 Hello, and welcome to NewsClick's International Roundup. This week, we take a look at the latest developments around the controversy around Donald Trump's impeachment as well as the situation in West Asia after the conclusion of the UN General Assembly Summit. To talk more about this, we have with us Prabir Prakash. Hello, Prabir. Prabir, so last week saw a lot of debate and controversy over a possible impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump. And the details are still very murky, but a lot of this has to do with the call between Trump and President Zelensky of Ukraine, the new president. So how do you see the case and do you actually see the grounds for any sort of impeachment proceedings to credibly happen? I think we should take a step back and look at the American politics differently. American politics for the last 15, 20 years, probably even more, has been what we would call a completely broken political system, where the president is continuously impeached and threatened to be impeached by the Congress. The president seems to have taken away the war-making powers of the Congress into the president's hand, afterwards called the global war on terror, which seems to be never ending. And you have a situation where the Congress, particularly the Senate, if it is in the hands of one party, then the other party holds the presidency or the lower house, thousands of representatives, then a three-way fight begins, which begins in the budget, begins on various of the issues. So this has been a continuous problem in the US politics that they are not able, in some sense, to get a consensus, what the country should or shouldn't do, which would seem to indicate a deeper crisis of the system as a whole. In this particular case, particularly when Trump came into power, there are sections who did not like it and argued that he came somehow with the help of the Russians, therefore the whole Russia-gate issue, which has gone on for fairly long, and the Mueller investigations, various other investigations have taken place. We don't see what results can or cannot be because honestly, rest of the world does not consider significant for a very different reason. They said Americans have been involved in elections in every other country in the world. Why are they now screaming for their elections to be interfered if it is true by a foreign power? Of course, every country has an interest in other countries' elections and that's why if America can take quote-unquote interest, they came public credit for Yeltsin's victory, Yeltsin's elections against Zuganov, then why are they crying now even if it is true Russia intervened in the US elections? So for the rest of the world, it's a non-starter. For the US people, it's a very big issue. Yes, it is our God-given right to interfere in every country's elections, but nobody should be interfering in our elections. So this is the difference between the US politics and how the rest of the world sees it. In this particular case, the Trump administration has always argued that the DNC had launched a motivated campaign because they wanted to hide Hillary Clinton's problems. And because of that, they raised the bogey of essentially Russian interference and Hillary Clinton's problems not with respect to her server, but with respect to the fact that she was effectively the DNC committee in Hillary Clinton conspired to deny Bernie Sanders the nomination for the Democratic Party. And that's what WikiLeaks had brought out and they wanted to blame it on the Russians. So this is the whole start of it. Whether Russians did get access to the DNC server or not is a good question. The question is DNC server was not protected and it had very low level of shall we say cybersecurity. So given all of this, the whole argument that the Russia-gate issue had an Ukrainian involvement has been raised time and again. There have been people who have been close to the DNC, this is Chalupa sisters who are Ukrainian-Americans. It's also the crowd strike was run by a person who was an Ukrainian origin, United States American, but US origin. So all these questions have been there in the air. So Trump after the Buller committee has virtually said that there is no proof of any wrongdoing which is impeachable that Trump is asking Zelensky in this phone call to see whether there was any truth to do those kind of remarks and also whether there's also been an argument which has been raised that the steel dossier also had some Ukrainian inputs or origin. So he really wants to strike back at the DNC and the allegations of his presidential elections have been the Russia-gate angle to see if there is a Ukraine-gate angle to this. And of course the other issue is the Biden's frontrunner and of the Democratic Party's nomination and Biden has a Ukrainian connection. Hunter Biden was made a consultant in one of the companies. I think the $50,000 a month salary or something and there was a particular prosecutor who was trying to look into this company, not against Biden, but into this company's affairs. And when Biden came and wanted that prosecutor to be fired and withhold $500 million that Ukraine was supposed to get from the US, then one of the arguments is that Biden was really doing it to save his son and the company that his son was involved with. Of course it can be argued that wasn't what Biden was really performing as his duty. He had been instructed by Obama to take out this prosecutor, asked him to sign this prosecutor because of other corruption charges. But if we don't want to get into that, I don't think that in any other country people would have batted an eyebrow on this kind of issue. And I therefore think it's much more a matter of not of shall we say what Trump did or didn't do but really the broken nature of the American politics where they don't know how to accept their no longer the sole global hegemon and this is what is tearing the United States apart. In fact, Trump has serious crimes against him which should be investigated which is what is doing in Venezuela, what is done in Syria, what's doing in Iran, all of which are actually war crimes, striking of Syria for instance. All of these are war crimes and all of these would be illegal acts the United States is doing but you know the US illegal acts don't matter. Every other country it is supposed to abide by international law but not the United States and that is United States legal position. Forget about it whether it's a real something which can be taken to the court or not. International court or not US doesn't accept the international court even when its rulings have come against it and US law its claims goes and operates every part of the world. We have an epitome and president convicted by US court and taken abducted really from Panama to serve US justice. So you know this kind of things really are an indication of the failure of the crisis of the global system and also the crisis internal to the American system which they don't seem to know how to resolve the internal contradictions anymore. Right. Do you also think that this process might actually end up benefiting Trump in terms of his being able to polarize his vote base by showing himself as victim? You know his vote base is going to stay with him. The question is what happens to the people in the middle and will that depend on the impeachment? No. I think what it