March 26, 2025 (EIRNS)—Appearing on Judge Napolitano’s much-viewed Judging Freedom channel on March 24, Alaistair Crooke, a former British diplomat and intelligence officer with decades of experience in the Middle East, issued a blunt warning to the folks in Washington, D.C.: If the U.S. attacks Iran, it will destroy any possibility of restoring U.S.-Russian relations and ending the Ukraine conflict. The Russian political class is already deeply distrustful of the United States, he warned. If the U.S. attacks Iran it will be taken as a message that the Americans are “agreement-incapable,” killing any possibility of trust between the two superpowers.
Crooke detailed his evidence, that the U.S. bombing campaign against the Houthis is preparation for a decapitation strike on Iran. There is a strong belief in Washington that Israel’s decapitation of Hezbollah’s leadership is a model of how to solve the Iran problem, he warned. People think that they no longer have to worry about taking out Iran’s oil and gas facilities and nuclear sites to overthrow its government. It is now “widely believed” in D.C. that if targeted strikes take out (decapitate) Iran’s leadership, the Iranian people will rise up to welcome the new leadership put in by the U.S. and Israel, as the HTS did in Syria—an “imaginary outcome” that will not happen!
This is coupled with the Israeli line, also popular now in Washington, that Iran is in its worst security situation since 1979, because Israel has knocked out its air defenses and hit Syria, Yemen and Lebanon. This mistaken evaluation was repeated by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz on the talk shows last Sunday, Crooke reminded.
It is Israel which desperately needs this war on Iran, to rally wartime support from the population once again, Crooke proffered. Of great concern, is that an Israeli delegation led by Netanyahu’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegby, and including (among others) the Atomic Energy Agency, has arrived in Washington for strategic consultations, with their agenda being to convince Washington that Iran cannot be allowed to drag this out, and the decision to strike must be taken this Spring.
Crooke was emphatic that Russia cannot sit quietly by and let Iran fall. Not because Iran and Russia just signed a trade and friendship treaty, and not because of some “concert of nations” theory. Rather, because Iran sits in the middle of the International North-South Trade Corridor, which is Russia’s main trade corridor for the future, and it sits in the middle of the East-West corridor which runs through Central Asia. Defending Iran is crucial to Russia’s own economic self-interest.
