Trump THROWS His OWN TEAM Under the BUS after HUMILIATION by Michael Popok Legal AF Jun 21, 2025 The Intersection with Michael Popok
Trump just attacked the head of his National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard for the second time in a week and at least the 3rd time in his administration, as he rejects her intelligence assessment on Iran's nuclear capabilities in order to side with his twin Netanyahu of Israel, to provide justification for the US to enter the war on Israel's not the US's time table. Popok explains how Gabbard, a former Dem, got sideways so quickly including almost being shown the door out of the Cabinet this week, and what it means for our national security.
Transcript
[Michael Popok] Well one of two things is going on either Donald Trump figured out what we all knew and suspected from the very beginning that Tulsi Gabbard was over her skis and obscenely unqualified to be the director of national intelligence with 14 intelligence agencies reporting to her or he's getting snookered by the Israelis and has decided that their intelligence is better than our intelligence and that's how he's backing us into the Middle East war either way Tulsi Gabbard is not long for the Trump administration because there's new reporting that not only is Donald Trump pissed off and told her to her face about a video that she posted on social media in which she lamented the horrors of nuclear war at a moment when we're having a fight over whether Iran is about to have a nuclear bomb or not and Donald Trump didn't like the timing of it and didn't like what it looked like from her personal career advancement and told her so and at the same time he just crapped all over Tulsi Gabbard in an impromptu statement to the press where he said and I'm not mincing words if she said that the Iranians are not close to having a nuclear bomb at this moment then she is wrong this is not the first time tulsi Gabbard's intelligence assessment I mean both personal and from the intelligence community has been attacked and criticized by Donald Trump the first time is when her intelligence community took took the position that Venezuela was not being controlled by the trend Aragwa narco terrorist gang which was the foundation for Donald Trump's proclamation effectively of war in order to round up Venezuelans and send them to El Salvador he didn't like that assessment either let me synthesize it here the only way I know how without blowing smoke or sunshine here on legal af take a moment it helps hit the subscribe button let's move on tulsi Gabbard we all said other than being in the military for a relatively short amount of time not at a command and control function and being a Hawaii senator and a one-time Democrat she seemed to have no qualifications including we had suspected based on reporting that she may even be a Russian asset there was enough reporting about her doing the talking points of the Kremlin instead of in America's interest so we were slightly surprised that she got confirmed by the Senate and is now uh the head spook the head uh spy if you will as the director of national intelligence i mean sure John Rackcliffe is the head of the CIA and we consider him to be the spy master but Tulsi Gabbard's pretty important in the cabinet not anymore first she gets off steps off sides with with Trump and has to fire the analysts because at the same moment she has a she has exquisite timing in stepping on Donald Trump's story and making it worse that's a talent that's a gift that's a gift that I I'll be sad when it leaves her ability to do that it's exquisite tra I It's not comedic timing it's tragedy timing it's so Donald Trump's out there telling the world few months ago Trenda Arawa terrorist gang let in by Biden it's an it's an predatory incursion it's the equivalent of we're under attack i get to use the alien enemies act because the Venezuelan government has sent these people here as enemy combatants right except at the same time under under uh Tulsi Gabbard the intelligence community said the opposite that the Venezuelan government is not in in bed with Trenda Aragua they're scared of them they may do some deals with them just to stabilize the government but they're not they're not controlled by either way vice versa they're not in that kind of relationship with this terrorist gang now that undercut Donald Trump's main argument i did a whole hottake about why that should be used by the litigants in courts against the Alien Enemies Act and hopefully one day it will be those people got fired thereafter because Donald Trump was embarrassed by Tulsi Gabbard now fast forward right we've got the attack June 13th we've got the uh Israel's attack on Iran's nuclear capacity tulsi Gabbard had been in Congress in March and told them it was the intelligence community's assessment that they were not close and and the the uh the grand leader the uh of Iran had not given the order and did not desire to have a bomb built even though they were enriching uranium and making yellow cake which is the foundation ultimately of a bomb to the tune of up to 60% enriched uranium you only need about 20% for civilian purposes you need 90% enriched uranium to make a bomb why are they at 60% but the intelligence community under Tulsi Gabbard told Congress based on their reports what they know on the inside that the grand leader of Iran has no interest in making the bomb at this moment they're a year or two away israel is saying the other saying the opposite israel saying they effectively have the ability to do it right now and right and I just did a hot take up here on legal af that the international inspectors who were doing 500 inspections a year in Iran have lost track of the entirety of Iran's nuclear uh uranium stockpile enough to make 10 bombs if enriched they don't they literally do not know where it is as I'm doing this recording okay that's different than what Trump administration is telling the American people through Carolyn Levette and Donald Trump that they could make a bomb right now that's a lie they could make a bomb by getting the uranium from 60% enriched to 90% enriched and then I think they have the rest of the technology to put it all together but that's that's different than they've got 10 nuclear bombs ready to go so earlier in the week Donald Trump is livid because he learns that Tulsi Gabbard went to Hiroshima the site of the atomic bomb being dropped by the Americans to end World War II devastating of course radioactive burnings of human beings as a result it's a it did end the war but it is also a dark mark on the history of America to most people uh so because these are innocent civilians right but it did bring the Japanese to their knees she posted a video i'm gonna run you a clip now that pisses the crap no that's a mixed metaphor who piss pisses off Donald Trump let's play just a clip i recently visited Hiroshima in Japan and stood at the epicenter of a city that remains scarred by the unimaginable horror caused by a single nuclear bomb dropped in 1945 80 years ago yet this one bomb that caused so much destruction in Hiroshima was tiny compared to today's nuclear bombs as we stand here today closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before political elite and wararm mongers are carelessly fermenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers so it's up to us the people to speak up and demand an end to this madness we must reject this path to nuclear war and work toward a world where no one has to live in fear of a nuclear holocaust now Donald Trump presumably saw that or had it sent to him and called her on the carpet and said it was inappropriate that he was embarrassed that she that that it was a a bad moment for her that it showed poor judgment and then he called her out for running for office which you know people around Trump can't do he said 'If you want to run for the presidency you're not going to do it from your position as the national intelligence director then leave the cabinet so that's kind of going around in the last 72 hours and then you get Donald Trump being asked by reporters on the tarmac you know on his way out of Bedminster golf course about Iran and about the intelligence community reporting that in America that they weren't close to having a nuclear weapon and and Israel claiming that they were and on what side of that argument was Donald Trump on and here's the clip do you have that Iran is building a nuclear weapon your intelligence community has said they have no evidence that they are at this point well then my intelligence community is wrong who in the intelligence community said that your director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard she's wrong so you hear him say you know the my intelligence community said that then they're wrong who in the intelligence community tulsi Gabbard she's wrong all right so you have multiple data points now that we're piecing together here on Legal AF that demonstrate that Tulsi Gabbard is on thin ice reflect thin ice suggests that there's ice i don't think there's ice for her anymore don't be surprised if she is removed and if she leaves to go be with her family there's always a trust issue between the MAGA and Tulsi Gabbard she said the right things she looked the part she had the military background but she was a former Democrat of course the Democrats think she's an asset of the Russians based on her comments and statements and that came up during her confirmation hearing and now you have her the number one cardinal sin against Donald Trump in his administration if you show up the boss and it looks like you're running to replace him i mean this is the guy in Donald Trump that won't even at this moment endorse JD Vance as the Arab parent for MAGA and for the presidency in 2028 donald Trump best Donald Trump can say is we'll see we'll see he has to earn it hasn't earned it yet i mean traditionally the vice president is the air apparent to the movement to the political party and to the pre and to the presidency but not for Donald Trump you know this is all celebrity apprentice political the political version everybody's got to compete to to to to for him to endorse in 2028 leaving the party very unstable as a result but let me end it this way after seeing those clips and hearing the reporting do you have any doubt that Tulsi Gabbard is not trusted by this administration and that's a very dangerous and precarious place to be for any member of the cabinet that she's lost the trust of Donald Trump we know coming in that he didn't believe in the intelligence community in America he thought he would they were against him that they were Democrats that they weaponized the intelligence community against him for the Russia collusion investigation the Chinese collusion investigation so he never trusted the intelligence community um that's why he put Cash Patel in charge of the FBI and presumably put Tulsi Gabbard in charge of national intelligence but there was a lot of repair work that had to be done to get Donald Trump to trust you again in that area and her apparently posting on social media about Hiroshima i'm sorry is the Is it too soon for Donald Trump he didn't realize what had happened in Hiroshima and he's pissed off that one of his cabinet members recognized it i know Donald Trump's busy denying that history exists and lives in his own time space continuum you know he won't acknowledge Junth he won't acknowledge any black history event um because it will undermine his current version of diversity equity and inclusion he was fine with all of that just to show you how how far he's come he was fine with all that in his first term he was he was wishing June Junth se people who celebrated that warm wishes from Melania and me and now it's completely ignored and we should get rid of Junth because uh we have too many holidays so I don't think Tulsi Gabbard recovers from this at all and I think we are less secure as a nation because now he's going to start relying on anybody who's our allies who lobby him with their own information instead of relying on the US intelligence community and for the US intelligence community not to have a supporter in chief in the president it's a dangerous place for them to be i would leave intelligence gathering we don't have a president that trusts what you have to say he'd rather trust the Mossad and the Israeli intelligence community which has their own vested interest to drag the United States into a war let me be clear i'm a supporter of Israel i've been to Israel i'm a supporter of Israel i'm Jewish on top of that however I am a critic of all governments and I am an American first and I don't like being dragged into a war that we weren't ready for on somebody else's timetable based on intelligence that's inconsistent with our national intelligence and you know hand it to Netanyahu he knows how to play Trump they're they're brothers from a different mother they both have criminal problems they both have legacy problems and they both have figured out that they might be able to solve their legacy problem by being wartime presidents at the same time of course that could all backfire because Donald Trump is a terrible leader and makes terrible decisions um and how he's handling this war so far you know we'll just wait two more weeks based on what based on national intelligence i mean it did help the financial markets but that's about it we'll follow it all don't be shocked when I come back online and tell you that Tulsi Gabbard's been has quit and or been fired probably quit um and he's replaced her with fill in the blank he might put John Ratcliffe in charge he's the head of the CIA maybe he then they just merge it all together and make him in charge he's done that before but we'll continue to follow it right here on Legal AF take a moment hit the free subscribe button listen to Legal AF the podcast including the audio version help us as we continue to climb up the charts into the top 50 there and then of course Legal AF the Substack so until my next report I'm Michael Pop i'm Michael Popac and I got some big news for our audience most of you know me as the co-founder of Midas Touches Legal AF and the Legal AF YouTube channel or as a 35-year national trial lawyer now building a what we started together on Legal AF i've launched a new law firm the Pope Firm dedicated to obtaining justice through compassionate and zealous legal representation at the Popo firm we are focused on obtaining justice for those who have been injured or damaged by a lifealtering event by securing the highest dollar recoveries i've been tirelessly fighting for justice for the last 35 years so my own law firm organically building on my legal AF work just feels right and I've handpicked a team of top tier trial fighters and settlement experts throughout all 50 states known as big auto injury attorneys who have the knowhow to beat heartless insurance companies corporations government entities and their attorneys big Autos attorneys working with my firm are rock stars in their respective states and collectively responsible for billions of dollars in recoveries so if you or a loved one have been on the wrong side of a catastrophic auto motor vehicle ride share or truck accident suffered a personal injury or been the victim of medical malpractice employment harassment or discrimination or suffered a violation of your civil and constitutional rights then contact the Pope Firm today at 1877 pop af or by visiting my website at www.thepopfirm.com and fill out a free case evaluation form and if we determine that you have a case and you 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Iran BOMBARDS Tel Aviv & Haifa, Israel BEGS US for Bigger War w/ Elijah Magnier & Patrick Henningsen by Danny Haiphong Streamed live 4 hours ago #israel #iran #trump
Wave after wave of Operation True Promise 3 has Israel on the ropes militarily and in the court of public opinion. War correspondent Elijah Magnier has been deeply following Iran's massive response to Israel, and joins the show to outline just what Iran has been doing and why it has changed everything. Then Patrick Henningsen joins for deeper coverage into the US/Israeli War on Iran and what it means for the world at large.
