The NdB Sunday Show — (Ret.)Col Chris Wyatt: How Trump is taking the ANC's allies off the chess board...

In the latest NdB Sunday Show with Chris Steyn, US intelligence analyst, retired Colonel Chris Wyatt describes how the African National Congress' “friends are disappearing”. He says US President Donald Trump is “playing 3D Chess while everyone else is playing Checkers. Trump has a long-term strategy here… the rogue states… the friends of the African National Congress have been taken off the chessboard one piece at a time. Nicolas Maduro wanted for criminal acts and for supporting terrorism and drug trafficking was extradited back to the United States. That regime has been hobbled. Cuba is being strangled. They no longer have any ability to influence things. Now it's Iran. So that's three of the ANC's friends. That really just leaves Russia, China and Brazil still on the map. Brazil will be dealt with eventually. The leader of that country is a convicted felon. He will eventually be dealt with by his own people. In the meantime, they're no threat to anyone. Russia is engaged in a war it cannot win because it's a foolish approach. China is doing nothing...” Col Wyatt adds that the three Iranian ships that participated in South Africa's BRICS exercise recently “are now at the bottom of the Arabian Gulf”. In his update on the raging war, Col Wyatt says: “I'm not sure we have an end state here. It seems like unconditional surrender and regime change are what it's going to be.”.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..Watch here.Listen here.Edited transcript of the interview.Chris Steyn (00:01.327)Welcome to the NDB Sunday Show with me, Chris Steyn and US intelligence analyst, retired Colonel Chris Wyatt. Morning, Colonel.Colonel (Ret) Chris Wyatt (00:10.606)Good morning Chris, I hope you're well this week.Chris Steyn (00:13.967)Well, I've been riveted to the news. Tell me, Chris, US President Donald Trump has demanded unconditional surrender from Iran. How likely is that demand to be met?Colonel (Ret) Chris Wyatt (00:32.334)I think that's the $64,000 question at this hour. How likely is it to be met? Well, it is interesting that Trump has gone ahead and demanded unconditional surrender. You don't often hear that. That clearly shows that the US authorities feel they have the upper hand in this conflict. The question is, who will surrender? Most of the senior leaders of this government apparently are no longer with us. So we're going to have someone step forward that will actually offer up an unconditional surrender. I don't know how quickly that'll happen. I think that's something that may take some time and that has extended this war most likely. Initially, with the objectives laid out, I assumed that this would be around a six week conflict. Now I expect to go longer than two months because of the unconditional surrender point which Trump has laid out there. It also makes it very clear that this is not simply because of the nuclear programme. Obviously, this is about regime change, this evil, unjust, undemocratic theocracy that has murdered thousands of people throughout the region through its proxies and directly on its own accord. A country that declared war on the United States in 1979. It took us 47 years to respond to that war declaration. A country that killed 341 Americans in Beirut and … in 1983 on a peacekeeping mission to end the conflict in Lebanon. They stoked the conflict. I think that what's going to happen here is that we are going to have to wait and see who emerges in Iran, if anyone emerges.One of the problems is that apparently the Israelis and Mossad have very good intelligence inside of Iran, which they've cultivated for decades. And they're able to find things out very quickly through obviously not electronic sources, but human intelligence sources. These Iranians aren't really using communication networks. You're passing word by messenger and by person to person, and yet they're still being found. So clearly there's some very good intelligence at work inside of Iran. And I think that the unconditional surrender may be something that actually does happen, but it's not going to be an easy or quick thing. As I said, someone has to emerge that is the leader and then they have to decide to do it. You look at the end of the Second World War, Hitler offed himself and then we had to accept the surrender from someone else.Chris Steyn (02:34.267)Chris, would you as a military man say this war has gone quite badly for everybody concerned?Colonel (Ret) Chris Wyatt (02:43.416)Well, I would say that it's gone quite badly for Iran, which is to be expected. I don't know the status of Israel. You don't see a lot of video coming out of Israel. Some people claim there's censorship going on. That may very well be the case. Normally when Iran attacks missiles on