American Thought Leaders

“The U.S. went to war in Iran because Iran made itself a Chinese weapon,” argues policy analyst Zineb Riboua, a research fellow at Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East.

Riboua is the founder of the “China in MENA Project,” which tracks communist Chinese expansion and influence across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Is there a bigger dimension to the Iran war that people are missing?

“We have this tendency to just look at the countries involved ... but there’s a big player, and the big player here is China,” she says. “China has been investing immensely in the region in the last two decades, in courting, in coordinating, in cooperating with Gulf countries, with Iran itself, and also with its proxies.”

And why, I ask her, has China been so keen on gaining strategic influence over the Middle East?

It’s because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) understands that “China cannot rise without having the United States weakened in one of the most important regions in the world,” she said.

“Iran has been that tool. China has built Iran’s military arsenal. It has collaborated extensively with Iran’s proxies, especially the Houthis.

“And reversing that calculus is what Operation Epic Fury is doing.”

In our interview, we delve deep into the symbiotic relationship between the two countries—why China needs Iran and why Iran needs China:

1. Which role does Iran play on China’s geopolitical chessboard?
2. Why did China turn Iran into one of its strategic allies, and how did the Islamic Republic benefit?
3. How dependent is the Iranian regime on China’s military support and surveillance infrastructure?
4. How dependent is China on Iran’s oil?

The goal of America’s military operation, Riboua believes, is to dismantle the whole structure of the Islamic Republic. “The United States is destroying ... every single launcher, every single missile facility. Their whole Navy has been absolutely crushed. ... It’s 2,000 targets so far, and they’re hitting even more.”

We also discuss what the Chinese regime will do if the Islamic Republic disappears.

How will its geopolitical strategy be impacted? What will happen to the CCP’s Belt and Road initiative, in which Iran played a central role? And how will China’s economy and its relationships with its Middle Eastern and North African proxies be affected?

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Dozens of Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have been killed in U.S.–Israeli joint strikes on Iran.

In this episode, I’m sitting down again with seasoned China analyst Gordon Chang, author of “Plan Red,” to understand how this is changing the global geopolitical landscape—especially for Beijing.

Including the Venezuela raid that captured regime leader Nicolás Maduro, this is the second time President Donald Trump appears to be neutralizing a key ally of Beijing.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessari

For twenty years, I’ve investigated a crime almost too horrific to name—now documented in my new book: “Killed to Order: China’s Organ Harvesting Industry and the True Nature of America’s Biggest Adversary.”

In America and other free countries, patients wait months or even years for an organ. But in China, transplant wait lists are measured in weeks—or even days.

In this episode, the tables are turned, and I’m in the guest seat this time.

I invited my good friend, actor and comedian Rob Schneider, who has become deeply personally invested in this issue, to be the guest host for this special episode.

This is the dark reality: When someone decides to go to China and pay a hefty sum for a scheduled transplant, then on the other side, an incarcerated prisoner of conscience, who has already been blood-typed and tissue-typed, is likely being killed to order.

China’s transplant industry began its exponential expansion at the exact same time as the state launched its aggressive, nationwide campaign to eradicate the spiritual practice of Falun Gong. There is growing evidence of Uyghurs being targeted as well. There is even an underground global market for what are called “Halal organs,” which means organs from Muslim donors.

And it’s not just wealthy foreigners who travel to China for organ transplants.

China’s super elite have access to a secretive longevity program dubbed “Project 981” with eerie ties to this macabre organ industry. This project entered the spotlight last year after the revealing hot mic exchange between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, where they talked about extending lifespans in part through repeated organ transplants.

American institutions have, wittingly or unwittingly, helped facilitate the rise of China’s transplant system through partnerships with Chinese transplant centers, the training of hundreds of Chinese surgeons, and the supply of China’s organ preservation solutions, surgical instruments, immunosuppressive drugs, and transplant diagnostics.

The stories I share in this episode are disturbing, but we cannot afford to look away.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Dr. Daniel Monti is the founding chair of the first integrative medicine department at an American medical university.

Rather than treating symptoms in isolation, integrative medicine takes a holistic approach to health, combining conventional Western medicine with mind-body therapies, nutritional medicine, and traditional practices such as acupuncture and herbal medicine.

“Integrative medicine,” Monti told me, “has become a subspecialty of medicine with its own board certification. ... To become an integrative medicine doctor, you have to first do your residency in something like internal medicine, neurology, OBGYN, and then do a fellowship in integrative medicine.”

Monti, who holds board certifications in both psychiatry/neurology and holistic/integrative medicine, said that integrative physicians “take a deep dive into whole-person health and understanding who the person is.” They look, for example, at genomics, the patient’s microbiome, and maximal oxygen consumption.

A powerful technique Monti studied in depth is the neuro-emotional technique (NET), developed in the 1980s. It’s a mind-body therapy designed to release emotional stress from within the body. And through advanced brain scans, they can see how the brain changes after applying the technique to alleviate distress.

