 Welcome to News Clicks Show, mapping fault lines where we discuss major geopolitical issues around the world. Today we are going to be talking about an issue which has to do with technology, which has to do with global politics, which is the recent seizure of nearly 33 sites by the United States. These sites belong to Iran's press TV. There is a site of Al-Masjida which belongs to Houthis. There is a site which has to do with Palestine. A lot of such sites being seized by the US Justice Department under the claim that they spread disinformation. Now this has caused a lot of condemnation around the world. And to talk more about this, we have with us Prabir Prakash. Prabir, thank you so much for joining us. So first of all, it's quite unprecedented in some ways, but also very blatant attack on the media of Iran because the press TV domains under .com and .net have been seized. It's still available under .ir. And there's this whole claim that they're spreading misinformation and there's this entire narrative being built. So all this while we were hoping that there would be an advance in US-Iran relations, would settle down once Biden came to power. It would be slightly different from the Trump times. But now we see this very blatant attack on the freedom of expression itself. So how do we see this in, especially technically as well? What are the implications? Well, let's pass this into two sets of questions. One is the larger significance of this particular set of seizures. And what does it mean technically or technologically to seize a certain domains? Now if you see the domains which they have seized, they all end with .com, .net or .org. Now this are essentially under US law because their domains given to the United States and the domain registrars are also the United States registries. So effectively they operate under US law unlike for instance .ir which should be under the law of Iran and .in which is under the Indian law. That's the jurisdictional legal issue. So but this has also been an unprecedented move in spite of the legal part being what it is because the US has never really gone after other countries in this blatant fashion, seizing domains just because they're .com, .org or .net. Because internationally the expectation is these are sort of international domains. Technically they're not but they don't look like domains which are like .in or basically various country domains which tend to end with the name of the country in some form or the other. So in that sense it's an unprecedented step by the United States saying that now it regards any .com, .net, .org or .org domains and there are a set of other such domains belong essentially to the United States government jurisdiction and they can do what they want with it. So that is one part of the issue and I think it also sends a rather important message that parties who are critical of the United States should not set up domains under .com, .net, .org or any such domains but should set it under their country domain names or register in countries where such action is unlikely. So these are one of the steps that I think most domain people who are registering domains should take cognizance of that they are if they go for .net, .com, .org they are essentially accepting American legal jurisdiction. If you look at the bigger picture and that's what you really we are really looking at. On one hand you have a set of issues being discussed with Iran and it's really the JCPOA that how does the United States return to the agreement which Trump had walked out of. So that's really the issue. Whatever way people might frame it the reality is that's a key issue that US has to walk back on something it had walked out of and that's the negotiations. They are hinging the negotiations appears that ok we will come back but the negotiations for your missiles and other issues that we are raising will continue post our walking back into the deal. Now Iran's position on this has been from the beginning that we are not going to allow you by the virtue of walking out of the deal now to negotiate a bigger deal and which is which was not the intention in that case we are not coming back. This is something which I think the United States has to negotiate and it's also clear that under Ibrahim Bahraim you see the position has really not changed. So these are positions which are the national positions that Iran has and I don't think they are going to be determined by who is the president and who is not the president. So I think that message is also quite clear. The question that arises is is there a larger disengagement the United States has with West Asia and will the processes that Iran and Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates have already set in motion which is talking locally regionally about Yemen and other issues will that continue. So the dynamics of the US engagement in West Asia with other countries including Iran and of course Israel being the other spoiler in the pack how that will play out we have to see but I think there are two parallel processes in operation. One is the US engagement with the region which in the long term can only weaken because I think the regional players are deciding that they have to you know really settle issues among themselves they should not be letting the US set their agenda as well. I think that's a longer term issue that's coming up and I think that's for instance the trooper Afghanistan as well where it's no longer the global John Dom the United States the sole hegemon of the world deciding everywhere what should happen. So I think that is returned to a more natural discourse of the regional powers and in that I think Iran, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates these are the three players talking of course there is Iraq there is Syria there is of course other players in the field as well but if we look at the larger picture of West Asia then I think at the moment the dynamics between the monarchies led by one on one side by Iran on the other side and in which case you also get Syria Lebanon also into the mix these are the local alliances which are going to really negotiate of course Iraq as you know is always in a bit of a mix. So all of these things we have to see and if you talk about external players then the near players are really players like Turkey Pakistan could be a player but really doesn't seem to be doing much at the moment and of course Afghanistan is also a neighbor of Iran. So all this would have some impact but I think the things are not at the moment as US or Western power-centric in West Asia as it was say five or seven years back and I think that's something which is in the long term good for the region. We're talking about another key player that's of course Russia and we did see that Putin and Biden also had a meeting last week there was a lot of buzz around it finally it turned out that the opinions are still split over whether it was actually a productive one or it was basically a stalemate so to speak. So how do we also see the role of Russia and the US Russia equation right now in this context? You see there are two sides to the meeting that Biden had with Putin. It's very clear that there