people did not make that link politically until recent years.

There's almost no understanding in the United States about what happened in Syria.

From the American point of view, in the public, Syria was a revolt against Bashar al-Assad.

They don't know that it was a presidential finding to put the CIA in charge of overthrowing the Assad government.

So they did not make that link either.

What changed American politics was Israel's genocide in Gaza, because the American people watched day after day as Israel was destroying tens of thousands of lives, women and children, destroying hospitals, universities, clinics, mosques, churches, and declaring openly that the goal was to make Gaza unlivable, and hearing more and more people that the Americans did not know, like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, alongside Netanyahu, declaring openly genocidal ideas.

This was quite a shock for the American people, and it led to the most dramatic change of the American public opinion that I've recalled in my own lifetime in terms of attitudes in foreign policy because Americans don't pay so much attention to foreign policy.

They swung strongly in favor of Palestine, strongly against Israel, and strongly against the U.S. complicity in the war in Gaza.

So this was a big change that occurred between basically in one to two years.

Trump campaigned for office in 2024 on the grounds that he would keep the United States out of war in the Middle East that he would end the perpetual wars.

And so this too meant that when the U.S. and Israel launched its 12-day war against Iran in 2025, that was a shock to his own base, but in a context in which the American public opinion had changed quite markedly. So this is where we are today.

The United States leadership continues its hegemonic aspirations. It continues the close partnership with Israel, but the American public has changed quite strongly, and that's why we have a debate for the very first time because what the U.S. government is doing is contrary to the strong opinions of American public, which up until now have basically accepted the official narrative, but no longer do.

Now, the truth, of course, is that the American public does not have much say in American foreign policy.

The wars go on no matter what the American public says. So this is not a decisive matter in terms of actual events, but it is a major change in the public discussion.

And now it's possible to run for office in the United States explicitly on the basis that your opponent is too pro-Israel.

This is quite unprecedented.

INT- This is a very interesting discussion.

Let me continue this discussion with what I think is a much larger question than this current situation in the region.

For decades, the United States was not only a dominant military and economic power, it was also a principal architect and defender of the international order.

American power was sustained not merely by its military might, but by its normative power.

This normative power played a very important role in the U.S. rule over the whole world.

But the course of events during the last few years, including the war and aggression against Iran and unconditional support of Israel and Bibi Netanyahu have exposed something much deeper perhaps not simply the decline of the American power, but the decline of the American Empire in the minds of the people around the world.

Do you think the war against Iran and this unconditional support of the Israeli regime has accelerated the transition of American hegemony to a post-American international order and perhaps more importantly has damaged something even harder to rebuild the reliability and credibility of American power in the eyes of the individuals, intellectuals and political leaders around the world.

SACHS- It's a very interesting phenomenon.

I would say that the United States went through several phases internally. In 1945, when the U.S. was led by Franklin Roosevelt, who was our greatest president in our history, Roosevelt truly believed in a world based on norms and law.

He was not a naive man, but he truly believed that the United Nations could operate as a true international system.

When he died, the United States abandoned that to an important extent and took up the crusade against communism.

And this didn't pit the United States against the UN exactly, but it put multilateralism aside and focused on a crusade against communism. That was the Cold War period.

The United States could say all the time that it supports the multilateral system.

It was easy for the U.S. to do so to say that we support the international system.

The communists oppose it. But of course, there was a great deal of hypocrisy in all of that because the United States behaved like it did in Iran in 1953 in overthrowing a democracy completely against the UN charter. But that was the normal mode of operation of the CIA basically since its founding in 1947.

The next phase came with the end of the Soviet Union because then the United States said, well, we are the only superpower and we can do what we want.

Again, the United States didn't have to break with the UN to do that. It could give it lip service, but basically after 1991, the U.S. idea was that it runs the world and no one can challenge it.

And that's why it embarked on NATO expansion to Ukraine, why it overthrew governments around Russia, why it aimed to weaken Russia.

The great change in the world has been the rise of China.