Israel, you see lots of videos where people are posting this stuff on X, for example. I haven't seen a lot of that. Maybe it's out there, but I'm not searching for it. Usually it's in your face, So I don't know what's happening in Israel, if it's going badly for them. But for the Iranians, certainly the Iranian regime is going very poorly.For the neighbours, it's disheartening to say the least. Iran has struck out at virtually every one of its neighbours, including Azerbaijan. They've attacked virtually everyone. It's crazy. The only people that they don't think they have attacked is Russia. That's about the only neighbour and Pakistan. Of course, attacking Pakistan would be a foolish mistake because they actually are nuclear armed and that would likely bring Armageddon to the Iranians, a possibility of that. But they've attacked every state in the region, even Lebanon. Lebanon has nothing to do with this conflict and they're attacking Lebanon.I would say it's gone very badly for Iran. I wouldn't say it's gone badly for the others. Of course, any attack, any destruction of civilian infrastructure, hotels, apartment buildings, ports, airports is tragic and the loss of life is unfortunate. But this is a rogue regime and they've proven it with their attacks. They're not attacking US military bases in these countries. They're attacking civilians. They claim they're attacking the military, but they're attacking civilians. And it's really unfortunate to see this thing happen. But I would say that it's gone very poorly for Iran.From the U.S. I think the U.S. government has achieved many of the goals they set out for initially. There is no Iranian Navy. It's a myth now. It's the ghost of the Iranian Navy. It's all that's out there. The three ships that, from a terrorist organisation that participated in South Africa's BRICS exercise recently, are now at the bottom of the Arabian Gulf. I guess we can call it the Arabian Gulf today rather than the Persian Gulf, that little dispute that's always going on. But they're no longer floating above the surface. The IRIS DINA, which participated in an exercise in India, which the US ironically also participated in. Once they left shore, they were sunk by a US submarine. The first time since World War II that the United States has sunk a surface vessel with a torpedo from a submarine. That's a first. I can't imagine being in the military and being a submariner for 70 years, nobody fires a missile at any targets. That's pretty crazy. So I guess it's just always prepared, never in action. Well, this is in action. A number of...Colonel (Ret) Chris Wyatt (05:00.888)personnel died in that and then the Sherlock has rescued the rest. Yeah, I think that it's going badly for Iran and it's only going to get worse for the government. Hopefully it doesn't go badly for the people of Iran.Chris Steyn (05:11.48)Surely the United States did not anticipate Iran destroying its bases in so many other countries in the region.Colonel (Ret) Chris Wyatt (05:23.82)Actually, if your point is, did the US anticipate that the Iranians would attack bases where the US personnel in neighbouring countries? Yes, they did anticipate that. Absolutely. In fact, that's one reason why there's so many Patriot missile systems in the region and the … high altitude air defense systems are also there to take out ballistic missiles. They did anticipate that. I don't know if they anticipated every country except Russia to be attacked. That's a bit of a surprise to me. I expected to see the Emirates, Bahrain,places like that be attacked, but I did not necessarily expect to see Lebanon or Turkey drawn into this war. That was a bit of a surprise to me. I don't think that was a surprise to the US authorities. Bear in mind, I'm a citizen. I don't have 19 intelligence agencies at my disposal and see what they see every day. So me being a little surprised by it shouldn't be shocking. I doubt the US government was surprised by any of this. The one that really they haven't done is Egypt. Of course, we have no US military personnel permanently stationed in Egypt, although we do have peacekeepers stationed in Sinai. That's a different story. So they haven't attacked Egypt, and that's probably wise. But no, I think the US government has probably expected this and prepared its allies, friends, and partners in the region for just such contingency.Chris Steyn (06:32.164)Well, given the extent of the attacks on those countries in the region, how do you think they feel about having been drawn into the war to this extent, Colonel?Colonel (Ret) Chris Wyatt (06:45.262)Well, that's a very difficult question for me to answer. You want me to get inside the head of the leaders of each of these states? I'm sure they're not thrilled about being drawn into the conflict, but I would tell you geopolitically at the same