is really going to depend is whether the Iran crisis can be resolved will it lead to a further global crisis and will it actually have implications for the global economy if there is a war? The global economy is going to go down the tube so that's going to happen. And partly how he handles his relationship with China. Let's face it the American trade war and the technical war technology war against China has taken us across spectrum in the United States. So how that shapes up and what is the impact going to be? I think that's going to be a much bigger issue. In the short term this is not going to probably affect the US election. What's really going to affect the election is what happens to the economy. And this is you know hardly eight months, nine years away. So I think the key issue is if there is a shooting war then I think Trump's chances are going to be bleak and whether there will be a shooting war or not depends on how much maneuverability Trump has. And unfortunately impeachment threats of impeachment reduces maneuverability and therefore may make it much more difficult for him now to get out of this locked down battle words move that America the collision course more that the American and the Iranians have been moving on particularly the Americans. And Trump can he have the political maneuverability to get out of it. This may actually constrict that. I think that is the issue that we should all be worried about. So let's delve a bit more into the issue you're talking about about Trump's equation relationship the US relationship with Iran. And recently we saw that Iran did release one of the tankers it had it had been pounded. And there was a UN General Assembly summit last week this much speculated Trump Rouhani meeting did not take place at the same time. There have been certain voices demanding further negotiations. And we also have the fact that Germany UK and France did release a statement declaring that Iran was responsible for the attacks on Saudi Arabia. So keeping all this in mind do you think what do you think is likely to happen in the next couple of weeks in this part of the world so to speak. The crystal ball that I have is very crowded on that central issue that we have is is there a way for the United States to walk back to the JCPOA agreement. That's the key issue. And it also appears that while the three countries to mention Germany France and England blame by blamed Iran for the attack on Aramco but they also asked that the United States make certain gestures by and basically 15 billion dollar of oil trade should be allowed. They should be allowed to have this 15 billion dollar of oil trade with Iran. And this was also something they have been saying. So to be it reads that they were trying to be even-handed. We say this for helping the United States and Saudi Arabia but we also then want you to give the concession that we can trade it with Iran and then Iran formally can still stay within the JCPOA even if the United States has walked out of it. So this was I think the package deal and that was the expectation that the Rouhani and Trump would meet on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. We didn't take place. So this possibility exists. There have been reports in the newspapers that Trump was willing to go with it and they are trying to work out on that. But that's what I was talking about earlier that this requires Trump to have a stronger position in the United States which unfortunately for him the impeachment may actually weaken because let's face it. There is a loss of face if he has to walk back the JCPOA even in some sense. So it will be taken as his defeat. Why the hell did he withdraw out of the agreement with Iran? And his only criticism for that would then be it was signed by Obama not be. So given that, that kind of position I think is going to be a little more difficult for him right now. But yes Iran has completed what it was supposed to do. It did not do it, did not release a tanker immediately after the grace one was released. It waited and that's also his need to show that the two incidents were not linked. So even though we think that possibly the whole world believes they are linked and they also did release the tanker. Finally, I think it was very clear after some time they would release a tanker which they have done. I think Iran's issue is a very simple one. That they are not going to follow down Iraq's route which is accept sanctions, UN sanctions and essentially delude themselves completely of all possibility of resistance before they're invaded. Iran is not going to do that. And Iran's capability lies in the fact that it is militarily certainly a capability which the United States does not seem to have foreseen. They have not spent on what would be called the conventional military weapons, air force, aircraft carriers, all of that. But they have speed boats to counter aircraft carriers, missiles, torpedoes using small submarines. And then as we know now drones and cruise missiles. Now drones and cruise missiles essentially are very similar in technology. Drones has an added ability to hover over a target. But if you consider suicide drones that they go and hit as they did in Aramco, they're really not fundamentally very different from cruise missiles. So I think given all this development and the fact that Iran seems to have parted with this technology to Hezbollah earlier and now Houthis, it's clear they were transferred technology. And now there are also detailed drawings showing that essentially their version of Quds-1, which is the cruise missile, the cruise missile that they have. And Somar, but the one which Iran have has significant differences as well. And detailed reports are now available on blogs and other places, which are certainly not pro-Iranian, which shows what the differences are. Given all of that, we have to see it as a transfer of technology, not a transfer of weapons. And given the fact that the US has transferred weapons, including support, active war support to Saudi Arabia, it's very difficult to blame Iran for this. But the fact is they have Houthis, they have Hezbollah, they have the Syrians with them, and they also have the Iraqi forces with them. So today Iran is a much stronger position than Iraq was for instance when Bush invaded Iraq. So given all of that, and Iran is much bigger than Iraq. Given all of that, I think the military equation is not in the United States favour in terms of taking out Iran without damage to itself. But at the same time, can the walk back from a very stupid walkout that the United States did, walking out of the JCPOA, a part of non-functional US politics again, that any president which strikes an agreement, the next president walks out of it, carries an agreement which was on a climate change as well as the nuclear agreement. So I think the crisis that the United States has internally is being imposed all over the globe. And if the US, the biggest political power, cannot reach any stable agreement globally, then the global international regime as we would call it is actually at stake. And that's also the issue that we have here, is the United States capable of having a peace agreement with any country? And can a president reach such an agreement is as much the issue as to Donald Trump? Thank you, Prabir. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching NewsClick.