NET merges principles from conventional medicine with traditional Chinese medicine and psychology, he says. The goal is to “get at what is underneath the issue that’s bothering the person. ... Most of the time I’m experiencing a block in my life in some way. And then we have to kind of figure out what the life experiences were that are contributing to that present-day block.”

During the interview, Monti used me as a test subject to demonstrate the integrative medicine technique.

We also discuss additional integrative medicine therapies, such as vitamin infusions and stress-reduction treatments. We also dive into a recent study into a powerful antioxidant’s power to benefit Parkinson’s patients.

Monti is the founder and CEO of the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health and chair of the Integrative Medicine and Nutritional Sciences at Sidney Kimmel Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University. He’s the co-author of “Brain Weaver” and “Tapestry of Health.”

He’s also the host of “House Call with Dr. Dan Monti.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“What’s important for people to know is that the majority of California is actually not to the far left. We’re a very purple state,” says Elaine Culotti, a self-made entrepreneur, star of Discovery’s reality TV series “Undercover Billionaire,” and founder of the Mayors Matter project.

On a mission to understand the root causes of California’s challenges, Culotti recently went on a state-wide tour and talked to 50 out of California’s almost 500 mayors as well as countless regular Californians on the way.

“I’ve talked to people from Humboldt County, which is the very top of California, to Chula Vista, all the way into the Central Valley ... to Santa Monica and Pacific Palisades. ... And it does not matter if you have an R or a D,” Culotti said.

The fifty mayors she spoke to—on both sides of the aisle—have two overarching priorities for their cities: security and economic development, Culotti said.

But no matter how hard they try, they find it difficult to achieve either one. Why? Because of Sacramento, Culotti said.

Most taxpayer money goes to the state government with its over half a million employees, Culotti noted. The cities receive little money but lots of crippling orders from Sacramento, and fraud at the state level is rampant, she said.

When California’s top politicians “are pushing downstream what’s called unfunded mandates onto people, you create war in those city halls. You create war with those mayors because they are saying, ‘No, no, stop oppressing us with your mandates. We don’t want to do it,’” Culotti said.

“We’re all being boiled to death by Sacramento,” she said.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

In this episode, I sit down with Grace Jin Drexel, the daughter of detained Pastor Ezra Jin, the founder of one of China’s largest underground house-church networks.

Last October, Pastor Jin was arrested along with 27 other pastors and church leaders from Zion Church. It was one of the largest assaults on independent Christian congregations in China since the Cultural Revolution, said Drexel. She has since become a prominent voice speaking out against religious persecution in China.

State repression of Zion Church began in 2018 amid a broader wave of Communist Party efforts to subjugate faith communities, Drexel said.

“You saw the tearing down of crosses [and] putting portraits of Xi Jinping and Mao Zedong on church buildings,” she said.

Zion Church was deemed an illegal business operation, forcing them to shift to a hybrid online model of worship. Authorities also placed an exit ban on Pastor Jin.

“There’s so many parts of our lives that he has missed out on. He was not able to walk me down the aisle at my wedding. He was not able to attend my baby’s baptism,” Drexel said.

She sees her father’s detention as part of a new wave of persecution targeting not only her father’s church but also many other underground churches and religious groups as well. As in 2018, authorities are again installing pictures of Xi in churches again, sometimes even replacing crosses, to “showcase who is the true leader of the church,” she said.

Another sign of a new wave of suppression is the sentencing of Jimmy Lai, the 78-year-old founder of Apple Daily and a practicing Catholic. He was recently given 20 years in prison, which marks the longest sentence handed down to date under Beijing’s national security law.

Since Pastor Jin’s arrest, he has not been allowed any family visits, phone calls, or even letters from his loved ones. He is also suffering from severe Type 2 diabetes, and Drexel is deeply concerned about his wellbeing.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

How polarized are Americans really? Are we really on the “brink of civil war” as some suggest?

That’s what I wanted to find out when I sat down with Jonathan Butcher, author of the recently released book “The Polarization Myth: America’s Surprising Consensus on Race, Schools, and Sex.”

“When we hear the term polarization, it makes us think that there’s 50% on one side and 50% on the other side. But that’s not what’s going on,” says Butcher, who is acting director of The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy.

Butcher conducted a survey of more than 2,000 Americans and asked participants for their opinions on contentious cultural and political issues.

What did he find? Contrary to what Americans are constantly told on social media and in legacy media, there is no deep divide on the issues that drive the so-called culture wars, he says. His survey found the following:

-Biological sex: A majority of respondents maintain that sex is unchanging -Gender and schools: 61% oppose teaching young children that they can change their “gender”​ -Sexual content in schools: 69% do not support access in schools to books that depict sexual activity -College admissions: 52% oppose the use of racial preferences in college admissions, which are central to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs​

The culture war, Butcher concludes from his survey findings, is a narrative propagated by a small faction of radical activists and amplified by the media to instill fear.