time, most, if not all of these states would just relish the thought of this regime gone. Iran has threatened its neighbours endlessly. They're bellicose, they're dangerous, they sink ships, they attack oil tankers, they harass people in the Arabian Persian Gulf. They have been a threat. And of course, you've got the shift, schism in the Islamic world between the Sunnis and Shia. And this is a major fault line with Iran, they're being on the other side of this mix. And so they don't get along with their Arab neighbors. And this is probably something many of these Arab states would relish, they would cherish the fact that this theocracy disappears. So I suspect that on a geopolitical level, maybe not what's out for public discussion or what they say publicly, but the geopolitical level, I suspect that every single leader of every one of these countries would just love to see this regime gone.And they probably accept that this is a small price to pay because they're not involved in the combat, except for Qatar. Qatar actually, they actually scrambled a couple of jets and shot down Iranian bombers that were trying to bomb their cities. So they're the only other country that I know of so far who's actually engaged in an offensive manner. Well, it's really defensive. They're defending their airspace, but put aircraft here and shot down Iranians. So I think that geopolitically, they're all, they're all probably dancing in the streets, you know, they're probably having a big party pop and champagne that this regime is going to be gone. This is an evil criminal regime that has terrorised its neighbours for 47 years. And this is a consequence of that.Chris Steyn (08:17.274)What if China and Russia come to Iran's aid?Colonel (Ret) Chris Wyatt (08:23.47)China, Russia are not coming to Iran's aid. You know, it's interesting, this is probably a good point to pivot on, something I was hoping we'd get a chance to talk about today, and that is that the African National Congress' friends are disappearing. Donald Trump is playing 3D chess while everyone else is playing checkers. I've been saying this pretty much ever since he came back in office. Trump has a long-term strategy here. It's becoming more and more evident, something I pointed out a year ago. The friends, the rogue states, they're friends of the African National Congress have been taken off the chessboard one piece at a time.Nicolas Maduro wanted for criminal acts and for supporting terrorism and drug trafficking was extradited back to the United States. That regime has been hobbled. Cuba is being strangled. They no longer have any ability to influence things. Now it's Iran. So that's three of the ANC's friends. That really just leaves Russia, China and Brazil still on the map. Brazil will be dealt with eventually. The leader of that country is a convicted felon. He will eventually be dealt with by his own people.In the meantime, they're no threat to anyone. So Russia is engaged in a war it cannot win because it's a foolish approach. China is doing nothing and they will do nothing to come to the aid of Iran. But here's the big loser in all this. As we were talking a few moments ago about the countries in the region, China is the big loser. China has already lost access to the oil from Venezuela. No oil has gone from Venezuela to China the past month. Now it's lost access to the oil coming from Iran. Its economy will choke the moment that its strategic reserves are drained. It doesn't have any way to pick up excess oil in the marketplace. It's one of the reasons why the price of oil is now surging because that excess is being sucked up. There's no slack left. So I think ultimately this is really, really bad news for the Chinese. And I think that we're going to see that show up very soon in their economy.Chris Steyn (09:54.565)What do you make of the utterances that have come out of South Africa in response to the war, Colonel?Colonel (Ret) Chris Wyatt (10:03.768)Wow, very disheartening to see people in South Africa who sat by idly and said nothing while the regime murdered thousands of its own citizens, gunned down private citizens walking in the streets or demonstrating the streets with machine guns. They said nothing. They sat there. When their terror sponsor shows up and does a naval exercise, we hear South Africans scream sovereignty, sovereignty. We're talking about a small, small number of people. Sovereignty, sovereignty, sovereignty. Okay, great. Well, consequences, consequences, consequences.We've seen a recent New York Times interview by Cyril Ramaphosa in which he spent the entire time calling Donald Trump a racist and attacking the United States and then saying, we don't understand why they're interested in us. We're just a small country. We don't harm. We're no danger to the United States. Now that's all poppycock. No danger to