Madea Benjamin on the US–Israel War on Iran, AIPAC, and Building an Anti-War Movement - Ep 179

this is Fortress On A Hill, with Henri, Danny, Kaygan, Jo

vonni, Shiloh, Monisha , and Mike

Welcome everyone to Fortress On A Hill, a podcast about US

foreign policy, anti imperialism, skepticism, and American way of war.

I'm Jovanni, I'm speaking with you today.

Thank you for joining us and, as of this recording.

We're entering the third week of the usis Israel War of Aggression against Iran.

Following the killing of Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of the Iranian Revolution

and spiritual leader of Shia Islam.

This attack shattered What had been described by Ani intermediaries

as positive negotiations between the US and Iran.

Just hours later, a coly surprised attack by Israel and

the US ignited a regional war.

What has initially presented by the Trump administration as an incursion

that will last only four days, has extended into a full blown war with no

projected end date, threatening the global economy and international stability.

It rans resistance, retaliation, and appeared to have caught

the war makers by surprise.

They now seem to have no plan and working on the fly.

The decapitation of Iranian leadership was expected to spark an uprising.

Regime change or simply plunge the country into chaos.

As has happened in so many places where Western backed regime change has

occurred, instead Iranian people have proven, resolute and defined supportive of

their army and leadership in the face of their attackers and scrupulous violence.

This war is a culmination of a decades long obsession with

toppling the Iranian government.

Dating back to 1979, plans to degrade or defeat Iran have openly strategized,

including in a 2019 Brookins institution paper which path to Persia Options for

a new American strategy towards Iran.

For years, Benjamin Netanyahu has sought a US president to make this

fantasy of war with Iran A reality.

He appears to have fought one and Trump.

Let's discuss this further with Madea Benjamin.

Hey, great to be with you, Jovanni.

Great to be with you.

Mania Madia is the co-founder of the woman led Peace, group Code Pink.

She's also a co-founder of the Human Rights Group Global Exchange, the

Peace in Ukraine Coalition, unfreeze Afghanistan, which advocates for the

returning of $7 billion in Afghan funds frozen in American banks.

Aser, the Alliance for Cuban Engagement and Respect, and the Nobel Peace

Prize for Cuban Doctors Campaign.

Welcome back, Madea.

Hey, good to be with you.

Interesting times, right?

Crazy times.

Deja vu.

Huh?

Deja vu, right.

A famous quote saying that, there are, decades and nothing happens.

And there are days that decades happen.

It seems like the last 14 months, like years have gone by.

Yeah.

I can't believe that Trump's second term has not even been two years yet.

It seems like a lifetime.

so like we talked about, like I mentioned in the intro, we're now

entering the third week of this war.

what sense you make of it.

what's the game plan here and, what do you think about this?

I am just gobsmacked.

I'm just amazed that the US had the stupidity and the

hubris to actually attack Iran.

I never thought they would do it.

I thought people in the Pentagon would say, no way.

This doesn't make any sense.

but of course with Pink, Pete Hegseth as the Secretary of War,

I guess he feels invincible, as does Trump, and they've gotten

themselves into a horrible quagmire.

With no strategy, no exit plan, no support from the US public, and yet

they're going further and further into it.

I'm reading today that they're sending a, 2,500 marine

expeditionary unit to the region.

they're ramping up instead of ramping down, so I have no idea.

Where Trump thinks this is gonna go.

I just wish that he would declare a victory and end this, but it

doesn't look like he's gonna do that, and it doesn't look like the

Iranians are gonna accept that.

Yeah.

I'm wondering where those 2,500, Marines gonna go and go where they're gonna

change given that a lot of the, the basis around Iran has been evacuated due to

the, the missile, retaliation attacks.

Well, they're supposedly going to help open up the Strait of Horus,

which has been mined and already, ships are not wanting to go through there.

They, have been, I heard they had been offered US Navy escorts and they said

no, they'd rather not even go because that would make them such a target.

Yes, what these new forces are gonna do.

God only knows.

And this idea that potentially there could be a US ground

invasion is just so disheartening.

Jovanni, we've been through this in Iraq, we've been through this in Afghanistan.

We know.

that there is no winning.

There's no winning.

Now there's no winning.

If US troops, there'll only be more US soldiers dead, and I hope that

this is enough of a crazy warning that people will start voicing their

opposition, the opposition that we hear.

Or we read about in the opinion polls, but hasn't been translated

into the large demonstrations we had leading up to the Iraq war.