This is the most important geopolitical event of modern times.

And it is the clear proof that the United States is not the sole superpower.

The United States has not only a peer, but a country that excels and dominates in certain technologies and in manufacturing in major industrial areas.

This is the stage where the United States actually turned against the United Nations because China said, well, we support the UN, we support international rules, but the United States became nakedly hegemonic in attempt to break China's rise.

So the United States around 2010 abandoned all pretenses of supporting the UN and became nakedly hegemonic in its aspirations, launching many wars, launching trade wars against China, and using a language of containment against China.

And of course this has failed because China, Russia, Iran, the countries that just met until yesterday in Kyrgyzstan and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the countries that will meet in a few days in Delhi, in the BRICS said, no, we don't want U.S. hegemony, we want a multipolar world, and the fact that China has such strength economically, financially, technologically is the bulwark of this.

If it were merely an argument for the UN in principle, the U.S. would trash the UN and just walk away.

The fact is we are truly in a multipolar world right now. That's the big difference in this world.

And what is being exposed is the U.S. doesn't have principles of multilateralism. The U.S. doesn't have any allegiance to the United Nations. It's the country that is least aligned with the UN Charter in the entire world.

In fact, it's openly in revolt against the United Nations right now. No other country in the world is in open revolt against the UN, not Russia, not Iran, not China, not any of the BRICS countries.

Only the United States has abandoned dozens and dozens of UN bodies in the last two years because it's saying we will not be constrained by anything other than our own power.

But this is all very delusional because like you say, it has broken a kind of spell that that people around the world thought the United States represented some principles rather than naked power.

But the United States is saying right now we believe in naked power. The U.S. believes that it still has dominance, which it does not do. But that is now the U.S. foreign policy.

And because Trump is a very particular person whose entire personality is based on a kind of gangsterism that I can threaten you. I can punch you in the face first and then we can negotiate.

This is Trump's style, which we've never had a president like this who is so openly lawless.

But with that style, you have this extraordinary combination. So the U.S. is even at war with Canada now, not in hot war, but in ideological and trade war with its next door neighbor.

And this has changed the world understanding of what the U.S. is. But the reason fundamentally is the U.S. aims for hegemony and it can't have it anymore. We are in a multipolar world.

INT- Yeah, it's a very important issue right now, this Trump style way of governance.

In fact, a blunt imperial way of governance based on imposition, imposition of sanctions on adversaries and tariffs on friends and the partners, which is weakening.

In fact, the international institutions, which is weakening U.S. allies and partners around the world.

What we see right now in Europe, it is somehow irrelevance in all strategic issues and Europe does not have any role to play around the world. This has caused the kind of revisiting the policies by other actors, including the partners, allies and also adversaries.

You refer to what China is trying to do, what Russia is trying to do. What Europe is about to start to do?

How do you see the upcoming world order?

You talked about multipolar, multipolar world, multipolarity, post-polarity, hierarchical disorder or a kind of balance of power, where the middle powers gain more power to play a role in international order.

SACHS- Well, I don't see... Actually, let me put it another way. There are many possible directions right now.

The one that we should be aiming for is a basic level of cooperation between the major powers.

So we should be aiming for a world in which the United States, China, Russia, India, which I would say are the four world superpowers at the moment.

At least don't get into each other's neighborhood or over each other's red lines to the point of causing world war.

But we're very close to world war because the United States is at war with Russia in Ukraine.

The United States is at war with Iran, which has powerful friends with Russia and China.

The United States is at economic war with China. All of this is extremely dangerous and provocative.

The world we should have is where the major powers respect each other's boundaries and red lines and stay clear of them so that we don't get into global world war three. That would mean no NATO expansion to Ukraine. Stop this. Just like the United States would never tolerate a Russian base in Mexico or Canada, Russia will never tolerate a U.S. military base in Ukraine or in Georgia. And that's why we have the war.

The United States should stay clear of Taiwan.