the United States. The very next day, Ronald Lamola comes out and attacks the United States for the conflict in Iran and goes on and on. No threat to the United States. You work against the United States interest on a daily basis.You know, and the United States has once again thrown an olive branch out there, despite all the naysayers who run all their comments in their mouth about the incoming ambassador attacking him as a racist, anti-ANC, by taking something that he supported in 1987 when the ANC was a banned organisation, he participated in a group that said, let's, you know, let's, let's, let's boycott this. Let's not let the ANC leaders come to America. So they take that snapshot in time in 1987, we're talking nearly 40 years ago, and use that to tar and feather the incoming ambassador, Brent Bozell as anti-ANC and racist. Neither of which is true. That was a snapshot in time. I mean, I'd like to ask these people what they were doing in 1987 and what geopolitics was. So they built this picture up of Bozell as somebody who's opposed to South Africa and who's going to be arrogant and he's going to come and he's going to attack South Africa. Ambassador Bozell has done exactly what I anticipate and want to predict. He's going to come to South Africa. He's going to be ambassadorial. It's not his job to be confrontational.And despite the provocations coming out of the Luthuli house and out of Pretoria, the United States has been gracious. We sent an ambassador, his first actions are to meet with the Foreign Ministry to present his credentials. Then he goes to the Apartheid museum, says wonderful things about South Africa and its people, and then visits key leaders around the country and has nothing but good things to say. Yet they continue to paint him in a very poor fashion. This is a shame what's happening in South Africa. This government, which says it's no threat to the United States, continues to attack our interests on a daily basis.Colonel (Ret) Chris Wyatt (12:26.86)And they have no compunction about doing it. I mean, can you imagine for a moment there, Chris, if Donald Trump got on the lectern and started going after Cyril Ramaphosa and saying, well, I guess he's pretty ill informed. He really doesn't know what's going on in America. Coming to Jesse Jackson's funeral service? Why? He wasn't head of state. What's he doing over here? I think he's just a racist. Well, he's just, he's an uninformed racist. That's pretty much what Ramaphosa has said in a New York Times interview. This is shocking. The leader of a country saying such things. We've heard Ronald Lamols make these idiotic statements in the past, of course, and we've also seen it from Ibrahim Rasool. But to hear the leader of the country say this and then claim we're not a threat, well, you are a threat. You're undermining the credibility and the sovereignty of the United States on a daily basis. And this is something that the United States has been ignoring. But keep it up. You want attention, you're going to get attention. That's unfortunately what the ANC is trying to do here. And sadly, in many cases, those who will be harmed will be South Africans, not the elites.Chris Steyn (13:23.77)Colonel, what have you made of the Iranian ambassador to South Africa, choosing this time of war to deny that Iran had funded South Africa's case against Israel?Colonel (Ret) Chris Wyatt (13:38.894)Well, I haven't paid much attention to him. He carries very little credibility or water with me whatsoever, listening to what he has. So that's the first time I've actually heard that from you saying it. But my response to that would be that, yeah, and of course they're going to deny it. But we suspect that it's the true case. It really isn't germane to the issue here. It's interesting for us to talk about, but it has very little to do with the conflict. And so I think it's just a distractionary measure to talk about that. Maybe he was asked that question directly. That's why he answered it.But the Iranians can claim all they want. But there's some real magical mystery stuff going on here when it comes to ANC finances. And as far as financial reporting, the fact that there hasn't been a government investigation into the previous two elections about where the money came from, how the money was spent is shocking. The ANC couldn't pay their party planner a bill that was half a decade old. They were taken to court, had a judgment against them. They refused to pay it because they're deadbeats. They didn't have the money. They didn't pay their staff for over a year. It happened on more than one occasion. They had no money whatsoever.Colonel (Ret) Chris Wyatt (14:40.492)Now Naledi Pandor goes to Tehran, comes back, suddenly the ANC has money to pay off their debt. Now it's conflicted information in the open source about whether they paid the