I was gonna ask you about that.

I remember that there were cities, there was a millions of people around the world.

in multiple cities of the United States, a lot of mobilization to, his opposition

to the Iraq war before it even started.

There were people mobilizing, and this time around, you

don't see that same energy.

here where I'm at, we organized a protest here and there was like

70 something people, showed up.

what do you think?

Why does this happen?

I think there's multiple reasons for that, Jovanni, and some

of them are that the Iranian regime is not one that people want to be seen

as supporting, and they think if they go out to demonstrations, that will

be seen as support for regime that has cracked down on its people and killed

a lot of people who were protesting.

In the lead up to the Iraq War, we thought that we could stop the war and there

was a long lead up, whereas this just happened so quickly we didn't have time to

organize before the invasion took place.

I also think we have to put it in the context of.

Years of people being out on the street around Gaza and feeling so defeated

because we went out over and over and over and over again, and Israel

still continues to do what it wants to do, not only in Gaza, but now

in the Middle East and in Lebanon.

I think there's the domestic issues that so many people have been out

protesting ice, and the corollary to that is that many people are

afraid if they're in the immigrant community, they're fearful of ice.

If they're not in the immigrant community, but they have been subjected to oppression

for being out there, supporting the immigrant community, people feel afraid.

So I think it's frustration, it's fear.

It's, all of those things together, whatever it is, it's

not good on the opinion polls.

We see overwhelmingly the American public does not support this war, and

that is something very important and should be reflected in votes in Congress.

It is to some extent, but not enough, but that anti-war sentiment.

Has to also be reflected in other ways, like big demonstrations on the street.

Like people expressing their outrage calling their members of Congress

and saying, you were spending a billion dollars a day when

there are so many needs at home.

And in a war that was unprovoked, should have never have started.

And you know, now the administration is supposedly gonna ask for another.

$50 billion on top of the trillion dollar military budget.

So people should be outraged and we've gotta help them get to that point.

I know that these, this the war, the current war, it happened

after last year's also surprise attack.

The 12 day war, this time around it was proceeded by,

it was proceeded under cover.

It was started under the cover of protest where, it was admitted

that the currency was manipulated.

there was this huge inflation.

People came outta protest inflation.

Then at the same time, there were filtration by the, by the, curves,

the me and everything right.

Coming in as well.

So it turned into like this chaos like we've seen in other places,

like in Venezuela, in Ukraine and whatnot, where we're under the cover.

of people protesting, right?

These elements come in and they just start pretty much just blowing up

and attacking and burning things up.

So this conflict was.

Proceeded by this effect.

It then happened, then things calmed down.

Then we have the delegations, of Oman, being the intermediary.

he was saying that everything was nice.

Everything was good.

You know, they have, the United States And Iran was coming into terms,

you know, Iran, I think, made some concessions also, in accordance to his

new, nuclear project and everything.

And next thing you know, poof, we had this thing just blow up.

what I'm hearing is that they had.

the idea that if they just did a decapitation strike, similar to

the kidnapping of President Maduro in Venezuela, they were gonna

Shock the Iranian, government.

They ran people into, paralysis and nothing would've happen.

do you read the same thing?

Do you think that was realistic?

that that was gonna happen.

It's so unrealistic and anybody who knows anything about Iran

knows how unrealistic it is, Iran really has a multi-layered system, whereas you

can kill off top leaders and there's another, layer, and then you can kill

them off And then, you have another layer and this goes down and down.

And that's, the Iranians have been reding themselves for a long

time for this war, so they have.

Built up these kind of structures, it is totally unrealistic to think that you

could have taken out the ayatollah and the whole regime would have collapsed.

Now it's important to think about what are the goals of Israel versus the United

States, and I think they're different.

I think for Israel, they definitely want regime change, And in fact,

maybe they want it to turn into chaos.

Internal strife, one group fighting another, a weakened Iran may

be broken up into sub states.

that is something that Israel.

we'd like to see happen.

I think the US is less interested in saying chaos in, Iran and, therefore

chaos in the region, but really doesn't have a strategy, followed Israel

into this war, which is why it's so important whenever we talk about this

to say this is an unprovoked war for.

make Trump really seem like he is following the leadership of

another country because, one, I think that's what happened.

And two, if Trump decides that he's had enough and wants to declare victory

and pull out, the Israelis are gonna be there to say, no, no, no, no.