Again, the idea that China would arm an American state is unimaginable, but the U.S. arms Taiwan.

So this is a reciprocal violation of red lines that the United States would never tolerate.

So that's what I believe we should be aiming for.

Of course, within that concert of the great powers, we would have the United Nations for the rights of every country in the world.

Sovereignty, the right not to be threatened or to face force like Iran is suffering right now from the United States.

So we would have a UN-based system, but with mutual responsibility and prudence among the great powers.

The United States obviously does not show the wisdom for that right now. The U.S. is the biggest threat in the world, unfortunately, I'm sorry to say, because it is the one that still demands primacy or hegemony in a world that is already multipolar.

Europe, by the way, of course, is completely lost because it bet everything on the United States.

And it bet everything on the United States for decades. Europe cannot think independently.

Most of the European political class was raised by the United States, cultivated by the United States.

Any European politician that opposed the U.S. was thrown out by U.S. pressure.

So we have a political class in Europe which is unable to think even for Europe's own interest and unable to be honest.

And I think Iran suffered this not just now, but already 11 years ago, or I should say maybe eight years ago, when the U.S. abandoned the JCPOA with Iran. Did Europe protest?

No, Europe remained silent, even though Europe was signatories to the JCPOA.

They blamed Iran, even though obviously it was the United States that ripped up the agreement.

And this showed that Europeans are dishonest in their policies and rhetoric because they're constantly trying to find the favor of the United States.

But the United States does not have European interests in mind at all right now. It might invade Europe literally in Greenland.

It has absolutely no interest in Europe's well-being, but the European political class is unable to deal with this.

How else might the world evolve in this way? You can imagine the following scenarios.

One is that the SCO basically becomes stronger and stronger as most of Eurasia united in economic development, infrastructure cooperation, and resistance to American hegemony.

This is a quite plausible outcome.

And the SCO will have a natural alignment with Africa, which soon will be a quarter of the world population as well.

So you can imagine the West versus the rest of the world, the West being the United States, Europe, maybe Japan still, but basically around 12% of the world pitted against the whole rest of the world, 85% of the world or more. And that's one way that the United States is pushing things because the only ones that follow the U.S. right now are the European Union, Britain, Japan, and a few other countries, Argentina, Paraguay, and so forth.

So this is one possibility the U.S. is trying to bring India into its strategic camp.

It's telling India, you side with us against China.

So the U.S. is trying to break the SCO, it's trying to break the BRICS by bringing India into the U.S. camp.

And this would be India's greatest mistake imaginable.

I hope that India remembers its hundreds of years under British domination to understand that it should not be a party to American political machinations like this.

But that is part of what the United States is trying to do. Europe is interesting.

It is, as you say, devoid of strategy right now, very confused, terrified of Russia, which has no objective to harm Europe, but doesn't want to be attacked by the U.S. and Europe.

And so Europe is unable to engage in basic diplomacy right now. It simply follows the U.S. even to this point.

And the future of what Europe does, therefore, is another question mark. Will Europe open its eyes and behave in a rational, self-interested manner as a major power that can help to bring about a multipolar, peaceful world? We're waiting for that. It hasn't happened yet.

INT- Thank you. Professor, as you mentioned, this one of the most important consequences of the war against Iran and very heroic patriotic resistance of Iran has been the rise of middle powers and the role they are now playing in the world.

The space and environment they can find for themselves to play a more important role.

And this has caused so many developments in the whole world.

And I think in the future, it can cause even more.

SACHS- Maybe I could say something a little bit more about that. Iran shows that it has deterrence against the United States.

This is quite remarkable from the U.S. point of view because the U.S. did not expect this at all.

But Iran's well-being, honestly, depends on its relations with China and Russia as well.

So I just want to emphasize, the major powers here play a very important role even in this context.

But yes, it is true. It is true that Yemen can close the Red Sea. Iran has a credible deterrence against the United States.

These are shocks to the U.S., but they are a fact of a reality that Iran is a technologically sophisticated, powerful country that can resist the American, even the American military attacks.