is one thing which has happened which is talking about nuclear weapons and I think that is something that we have to think is a big issue people seem to have forgotten it but we have the doomsday clock it's pretty close to 12 o'clock you have new kind of weapons coming in what I call the hypersonic weapons you also have the kind of weapons which were really thought to destabilize any disarmament issue which was basically missile shields. So these are the issues which have been dogging the US Russia relationship and the fact that Biden and Putin have agreed to talk walking back into an arms limitation agreement. I think talks about it and starting this I think is a very welcome sign because one should not forget the centrality of the civilizational challenge of nuclear weapons. I think that is something that the western media tends to underestimate for them how to control Russia and get it out of Europe and make it somehow a pariah nation seems to be the main thread that emerges and you know we keep on hearing about how Putin is becoming worse and worse because it's becoming weaker and weaker. Now that story has been going around for donkey's ears now but the same story is almost rewritten every time there is an engagement. The other part of it and this is I think very important that US and the western countries are not going to stop with their sanctions regime on Russia. The European Union does not have the same stake because they have a stake of a larger duration trade and other agreements taking place which would determine that they can have an economic engagement with both Russia, Central Asia and China. The United States would like the Western Europe to be more US focused which means it becomes really what was called the NATO not Atlantic Treaty Organization which is to bind the two sides of the Atlantic together. So if European Union doesn't look only towards the Atlantic which is an ocean so it's really not human beings but not America would be the other part but that's quite far away and if it looks at the European land mass and the Asian land mass then its stake of the European Union in Russia and China and Central Asia is much greater. That's where Europe really belongs. It's only the maritime expansion of Western Europe that made it feel it's a part of the oceans not really part of the land mass and as we know Germany is at the moment one end of the belt road initiative across European land mass, Eurasian land mass and therefore it is becoming an important issue for Germany that do they maintain normal relations with Russia and China trade relations or the dope. The Joker in the back is the fact that the US controls the global financial system and therefore if the issue sanctions they and they do it almost you know like having the breakfast every morning what sanctions do we do today then European Union is sort of dragged into this because as of date no major financial entity in Europe is going to buck the American strength on terms of this financial control except Russia and Russia has already sort of become immune to sanctions because the way it has structured its economy the way it's building links with China it really is not as dependent as it used to be so given that I think the sanctions are going to continue whether there is a disengagement on the nuclear issue in Iran or the disarmament talks that takes place in Russia I think the sanctions regimes are going to continue so we want to have this split personality regime in operation where you can normalize the nuclear engagement at the same time you continue your sanctions regime so I think that's the way it's going to shape up and let's see what happens the only other issue which I think is something which again the Western media is very very partisan if we will partially blinkered if we will that they talk only about the fact that the all these groups which are operating on ransomware etc etc using cyber hacking tools are all based on Russia therefore these are all Russian operations or Chinese operations that's also there in play but what they seem to forget that we have the Snowden Revolution right we have a huge amount of material that has come we have discussed it in our shows which shows clearly that the US was the leader of the cyber hacking regime in the world and in terms of offensive and defensive capabilities the United States is still number one so ranking that is there which agencies which get together and do this rankings give so given that to the fact that they have said they will discuss the cyber weapons issue or cyber hacking issues I think it's very important but the people again tend to forget the Russia and China have been saying it now for last 12 10 12 years that we need a treaty which limits cyber weapons ban cyber weapons because the danger is not five or 10 people doing hacking the danger is that when nation states use thousands of people the best minds that are there in this in this areas to build hacking tools which is what the NSA did which is what the CIA did and then these tools are dumped or accessible to hackers and that's what happened with as we know with the NSA tools and we know also partially that happened with the CIA tools I'm sure this is not limited to only the United States because human beings if they're involved in creating hacking tools they are not as secure as you know governments think they are so therefore it does leak out and the quality of this hacking tools are way beyond what five or six criminals can do that's why a group of companies including Microsoft came out with the statement that nation states should not be involved in hacking now will these countries agree to that that's an open question but I think if they do want to take steps to bring the issue of cyber weapons on par with what we have done with nuclear weapons or with chemical and biological weapons I think that would be very welcome step because it's absolutely true the threat is not from just five or six criminals I think the world can save itself if there's small groups working in this way but we cannot save ourselves from and everything as we know today whether it's finance with the hospitals where this power grids everything works on the basis of a stable cyber infrastructure right so I think that's a very important area I hope that this engagement will pave the way for what has not happened till now the United Nations there have been a number of such discussions have taken place as a group that even set up on this but really the United States continue to sabotage it calling for all the criminal things we should go to something else you have set up which is nothing to do with cyber weapons but it is to do with crime and so on and just more a kind of what should be considered weapon and what is not right so this whole argument is really something which the United States been blocking on different platforms and I think this is something which if they do engage it would really be welcome it can be expanded to include other major players right and I think that is something we have to see but yes they've engaged to agree to engage what it means yes thank you so much for talking to us that's all your time for today keep watching news click