And we have to be there to say yes, yes, yes, yes.

We also have to tie it to APAC and the strong Israel lobby that

exists in the United States that has captured our government.

You know, I spend a lot of time in Congress going every single week, and

it's amazing how many of the members of Congress not only take large amounts of

money from apac, but do Israel's bidding.

And that's certainly true of the Republican party that is

also afraid of Trump and afraid of standing up against him.

Even though the Republican base, especially the young people in the

Republican base are very much against this, but it's true on the hawkish

side of the Democratic party as well, where you have leadership like Chuck

Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries speaking out of both sides of their mouth.

And when this 50 do billion dollars comes up, to give Trump more money for this war,

I wouldn't bet that the Democrats would, get together and say No Collectively.

Yeah.

couple points there.

I'll say it.

Some of these congress people actually served in the IDF as well.

Brian Mast,

head

of the right on the house side.

The head of foreign relations.

But, couple things that you pointed out there, right?

let me go back to the different interests.

What is the US interest?

What is Israel's interest here?

so you go back to Brzezinski with his grand chess board, right?

talked about, control over the Euro, the Eurasia in the United States.

He control Eurasia.

You have Wolf of Its in, the doctrine of Wolfowitz back in 92.

saying that the United States do not tolerate Any challenge to us primacy.

you have the project for the New American Century, which talked about, extending

US dominance and definitely, so you have all these goals back in the, you

know, the nineties, et cetera, right?

To maintain, unipolar, polarly, right.

Ly.

now a lot of, many, analysts saying that we're moving towards,

pluralities, multi polarities, even Rubio in a speech, acknowledged that

the world is no longer unipolar.

Now it's multipolar, pep Escobar calling multimodal and Vij.

Pshaw doesn't agree.

He, he feels that we're going into hyper capitalism and hyper imperialism.

All this right to say that we're seeing this continuous, this from the nineties

onward, this continuity of policy.

We see Obama when, Bush going into West Asia, then Obama talking to about, pivot

to Asia after about 20 years in, in, you know, fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

is the current drive in your opinion, To bring down Te Haran, actually really,

a way to get to China, in your opinion.

'cause China right now is the leading, contender or the leading, challenge to us

at least economic primacy in the world.

Well, yes, certainly the China is the number one purchaser

of Iranian oil, so it does hurt them.

But I think it's also important to look at the national strategy doctrine

that, that the Trump administration put out, that talked about the.

Basically a pivot to Latin America.

Mm-hmm.

Talked about a revival of the Monroe doctrine, really the Don Row doctrine.

Mm-hmm.

and we see that with the meeting that they had in South Florida

recently, bringing together 17 heads of states, the right wing heads of

states throughout Latin America, under the pretext of, combating drugs.

we see it in the way they kidnapped Maduro and, his wife Celia Flores

in Venezuela, and have forced the Venezuelans to give concessions to

US oil companies as well as gold.

we see it in the strangling of Cuba and the really.

Vicious efforts to topple that government.

So, that's why I think we have to acknowledge different goals between

Israel and the Trump administration, whereas I think the Trump administration

would've been happy to not spend so much time and energy and resources in the

Middle East and employ them elsewhere.

But here we are, and it seems like Trump is just going down

this path of getting deeper and deeper into the hell hole of war.

when he says it's gonna be quick, the markets, revive.

And then when he says, this is gonna be long war, they're down in the dumps.

We know that the prices of gas at the pump are going up.

And if it keeps going up, I think there will be a lot more visible opposition

to this war than we're seeing right now.

so I know you mentioned, how APAC.

Is also influencing, but you also have, and I think he is one of this camp of

the Christian fun mentalism as well in driving this policy in West Asia.

we just saw recently, complaints from soldiers, and troops saying

that the commanders are framing this conflict in religious term.

Like we're heading to our Armageddon and they're embracing it, so there's multiple

influence and layers and this thing here.

I dunno what to call it.

Insanity you can call it.

And yes, this Christian insanity that this is part of, leading to the Armageddon.

And so it's God's will.

And, Trump is anointed by Jesus.

I, go into Congress every single week, and if people get a chance to watch some

of the videos on social media, you'll.

See some of these crazy interactions like one I had this week, with Senator Kramer

who has a big Israeli flag outside of his office in Washington DC and when I talked

to him and said, is this a war for Israel?

He said, we have a biblical obligation to Israel.

So these are people that are supposed to represent their states,

their districts that are giving away over a billion dollars a day.