Yemen can do tremendous damage to the U.S. when it is threatened by the U.S..

And so that resistance is real. But I think that the fundamental point is also important that the U.S. would impose its hegemony, were it not for China, were it not for Russia, were it not for the BRICS, the SCO, the broader changes that are taking place in the world.

Those are extremely important. They're part of a broad reality, which the United States doesn't understand, which is that knowledge, science, technology, capacity are well diffused in this world.

Now they are not the secret prize of the United States alone.

But this is something the U.S. doesn't understand. The U.S. is mesmerized still by its own power, not understanding that countries like Iran or Russia or China are technologically sophisticated countries that do not accept the dominance by someone else.

INT- Yeah. Professor, as an economist and a very prominent university professor working on economic topics for decades, I want to refer to this last phase of the U.S. aggression against Iran, this operation for economic outcast of Iran, which is putting more pressure on different actors around the world to compel in fact to urge them to accomplice the U.S. aggression, U.S.-Israeli aggression against Iran.

You know after this aggression when the Islamabad memorandum of understanding was reached as a sigh of relief, and a very important diplomatic achievement.

It was breached several times by the United States and Israelis. And then we have been witnessing persistent attacks on Iran's infrastructure. And you may know that even last night, we witnessed a very huge crime by the United States again, targeting a wedding ceremony in southern part of Iran, which caused so many casualties in that wedding ceremony. After what happened in Minab School and after what happened in Lamerd Sports Complex, this wide range of crimes against the human being and dehumanizing Iranians, after dehumanizing Palestinians and other nations, how do you see the different aspects of this economic outcast and how do you see the future of this operation against Iran?

SACHS- I think the important point in general is the United States uses hybrid warfare.

So the U.S. uses open attack and open bombing. The U.S. uses covert operations.

The U.S. uses assassinations as Iran knows all too well.

The U.S. uses information warfare and the U.S. uses economic warfare. The economic warfare is based on the role of the U.S. dollar in the international trading system, because the main enforcement of U.S. sanctions is by excluding entities, especially banks, from participating in the U.S. clearing system.

So if you can't do business in dollars in the world economy, you're very vulnerable to U.S. pressures.

We know that the U.S. has been attacking Iran for decades with economic statecraft, so-called, their economic sanctions.

And this has been going on, of course, literally since the 1980s, since 1979, but it intensified in the first Trump administration.

Biden did not change that in any material way, and then it even intensified again when Trump came back into office.

And we all heard our Treasury Secretary, who's a kind of gangster, Scott Bessent, say in the World Economic Forum, January 20th this year, in an interview with Fox News how his job in 2025 was to destroy the Iranian economy.

So the idea was to crush the currency, exclude Iran from international transactions, but break the currency and create high inflation.

So, of course, the Iranian people are suffering from high inflation, and the U.S. aim was to make the Iranian people turn against the government. You're so incompetent, you're so corrupt, you're creating such pain for us, but the pain was the deliberate economic warfare of the United States. And Bessent explained this very, very clearly, very openly. He boasted about it. He said, we brought the people out to the streets.

This is "economic statecraft." He was a very weird person. So he said all of this with a great delight.

Now he has said they're going to do more.

I'm not sure what more they can really do, by the way, because they've been aiming to destroy the Iranian economy for years and years, and in a very intense way.

So, now they've launched their "Economic D-Day." I don't know the Iranian books.

I don't know, of course, the actual issues about the physical trade, but Iran does need a strategy that is a response to this.

I mean, an economic and financial strategy that is a response to this, not only a military strategy.

And in that strategy, the role of China, the role of Russia, the role of other neighbors is essential.

And basically Iran will have to find ways to transact as best it can, in non-dollar payments, in renminbi, in rubles, in other ways.

And of course, there's a physical aspect to this because of the blockade, and there is a financial aspect to this because of the U.S. economic sanctions.

But these are technical issues that I believe need to be solved by Iran, but no doubt Iran is facing an attempt at economic war.