debt in full or they paid a portion of it. Apparently never paid the penalties. Whatever the case is, they at least paid enough of it initially that it got off their back. So we're talking tens of millions of Rand. Then they held a birthday celebration … which they spent 20 million Rand on. Then they financed just a matter of months later this campaign for re-election.If you look at the money that comes in this publicly reported, they received…, it doesn't come close to matching the expenses of this campaign. So that's our election campaign. Nevermind finance the ICJ case. We have yet to see a forensic accounting of the money spent and where it came from to pay for the lawyers who went to The Hague from South Africa and all the travel and the hotel and all the costs associated with that. Until we see a forensic report on that, I'm not going to buy any argument that the Iranians didn't finance this because no one's telling us where the money came from. And even if they do, it's going to be suspect. The South African government under the ANC, which really is what the government's run by as the ANC now, continues to mislead, misdirect, and lie at every opportunity.Chris Steyn (15:49.915)Colonel, now some quarters have suggested that President Trump was strong-armed into the war by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Colonel (Ret) Chris Wyatt (16:04.11)Well, that's an interesting take on things. I've seen that as well. There's a quote that claimed that Rubio said that I didn't see him say that or hear that if he did, I'm not going to deny it. The whole thing is quite odd. First off, if anybody thinks the United States has not been ready to destroy the Iranian regime for the past 40 years, they're really living under a rock. We've definitely had plans in place for this forever. And they've been modified to change based on capabilities and threats. Whether he was pushed into or not, I really don't think that's even possible. You know, when Iran attacked Israel about 18 months ago, unprovoked and fired hundreds of missiles and attacked civilian sites and murdered civilians, the United States was not drawn into a conflict. The Israelis attacked them back and we weren't drawn to a conflict. When we went after nuclear capability last summer, about a year, almost nine months ago, we weren't drawn into a conflict. It had limited objectives. They were achieved. We were pulled out. So the argument might be this, and I think this is a fair argument, that perhaps the United States wasn't quite ready. The day that they were going to attack may have been looming, but it wasn't the day they went and the Israelis were going to launch and that pushed them. But I seriously doubt that. Israel does know which side of this bread is buttered on. And people seem to think it's the other way around, that the US is pushing Israel. But I think in some cases, I'll agree with the lunatics on the left, that in some cases, it's the US that controls what Israel's doing as far as big things like this. The US probably has no say or no influence whatsoever in Israel going into Lebanon, what they're doing in Lebanon. But certainly, this is too big an issue from US geostrategic concerns that Israel would have, I think, dared attack Iran. And it's pretty obvious in the execution that it was a joint effort with these two. I mean, the reason that the Ayatollah is dead is because apparently the CIA provided the information and the Israelis hit the target. So I don't put a lot of credence in that story. I think it's much ado about nothing. And it really doesn't matter because it's in the sands of history now. The bottom line is there's a conflict ongoing. Hopefully it will end very soon. Hopefully very few, if any, Iranians will be killed as a consequence and this evil regime will be removed. But then I am concerned about what comes next. Because what comes next in Iran can only be one thing if we want that country to be a reliable member of the community of states…. No member of the Iranian Parliament who's ever served a single moment in that Parliament should ever be allowed to serve any government position ever again in their life. They …. need to abolish the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.Colonel (Ret) Chris Wyatt (18:26.808)They need to pursue people and quite frankly, they are going to have to have an awful lot of trials in that country for the evils that have taken place. Short of …. Iran will not return to the community of good states. That will be a problem.I find it hilarious watching members of the ANC talk about Iran's right to self-defense when they attack all their neighbours. And the argument is that they're attacking these neighbours because there's US military bases there. Yeah, well, if they're attacking the bases, that would make sense, but they're attacking civilians.This