All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is happening in the Middle East and Iran's impending retaliation.

The news, the narrative, if you believe it, I imagine, well, I'll let you answer.

I was going to say, I imagine you don't believe it.

But if you believe it, from the United States and from the collective West media,

they are saying that they are actually making some headway in convincing Iran to moderate,

to lessen its retaliation.

This is what they are reporting, that U.S. diplomacy, it's a carrot and stick diplomacy.

They're using some carrot, but they're also using some stick and saying, if you, if you attack

Israel, then we're going to get involved. So they're doing everything they can, according to the

collective Westmead. This is not me. This is the media, CNN, and Reuters and all of these outlets, Politico, did a big piece on this.

They are saying that according to their sources, they feel that they are making progress in convincing Iran not to retaliate in a manner that would be deemed as heavy, excessive to lead to a big wider war, let's say.

What do you make of these reports and what do you think is going to happen within the next few days?

Well, the first thing to say is that I don't know what the Iranians and the Americans have been saying to each other.

And, you know, what I'm going to say now is my own sense of the situation.

I think these reports are either one of two things, wishful thinking, of which probably there is a significant dose of it,

or just possibly the Iranians themselves stringing the Americans

along. Now, one of the things to say is that over the last couple of days, there were a lot of

reports that in Israel and the US, there was a lot of nervousness about what the Iranians were going to do.

And there were a lot of fears that, you know, there would be an attack on Israel that would be far more powerful than the one in April.

And there were even some reports that some people in Israel were discussing the need for a preemptive strike on Iran.

So given that this is so, it might be the case of the Iranians, you know, string the Americans and the Israelis along because they don't want to have preemptive strikes on themselves,

and they need time to prepare. And I think it is the second that is the most important thing.

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