Transcript
[Danny Haiphong] Everyone welcome back to another live stream thank you so much for joining this weekend be sure to hit the like button as you come on i have two very special guests I will introduce in a moment right now we have uh B2 bombers US B2 bombers heading in route to West Asia to possibly enter the conflict theater imminently as uh Israel was hit by wave number 18 of Operation True Promise 3 over the last 24 hours with uh wave number 17 hitting very hard Hifa Tel Aviv strategic military targets the damage now is numbered some people are estimating to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars uh in the total cost to Israel and now Israel is warning that this could be a protracted conflict and our guest today will help us understand what is going on uh Elijah Magne Magnet a veteran war correspondent said on X "Israel is losing operational momentum and finds itself searching for a new bank of targets a precarious position for any military once its objectives have been exhausted meanwhile Iran is gaining traction both strategically and psychologically the cost borne by Netanyahu and the society that rallied behind him is proving far higher than anticipated and this asymmetry and momentum could accelerate the push toward a ceasefire uh veteran war correspondent Elijah Magnet joins today thank you so much for joining me i appreciate your time on this weekend and then we also have from 21st Century Wire uh Patrick Henningson thanks so much gentlemen really appreciate your time today thank you for having me great to be with you Danny well let's uh begin okay with uh these waves i want to start with you Elijah first we have uh the mayor of Hifa uh he said this i want to play this from on from CNN so wave number 17 of Operation True Promise 3 really hit Hifa hard and CNN decided to speak to the mayor of Hifa this is what he had to say there's diplomacy going on in Geneva right now with the Iranian foreign minister the some European foreign ministers president Trump right now has said he's going to wait two weeks before he makes a decision what to happen next what What are you hoping for from these different diplomatic pieces peace that the peace treaty will come out of it and President Trump waiting two weeks to make a decision what do you think about that it's too much why because we have no time you see what's going in the middle time well well what that there's more destruction they have to sit now and negotiate and design a treaty it's not a big deal and do it as and you're on so Elijah could you help us understand you've been following Operation True Promise 3 minute by minute wave after wave talk about the damage that's been done uh the mayor of Hifa here is calling for a peace treaty which is something you don't hear much from Israeli officials uh generally so uh help the audience understand what operation true promise 3 has been doing well first of all there is an important point to highlight is from the beginning of this war the Israeli society supported Benjamin Netanyahu and all the politicians even those of the opposition the former officers the generals they all stood behind him because there has been a brainwashing for Israel in the last 15 years by Benjamin Netanyao starting since 1996 uh every time he comes out he always mentioned that Iran is just weeks away from making the nuclear bomb therefore there is a consensus in Israel that Iran should go iran should be destroyed the Iranian program should be eliminated the missile program should be removed and there is a a necessity to remove the ruling system because without it then the danger will be removed on Israel and as long as it stays then the danger on Israel will remain now the Israelis managed with a ruse uh supported by Donald Trump who first of all gave an ultimatum to the Iranians well it wasn't an ultimatum he said the Iranians have two months to negotiate a nuclear deal with us however on the day 60 he gave them an appointment 4 days later in Oman Moscow therefore on the day 64 the meeting was set set up to meet to be arranged between Steve Witkov the US envoy and Abbasarakjid the Iranian foreign minister and they were very happy together talking and trying to sort out the problem and making sure that Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb and the Iranian accepted the American direct supervision with European and the UN and here you and a branch of it the international atomic energy or association therefore the uh things were going well and then in the evening before the uh uh light of the next day on a Friday morning the Israelis attacked Iran and that was the war declaration in Iran and it took Iran by surprise because there were around 700 target that were destroyed on day one therefore it was a huge surprise for Iran followed by uh hundreds of drones made domestically by the Israeli spies and that created the major confusion for the Iranian defense air defense system because the drones attacked all the Iranian defense system carried out assassination and there were even teamed assassins team who went into homes went into police station command and they assassinated many people including they tried to assassinate the uh leader of the revolution said Ali Kamini who left his home an hour before and the home the same home was attacked by explosive and uh gunmen uh just after his departure therefore it was a perfect plan for Israel now it took the Iranian 12 hours to regain control of the command and control center to reappoint commanders because as you know the Iranians have around 1 million officers and soldiers therefore they have around 4,500 generals and they can really replace a general that is killed with another or is even 10 or 100 others so this is not a problem however the surprise attack this command and control and the communication and these are the nerve of any army this is why the recovery took many hours but Iran recovered and this is where the Israeli problem started because by recovering Iran showed this capability of launching missiles and drones on Israel the first day the second day and now we are on day eight the problem here is surfacing for the Israelis first because the Iranians are using different kind of missiles that are impossible to be intercepted secondly they are also using the same style the Israelis are using by sending drones and combining drones with old missile drones with new missile drone with hypersonic missiles and this is where the Israelis are finding it very difficult to intercept all the Iranian attacks and they are screaming all of them to uh for the US to come and help them the only person I heard saying we want to sit down and talk to the Iranians is the mayor of Hifa which is genuine however we heard from the Knesset and from other people from the opposition decision makers begging the US to intervene because Iran is showing its teeth and the Israelis confirmed long ago that it is impossible for Israel to carry out any war even against a non-state actor like Hamas and the Islamic Jihad and the other resistance have been going on the fighting since 620 days and Benjamin Net is unable to achieve his objectives now Iran things have changed because at the beginning Benjamin Netanyahu he says he wants to destroy the nuclear program but he knew he can't do it therefore obviously he relied on the Americans then he said he wants to destroy the missile program and again he can't do it because there are thousands of missiles everywhere in Iran and he cannot destroy them and all including the knowledge of making the missiles because they are made in Iran at home so they can always produce and the production is happening while we talking therefore it is not something that Benjamin Netanyahu can do and then he moved to the third phase by saying his operation is a rising lion they're quoting a biblical quote however he was flirting with the Iranian opposition that on their flag they have the lion and the sun and the sword and what he's telling us in his message that the lion really doesn't spare any animal that is catch but eats it alive and drink his blood so his objective is to create a chaos in Iran something that he cannot do this is why he need the Americans in and the Americans are can no longer bluff by saying I would to think about it in the next two weeks they are as you started on the first beginning of this program gathering forces and a large force to widen the wall yeah uh uh Patrick I want to just play quickly this uh scene here uh just going over some of the damage that's going to be silent um I I want to and that's just one part of central Israel Ramakan which was hit um in successive waves uh during Operation True Promise 3 uh follow up talk about any impressions you've had of this and where where things are heading here well just to uh add to what Elijah just laid out there which was which is a very good summary of where where we're at right now um just this is unprecedented territory for Israel you know they really haven't faced any sort of long protracted uh conflict with anybody uh for in in their entire existence certainly uh not against any state actor a formidable state actor uh of the likes uh with the power that Iran has and the size of the military force and of course the technological advantages that they have in terms of rocket technology and munitions and so forth but what that means is that the Israeli public are not used to uh anything like this much less a war of attrition when we say war of attrition you know how much would it take to break Israeli society and and and and break politics uh in Israel and create fissures that quite frankly will be irreparable in the Israeli context which is already combative if you follow internal Israeli politics uh already you already see seen those fissures uh appear as well so what are we talking a few weeks uh a month i think the breaking point will probably be somewhere around uh four weeks around a month iran different story iran has a history of fighting long wars uh most notably the Iran Iraq war which is a real focal point in the Iranian living memory if you go to Tran of course the the central piece and the capital of course is the museum for the Iran Iraq war uh and so it's it it's it occupies a very important place uh in in their national story in their conversation and it's it's in the front of everybody's minds and hearts and so forth and many many veterans of that conflict are still alive uh they're in politics they're in leadership positions right now so Israel is a completely different story so from this point of view u I think it's going to be extremely challenging for Israel to hold it together this could be the X factor which is the political element certainly on the military front look it's Israel is acting as a proxy of the United States you could say in in a very similar way that Ukraine is backed by NATO they're an extension of NATO israel pretty much on every single aspect of everything they do is an extension of the United States military and intelligence complex as well as Britain and some European countries that also support it uh other than you know flying the planes the pilots are Israeli but everything else the technology the ISR uh everything is coordinated with the United States the munitions the bombs uh the protection the extension of the Iron Dome is it's all it's all American in fact the entire region Israel would would not be able to operate without the United States look at Iran who is helping Iran who's propping Iran up nobody is propping Iran up what does that tell you they're very uh s self-sufficient and they have the wherewithal to fight a war of attrition against the Israelis and I think and the Americans too and the reason I say that is because the United States just finished a 7-week air campaign against Allah in Yemen okay and arguably this is a very weak opponent in comparison to the Islamic Republic of Iran so the United States had all sorts of problems in fact if you look at the loss of equipment uh I'm talking about uh F-18 Hornets Super Hornets i'm talking about damage potentially to US uh naval vessels and so forth uh drones that were downed by the Houthies as Americans call them the Houthies uh it's the record numbers never seen before in any altercation where the United States was acting directly record-breaking so if they had that level of of problems against Yemen I would say they would have 100x potential problems against Iran in a 7-week campaign let's say it's of the same duration and that's to say nothing about the continuous uh rockets uh that are going to be raining down on Israel during this time what the Iranians have done is they have raised considerably they have considerably raised the cost not just the economic cost the political cost of warfare with Israel and the United States okay the longer this goes on that cost just goes up and up for the Israelis and for the United States too because the US can't fight a long war with Iran i'm telling you the the American public the press the opposition even the Republican party doesn't have the stomach for anything i mean the the Yemen campaign was pretty much breaking point that's seven weeks that's enough for the United States in the current society uh in the current political meal that's it so seven weeks against Iran what could the how do you define winning at that point because for the Iranians just to survive is a win psychologically and you mentioned the psychological aspect Danny at the beginning and this is something you can see very deliberate uh if you look at True Promise 1 and two the Iranians announced they're going to be launching X Y and Zed they they spoke to the United States beforehand i even It's even possible that they sent messages to the Israelis we're going to do X Y and Zed this is all part of this is this is the uh behavior of a normative power within the international system and and so the Iranians it it kind of puts them above the Israelis the United States and the Israelis had to do a sneak attack they had to employ deception uh and and create a ruse through negotiations in order to uh lull the Iranians into complacency and attack them by surprise uh basically destroying any possibility of any diplomacy in the future there's no trust there but look how the Iranians are operating so the Russians and the Chinese other powers even the Europeans and even some people in America are looking at how Iran is behaving and Israel too and other Arab countries and thinking ah that if you look at the international system in history it tends to bend in favor of normative powers and Iran is doing everything that a normative power does much like the Russians very patient and very deliberate and very pragmatic and being able to the key is being able to back it up and it seems like Iran has what it takes I think in this particular conflict to be able to back it up missile levels I've heard different maybe Elijah knows more about this but there's a lot of different estimations about what Iran has in their arsenal i've heard on the high end 20,000 uh missiles on the low end 4,000 but even if it's 4,000 if they're firing 20 a day uh over 20 days that's uh 400 uh multiply that times 10 200 days that's 4,000 200 days that's more than 6 months if it's on the high end are does Israel even have a chance does the US even have a chance i don't know if they've thought this out on the western end of this equation