is an evil country run by an evil regime. And it's really sad because that Persians by and large are amazing people who have accomplished some truly wondrous things throughout their history. In fact, major empires were Persian empires back in early history. But today it's just a mess and hopefully this will get resolved soon.Chris Steyn (19:11.178)…when there wasn't a quick regime change, as some might have hoped, and it's now been longer than a week, the war has been raging…. America has suffered severe losses already…. How long do you think they can keep going?Colonel (Ret) Chris Wyatt (19:35.694)Well, I'm not sure about severe losses. To my knowledge, we've had six service members killed and that's unfortunate. That's six cases that unfortunately shouldn't happen. And another dozen and a half, two dozen who've been wounded and these were in these drone strikes. We lost three aircraft that ironically our allies shot down. The Kuwaiti shot down three F-15 Strike Eagles. All the pilots survived and then recovered and were shot down over Kuwait's airspace. So that's ironic they shot them down. We haven't really suffered any losses beyond that. Iranians are the ones suffering the grievous losses. As I said, all 17 of their capital ships are now at the bottom of the sea. At least one of their submarines is gone. The other ones are suffering losses. So how long can you do it? I think the question you're getting at is what is the appetite for casualties, which is really what this all comes down to every time there's a conflict. I think the bottom line here is that people really have unrealistic expectations of what conflict is and how conflict goes, war.This saying that after one week of grievous losses …pull out. Well, I don't think that that's a realistic expectation. This was never going to end in a week. Some people seem to be under the misperception that people sit in a room and push buttons and that's how war is executed. That is how it's executed in some cases today with drones, but there's a lot more to it. There are actually pilots in the air and navigators flying over these airspace. There are people operating ships in the sea. There people operating electronic warfare things andThis is going to take some time and the expectation that things should be over in a week or that we wouldn't have the stomach for it for beyond that, I think are unrealistic expectations. Somehow, I think in many respects, the world has gotten into a video game mindset where you sit down, you push reset, you play Ready Player One and there you go. But I think that the lesson of Ukraine with Russia ought to be an object lesson for those with unrealistic timeframes. This war is now going on in its fifth year….when it started, I was the night that that attack launched in 2022. I was in Orlando for a conference… and I went live and I analyzed it and people said, well, how long will this last a month, six weeks? I said, no, I said, this is a minimum three to three to five year conflict. Like what? I said, yeah, you have to understand the underlying causes and also understand the strengths and weaknesses of the players involved. And here we are entering the fifth year. And I proved to be prescient in that prediction. People have very unrealistic.Colonel (Ret) Chris Wyatt (21:56.11)…expectations. Part of the problem with conflict also is that the end state changes frequently, the desire. So for instance, in Korea in the 1950s when the Koreans invaded South Korea, the North Koreans crossed over and we were pushed all the way back to the Busan perimeter, the United Nations forces. Eventually, because at Incheon, MacArthur landed there and hit the North Koreans in the rear. They fled back up the peninsula and the goal was simply to eject them from South Korea. Well, MacArthur ignored the present and continued the offensive all the way to the Yalu. US troops reached the Chinese border and we're all the way that far north before there was a counterattack from the Chinese communists. And we were dragged into conflict, which by the way hasn't ended, Chris. We're still in a state of war with North Korea since 1950. And so that never ended. So the thing is people have to have realistic expectations. Whatever the end state is, it has to be clearly defined. And I'm not sure we have an end state here. It seems like unconditional surrender and regime change are what it's going to be. But then what comes next is the big question.Chris Steyn (22:53.497)Thank you. That was U.S. intelligence analyst, retired Colonel Chris Wyatt, on the NDB Sunday Show. With me, Chris Steyn. Thank you, Chris.Colonel (Ret) Chris Wyatt (23:05.55)Thanks a lot, Chris. Have a good week.

The NdB Sunday Show — (Ret.)Col Chris Wyatt: How Trump is taking the ANC's allies off the chess board...

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