To this war for biblical obligations that we have to Israel.

It's really hard to counter when they go this biblical route.

Yeah.

and they seem so, like when you look at them, they seem like so crazy,

you know, some crazy eyes as well.

I've seen those videos with those congress people, I mean, they just outrageous.

Just they feel like they're like unhinged, you know,

Absolutely.

In fact, the only thing they can say in response to our questions is that we are

funded by the Chinese Communist Party.

And I heard of that.

We are friends with Qi and with Putin.

Rick Scott asked me, look me in the eye like very evilly and

say, are you an Iranian citizen?

such ridiculous baby stuff.

Instead of facing up to the fact that they are supporting Trump in this

unwinnable, reckless, dangerous war.

who didn't say beforehand that this would spread beyond Iran to

the entire region and affect the strait of Horus in the price of oil.

it was said by all kinds of analysts and, even government people, you wonder what

kind of intelligence in quotes they go on when they allow themselves to be dragged

into something that is already a regional war that is hurting our interests.

So made, so we're going back to Israel and.

What's their gambit here?

I mean, there's different goals.

They have their, I mean, for years then Yahoo.

I think he's been Prime Minister ever since.

It seems like he's always been there to me, right.

In this great democracy that,

yeah, see I can't, it seems like he's always been there.

You know, I can't remember anybody else but him.

But, but they've been pushing for this world for years.

Four years.

They've been, I mean, including, Bush two.

they were pushing him to go to Iran, you know, they were pushing for years and

they have an obsession like with Iran.

and like you say, they don't really, and their obsession is not

to fight them on their own 'cause they want the US to fight for them.

There's this thing around that's coming out more and more, about

this greater Israel project.

what can you tell me about this greater Israel project and does

this have something to do with what we're seeing right now?

the war against Iran?

Well, Iran has been supporting resistance movements in

the region, supporting Hezbollah, the, Houthis, Hamas, Israel is using the

pretext of Iran getting a nuclear weapon, which is so ironic because Israel is

the one that has the nuclear weapons.

Right.

In fact, many people are very fearful right now that they would use a

tactical nuclear weapon against Iran because the war is not going

the way they would like it to.

Right?

And they

get a nuclear world for the, The last 20 years has been like around

the corner about a couple days from now.

Absolutely.

And we had a nuclear deal assigned in 2015 that guaranteed

that there were inspectors,

And you know when Trump goes and, rips that up.

Then twice we talked about the negotiations and this war starting

in the midst of negotiations.

But let's remember that happened twice in the last year.

It happened back in June when there were negotiations.

Bombing the negotiators and then it happens again.

So obviously it's not about nuclear weapons and negotiating.

it's about Israel wanting to get rid of a neighbor that has not been in

lockstep with Israel's oppression.

we see what they're doing now to Lebanon.

You know, there's over.

500,000 displaced people in the last few weeks in Lebanon because Israel decided

that it would demand that all the people in southern Lebanon just get out of there.

You know, Iran has been standing up to Israel and

Israel wants to get rid of that,

Bahrain just introduced a UN resolution, this week

or yesterday, I believe.

where it condemns.

Iran only, for this war, For attacking its neighbors and stuff like that.

it doesn't mention anything about Iran being attacked and

retaliating to this attack.

It just condemns Iran only.

why are these, Arab countries, these monarchies and so forth,

including the leadership in Lebanon, why are they so submissive, to

Israel and the United States?

Well, they are lackeys of the United States.

They have US bases.

They made a deal with the devil and that was, excuse me.

Sorry for supposed protection.

The US would basis would be there to protect these, undemocratic,

mostly monarchies in these countries.

I mean, look at Saudi Arabia.

US complains about unfair elections in certain countries.

There's never been an election in Saudi Arabia or in these other Gulf states.

They're really, the protection is mostly against their own people.

And we see that in Bahrain right now, where, the majority Shia have been ruled

by a very, oppressive Sunni government.

And when the Iranians hit a US base in Bahrain, there were people in

Bahrain who were celebrating that.

So these monarchies, these right wing repressive governments in the

Gulf have been protected by having us bases or thought they would.

And now it turns out that they realize that having the US bases

there actually makes them a target.

So you just wonder as this all plays out, are they having second thoughts

about being so closely aligned with the United States and might

there be some major realignments.