or not that's that's something that maybe is up for discussion well Elijah I'm curious i get this question asked all the time what exactly are Iran's capabilities and uh while I think Iran keeps this very close to the chest uh and and it's not public I'm curious on what you've been able to find through your uh investigation um in your work on what is Iran's capabilities here because uh this is the big question I think a lot of people in the audience are asking uh based on uh just how they've been doing in Operation True Promise 3 and of course the now Israel is saying this is a protracted war it's open-ended it could last for quite a long time it's a good question first of all Iran manufactured thousands of missiles throughout the decades until they start developing a more modern missiles we've seen the old version of Shahab missiles fired on Israel at the very beginning used to flood the Israeli interception missiles and we have seen after eight days only despite the fact that the Americans said that they have sent to Israel a large quantity of interception missiles two weeks before the beginning of the war indicating the knowledge of the uh American s of the timing of the war and also the preparation of the Israelis to the maximum that the Iranians can fire so they have miscalculated because the Iranians started to fire the old missiles but then it was important to shift to a few new one because there was an old theory that also used by Hezbollah it's important to flood the interception missiles and then allow the elite missiles we talking about hypersonic missiles or a fate 110 the new version 110m to sneak in however the Iranian changed their policy because that was giving a sense of security to the Israelis they've started to launch ballistic missiles modern one but not the latest version and I'm talking about the modern one I'm talking about hypersonic missiles that the Israelis cannot intercept so the Israelis increased the multi-layer interception missile system deploying the maximum they can and using uh between five to 10 interception missile on every missile this is where the Iranians were managing to hit the Israeli but then they showed them something completely different by using one single missile against all the multi-layer Israeli missiles and this missile reach the destination we're talking about theam shah missile and then they showed them the one they haven't showed them the sil 2 and they haven't showed them the fat they've showed them the fat one and the one and this Sil people thought that it was carrying a cluster bomb it wasn't it carries 26 different warheads including the principal one and they all open at 7 kilometers above the sky and then it is impossible to intercept them so they showing the Israelis what kind of missile they have but they keeping the most modern and destructive because they have up to two tons of explosive missile that they have not used because they are convinced the Americans are going to come in and if the American join the battle there are a few American bases that are the closest and can be immediately destroyed and we're talking about Kurdistan Iraq that are on borders with Iran so really the Americans cannot have time to intercept any of these missiles and we're talking about Assad that is in Albar Iraq and we're talking about Aladid in Qatar that is within 200 kilometers now to give you an idea why I'm saying that because the first wave of hypersonic missiles needed 12 minutes to reach Israel the new version of the most modern missiles needed four to five minutes and in four to five minutes there is no personnel in the world that can intercept an avalanche of missiles even four or five and down all these together it is just impossible therefore for the Iranian when they showed their capability in the last few days only they started only three days ago and they not messages for Israel alone they messages for the Israelis the Americans and the NATO allies that are helping the Israelis and supporting them in intercept in intercepting the Iranian missiles in the Mediterranean and I'm talking here about the French in Jordan i'm talking about the uh uh British and the Americans who used to have the 492 and 494 Strike Eagle squadron that were deployed to only intercept the Iranian missiles and they have been reinforced and substituted by another airship with additional F-16 F-22 F-35s therefore the Iranians they have much more than the 20,000 that the Israelis think they have because they believe this war is going to be very long and they believe they can inflict serious damage on Israel whenever they want they've been selecting very specific targets and they are using very precision missiles unaffected by the Israeli electronic jam because they do not use the GBS but they use the GLONES positioning system which is not vulnerable but they also have in their more modern missile a system where the warhead would close after receiving the information of the coordinate of the target and would open to correct uh the uh trajectory of the missile only in the last seconds so I think it's going to be a tough war on everybody without disregarding the fact that Iran will be seriously damaged with one advantage that the Iranian military after two days of the war acknowledge and accepted the fact that they are going to suffer heavy damage but they also know if they surrender or they stop the entire governing system is going to fall and they're not going to do it yeah anything you want to follow up uh Patrick no uh well I just I I think there's a couple of things um one is there's there's a lot of talk right now in the US i mean we'll start with the the the expectations of US involvement so Donald Trump announced there's going to be you know oh wait 14 days uh I don't trust anything Donald Trump says so that could very well be a ruse and according to other journalists uh I think Douglas McGregor as well as Seymour Hirs has published that the attacks going to happen this weekend maybe as we speak right now or very soon who who knows but uh if that's the case then it it seems like it's a fatal comple uh war this undeclared war of aggression by the Israelis now if they do uh their stated objective is the W that they're going to have to get and this this is actually a little bit murky because this started off as Iran can't be allowed to have the bomb so in order to achieve that victory or mission accomplished uh the Trump administration the United States military will have to along with the Israelis they'll have to disable uh the deep underground uh Iranian nuclear facilities and it it's unclear whether conventional even a MOAB can do this efficiently or accurately it's it's a kind of an untested uh area so there's now a lot of talk in the US media and that Donald Trump has said or his his representative has said that nothing's off the table including tactical low-yield nuclear weapons in order to achieve that quote bunker busting uh capability now would they have Israel do this does Israel have low yield warheads in its arsenal uh one might assume that they do among their sort of undeclared uh nuclear arsenal anything from 70 to 300 depending there's a lot of different estimations on that but the the point is uh the optics of this would just be so severe in that there's no evidence that Iran has a bomb there's no evidence that they're actively pursuing a bomb and so the United States or Israel will use nuclear weapons against Iran without in absence of any actual tangible proof i mean the this the blowback diplomatically and uh reputationally and politically for the US in terms of getting you have to remember Donald Trump is trying to do trade deals with every single country in the world he's trying to put himself out as a dealmaker a peacemaker they'll have no credibility at all the US won't be able to do really much at all uh for the rest of this ter president's term if he survives uh this term politically as a result of what he may or may not do here uh for Israel as well i mean Israel's already I think the damage for Israel is irreversible uh the whole world despises them and more so as each each day goes on they the entire global south and lots of the rest of the world are already rooting for Iran this is this is pretty clear if you get outside of the Western media echo chamber so but but will they do that are we looking at that type of finality in that someone would use or deploy this type of a weapon so that's the big question because the the ramifications of this are world changing it this means that every single country who has nuclear weapons just starting with the nuclear countries will have to revise their doctrines as a result of what may happen here okay and I I I don't think that probably means the world's going to be a more dangerous place not a safer place uh as people assume it has been through mutually assured destruction and so forth so we're we're we're waiting into very dangerous territory here as the human race this is something of that should be of grave concern uh to everybody so that's that's another problem and also means that the the IAEA and some of these international agencies uh are really going to be without portfolio at this point and the IEA is already implicated in espionage against the Iranians uh this is what's been inferred with the intelligence leaks that Iran put out just days before the Israeli attack so cooperation any kind of NPT agreement or even a future JCPOA is sort of off the table for Iran and probably for other countries as well in fact what's what's amazing about this is Israel through this preemptive so-called preemptive strike they have made the argument for the hardliners in Iran better than the hardliners could ever make it so they they've incentivized Iran or hardliners there to to make a winning argument as to why Iran should have a nuclear deterrent okay so that's red rag to a bull as far as the US is concerned but who knows with a weakened Israel might be a different story uh so and what would Israel do in their act of desperation uh they have certain doctrines that are well known and have been published like the Samson option exact for example uh note the book by Seymour Hirs these are all very concerning things and we we just don't know what might happen that th those would be gamechangers of course now the question is if they used a low yield uh uh device to penetrate the deep underground nuclear facilities of Iran what does that mean for Iran Would they would they would they surrender at that point or would they keep firing all that they have at Israel and any US positions in the region and possibly even if US destroyers or aircraft carriers are stationary enough in the eastern Mediterranean those would be targets as well would Cyprus be a target at that point because that would also that's also a major staging ground that would be a gamecher because that pulls in NATO and pulls in the the European Union in a much bigger way but all bets are off you know when the the point is if the US go through with this all bets are off a lot of restraints are off for the Iranians and Russia is uh also made very very clear uh what their concerns are not not least of all 250 Russian engineers and specialists who are I believe assigned contracted to work on the Basher uh nuclear site uh in Iran which is one of their main nuclear sites and Vladimir Putin says they're not being evacuated they're not so he's kind of hinted there and where Russia and China for instance could move assets into Iran not even military assets but by occupying the space and quite frankly they'd be well within their rights even militarily by international law because Iran by international law has been a victim of aggression by by Israel but here's the other X factor I want to end with and maybe Elijah has some insight on this i if if if the Iraqi government if if let's say it's true and the United States has been evacuating personnel and some equipment from Bahrain uh from some of these other from Qatar uh in anticipation of a Iranian retaliation if their bases in Iraq or their position is weakened making them very vulnerable to the Hashid or the PMUs uh to to basically set upon those bases what's stopping the Iraqi air force from enforcing a no-fly zone uh out of wish the wish for peace or for to deescalate Iraq the Iraqi air force is well within their rights internationally legally to do that with the United States moving out of those positions potentially that's a possibility I mean I I might be too idealistic here but that seems to be a big problem two two problems are Jordan and Iraq because they make this operation a lot easier for Israel offensively and defensively and who knows those situations could move uh if the United States goes forward with this and Iran retaliates like many believe they will but uh I I would love to hear Elijah's opinion on some of those well this is a very good question Patrick because Iraq is not an independent state first of all the Americans are flying over Iraq without the agreement of the Iraqi government the Israelis are using the Iraqi airspace without the approval of Baghdad and in Kurdistan there are bases of the Mossad and a base where there are drones attacking Iran from Kurdistan Iraq now why all that is happening for a simple reason iraq relies 90% of his budget on oil that hit the bank of New York before reaching Baghdad therefore on the first sign of kind of rebellion from the Iraqi they won't receive a penny from the uh Americans because they still under article six of the United Nations and they not really free in their budget the other point is that the Iraqi air force cannot operate without the US spare parts and the US spare parts are really very uh slow in arriving and the Iraqi air force was downing its air force because of the lack of spare part but it is no match of the Americans therefore they cannot unless they decide to accept the losses mount a campaign to detach themselves from the American banks go to the UN and remove themselves from the article six and then ask the Americans to leave they cannot ask the Americans to leave and they don't dare to do so because they not really willing to accept all the consequences and the losses iran is fighting a uh today a war with there's no balance between the force that is attacking Iran and its capability and the Iranian capability the sky in the in uh Iran is pretty much dominated by the Americans and the Israelis and we're talking about jets the drones don't have the maneuvering possibility of a jet this is why the Iranians can down the drones however in Iraq they have nothing after Shabi of course can attack the Iraqi bases the uh US bases in Iraq nevertheless during the war on Gaza the uh Baghdad was warned the prime minister was warned if the Iraqi continue sending drones or try to attack with missiles on Israel then the Iraqi will suffer daily will not receive a penny this is where the uh Iraqi prime minister came out and the foreign minister and announced that Iraq has nothing to do with Gaza and they are out of the equation the same threat can be valid for Iran however I presume and I think that Hashtabi is going to be part of this war because even if it it depends on the orders of the prime minister because Hashabi is not the resistance they do different things and people tend to confuse between them but hashtabi is an ideological force that understands with the fall of Iran