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The John Batchelor Show

2/4: The Shadow War: Iran's Quest for Supremacy Hardcover – by Brandon J. Weichert (Author)

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

News, Books, Society & Culture, Arts

4.62.7K Ratings

🗓️ 15 March 2025

⏱️ 8 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

2/4: The Shadow War: Iran's Quest for Supremacy Hardcover – 
by  Brandon J. Weichert  (Author)

1911


There has been an ongoing shadow war between the West and Iran, one that could explode and plunge the world into a third world war. The Biden Administration's move to make peace at any cost with the mad mullahs of Iran may be the very spark for a regional war that turns into a global conflict, the likes of which not seen since the 1940s.

As the Biden Administration pines for a return to the ill-fated Iran nuclear deal, Tehran makes ready to consolidate its growing power in the Middle East at America's expense. For the last decade, Iran has consistently expanded its own reach and influence across the region—all while judiciously building up its military capabilities. As America looks for a way out of the Middle East and a return to the Obama-era nuclear agreement, Iran enhances the ability of its terrorist proxies, like Hezbollah in Lebanon or the Houthis in Yemen, to threaten the security of Israel and to destabilize the Saudi regime.

Each time the Biden Administration signals its willingness to negotiate with Iran, Iran gets more aggressive. In the words of one Saudi official, Iran is a "paper tiger with steel claws." These steel claws have extended to encompass the whole region, and they include Iran's growing arsenal of complex drones, precision-guided munitions, EMP weapons, and their nuclear weapons arsenal.

Thankfully, there is a path forward for the United States and the solution can be found in the policies outlined by the previous Trump Administration; in the form of the Abraham Accords and daring "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran. But time is not on America's side. Should President Biden continue down the destructive, illusory path to "peace" with Iran, he will not only have abandoned America's long-standing allies, but he will have also helped to trigger the very conflict he seeks to avoid. After all, as Ronald Reagan once quipped, world wars do not start "because America is too strong." They start because the United States is deemed too weak by its rivals.

In The Shadow War: Iran's Quest for Supremacy, author Brandon Weichert explores how the next world war is unfolding right before our eyes and explains how the American government can avoid it while maintaining its position of strength and support for its allies.

Transcript

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0:00.0

I'm John Batchew with my colleague, Brendan Wykert, whose book The Shadow War, Iran's Quest for Supremacy,

0:05.9

contains the history of the U.S. involvement in Iran's fate.

0:10.9

This is a land that was once called Persia, my mother's people, Persians.

0:15.3

It is very old, so old that in 1971, the Shah held a party at the ruins of Persepolis, 2,500th anniversary celebrating Iran.

0:28.0

That's old.

0:29.5

And there is reason to believe that the Shah was thinking about maintaining control over his country indefinitely.

0:38.4

Buddy, he became ill.

0:40.7

And the Shah's death triggered a cascade of events in late 79,

0:46.8

one of which was the taking of American hostages.

0:49.9

Your measure, Brandon, because that's when Iran crashed into American news cycle and stayed there for over 400 days, 444, I think.

1:01.1

At that point, Iran's grievances were many.

1:05.6

Did the American people understand, were they educated by what remained of the Carter administration? And was there

1:14.4

candor about why it was that the Iranian people were so angry? No, I don't think many Americans

1:21.6

understood. Remember, we're coming over at this point in American history. We're coming out of

1:26.4

Vietnam. We're coming out of Watergate,

1:29.2

a very tumultuous time. And so I really don't think most Americans had a full grasp of what was

1:36.2

going on. And furthermore, I don't really think the Carter administration fully understood

1:39.8

what was going on. Remember, they were looking at Iran and saying, well, the Shah's got to go,

1:45.8

and they were reaching out to people like Khomeini to be the replacement. And of course,

1:50.7

that was a poison pill to swallow. And so I don't think any of them fully understood what was

1:56.5

going on. They just knew the people of America just saw the hostages being taken, but they didn't understand the context.

2:02.6

Now events tumble. November 78, Sullivan writes the memo, thinking the unthinkable.

...

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