But there are approaches around that economic war, basically, that very much involved China and very much involved Russia and very much involved the financial lifeline.

But the goal of the United States is to create a massive inflation or hyperinflation in Iran, and the main response is to prevent that from happening.

INT- Thank you, Professor.

This is, of course, very useful advice for the government of Iran, how to deal with this situation.

In fact, Iran has proved to be a very competent actor dealing with such pressures during the last four decades.

Iran is a civilization-state.

SACHS- Maybe the oldest civilization in the world, at least that you're competing with Egypt for that title.

INT- Yeah, we have been trying to find some ways.

And what is the very clear for Iran that it is this kind of pressure are not going to change Iranian strategy calculus.

In fact, we are still hoping the diplomatic channel would work, and their wisdom will prevail for all sides to come back to the negotiation table to continue this negotiation to solve the problem.

You know, our region has been suffering from accumulated unresolved disputes for decades, and it takes a long time for this region to come back to peace and stability, and this will happen through dialogue and conversation.

Professor, how do you think this is a very important question right now around the world, that when and how do you think this war will end? If you want to give a piece of advice to the government of the United States to act wisely and as a rational actor as a big power to solve the problem, not only regarding Iran, but also regarding the whole region. How do you think this stability and peace can come back to this region?

SACHS- I think there are two issues in sequence.

One is ending this war, and the other is resolving the crises of the region.

Ending the war, in my view, has one practical way, which is that the United States goes home, period.

I am not very optimistic that the United States will ever sign or honor an agreement, and the reason is that when you are a hegemon, want to be, when your whole mission is to show you dominate the world, anything written on paper which conveys the idea of the limits of your power are unacceptable even if they're completely rational.

So the problem with the MoU, or the problem with the negotiations to reach an actual diplomatic agreement with Iran, which could be done on a rational basis, is that they would require the United States to respect Iranian sovereignty, and they would demonstrate U.S. inability to dominate.

And that is the difficulty, not vis-a-vis Iran, but vis-a-vis the rest of the world.

The United States needs to show it is in control, and an agreement would show it is not in control.

And so I am rather skeptical of any kind of formal agreement, and you saw that when the MoU was signed, the United States violated it within hours. Israel violated it within minutes because the U.S. cannot accept a formal limitation of its power.

When it is in the current psychological state that it is in, not vis-a-vis Iran, but vis-a-vis China, it has to prove it's the dominant power. Of course, it's not. This is the great problem for the United States. Its aspiration and reality are two different things, but this makes it almost impossible for the United States to sign an agreement with Iran that says anything that would be a rational outcome of this.

So what is the answer? In my opinion, the answer is just go home, declare victory, say whatever you want, but stop without an agreement.

We'll never have an agreement within the next months, possibly years on nuclear issues or anything more sophisticated.

This is almost impossible, because the United States will not honor such an agreement if it shows a limit on U.S. power.

Of course, I'm not against diplomacy. Don't misunderstand me. I preach diplomacy every single day.

I just think there needs to be another path which is based on informal understandings, not formal understandings, and the informal understanding that I think is most important is the United States goes home and the Strait of Hormuz opens up and Iran reestablishes normalcy with its neighbors across the Persian Gulf.

That's perfectly possible because that's in everybody's interest, but it would be informal and then Donald Trump can say this is the greatest victory in the history of mankind.

We destroyed Iran, we did this, we did that, we got everything we want, but it would be peace and it wouldn't be on paper.

This I think is to my mind, it's the only thing I've been able to think of as the way forward because anything that's actually on paper is probably, unfortunately, impossible because of the reflection on U.S. limitation that it would signify.

So Iran cannot aim for a formal demonstration of the U.S. limit of power, but it can aim for peace, and that's all I would aim for right now.

I wouldn't aim for even releasing frozen assets. I wouldn't aim for any kind of broader agreement.