Iraq will be forced to see a peace deal with Israel and Israel wants a piece of Iraq in the greater Israel and nothing can stop Israel from having a piece of Lebanon Syria and Iraq if Iran falls so either everybody falls with Iran or everybody fights with Iran and I think Yemen today showed that Yemen is going to fight with Iran simultaneously regardless of the deal with the Americans to stop the war and they said today they will join the war if the American join in iraq will do the same not the official but the nonofficial and the resistance and Hezbollah will follow because if Iran falls the Israelis will turn immediately to Lebanon and ask the total disarmament of Hezbollah and they would invade the south of Lebanon so all this scenario is unfolding in front of everybody this is why the Iraqi official will not take part of the war but the nonofficial part will join in yeah no I mean just an incredible amount of dominoes that uh are certainly to fall as this uh transpires i wanted to Patrick before I bring you back in just uh show some of the reports that have emerged about uh the United States's moves here the cradle reports from Fox News six B2 South bombers appear to be headed toward Guam i think they're already there us island and the Western Pacific according US controlled island uh according to North Garmin B2 stealth bombers can refuel range of 6,000 nautical miles extending 10,000 nautical miles with a single refueling the distance from Guam to Iran's Fordo nuclear facility is about 9510 kilometers now there's also uh reports here of uh what's happening in Saudi Arabia so there's satellite imagery showing that there's a major military presence right now at Riad's air base um uh 22 KC135 tankers 53 F-16 fighters on and on and on and here's just satellite imagery of what that looks like so Patrick uh it seems like the region is becoming more and more militarized for the purposes of striking Iran what do you think the calculation here is because you mentioned two weeks within two weeks this strike is going to happen some are saying that it's going to happen uh maybe hours after we're done talking here uh so talk about the calculations that the US is making in particular uh as they consider uh making what some are saying is an absolutely catastrophic move that as Elijah just pointed out could change just everything in the region and Danny is that Prince Sultan uh air base is that the is that the facility i think so we're looking at uh yes Prince Sultan Air Base i'm I'm quite frankly surprised uh that Saudi Arabia would allow itself to be a staging ground uh for any kind of US attack considering the amount of warnings and threats that Iran's been very you know clear about that that will there will be a response and it will be uh to any to the source of the aggression and if it's staging in Saudi Arabia they're going to get hit and they're probably not going to be uh u restricted just to military targets perhaps uh infrastructure that's all fair game uh in war so is Saudi ready for that i mean uh look you know I I just can't believe what Iran has demonstrated in the last week the power the accuracy the the depth and and the ability for them to reach out and touch targets and they may have Patriot missile batteries uh defending Aramco sites in Saudi Arabia but even Yemen uh with rudimentary drone technology was able to uh bypass uh some of the protections that they had in place there and that was a gamecher in terms of the Saudi uh Yemen war so I can't imagine what's going on here in the minds of the Saudi Arabians they're almost being set up uh for a major blow here you know so I I I really don't know i really don't know what what to expect here other than I just think this could be a catastrophic mistake for some of the Gulf States and what's what the other thing that's extraordinary is that we're not seeing any of the Gulf States publicly calling for deescalation it's almost like they're on board with this operation i certainly haven't seen anything meaningful uh there so maybe they know something that we don't and this also makes us a little bit uh again concerned that the United States want to avoid a long protracted uh engagement and air campaign they might use uh a nuclear device or they might do something like this seeing that that's the uh you know economic decision has the highest level of utility and the lowest cost and it avoids a long drawn out conflict in terms of the two-week window that you mentioned Danny uh the that that's interesting that Trump's comments that we need two weeks comes immediately on the heels of admission by US officials that Israel's uh missile defense batteries uh around their cities and sensitive sites uh will be depleted in between 10 and 12 days so perhaps that's not uh a you know coincidence that those two things were mentioned at more or less the same time that might be the amount of time that the United States needs to uh because they're going to need to prepare Israel for retaliation so that's going to take it could take time it could take a couple of weeks uh especially if they're being depleted so and they're going to have to move assets from Ukraine and from lots of other places maybe even from their own strategic reserve which would leave a lot of US sites uh un undefended and unguarded so I I I I'm not sure what to expect here other than I I just see a lot of problems for the United States tactically and strategically and uh either they haven't thought this out uh properly or they're not planning for a long campaign this the latter really frightens me because if they're not planning for at least the duration of the campaign against Yemen then what are we looking at in terms of overwhelming force that would be my number one concern and the fact that the US has already evacuated uh personnel and troops from some of their main military positions in the Middle East like Bahrain and Qatar for starters and even from some of their installations in Syria um and also removing some some uh equipment as well that means that they're expecting a retaliation so it kind of means that they are going in it seems like a fatal come plea the question is when and and not only that how hard how hard because it we we will be waking up to a new reality if any nuclear devices whether they're low yield or strategic nuclear weapons are used we are going to wake up to a new world the following day everything changes internationally and all like as I I said before you know all doctrines are basically out the window and and I I think we are so dangerously waiting into a return of great power politics the likes of which have led in in history to disasters like World War I where o overwhelming force uh was the only option and diplomacy was basically discarded as any sort of viable option and it was really military against military we're going to settle everything with overwhelming force and I really I I really feel like we're there and uh it's it's it's very very concerning it's very concerning well Elijah uh base I know you have about an hour here so we're coming up at the time but maybe you could help us understand uh even deeper kind of the military calculations here for the United States because the scenarios appear to be very numerous and uh they come in this context of what Iran has already shown and perhaps what it hasn't shown as you have mentioned many times so talk about what uh the deep calculations that the United States may be making and and considering as they move into position as well as uh uh game this out because it's it appears there's just so much that could happen well the United States is gathering forces in the Middle East so at sea there are three US carrier strike groups they led by USS Carl Vincent USS Nimites and there is an unnamed third carrier so far that is operating in the eastern Mediterranean and in the Arabian Sea so they have uh many destroyers they have um these destroyers are armed with the um SM3 SM6 interceptor system they are prepared for a war with Iran and also they have as you mentioned in the third beginning the long range bombers are also in position and these B2 and B-52 each one different but the B2 is basically for the four-door nuclear plant because it is deep 100 meter under the mountain and the B2 can carry the GBU 57 that is 13.5 tons of explosive and can reach up to 50 m but if they do exactly what the Israelis did in Lebanon when they assassinated say noah so they drop several bombs on the same locations and each bomb open the road for another and they can reach 100 meters however that is not going to stop Iran from uh not having a nuclear program because all the enriched uranium of 5% over 7,000 of 20% over 3,000 and of 60% uh of 402 kilos uh therefore they have enough uranium to continue they have uranium mine to rebuild everything they have lost even if the espan nuclear site has been destroyed where they do the yellow cake all the natans has been destroyed where they have the centrifuge because they can reconstruct because everything was made locally so the Americans have no intention to destroy the Iranian nuclear program by bombs only because that can be done only with boots on the ground and boots on the ground is not possible because the the Americans have learned the lesson from Iraq and from Afghanistan and from Libya therefore the only possibility is to do exactly what the Israelis are starting to do in the last in the last two days now they're hitting the oil and hitting the oil it means they want to destroy the Iranian economy by destroying the Iranian economy using the B-52 to unleash all their bombs using the F-16 the F-35 to start bombing and with the US carriers they can create a force of between 400 and 500 jets they can do twice an attack on Iran per day one or twice the Israelis can't do more than 30 to 50 per day because they are between 1,300 to 1,500 to 1,700 kilometers away therefore for the Americans to bring the carriers close or to use the Aladid base in Qatar or the naval base in Bahrain or the base in Kuwait uh so it's easier for the Americans to start destroying Iran and the only way with a possibility to change the ruling system in in Iran is by destroying completely its economy by putting the oil on fire the reserves are already hit by the Israelis they've started a couple of days ago and they are hitting sever several depot uh in Iran with the intention to the Iranian economy because so far the destruction have caused more or less around 30 to 40 billion dollars if Iran doesn't have oil reserves or doesn't have the capability of reconstruction reconstructing the country I remember the Iran Iraq war I covered uh when Hashimir of Sanjani went into the election after being the president he fell because people didn't want him because the economy was on the ground and Iran of course was much weaker than today that the Iranians are extremely critical and not many people support the existing uh ruling system but they all stand with their government against Israel so we have uh Kubi Katami all the ex-presidents including Sheikh Rouani they all even some of them were were on and still are on house arrest they called for the support of the government against Israel so the solidarity now as it is in Israel sort of and in Iran is protected until now what's going to happen next in the next weeks will determine the future of Iran or Israel and this is something that no one knows but the Americans are fully aware that Israel failed to achieve its objectives will not achieve its objectives to destroy the Iranian nuclear program and the missile program on its own and will certainly not bring down the ruling system this is why they begging they they really begging for the American intervention and the Americans are going to interfere maybe I'm wrong but they're going to interfere and they really interfering only to support Benjamin Netanyahu otherwise he will fall as a prime minister because he failed in Gaza and now he's failing in Iran and if the Americans don't come to rescue him in person he's going to be removed so this is really the objective of the Americans because the Israelis cannot change a regime cannot change a state and put another one and there is more experience even if failed experience with the Americans so they want the Americans in to help them to find another system because the chaos uh in Iran that borders seven countries is really the last of the Israeli concern because they not on the border with Iran however many countries including Iraq Afghanistan Pakistan Russia Turkey because Turkey is next this is what the Israelis are saying so all these countries will be extremely worried about what is going to happen next oh yeah turkey Qatar Israel has mentioned as being a big uh problem for them and and as you said Elijah the the the aim appears the aim of regime change for it to be accomplished we'll have to you you will have to uh starve and and destroy the Iranian people into submission essentially
And in the last few minutes while we have you Elijah maybe you can give a final comment before you go on this uh we are in this historic moment uh how Iran has been able to respond to damage inflicted on Israel and of course the US uh really approaching this uh catastrophic uh war that it is it has facilitated and engineered uh in this scenario when the United States finally goes in uh we saw during the Yemen campaign that uh you had you know F-18 Hornets sinking to the bottom of the sea you had the USS Ronald Reagan uh having to make heavy evasive maneuvers and maybe was even hit um uh uh by Yemen fire uh should the United States uh get involved elijah in your long experience following wars especially in this region do you foresee the United States taking significant damage and if so that's historic in and of itself and could lead to I guess consequences that we have not yet seen at least in the period since the US you know became the uh so-called uh global superpower first of all it's important for the American people to understand this is not their war there is no war between Iran and America and the Iranians always asked the Americans for negotiating and they signed a deal in 2015 with Barack Obama who did not respect by the way and he kept the sanctions on the Iranian bank therefore they accepted the deal and until Donald Trump came and shredded the deal completely in 2018 and the Iranian waited until 2019 it was not really a clever move for Iran to go to the 60% which I disagree with because they don't want to make the bomb and the Iranians offered to the Americans to come and check the nuclear program and they were open with the agency Tulsi Gabbad was crucified because she said Iran is not making a bomb she's doubling down but even Rafael Gi the director of the IAEA saying that Iran is not making a nuclear bomb if Iran is offering the Americans to come and check and Iran doesn't want to make a bomb the danger doesn't come from Iran toward the US the US are more than 10,500 kilometers away from Iran and they have no interests however it is not in the interest for Israel to see any powerful country in the Middle East region for the Israelis they want different small states they fight against one another they want sectarian war where everybody is busy and for Israel to dominate is this the interest of the United States this is where the Americans are going to lose men in the new war and it's not going to end here because the