The Israeli conflict will distract from the Russian-Ukraine invasion.

0:00 Speaker 1 Well. Us today is Mario Konomo, a former banker in North America as well as Europe, and he’s been reporting to us on the economic conditions in Europe. Mario, what’s any updates what’s going on in Europe?

0:18 Speaker 2 Yes, good morning. So everybody is stunned with respect to the events that’s unfolded last weekend regarding the attack by Hamas into Israel. Europe is stunned for some reason. This has actually hit to the core substantially more than when Russia invaded Ukraine. I think people are stunned. I think it’s important though, for everybody to sit down and to

0:45 think logically and not emotionally, and that includes all sides and all players in all parts of the world. The last thing we want to see is this to escalate tremendously out of control and to pull different and parties different countries in which will ultimately only have a negative impact on not only the local economies, but the global

1:07 economy as well.

1:11 Speaker 1 Understood, is there, How does the war in it’s actually a war going on in the in Israel right now with the Palestinians, How does that affect the rest of Europe?

1:27 Speaker 2 Yeah, so the war that’s actually going on is not with the Palestinians, it’s with Hamas, and I think we need to all be very careful how we label this and how we say this. The Israelis have said they are going to do everything they can in order to knock Hamas out. That does not mean the Palestinian people.

1:46 For its part, many countries are lining up behind the Palestinian people. For example, Algeria, Iran, Turkia, Katar have come out and said that they do support the Palestinian people in this. In fact, there was a NATO meeting last week and at that meeting, NATO condemned the terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel. Turkia was the only country that

2:11 condemned it as an attack but not a terrorist attack. At that meeting, in fact, NATO went on and said that Israel has the right to defend itself, but that the response has to be measured and in proportion, and that there are rules of engagement to protect civilians. This was actually echoed by the EU’s Foreign Minister, if you will,

2:33 the Commissioner who deals with the foreign affairs, mister Burrell, and he said that for example, switching the power off and the electricity is against international law on a civilian population and that that should not be that should not be done by Israel. I don’t think Israel’s listening. I think Israel at the moment is very emotional. They had

2:56 a lot of people of their own that died in this, so they are going to try to do what they.

3:01 Speaker 1 Can Amas Harmas As Hamas has treated the Israeli’s just as bad as Adolf Hitler.

3:11 Speaker 2 Well, yes, Hamas and its charter does say you are correct that their stated goal is the elimination of the state of Israel.

3:19 Speaker 1 So do you believe, Mariol do you believe that Hamas is taking their orders from Iran? I mean, we have talked about that the Wagner Group is really the Russian Foreign Legion. Is Hamas really the Iranian Foreign Legion?

3:41 Speaker 2 Yeah, So this is an interesting question, and I think the US has done a very good job being very careful about the statements it’s releasing with respect to whether or not Iran was behind us. They have said that they have no proof that Iran was basically behind us.

3:56 We do know that Iran did reach out to the king them of Saudi Arabia and to Syria in the past week and ask them to actually side with it and with Hamas and that this is an opportunity now for the musclim world to join together. Does that mean they were behind this actual attack. I don’t know, and

4:17 I don’t think anybody really knows, And I think we have to be very careful, mister Katsuma Tiv’s about going down that road, because the reality is Iran is a very large country. It’s a very strong country. Just to give our listeners an idea about the size of Iran in terms of geographic land size.

4:37 Speaker 1 It’s three million barrels a day because of the United States cutting back their supplies instead of the one million barrels that they were producing a year ago. Yeah.

4:50 Speaker 2 Well, that’s another interesting point, and I’ll get to that in one second. Iran is a lot of money.

4:55 Speaker 1 It’s a lot of money, Mario, it is a lot of money. One addition question, because we’re going to be about two minutes left, and one additional question is is the reason that the United States is failing to recognize Iran being the comfort because they don’t want to give a license to Israel to go in and destroy that,

5:20 to destroy Iran snuclear capability.

5:25 Speaker 2 I don’t think Israel realistically has the ability to do that because they know that Iran would actually respond very forcefully, and that would actually be a very bad situation for Israel. Like I was saying before, Iran is three times geographically the size of the Ukraine, roughly three times the size of Afghanistan, and America knows Afghanistan very well, and we’re

5:51 seeing what’s going on in the Ukraine. So now imagine trying to get involved in a war with a country that’s roughly three times the size of the Ukraine, three that also has Russia’s back. I do want to close on one very important thing. We need to speak to the Iranians, and the only way to do this is

6:10 through the Russians. So once again we’ve come full circle. The US and Europe need to sit down. They need to speak to the Russians, they need to have dialogue with the Russians. It’s time to resolve the situation in the Ukraine. And while we’re at it, let’s also resolve the situation with respect to Iran, because, like King Abdullah

6:30 Jordan has said that unless there is a Palestinian state, there will never be peace and that part of the world.

6:37 Speaker 1 Mario Konomo. Thank you for your update and we’ll catch up with you again real soon.

6:42 Speaker 2 Thank you, enjoy your day.