I would just aim, go home, get out of our neighborhood, we're going to stop shooting, the strait will open up, oil prices will come down to 65 or $70 a barrel again, we'll all live happily ever after, we don't have to sign anything.

That to my mind is the practical approach.

I'm not against something more ambitious, but I don't believe in it, and I don't believe the United States is up to it, not because of the bilateral issue, if we're purely bilateral and no one else was watching, the United States might agree to anything, but because everyone else is watching, the United States won't agree to this because it would signify, oh, they're weaker than we thought, oh, Iran won, oh, the United States had to concede, and the U.S. will not formally do that in my expectation.

INT- Thank you, Professor.

In fact, the only thing Iran wants is peace and justice not only for itself, but for the whole region, and this has been pursued by Iran for decades right now.

SACHS- Yeah, let me say a word about the second, if I might, the longer term, the longer term, strangely, it's weird, but it's about Israel because Israel has disrupted the entire Middle East because of a simple point that it would not allow justice for 8 million Palestinian or 10 million Palestinian people, and it's overturned the whole Middle East because of that, and the justice could have come, it could have come in so many ways, it could have come in two states living side by side, it could have come in one by national democratic state, it could come in many ways, but Israel's point of view is no, there will never be a Palestinian political self-determination, maybe if we have our way, there will never be a Palestinian people again.

That's their idea.

That's the idea of Netanyahu and since 1996, and his policy, as you know, was in order to prevent a Palestinian state or political rights, we will overthrow every government in the Middle East that supports the Palestinian cause, and that meant overthrowing Libya, it meant overthrowing Sudan, it meant overthrowing Lebanon, it meant overthrowing Iraq, it meant overthrowing Syria, and of course the big prize is overthrowing Iran, and so this is all incredibly weird, that over 10 million people, 400 million people's lives are profoundly disrupted, and most of the world understands this, the United States is now the only barrier actually to the two-state solution, the only barrier because Israel doesn't have a veto, only the United States has a veto, and the U.S. blocked Palestine as a UN member state by a veto in the UN Security Council, everyone else in the world would agree to it, but not the United States.

So this is the odd part, of course it became even weirder than this because Israel wants not only no Palestinian state, but it actually wants territory in Lebanon, it wants territory in Syria, God knows where else it wants territory, but it wants a greater Israel, which is even beyond the denial of Palestinian self-determination, so this is the more fundamental issue, the good, the solution to this is easy, the United States ends its veto of a Palestinian state, then Palestine would be admitted on the borders of the 4th of June 1967 to the UN in about one hour because all the rest of the world would support that.

That's one solution, Israel is intent on destroying that solution, so maybe the only solution in the end is one binational state, which is also a feasible approach, a Belgium or Switzerland or a Singapore where you have two or three ethnicities living side by side in the same place, but the U.S. has been the barrier to this, now it's the only barrier, but what's interesting, as I said earlier, inside the United States, the public opinion is absolutely in favor of Palestinian rights, it's viewed in the U.S. through the two-state solution, so about 60% of Americans want the two-state solution, it's amazing, 60% of the Americans say they support Palestine in the current crisis, so we're not so far from a solution, actually, because it just changes, it needs one vote to change in the UN, Israel has no veto on this, the only way that Israel survives in what it's doing is the United States itself.

No other country practically can protect Israel in its despicable behavior, in its genocidal behavior, and in its absolute rejection or determination to either kill or ethnically cleanse or rule in an apartheid way over the 8 million Palestinian people.

INT- Thank you, Professor.

In fact, I believe what the U.S. can do regarding Iran is to leave its maximalist demands, and if the U.S. wants to do something about the region, is to urge Israelis to leave and put aside their maximalist elimination policies for the whole region not only towards Palestine.

Thank you, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, to be with us, it was this conversation was full of insightful and brilliant ideas, and I'm sure this will be remembered for years to come, what you raised here as your ideas about the future of the region and the whole world.

Thank you again, and have a good evening. Thank you very much.

SACHS- Thank you, I appreciate it.

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