Americans and the Israelis threatened to kill the gran is like for the Christian threatened to kill the pope is this is something that the Muslim Shia are going to accept without killing any American they meet in the street those who are radically over the are ideologically very much attached to to their grandah for the Israelis and for the Americans to go and assassinated a religious figure this is really going beyond the limit so where is the granatal coming danger that he's representing against the Americans and are the Americans are going to be safe anywhere this is also another question that the Americans need to be to ask the Iranians will be cornered they will receive a hell of a lot of damage but they will not surrender and by not surrendering the only thing they can do first is every bomb falling on Tel Aviv it's Washington that's going to scream and they're going to hit Tel Aviv hard the second they will not spare any US base in the Middle East and that will anger the American even further and they will say you see they've killed our men therefore we need to retaliate forgetting who starting first it's like with Israel today screaming that Iran bombed a hospital when the Israeli destroyed 36 hospitals in Gaza so the narrative that is under the control of the Americans is one thing but the awareness of the American people is something else as the people of America stood with Gaza because it is important not to violate international laws we cannot live without law and the Israelis announced a war on Iran it is unlawful it's an aggression and they have started they have to end it and if the American people do not stand for that then we're going to have a very long bloody war elijah Mag everyone uh should follow his work you can find it in the video description following this program it's there now but after this program you can check it out um you should definitely support his journalism elijah thanks so much for joining today anything else you want to uh promote or plug before you head out thank you very much Lenny for having me and good to be with Patrick on the same s of course all the best yeah this was a great conversation elijah have a good rest of your evening everyone the link is in the video description take good care now thank you all right everybody we are still here we're going to get into some actually let's get into some of the political uh ramifications here Patrick if we could uh I think I've I was able to find some of this footage so I think one of the things that this moment has really exposed is uh the true character of the United States as a a political and economic system and what its true aims are uh here we see of course it's been nuclear talk nuclear talk nuclear talk um and uh we had Donald Trump say this on the tarmac about his own intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard here it is do you have that Iran is building a nuclear weapon your intelligence community had said they have no evidence that they are at this point well my intelligence community is wrong who in the intelligence community said that your director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbert she's wrong so there was that and then very soon after Patrick despite Tulsi Gabber the current DNI despite her reputation as being opposed to nuclear conflict she even put after her visit to Hiroshima in Japan and Nagasaki uh her opposition to nuclear conflict immediately after this she put out this statement let me actually put the playback a little faster just so it goes a little faster here we go here's what she had to say iran continues to seek expansion of its influence in the Middle East despite the degradation to its proxies and defenses during the Gaza conflict iran has developed and maintains ballistic missiles cruise missiles and UAVs including systems capable of striking US targets and allies in the region thran has shown a willingness to use these weapons including during a 2020 attack on US forces in Iraq and in attacks against Israel in April and October 2024 iran's cyber operations and capabilities also present a serious threat to US networks and data the IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Kamini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003 the IC continues to monitor closely if Tyrron decides to reauthorize its nuclear weapons program in the past year we've seen an erosion of a decades long taboo in Iran on discussing nuclear weapons in public likely emboldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran's decision-making apparatus iran's enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons iran will likely continue efforts to counter Israel and press for US military withdrawal from the region by aiding arming and helping to reconstitute its loose consortium of like-minded terrorists and militant actors which it refers to as its axis of resistance although weakened this collection of actors still presents a wide range of threats including to Israel's population US forces deployed in Iraq and Syria and to US and international military and commercial ship so Patrick uh I'm not sure actually that was the correct clip but she has come out and essentially kissed the ring of Donald Trump and said that uh the Iran is now a nuclear threat even though she didn't say it there but that's the latest news so talk about this change the political significance of of this as we head into this catastrophic conflict so So that uh that clip you just showed there was probably from March 20th and that was her uh DNI uh testimony uh to the US Senate at the time and what she did is she retweeted that video and if probably the where it was embedded when you originally brought it up on screen she retweeted that video quote tweeted it and said that the you know the dishonest media is taking my words out of context and all this other stuff so she's trying to walk back something that she's clearly said which is that Iran doesn't have nukes so I don't know if that's uh some you know her basically rear guard action i think because of the political fallout of Trump throwing that statement under the bus not once but twice which you showed that the second time Trump did that just previous to that Tulsi clip and the the statement she made about Hiroshima that video message that she put out was on June 10th okay very out of character for a DNI to put out uh a type of uh you know ideological or world peace type video uh the the anniversary of Hiroshima Nag Nagasaki I don't think it's till August so I'm just led to believe that was produced before was scheduled to be released and she somehow released it early uh and then that prompted some kind of uh you know internal backlash within the Trump camp um and and who knows what the real story is with this with this administration you just don't know and she's been given a a talking to and basically said get back in line because Trump doesn't tolerate anything other than complete unonymity on everything every opinion and so forth that's why he's basically said in my mind in my mind uh Iran doesn't have or sorry Iran has nukes and I don't care what the intelligence community says i don't care what my DNI my director of national intelligence says me Donald Trump I believe because Mark Lavine told me or because Netanyahu told me or somebody from Israel told me uh or the lobby told me that they have nukes and that's the end of that so clearly Tulsi said what she said that to take it at face value this is very disingenuous of her to do this but it seems to be very political now I I wouldn't rule out that there's games going on here because as you know Danny Donald Trump is the master of WWF or WWE theatrics and Israel is also very good at creating theatrical situations uh in order to create a political facade in order to perhaps uh you know prepare for some kind of a scripted succession of events so based on this Tulsi putting out that video would position her as an anti-uclear person an anti-nuclear person so what would that be preceding well Ergo that would be preceding the use of a nuclear weapon by the United States or by Israel and then she would she would then step forward as as the voice of uh the you know the voice of sanity the voice of levelheadedness she would be the good cop to Donald Trump's bad cop so it's it's a it is a political video she put out uh the Hiroshima video it's political which is totally out of character for an intelligence head which should all be leftrain and you know informational and pragmatic not political and she herself says that the intelligence services can't be political even though I agree with her message but that's buy and the buy me a as a as a as a peace you know an anti-war leaning person and a libertarian conservative I I agree with that message but that's beside the point why did she put it out why then and what what is this drama that's being prepared now that's the number one question not only that but uh sources close to her according to recent reports saying that she hasn't ruled out a presidential run in 2028 so it would be a global disaster if nuclear weapons were used for Donald Trump i think we can all agree that's that's kind of the end of MAGA it's the end of Trump he will go down history this is an this is an undeclared war of aggression that the Israel is waged and the US is ready to go in right behind them against every international norm and the UN charter okay so that would that's the end of Trump that's let's face it that's the end impeachment or 25th amendment who knows what crazy stuff he'll be tweeting out if they use nukes and so why did Nancy Pelosi rush through the 25th Amendment at the end of uh Trump's first term right before Biden came into office clearly somebody in Washington is preparing for to have that in place the removal of a president on the grounds of mental instability and something like this and Trump's already set himself up as the ultimately unstable mental actor so I'm I'm kind of speculating here but these are very strange things that are happening very out of character they don't make sense on the surface so I'm wondering whether we're going to be uh thrust into some type of Shakespearean epic uh in in the next week or two and if so which actors are going to be put forward who's going to be the hero who's going to be the villain uh clearly this this looks like this is what's being set up tulsi Gabbard has not been straightforward if she was really the DNI and she's really about objectivity and non-political intelligence Donald Trump throwing under the bus twice on this issue of nuclear weapons highly consequential staring at the precipice of a war potentially a World War II situation she should resign that's what anybody in a cabinet position would do at that point because she's compromised she's either not able to do her job or she is politically compromised erggo she's lost the confidence of the country and she's basically in violation of her oath at that point so she hasn't done that she's doubled down she's done the cope uh she's basically done a a reverse uh 180 and that's just completely kind of out of character for her she was kind of this straight shooter you know levelheaded the voice of reason high integrity all this stuff served her country country before politics and stuff like that uh I'm not sure this is not none of this adds up doesn't make any sense she could actually stop the war she could her her resigning and going public saying I disagree our intelligence assessment says there's no bomb that's that that would create such a crisis for Trump that they he could not move forward he could not move forward danny that's not happening something else is going on here what exactly is it that's the question oh yeah yeah no no it's not happening this is happening uh this is the statement uh the dishonest media intentionally taking my testimony of context spreading fake news to manufactured division america has intelligence that Iran is at the point it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months if they decide to finalize the assembly president Trump has been clear it can't happen and I agree so uh that's the testimony uh or that's what she put up uh when she shared her own testimony which appears to doesn't necessarily contradict this per se fully but she's obviously uh 100% in alignment with Donald Trump and this has been a process of course you know for Tulsi Gabbard and my politics i've always been a little weary of her but I did uh you know with critical support over certain periods over her career um have uh said it's valuable what she says her anti-war positions on certain conflicts um and then lately over the last several years I mean leading into her ascendancy to politics I think your uh judgment about where she's going is um very uh well with speculative I think there's a lot of evidence behind it showing her political transition leading into her becoming the DNI uh has that pathway it's like the revolving door she was into the corporate media millu embraced as now a part of the whole MAGA political phenomenon and then now she's DNI and look at how she's reacting during maybe one of the most important periods in US foreign policy history where we are at the edge of a potential global uh conflaguration there's there's something to consider there that Danny and this is part of a bigger phenomenon and the the bigger phenomenon is you look at Trump's cabinet you look at Trump's cabinet lots of people that are poached from the House of Representatives okay and the Senate and why is that more than any other previous president normally you fill those positions with uh bureaucrats diplomats civil servants security experts people like that permanent Washington people senior executive service types not people from the house but yet we had Tim Waltz national security adviser sorry Mike Waltz national security adviser tulsi Gabbard DNI both former congressman uh previously Mike Pompeo thrown into the head of the CIA position immediately uh also Ratcliffe again from the House uh House of Representatives straight into DNI last term now he's CIA director and Marco Rubio right post from the Senate a solid seat in Florida Senate seat for life taken out put in as Secretary of State why is this because every single person in the Trump cabinet that is related to national security or foreign policy was handpicked was shortlisted and handpicked by the Israeli lobby specifically prepare the list prepared by Howard Lutnik and Jared Kushner okay so nobody got through there without the okay of the collective lobby that put $600 million into Republican coffers including quart uh quarter of a billion into the Trump campaign okay that's what that money buys okay why do they pick House members congressman senators because the lobby has been grooming them from the first day they even step forward to campaign for their seat so there's a relationship including Tulsi Gabbard mary Matt has been uh in the Addins have had their eyes on and grooming Tulsi Gabbard since like 2015 2016 okay she she's been in that track and so has everybody else there's a bunch of other names I've left out as well so that's why all they've all poached which makes Elise Stefonic UN ambassador why they take her out of a Republican seat in New York it's like crazy if you want to keep the House and Senate and she basically had to withdraw from her UN position because they were afraid that she was going