Afterwards, depending on how this all shakes out, of not wanting to have us

bases, of not wanting to have, such close military ties with the United States

when all this is over, however it ends in your view, what will be the

balance of power look like in West Asia?

I hope this doesn't end in a nuclear apocalypse because then

we won't even be around to discuss it.

I think that Iran.

Will be weaker militarily, but actually stronger, socially because there's more

unity right now in Iran, certainly, than there's been in a very divided society.

And now there's much more sense of, nationalism and opposition

to an outside force that came in.

And on the first.

Day blew up a girl school.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, how can you be celebrating a US invasion if they're killing civilians like

we're doing and blowing up infrastructure that everybody needs, whether you're

for or against the present government.

So I don't think this government is gonna fall.

I think, that Israel is just losing.

Absolutely losing any kind of, ability to, have these, accords with its Arab

neighbors, the Abraham Accords, where it was, making nice with the Arab neighbors

and Saudi Arabia was about to do that.

Mm-hmm.

when the Gaza genocide started and now they're even further away from that.

So Israel is losing power.

Israel is losing, whatever legitimacy it had, I mean, it still has it

unfortunately among, leadership in the United States and in, Western Europe.

That's been so awful in this as well.

but in the long run, I think it's terrible for, the people of Israel who should have

been rising up against the genocide in Gaza and unfortunately never did that.

Indeed.

It was unfortunate and only didn't rise.

when they did the, polls, the

opinion polls, yeah,

the opinion polls like 80% supported it, so

Yeah.

Like high seventies had no concern.

They weren't worried about what was happening in Gaza.

And you just think, you know, what happens to people, how do they get to that point

where their humanity has been erased?

Indeed.

Well, I think this is a good place to wrap up today.

Madea, thank you again for coming on the show, sharing

your thoughts, time, experience.

any final comments before we go?

Well, we talked about how unfortunate it is that there

hasn't been a big anti-war movement that we can see in the streets,

but I think we have to build one.

And you, Jovanni, are.

Connected to a lot of veterans who are against this war.

we were just with Brian McGinnis, the, marine veteran who spoke out in

the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing and had his arm broken.

How's he doing by the

way?

He is doing good and the response has been millions and

millions of people supporting him.

And so I think an incident like that shows just how people are ready to rise up.

they just need to be pushed.

So our organizations have to get stronger, have to work together.

Have to really get out there because otherwise we're gonna

see US troops on the ground.

We're gonna see lots of us service people being killed in Iran.

things are going to get a heck of a lot worse if we don't make those

public opinion polls translate.

Into street power, into angry calls to our members of Congress, into

town hall meetings where we say, hell no, not another penny for this war.

we have to make our opposition felt by the people who are supposed to represent us.

You mentioned Earl earlier, the Democrats and how they're

just standing on the sideline.

And my suspicion is that they want everything to fall on Trump

because they're looking at it as a, political victory for them,

for the next election cycle.

Absolutely.

And.

you know, they don't care about the people's lives in, Iran.

They care about the politics of it all.

And that's why we see sometimes the Democrats coming at Trump from the

right, like they did in Venezuela and said, wait, you didn't do regime change?

Mm-hmm.

or Ukraine, you're not giving enough.

Support for Ukraine.

you're negotiating.

That's not right.

Mm-hmm.

or they're saying, in this case of Iran, well, you got rid of the ayatollah, but

you didn't accomplish regime change.

So we can't trust the Democrats.

That's why the pa, the pressure that we have to put on, those who are

supposed to represent us have to be.

Both on the Republicans as well as the Democrats, and certainly there

are some Democrats who are good.

Bernie Sanders has been excellent on this.

Some of the other senators, have been good.

They've come out of these, closed door briefings and said that they

were appalled by what they heard, that there is no exit strategy

The house have been good as well, introducing war powers resolutions.

so there are some good ones, but they will all be much better if they hear

from us as angry US citizens saying this war should never have started

and must be stopped immediately.

indeed.

What can we find you, Madea?

So I'm at Code Pink.

It's code pink.org.

Please look us up.

join this growing movement.

like the veterans groups, we now have chapters all over the country and we,

encourage people to join whatever group that you feel comfortable with and

just be more involved, more out there.

Leave your comfort zone and just make sure they hear from us.

You have folks.

Look up Madea.

Watch her videos.

Watch her challenge the, Congress people watch how stupid she makes 'em look.

and thank you guys for joining us.

I look forward to seeing you again, Madea.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jovanni.

Good to be on with you.

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