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The John Batchelor Show

4/4: 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

⏱️ 7 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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

1925

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 Batchel with my colleague Brendan Wykert. His new book is The Shadow War, Ron's Quest for Supremacy.

0:05.1

We come up to date. Having started in the 20th century, we look right now at the JCPOA, again suspended by the Trump administration.

0:16.8

It was in the first term, now is in the second term. In between Mr. Biden is of note because he was looking to reawaken the JCPOA, make it stronger.

0:28.0

The suspect nuclear weapons program, however, is only part of the arsenal that Iran now presents

0:33.7

to the world.

0:35.1

They are also manufacturing drones that Russia's buying and missiles

0:40.2

that Russians buying. They've become an armorer for the Middle East. And the policy today

0:47.1

is hostile towards Israel, towards the United States, possibly even towards the whole neighborhood. What is Iran's

0:57.0

ambition? You say supremacy. They have the surrogates of the Houthis operating in Yemen,

1:05.0

war with the Saudis, war with the Israelis. They have Hamas operating in Gaza, war with the Israelis,

1:10.0

and they have Hezbollah in Lebanon. They have Hamas operating in Gaza war with the Israelis, and they have Hezbollah in Lebanon.

1:14.3

They also have what you'd have to say, representatives throughout Syria, now a failed state with

1:20.4

Assad fled. What is their vision? Where are they going? Well, the idea is to become the great empire of the region to basically

1:31.7

prove to the world that Shia Islam, specifically the 12 version of Shia Islam, which is a very

1:39.3

specific belief set that really a lot of the elites, the religious elite of iran believe in that that is

1:45.7

the superior um religion or ideology and they want to basically dominate the region and from there

1:53.1

they want to be able to use that as a base to dominate the world now i don't think they'll ever be

1:58.2

able to get to that level but but that is the thinking here,

2:01.4

and there's also among some of the elite there, this idea of freeing the Mahdi from the well.

2:08.3

There's a whole religious eschatology involved here, but for the most part, it is truly, basically,

2:15.6

subordinate the Sunni Arabs to the righteous rule of the Shiites

2:20.0

and then crush the Israelis who are both unbelievers and agents of the American imperialists

...

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