All right, Alexander, let's talk about the situation in the Middle East.

We're moving very quickly towards a big regional war.

Netanyahu is pushing hard towards a conflict with Iran.

The Biden White House is completely lost.

And Iran is, well, Hezbollah is also pushing, pushing hard against Israel,

while Iran appears to be active in a lot of diplomacy.

So what's the general situation of everything that's going on?

A lot of escalation is my sense of things, but maybe there's a way out of this. I don't know.

I do think there is a way out of this. I think the Iranians understand that very well.

We'll discuss what they're saying

to everybody in a moment. But when you look at what they're doing and they are being extremely

diplomatically active, their foreign minister, Abbasarabshi is flying to all kinds of places.

And Pezishkan, the president, is talking to all sorts of places. And Pezishkan, the president is talking to all sorts of people.

But what they're basically doing, I mean, to me, it looks as if they're trying to sort out work with their allies.

In other words, they're trying to build up their alliances and to make sure that their alliances

are working and at the same time to try to persuade the Arab states to stay out of the battle

that I think they know is coming. I think the Iranians for a while remained, you know, were hoping that

this storm would pass, but it's clearly not going to pass. So what have they been doing? Well,

Pezishkan, who is the Iranian president, he met with Putin in Ashgabad in Turkmenistan. Now, this is a meeting,

this is a visit to Turkmenistan that had been on Putin's itinerary for a while. He does

regular trips to Central Asia. He meets with Central Asian leaders. He's been he's been in close contact for some

time with Kazakhstan, with Tajikistan, with Uzbekistan. He's traveled to Uzbekistan this year.

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