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Former BBC broadcaster Tony Gosling and I agreed on some points, and disagreed on others, last night on Press TV. Below is a partial transcript.

Press TV: Good evening. In tonight’s Spotlight, we examine a significant development in West Asia. The regional efforts for de-escalation between Iran and the U.S. and also resistance to U.S. secondary sanctions on Iran are increasingly beginning to overlap. Qatar’s Prime Minister is in Tehran discussing de-escalation, dialogue, and a phased maritime corridor through the Strait of Hormuz, while Russia says it will work with Iran and other countries to counter Washington’s secondary sanctions. So are regional countries beginning to take their security and economic interests into their own hands? Can Russia, China, and other powers prevent Washington from turning unilateral sanctions into a global policy? And are we witnessing the emergence of a regional and international order less impacted by the U.S. pressure? That’s what we’ll be discussing tonight with our guests: Kevin Barrett, editor of Al-Andalus Tribune of Saida, Morocco, and also joining us is Tony Gosling, historian and investigative journalist joining us from Bristol, the UK. I’m going to begin with Kevin Barrett, our guest from Morocco. Thank you so much for being with us. Let me begin by asking for your broad takeaway. Why do you think that the regional countries at this point are increasingly turning to Tehran directly to address de-escalation?

Kevin Barrett: Well, this is really the result of what’s been a clear Iranian victory in this war against Israel and the United States. The aggressors achieved nothing. They bragged that they were going to get a regime change and install puppet governments, and nothing like that happened. Quite the opposite. Iran has shown that it is the one that has the control over the Strait of Hormuz. It has shown that it is the one that has its weapons protected, buried deep underground, where they’re in many cases impregnable. It has more manufacturing capacity to renew its weapons than the Americans and Israelis have to renew theirs. And the American bases in the region have been decimated and the Americans have retreated. So the writing was on the wall already just 48 hours after the dastardly surprise attack on February 28th. But it’s slowly sinking in all over the world that this has been the most significant U.S. defeat perhaps in all of American history and the most important victory for a country that’s working for a multipolar world. And so now the world sees that we’re heading for that multipolar world. The U.S. is run by blatantly irresponsible criminal forces. Its figurehead president is a certified narcissistic lunatic who you never know what he’s going to say one minute after what he said the previous minute. And so every country has to try to figure out who’s reliable, who can it actually deal with, who’s going to keep its word. Well, the Americans won’t keep their word. They tore up and shredded every deal that they had, including the MOU. And so now we’re in a world where it’s every country for itself. And the countries that used to have to worry about American pressure are now seeing that the whole world will be better off if we get out from under this dollar hegemony where the Americans have the ability to choke off people’s money flows. And so that’s the new world and every country is having to adjust to it and go straight to Iran to make those kinds of deals to renew the relations in the region.

Press TV: That’s right. Now let me bring in Tony Gosling, our guest from Bristol. Thank you so much for being with me, Tony. I also wanted your thoughts on what it means that countries in the region that hosted and still host the U.S. bases are coming to Tehran directly, asking for de-escalation. And also what is important is to talk about what is happening in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran and Oman, which both of them are inching closer to a deal on how to manage the Strait of Hormuz, could that proposed maritime corridor through the Strait of Hormuz be a practical model for regional management, this time without Washington’s interference?

Tony Gosling: Well, yes, of course it could. But the trouble is, and I have to disagree with the other guest you have on there, I don’t think we’ve seen anything yet when it comes to this war. It’s certainly not a victory. This is tempting fate to say such things. It has been, so far, pretty much a defeat. But the thing is, you must never count your chickens before they’re hatched. This war could easily escalate. I think it could escalate in September after what we call here in the UK the silly season, where the politicians are schmoozed by the military-industrial complex, by the banksters, who are really driving much of the warfare that’s going on in the world today. Of course, these are not democracies. The people really aren’t getting a say whatsoever. And if you needed to be reminded of that, all you need to know is that Donald Trump campaigned on an anti-war platform and then he’s actually started one of the most horrific and horrendous wars of aggression, which is the greatest crime anybody in humanity can ever commit, with this illegal and unprovoked war against Iran. Okay, so the Americans at the moment are on the back foot, but that doesn’t mean to say that this is over by any means. Anyone that’s dropping their guard as a result should be extremely careful about counting their chickens. They’ll be dropping their guard. They think that somehow they’ve won, and I think it’s very dangerous. I think the war is still very much in progress. The Americans have got huge resources. They are in terminal decline, clearly. But a wounded tiger, as we know, can be extremely dangerous. They have nuclear weapons. They have got all sorts of weapons they haven’t used yet. And to think that this is all over and that they’ve won is a big mistake.

Press TV: All right, thank you so much, Tony. Now, let me go back to Kevin Barrett. Kevin, Tony makes a very good point. The Americans are on the back foot, but they still have a lot of resources. And also, we shouldn’t forget that they have a lot of allies in the region. So do you think that this is just a tactical retreat by the Americans, or is it a strategic one?

Kevin Barrett: Well, I think Tony made a great point that nobody should be letting down their guard. And it’s possible that there will be escalating military action. That’s true. But in terms of the relative balance of power, balance of forces, and the reactions of the various power centers around the world, it seems to me that any imaginable escalation of forces leaves the Americans even worse off. So in that sense, I think that barring extremely unforeseen circumstances, this can be marked as an Iranian victory, but one in which the Iranians obviously have to recognize that there may be more military attacks against them. That’s absolutely correct. And as far as Trump believing in Christian Zionism, yes, I agree that Christian Zionism and Zionism as a messianic millenarian ideology is the root of a lot of these problems. That’s what created the so-called state of Israel.

But I don’t think Trump himself is a true believer. I think Trump is a true believer in whatever is going to work for Trump. And I think Trump has been terrorized by his Israeli handlers into feeling like his life is on the line. And I think he’s suffering from a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, in which the captor manages to win the affection and loyalty of his abused captive. I think the Israelis have been essentially abusing their captive Trump. They have sexual blackmail on him. They have probably been the key players in the fake assassination attempts against Trump, the Butler Pennsylvania stunt where Trump did that ridiculous smeared fake blood on his face and jumped up and waved in front of the flag for the pre-placed photographers. The Secret Service never would have allowed a president to do that if he was really being shot at. And then we had the recent White House correspondent’s dinner shooting as well, which was also a hoax.

So I think that corrupt forces that are allied to Israel and its Kosher Nostra, the dominant crime syndicate in the United States, have totally surrounded Trump. They’ve threatened him. And they’ve terrorized him. Trump is constantly whining “the Iranians are going to kill me, the Iranians are coming after me.” I think that’s Stockholm Syndrome. That’s because he knows that the Zionists have a gun to his head and never stop reminding him of that…

For the full conversation, watch the video above. You can read the full transcript at my Substack using the transcript feature..