to lose that seat and so she's gone she's now back in her congressional seat so that didn't work out why because she had absolute loyalty to the lobby why is Pete Hagsth selected as Secretary of Defense he's the least qualified of any cab high level cabinet position maybe in the history of the country he is a Fox weekend host a major in the Army Reserve from I think Minnesota and uh on his like top of his resume is he served at Guantanamo Bay i mean guarding you know torturing taxi drivers school teachers and goat herders from Afghanistan i mean that's that's part of his combat experience how could you put someone like that in charge of the Pentagon because he is a part and parcel with the Israeli lobby he has gone and done advocacy in Israel for the building of the third temple so really a hardcore Zionist and a loyalist there so add all this stuff up and you can see there's there's absolute plan that it has to be executed under the Trump administration so for Gabbard and this is why this is why it's important she could she could very easily just as easily being have been used by these forces to execute certain key things mike Pompeo's job was to tear up the JCPOA and and after that he as Secretary of State when Trump lost Mike Pompeo was immediately on Fox he was immediately campaigning for a vice presidential or presidential position in the open GOP field and very anti-Trump if you remember Mike Pompeo so they had promised the lobby had promised Pompeo riches and fame and maybe a better position in the next election it didn't materialize but he did the job they parked them at a think tank like the Atlantic Council or they give them a show on Fox keep them keep them on the sidelines with a promise that that big opportunity is coming down the down the road and I think the same with Gabbard that you could you could be looking at the same thing she's not going to be president but they've told her that there's big things waiting for her in 2028 and she everyone I've spoke to including people that served with her including people that served with her said that uh she appeared to be very career oriented like that was a big priority for her um and that's the impression that many people have of her ruthlessly career oriented why would you switch you know to the Trump camp after being a Democrat so she's she's very malleable if you look at it her career so that kind of worries me anybody that's that malleable it means that they don't actually have any ideological beliefs or positions at all and it's literally in the pursuit of power so I don't know you probably noticed the same thing cuz I can see you were skeptical you said of her earlier and so that that's that could very well be the case is she if she said behave do what you're told and there'll be something good waiting for you down but they've done this to other people before Mike look at Mike Waltz his career is over but he he's been exposed as an absolute operator for Israel even this week recently with another scam scandal attached to him former national security adviser i think he's I think he's the UN ambassador i haven't checked but that he was meant he was meant to be there but I don't see him reading the script um so I don't know what happened to him but so there's a lot of that going on you know it's just disturbing Danny that we have a government that the entire cabinet has been bought by a foreign lobby it's this is a low point in American history and this is probably the weakest president politically who cannot stand up to a foreign lobby and you know the irony of this is it's a billionaire Donald Trump supposedly a genius of business he doesn't need the money he could probably fund his campaign another way but yet he took the money or is it a case of we're dealing with a mafia here that make offers that you just simply can't refuse and that could also be the case um that Donald Trump is in way over his head you can see it he is like a deer in the headlights half the time he's not his confident str uh you know striding uh Trump self he is literally on edge because he knows he has been put in a position in a corner that I don't think there's any way he can get out without some kind of a major fallout either with Israel and the Israeli lobby um or he just doesn't have the courage to basically be America first he's stuck being Israel first and everybody sees it maga's fracturing now uh you look at the polls you look at sort of you know rebellions within MAGA it's not working and he's basically be committing political suicide for uh for MAGA for the American first movement and for the probably for the Republican party too because he will not have the whip hand after this with the Republican party um so you're starting to see a bipartisan coalition come together with Thomas Massie Roana I think they have 40 co-sponsors for this bill to prevent Donald Trump from bypassing Congress and declaring a war uh so I this this is not uh a small thing if you think about what wasn't there before the Iraq war you didn't see that type of bipartisan cooperation before the Iraq war but you're seeing it here so I I'm an optimist Danny so right up to the right up to the last second you have to be and hope that there's something in politics that can uh can basically upend this this you know drive to war um that's my hope yeah well uh it appears that I mean Thomas Massie uh even though you know I stand on the uh left to left left of Democrat um Thomas Massie is the only person I see in Congress that has any political backbone when it comes to foreign policy he doesn't take the money he doesn't take the bribes and he is very very very consistent and gets heavily attacked for it and I believe that people like Roana who I do not see in that same vein on these issues um and any kind of bipartisan support uh that would be in terms of the optimism Patrick that would be a product I believe of the fact that one a war with Iran a protracted war with Iran is going to be catastrophic and it's going to at the very least it's going to sink the global economy which is bad for the rich people who actually control the uh US government bad for them uh to see the economy go at least you know in the long term in the short term they try to make um as much money as they can off of it but in the long term they don't want to see that because it it does uh bear really uh uh uh bad consequences for them in the long term and they don't want to see which I think is part of the optimism too which could occur in any kind of conflict with Iran don't want to see the unrest that could happen if the consequences of a long war with Iran are is to are to take shape they don't want to see people get angry like they did during the Iraq war uh go and start demanding uh that things stop uh that could be very uh bad for them as well because I think the consequences of a war in Iran are going to be even far greater at least in the global sense than uh a the war well there's another factor is that the the Gaza issue did did factor into the 2024 election and it did hurt the Democrats it did hurt Biden and Camala so it's that's still there and those young people have already mobilized on that issue and you know what they're very they're very savvy on Middle East politics now way more I I would say than even when my when we were students or when I was in my 20s they're on another level now they've seen what's happened in Gaza they're they're very uh you know their reticular activating system is is very uh turned on right now to to Middle East politics and geopolitics so a war with Iran an illegal illegal war with Iran that's going to I think definitely that that those protests those people that youth they're going to be activated they're going to be activated and they're this is their this is their um this is their education for their political life at that age and so you're you're talking about a potential powerful force in politics because they've witnessed this absolute debacle this absolute disaster through the last two presidents and there they'll be determined more than ever to say we're not going to have this and they will be in power those those kids everyone at Columbia University all these other places they're going to be in Congress many of them they'll be senators at the at these schools or who participated in these activities and who are going to go against Trump on this war and so in in a way I think there potentially Trump's and the Republicans are going to be awakening and the Democrats too that are basically sitting doing nothing most of them Jeff put out a statement that looked like it was written by IPAC uh this week I mean it's just insane talk about a slam dunk the doors already open with Trump you just have to push it and it could fall over but yet you can see the entire Congress practically not all of them but most of them the ones that aren't bought off by the lobby are afraid to to push too hard because they don't want to catch the backlash they don't be primar in the midterms so but I I think the the solution has to be with the electorate the solution has to be with the people and it's going to be the young generation that are going to move this and so that that's also a big thing that Trump may or may not appreciate what he is potentially going to unleash and it will transform politics uh in America in a significant way at least over the next 10 years totally and here's when we talk about you know the unelected interests that are actually dictating foreign policy in the United States in an article by CBS on the so-called diplomacy that was had between the E3 Germany France and the UK and Iran's foreign minister Abasarachi here's what uh was said in this article that kind of admits your US and European diplomats so these are so-called diplomats confirm conversations they're having confidential conversations they and whoever else about who would lead Iran next whether nuclear sites can be secured in the potential fallout health and environmental for regional allies for military strikes i mean this is literally these are the conversation these are the people who are having these conversations they're the ones who are dictating US foreign policy uh uh you know uh anyone who's uh publicly speaking on behalf of the so-called American people um in the interest of Apac and the corporate and monopolies and all the banks and all of those who who really fund them uh they uh they're they're the figureheads so I just wanted to put that out there and also Patrick if you have a few minutes just answer some questions here because there's a few good ones okay and I wanted to just um uh put a couple of them to you uh here is this one now uh so Elijah said the Israelis have already made attempt to assassinate Grand Ayatollah mainstream media ignored it president Trump said he vetoed any Israeli attempts what do you and Patrick think patrick I'll give you the first stab if you want to do this in a minute you know maybe we can do a rapid fire minute or so yeah I don't believe anything Trump says of what he vetoed it's just all you know he's not c he's not credible um whatever he says publicly in fact if he says something publicly more likely it's the opposite what that actually happened so he didn't veto it they just weren't successful in assassinating the uh the the the supreme leader so uh and again it's uh you know that's something Israel would do and then tell the US that they're after they've tried to do it or while they're doing it they wouldn't they've already de Israel's demonstrated with Nasalla and and they tried to kill uh the Houthi leader as well I think at least once and maybe even the US did as well unsuccessfully right yeah and you know Trump or anyone else US president when they say something if if it's not the opposite you should immediately uh think is the truth it should be in the in your mind that the opposite is happening uh as you as as they speak because uh the the US's track record especially through intelligence uh is one whether it you know if we put aside overt regime regime change military operations uh the the assassination attempts of leaders that the US doesn't like uh by US intelligence are that's a long long long long list uh we should not have any uh reservations and think in believing that the United States is in order to make this operation successful see that symbolic gesture one that's just horrifically offensive and and likely to blow back incredibly hard to try to assassinate a leader of this stature especially in the region not just that though if you look at Seymour Hersh's article that was posted a couple of days ago he he talked about this argument between uh the committee led by JD Vance and the Israelis about you know so Vance's uh team is saying "Oh we need to put in a moderate religious leader." And then the Israelis are saying "We don't care about the religious we just want to put in a political puppet." And so they're arguing about and I just see this profound lack of understanding or appreciation of what Iranian societyy's like and what is politically tenable in that country and if you have any experience with the Iranians to to if you've been to Iran or you've had a chance to sit with Iranians and discuss politics you will know how sophisticated but also how dedicated they are to uh gaining consensus and getting a political uh solution that's coherent and they do not leave any stone unturned in those discussions this is a very sophisticated uh advanced political uh uh economy and society in Iran but the the image that we have in America is that it's run by crazy mullers and the supreme leader is this crazy old man um in in wearing a turban and that's the caricature that the US has of Iran and they they don't even understand the role of the supreme leader what he embodies what he represents in the political sense and how that's different from the president and all of these different sort of distinctions you have to kind of understand this if you're talking about regime change and it's it's you know I I don't think any of it's going to work it they they already have their next supreme leader selected and then one after that trump thought because they killed Sulammani who was going to who wasn't a parent as a supreme leader that that was somehow going to cut the head off the snake and uh just totally delusional so this regime change game you know it's they they still are playing this game in America in Washington and I think they've chose the wrong target on this for for Iran they've got Palavi the crown prince pushing him around he nobody nobody recognizes him in Iran uh you know the the other one is the MEK it's a terrorist organization right i mean it's acknowledged by the US they they haven't got anything it's a joke so that that kind of makes me positive Danny that they're so out to lunch on the regime change thing that it makes me think they pro that then they could be out to lunch on the military planning as well they could really screw up with Iran and really kind of drop the ball and have egg on their face i mean that's also a possibility because we're talking about the most incompetent US administration maybe in history that they're they're failing at every single geopolitical flash point whether it's Ukraine Gaza and Iran and so you know that and imagine these guys taking China on it's it's beyond a joke the Chinese are just sitting back watching with you know great interest to