“It’s really like a majority of Americans and … a small minority of activists on the other [side] that just have a very loud voice,” he says.

The survey responses, he told me, also show a surprising degree of consensus among Americans on basic principles and core beliefs.

For example, he found that a large majority of survey respondents want their children to be taught about virtue and character at school. More than half favor increased civics education.

“The important thing to remind Americans is that on the issues, they’re not alone. If [you] think that individuals should be judged, promoted, accepted to school based on their merit instead of their skin color, right, you’re not alone. You’re not alone if you think that we should be protecting women from men accessing their bathrooms or locker rooms,” he says.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

“People have misunderstood that [Greenland] is somehow a President Donald Trump issue, and it’s not,” says Alex Gray, who previously served as National Security Council chief of staff and deputy assistant to the president.

So why does Greenland matter? And why has it become such a massive issue?

In fact, Gray explained to me, multiple American presidents have tried to purchase or acquire Greenland over the last 160 years. Andrew Johnson was the first in 1867. Woodrow Wilson tried during the First World War. And Harry Truman tried right after World War II, Gray says.

In my deep-dive interview with Gray, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and co-founder of American Global Strategies, he lays out Greenland’s geostrategic importance to America’s national security and what it would mean if Greenland became dependent on China.

In 1952, the United States signed a treaty with Denmark, still in effect today, that provides America with extensive military access to Greenland. Gray’s overarching concern is what will happen when Greenland is likely to become independent in five or 10 years.

For many years, China has shown great interest in establishing dominance over the Arctic region and is regularly moving its submarines up to the North Pole.

Gray is convinced that after independence, Greenland is likely to fall prey to the Chinese Communist Party’s “well-worn playbook” to gain influence and eventually control the island. He calls it the “Solomon Islands scenario.”

“They start offering Belt and Road projects. They start buying dual-use facilities. They buy ports. They’re taking over airfields. Next thing you know, we’re hearing conversations about potentially having [China’s People’s Liberation Army] naval access to ports in the Solomons. … This is a well-worn Chinese playbook,” Gray says.

Beyond Greenland, we also dive into security threats related to America’s northern neighbor and the implications of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s overtures in Beijing.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Xi Van Fleet grew up in China during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. She was too young to be a real revolutionary Red Guard, but old enough to observe the astonishing scenes of violence and ideological fervor around her during those terrible years.

I sat down with her to discuss her new book, “Made in America: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Enabled Communist China and Created Our Greatest Threat.”

She says she felt compelled to write this book to help Americans understand the true nature of communism. Over the past hundred years or so, the United States has made one grave mistake after another because of this major blind spot, she says.

In our deep-dive interview, Van Fleet takes me on a tour of China’s history starting in the late 19th century and explains how America—over and over again—made decisions that helped the Chinese Communist Party: first to gain influence, then to defeat the Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek, and eventually to rescue the CCP from certain collapse in the 1970s.

By visiting Beijing and re-opening US-China relations at a time when China’s economy was in shambles, President Richard Nixon effectively “saved the CCP from the ruins,” she says.

The history of how the United States helped the CCP survive is “hidden history,” as she calls it, one that is not taught in the schools and not discussed publicly: “A lot of people want to hide it. But in order for us to understand, we have to learn this very, very important piece of history that my book is all about.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

In this no-holds-barred interview, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, breaks down how the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research is changing under his leadership.

Bhattacharya, a former professor of Stanford University, public health expert, and coauthor of the anti-lockdown Great Barrington Declaration, was sworn in as director of the NIH in April last year.

With an annual budget of almost $50 billion, the NIH sets the direction of research at universities, medical centers, and research institutes across America.

It encompasses 27 institutes and centers that cover different areas of health and employ some 20,000 people. One of those is the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which was headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci for nearly 40 years.

The NIH, Bhattacharya told me, “really hasn’t had a change in leadership in decades. ... We’ve had new directors, but the fundamental structure and direction of the NIH has been basically the same until last year.”

Bhattacharya says his top priority is to end the practice of “funding the scientific enterprise for the sake of funding science” and ensure that NIH-funded scientific research actually produces better health outcomes for the American people. The goal should be improvements in health and longevity, not just more scientific papers, he says.

During our interview, we covered a lot of ground, including:

-Has the NIH completely stopped funding gain-of-function research?

-Is the NIH continuing to fund research with China?

-How has funding for international research institutes been restructured?

-Has the NIH stopped funding all research grants related to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives?

-What is being done to reverse the politicization of science?

-What is the NIH doing to help those who suffered injuries from the mandated COVID-19 mRNA vaccines?

-What can the NIH do to alleviate the massive replication crisis in research?

-How does he view the controversy surrounding vaccines and autism? Is the NIH looking into potential links?

-How is the NIH restructuring the allocation of funding?

What America needs, Bhattacharya told me, is a “second scientific revolution,” saying: “The NIH has the capacity to induce that second scientific revolution. That’s what I’m going to work toward for the next few years.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.