Richard D. Wolff & Michael Hudson: Middle East Exploding, Ukraine Crumbling! the US Take Action

October 6, 2024

 

NIMA: So nice to have you back, Richard and Michael. And let me just manage this. And let’s get started with the main question here that would be: Why is the United States not interested in putting an end to the conflict in the Middle East and in Ukraine? Which we know in both of these cases, they’re capable of doing this.

And before going to the answer of this question, I’m going to play a clip that the foreign minister of Lebanon is talking with Christiane Amanpour about his point of view and why they couldn’t reach a ceasefire.

[Video Clip begins]

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: … I spoke with Lebanon’s Foreign Minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, who’s in Washington to meet with American officials and he joined us for his first interview since the latest escalations. Foreign minister, welcome back to the program.

ABDALLAH BOU HABIB: Thank you. Thank you.

CHRISTIANE: Things have reached a major crisis in your country since we last spoke. And I want to ask you, you are in the United States right now. You know that several of the administration officials agree with Israel’s ground incursion into your country. What do you make of that as you’re in Washington trying to get support for a ceasefire?

ABDALLAH: Well, they also agreed on the Biden-Macron statement that calls for a ceasefire and that calls also for the implementation of a 21 days ceasefire. And then Mr. Hochstein would go to Lebanon and negotiate a ceasefire. And they told us that Mr. Netanyahu agreed on this. And so we also got the agreement of Hezbollah on that. And you know what happened since then. That was the day we saw you in New York.

CHRISTIANE: I know. And you were talking about going into the Security Council for this ceasefire. And barely 24 hours later, the head of Hezbollah was assassinated. Are you saying Hassan Nasrallah had agreed to a ceasefire just moments before he was assassinated?

ADBALLAH: He agreed, he agreed. Yes, yes. We agreed completely; Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire by consulting with Hezbollah. The Speaker, Mr. Berri, consulted with Hezbollah and we informed the Americans and the French that [that is] what happened. And they told us that Mr. Netanyahu also agreed on the statement that was issued by both presidents.

[Video Clip ends]

NIMA: Yeah. Here is the question here, because if you remember, with the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh while they were talking with Ismail Haniyeh, negotiating with Ismail Haniyeh in Qatar, they assassinated him.

And right after they reached some sort of agreement with the government in Lebanon and just Hezbollah said, okay, we’re going to go with that plan, they assassinated him.

And the question right now is here, why is this with the United States, Michael? Go ahead.

Read more:

https://www.unz.com/mhudson/middle-east-exploding-ukraine-crumbling-the-u-s-take-action/

PDF: MH6.10.2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXDz1PdMWao

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