how this is all unfolding and believe me they're making notes and they're not missing anything neither are the Russians by the way so yeah no it's uh yeah I see how I see it is there's a lot of consequences to come for the US's regime let's call it that the US's regime this political uh entity the the Trump administration and those wararm mongers behind them who are pushing pushing pushing for this i see a lot of consequences but as I showed the video Iranian people are hot they are united around their government even people who are very critical of it are very united right now because the war has already started um this is not a new thing uh Iranian people and people in the region have been very angry about Israel its role the US's role in facilitating what Israel is doing in Palestine and beyond and uh there's nothing like trying to take on the most uh modern and advanced and developed despite US sanctions society in the region that's uh uh sovereign and independent um there's nothing like that that could spell uh disaster because this isn't the foe even Syria they had a hard time with Syria for so many years and it took many many many many years after the destruction of just degrading and preventing reconstruction for that government to fall but Iran is not Syria right now and it's unclear and it's and we don't have a crystal ball maybe the United States tries to bomb Iran into the stone age and is successful but the consequences I don't believe they can i don't believe that the United States has that position anymore i I you know I'm not going to underestimate the violence of the US elite um and their capacity to pursue it uh but the blowback the consequences those are a lot to bear and if it were yeah it uh this is this is why I also think there was this two two week window even if the strikes happen tomorrow uh um there's a lot of considerations here that I think uh the even the US elite are very concerned about you even have palenteer that horrific monopoly this uh completely wararmongering entity who's uh you know one of their founders and CEOs said uh that they want a three-front war even they are saying though that they want to invest in Iran so there's obviously a lot of hedging and betting on uh whether this thing can succeed and I think more than uh you know more than not there's a lot of of of those even in the establishment that don't believe something like this can succeed don't don't underestimate the visual of Tel Aviv getting pummeled the visual power of that that will live in infamy okay and the United States was lulled into complacency with Ukraine because Vladimir Putin didn't want to lay waste to Kiev the Russians see that as their historic one of the historic uh foundations of Kiev and Roose of their whole culture their whole Russ Rous I think it's called R the Russian world so they and but they just assumed that there's this kind of restraint that happens with people who have military power that they won't go that far and I think even though they knew Iran could do it the the images of Tel Aviv getting smashed are you know you can't underestimate the power of this and that's always going to be in the back of everyone's mind including Trump and all his supporters and the lobby because at at the present clip a couple more weeks there's going to be nothing left uh in Tel Aviv you know it's it's it's gone property values in West Jerusalem as well are tanking you know it's a completely um it's one was one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world uh Tel Aviv so it but it's you know it's it's it's not anymore it's it's it's it's gone you know and so what else the banking sector there the stock market all of that stuff just the ability to capitalize enterprise there now it looks like a rebuilding zone you know that's that's the new economy for Israel is rebuilding but they don't have any cash so where's the money going to come from Trump no it's going to come from the Gulf it's going to come from the ar the Gulf Arabs the Gulf States they're the only ones who have the money to rebuild Israel couple more weeks that's what they're looking at and if they commit to rebuilding Israel and not rebuilding Gaza I mean that is there is no bigger betrayal so this is also they're walking on eggshells because we know that whether it's Saudi Qatar UAE these countries they walk very on very sharp eggshells with their own people with the Arab people and the people in their countries of various national ethnic groups and nationalities who are very unhappy about the Palestine situation so to rely on this uh Patrick because it it goes into the Abraham Accords and this idea that you know the the Gulf monarchies in these states are just going to normalize and then essentially um do the US's bidding and supporting Israel uh that's that in the context of a war oof that's a powder keg that could set off unrest and a firestorm that these Gulf countries especially if they're getting hammered with Iranian missiles i don't know if they can if they think about that like they have to be thinking about that really i think silence is part of the thinking i Iran has demonstrated quite clearly what can happen if they're going to be at loggerheads with any of these Gulf States there's no question there's no question it's the target bank list and that's it and there going to be no negotiations and only surrender terms only surrender terms so uh so that's might be what Israel is looking at the longer this goes on i'm quite I I I look at if Trump waits two weeks he's hanging Israel out to dry and then that's part that and that has to be part of the plan if he waits two weeks yeah it has to be part and then the question is why is it to have a better justification to swoop in oh no Israel is so defeated we have to save them or is it well Israel's so defeated talk it out stop stop the conflict cuz um if we do strike we don't want to strike in this context that seems a little less likely now but um or at least maybe a lot less likely but it is definitely has to be part of the consideration because I can't imagine the United States um foreign policy establishment isn't thinking about all of these consequences we've laid out here um yeah yeah but we have a couple of questions last two uh quickly here's one is it possible if Iran is regime change Israel is too destroyed to survive leaving a puppet Iran but no Israel uh Patrick what do you think maybe in a minute or less sure that's possible i mean the the the no Israel is very possible the puppet Iran I would say less likely actually so it could be Iran survives although limping huge damage great damage done to Iran but but Israel is is pretty much uh toast uh as well they they Israel doesn't have a future in the region as it stands today even if the war stopped it's the they'll never be accepted right by by the region or the international community for what they've done historically they are at the end of the rope the Zionist Project yeah I mean reap what you sow kind of thing this is this was a uh this was a I guess an outgrowth and a logical conclusion to um that fa that fatal gamble which I always believed was a fatal gamble which was to uh commit genocide in this moment as the one of the last standing colonies uh in the world um to do that was uh was always going to create um just absolute crises over and over again and and Israel's in one big now and then there's this one last question why did Iran decline Russia's help seems suicidal i mean I I'll give my two cents in 30 minute or less Patrick uh in my estimation I think we're seeing that Iran has a lot of confidence in its ability to defend itself and a lot of weariness like I think all the independent states in the world those that are left have which are that um should they operate on formal military alliances that could provoke an even more rapid response from the United States in the unipolar world to try to um accelerate their war against them so it's a it's a delicate game i'm not going to say that it's correct though you know I'm not going to say that's a correct judgment but I understand where it comes from in the sense that um you know in this multipolar world there's both a deep interest in economic and other kinds of cooperation and a big weariness of of military um alliances because of uh I they say it's because of cold war mentality like China will say that Russia to some degree um but in my opinion it's more so because they know that the actor on the other side those who oppose them they're not rational and that they're willing to do what we're seeing now with Iran they're willing to do that and to accelerate that if given opportunities and and I think that Iran just like Russia and China see their sovereignty and their ability to build uh uh different kinds of bridges as kind of their protection and their defense as they build up their own domestic capacities to defend themselves this is how I see it um and I think that there's also a a deeper knowledge maybe in the world of the US's uh perhaps uh limitations than we have here in the collective west also a deeper understanding of how those limitations may bring incredibly destructive and uh uh maybe incredibly stupid moves along the way so it's a del it's a it's a real big tight rope but um I'm of the opinion that uh that's that's probably what the thought process is as uh these kind of things are considered uh Patrick your final thoughts yeah I'm not aware that that uh um that uh Iran did rebuff any formal uh assistance by Russia i'm I'm not sure if any formal military assistance was offered no Putin said uh recently on the sidelines I believe of the St st petersburg Economic Forum during um a press conference that he offered or the Russian government offered air defense systems cooperation like to fortify Iran's air defense systems and Iran wasn't interested at the time didn't really say the year or when it was context yeah yeah yeah previously not in this context of this war but um in the past yeah yeah so yeah they licensed I think they they had a licensing agreement with uh the S400 um and so it's that's complicated all of that uh with militarily it's you know it's a very delicate dance as as you said um so no it's um it's Russia will be there to support Iran and if the US if the US attack Iran you're going to see a different uh Moscow now just bear in mind though if this happened before February 2022 Russia would be in there like a flash already they they they'd have air bases they they would carve out space there like they did in Syria they were able to do that um they can't do that and in and Iran would likely ask for it yes uh pretty quickly because Yeah like how at February 22 the building of an entire army the ability to encroach on Iran's borders thankfully and I think this is one of the bigger factors that you kind of touched on earlier Patrick if we can close on this the regime change part of the regime change operation while the military maneuvers are happening while there's an open conflict between Israel and Iran um that's happening long distance the internal situation in Iran what's happening around Iran uh that is not so hot for and it's not and it's not favorable to the United States and Israel at the time um it's not like Syria where there are you know hundreds of thousands million you know hundreds of thousands millions of foreign fighters armed to the teeth um wreaking havoc on the society uh this is happening differently um and it's not like in Ukraine where you had right on Russia's border and to Russian people um a literal military funded and created by the US and NATO invading and destroying and civil war and genocide and all these things um it's different so uh in that sense the positives are is that the United States has to they have one option really or maybe a few options within this one option right all out total throw everything you have at Iran try to destroy it as Elijah said put Iranian people into submission that's not going to be a quick process and there's no guarantee at all that that's going to succeed and there's no and there is a guarantee that the cost of that will be quite heavy the political cost is going to be astronomical for Oh astronomical so astronomical it's it's going to you know it's so I I I I can't even imagine you know the dead bodies dead women and children Iranian people you know civilians that because that's going to happen with the US destroyers burning uh US uh military assets burning perhaps i I grew up watching surgical strikes from America and uh they're anything but surgical yeah exactly so you'll have a lot of civilian uh of course Iranian people are going to suffer a lot uh but the United States is going to in the court of public opinion and also militarily oof it's not like Iraq i bet it's not this is not the Iraqi military of 2003 this is um you have hypersonics come flying at you in the in the Baba Mendde you're not going or the Mediterranean you're not going to you're not going to escape that like you're That might be that might be the deciding factor it could end up being in Yemen uh because they've they've surprised everybody at every stage of these various conflicts over the last couple of years so I expect to be surprised by Yemen again but I think Iran probably has the most surprises certainly they haven't disappointed so far no Fata 2 hypersonics have been unleashed ever we don't even know how many they have of those so that could light up uh things in a way that um we have not seen in history so we are in a historical moment Patrick it's been great to be with you i have your 21st Century Wire uh publication in the video description everyone should go read that support it um anything else you want to promote before we head out yeah yeah I just uh I just launched a Substack uh Patrick Henningson at Stub Stack that's my full name and uh sharing a different types of content there than 21st Century Wide it's a little more uh direct and personal as well as uh commentary on uh media appearances as well additional commentary and analysis including today's uh discussion as well so yeah Patrick Hennington at Substack uh do do follow us there please it's a new it's a new endeavor for me so a new string to the bow i got it in the video description now uh everybody also in the video description all the places support this channel Patreon Substack buy me a coffee and so many others uh this channel will continue to follow the developments in this conflict and its larger ramifications of course um as they arise so stay tuned and everyone have a good rest of your day take care byebye
WHAT I HAVE BEEN TOLD IS COMING IN IRAN: The initial battle plan for a new war by Seymour Hersh Thu, Jun 19 at 12:36 PM
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This is a report on what is most likely to happen in Iran, as early as this weekend, according to Israeli insiders and American officials I’ve relied upon for decades. It will entail heavy American bombing. I have vetted this report with a longtime US official in Washington, who told me that all will be “under control” if Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei “departs.” Just how that might happen, short of his assassination, is not known. There has been a great deal of talk about American firepower and targets inside Iran, but little practical thinking, as far I can tell, about how to remove a revered religious leader with an enormous following.
I have reported from afar on the nuclear and foreign policy of Israel for decades. My 1991 book The Samson Option told the story of the making of the Israeli nuclear bomb and America’s willingness to keep the project secret. The most important unanswered question about the current situation will be the response of the world, including that of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president who has been an ally of Iran’s leaders.
The United States remains Israel’s most important ally, although many here and around the world abhor Israel’s continuing murderous war in Gaza. The Trump administration is in full support of Israel’s current plan to rid Iran of any trace of a nuclear weapons program while hoping the ayatollah-led government in Tehran will be overthrown.
I have been told that the White House has signed off on an all-out bombing campaign in Iran, but the ultimate targets, the centrifuges buried at least eighty meters below the surface at Fordow, will, as of this writing, not be struck until the weekend. The delay has come at Trump’s insistence because the president wants the shock of the bombing to be diminished as much as possible by the opening of Wall Street trading on Monday. (Trump took issue on social media this morning with a Wall Street Journal report that said he had decided on the attack on Iran, writing that he had yet to decide on a path forward.)
Fordow is home to the remaining majority of Iran’s most advanced centrifuges that have produced, according to recent reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to which Iran is a signatory, nine hundred pounds of uranium enriched to 60 percent, a short step from weapons-grade levels.
The most recent Israeli bombing attacks on Iran have made no attempts to destroy the centrifuges at Fordow, which are stored at least eighty meters underground. It has been agreed, as of Wednesday, that US bombers carrying bunker bombs capable of penetrating to that depth, will begin attacking the Fordow facility this weekend.
The delay will give US military assets throughout the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean—there are more than two dozen US Air Force bases and Navy ports in the region—a chance to prepare for possible Iranian retaliation. The assumption is that Iran still has some missile and air force capability that will be on US bombing lists. “This is a chance to do away with this regime once and for all,” an informed official told me today, “and so we might as well go big.” He said, however, “that it will not be carpet bombing.”
The planned weekend bombing will also have new targets: the bases of the Republican Guards, which have countered those campaigning against the revolutionary leadership since the violent overthrow of the shah of Iran in early 1979.
The Israeli leadership under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hopes that the bombings will provide “the means of creating an uprising” against Iran’s current regime, which has shown little tolerance for those who defy the religious leadership and its edicts. Iranian police stations will be struck. Government offices that house files on suspected dissenters in Iran will also be attacked.
The Israelis apparently also hope, so I gather, that Khamenei will flee the country and not make a stand until the end. I was told that his personal plane left Tehran airport headed for Oman early Wednesday morning, accompanied by two fighter planes, but it is not known whether he was aboard.
Only two thirds of Iran’s population of 90 million are Persians. The largest minority groups include Azeris, many of whom have long-standing covert ties to the Central Intelligence Agency, Kurds, Arabs, and Baluchis. Jews make up a small minority group there, too. (Azerbaijan is the site of a large secret CIA base for operations in Iran.)
Bringing back the shah’s son, now living in exile in near Washington, has never been considered by the American and Israeli planners, I was told. But there has been talk among the White House planning group that includes Vice President J.D. Vance, of installing a moderate religious leader to run the country if Khamenei is deposed. The Israelis bitterly objected to the idea. “They don’t give a shit on the religious issue, but demand a political puppet to control,” the longtime US official said. “We are split with the Izzies on this. Result would be permanent hostility and future conflict in perpetuity, Bibi desperately trying to draw US in as their ally against all things Muslim, using the plight of the citizens as propaganda bait.”
There is the hope in the American and Israeli intelligence communities, I was told, that elements of the Azeri community will join in a popular revolt against the ruling regime, should one develop during the continued Israeli bombing. There also is the thought that some members of the Revolutionary Guard would join in what I was told might be “a democratic uprising against the ayatollahs”—a long-held aspiration of the US government. The sudden and successful overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in Syria was cited as a potential model, although Assad’s demise came after a long civil war.
It is possible that the result of the massive Israeli and US bombing attack could leave Iran in a state of permanent failure, as happened after the Western intervention in Libya in 2011. That revolt resulted in the brutal murder of Muammar Gaddafi, who had kept the disparate tribes there under control. The futures of Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon, all victims of repeated outside attacks, are far from settled.
Donald Trump clearly wants an international win he can market. To accomplish that, he and Netanyahu are taking America to places it has never been.
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Prof. John Mearsheimer : What If the US Does Attack Iran? Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom Streamed live on Jun 20, 2025
Transcript
hi everyone Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom today is Friday June 20th 2025 professor John Mearsheimer joins us now uh fresh from his European trip and speaking tour professor Mirshimer it's a pleasure thank you very much for accommodating my schedule and thank you for squeezing us in and what I know has been a hectic week for you is Israel prevailing in its war against Iran as the mainstream media is telling everybody in the West no israel is in serious trouble uh and you know I listened to President Trump not too long ago say that Israel is winning and of course this is the mantra in the mainstream media but the question you have to ask yourself is what does winning mean it's it's a meaningless comment by itself and the way you assess whether a country is winning a war is you ask yourself the question what are the goals and what is the strategy that that state has for achieving those goals and Israel has three stated goals here one is to eliminate uh the nuclear capability of Iran their ability to produce nuclear weapons and this is all about enrichment the second goal is regime change and the third goal which is articulated by President Trump himself is unconditional surrender of course if you get unconditional surrender that takes care of the first two goals but these are the three goals then the question you have to ask yourself is what is Israel's theory of victory tell us how they're going to do this well with regard to the first goal which is eliminating Iran's nuclear capability it's clear they can't do that by themselves they admit that and that's why they're begging the United States to come in and Trump is pondering whether to help them but I would submit that even if Trump comes in we're not going to eliminate Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons then there's the business of regime change we do not have a single recorded example in history of a state causing regime change with an air campaign remember we had to invade Iraq to get regime change we couldn't do it from the air and we would have to invade Iran to get regime change and nobody in their right mind is talking about invading Iran and in terms of unconditional surrender this is a laughable argument right we've put the Iranians in a position where we are threatening their very survival as a state they're going to fight to the last person they're not going to submit to unconditional surrender so what you see here is that the Israelis have no way of achieving the goals they've set out for themselves and even if we come in that's not going to solve the problem and in the meantime Israel is being pounded with ballistic missiles from Iran it's running out of its own missiles to knock down those Iranian ballistic missiles and it's begging the United States to send air defenses to the Middle East to help pull the Israelis chestnuts out of the fire you call this winning in my world it's called losing so Israel's theory of victory must be Netanyahu begs and the donor class demands that Donald Trump get involved and we start dropping 30,000 pound bombs it doesn't solve the problem right and and the media is full of stories these days showing to you that you know dropping uh 30,000 pound bombs on Fort is is just not going to solve the problem you probably cannot destroy uh the centrifuges down in the bottom of that mountain that are producing the enriched uranium you just can't do it even with American bombs but let's assume I'm wrong and you can destroy those centrifuges almost everybody agrees when you look at how extensive how comprehensive the Iranian nuclear program is that they can easily rebuild that program in a year or two and we'll be back to where we started so there's just no way that even with the United States coming into the fight that we can eliminate Iran's nuclear capability professor Mirshimer President Trump has insisted that Israel owns Iran's sky is there any accuracy to that that Israel has destroyed Iran's um air defenses and Israel now controls Iran's sky i don't think so it's very hard to figure out exactly what's happening here in large part because the mainstream media coverage is so terrible but um it appears that uh what has happened here is the Israelis have not penetrated into Iran and destroyed Iran's air defense systems their groundbased air defenses you remember when the Israelis first attacked this was on June 13th and for about the first two days everybody was puzzled by the fact that the Iranian air defenses were just not in the fight this was really quite amazing so the question is what's happening here my sense is that what the Israelis are doing is they're using crew uh they're using drones and they're firing missiles from places like Iraq into Iran and they're doing all the damage that they're doing and I don't want to make light of the damage that's being done to Iran with cruise missiles and ballistic missiles and other kinds of missiles that are fired from outside of Iran's border or barely inside Iran's border but I think the argument that the Israeli air force completely controls the skies over all of Iran uh is not true you would have needed a big battle a big air battle against uh Iranian air defenses for this to be the case the Iranians had significant amounts of assets on the ground that had to be dealt with and there's no evidence that that fight took place so I don't think they control the skies over uh Iran that's the Israeli Air Force but I do think they have the capability to lob missiles into Iran and lob bombs into Iran and put drones in Iran that can do lots of damage did um Israel destroy or damage Iran's oil refineries there has been some of that for sure and the Iranians have done the same to the Israelis uh so far the Israelis uh have limited the amount of damage they've done uh to Iran's uh ability to produce oil uh I think uh if the Israelis really unleashed the dogs and they destroyed Iran's uh oil infrastructure that that would in all likelihood lead to Iran uh shutting the Persian Gulf and getting the Houthies to shut the the Red Sea and that would have I think disastrous consequences on the international economy so the Israelis have not gone that far yet but you know the question you want to ask yourself here is if I'm correct that the Israelis are in trouble and I do believe I'm correct what are they going to do to get out of this problem call Donald Trump but again Donald Trump is not going to solve the problem for them right what is the what is the level and depth of the trouble that they're in what is Israeli society politics economy culture like today well the thing you want to remember is that the Israelis depend very heavily on the idea or the notion that they have military superiority over everybody in the region that they are invincible and if they start a war and they lose that war they don't win that war and indeed it looks like Iran wins the war this is a significant defeat for Israeli deterrence uh it's just something that's almost unthinkable they started this war thinking that they were going to win a relatively easy victory uh and they were going to do to Iran what uh has been done to Syria but that's not going to happen the Iranians are going to stay in this fight you want to remember that Iran fought against Iraq for eight years from 1980 to 1988 in those days we were on Iraq's side right that's correct that's correct so the Iranians I think will stay in the fight and I don't think Israel uh can maintain this fight over the long term does uh does uh their enormous international airport the Bengorian airport is it operative no I think it's shut down at this point in time uh I don't think that any airline would fly in there even if the airport were open for fear that a ballistic missile would come in and destroy the aircraft uh this is one of the principal problems that the Israelis face this is taking a huge toll on their economy people can't go to work the airport's closed and you want to remember that the Iranians are targeting Hifa which is an important Israeli port and ships are not going to be willing to go into that port for fear they'll be blown up by a ballistic missile coming in from Iran do any serious players besides uh Trump and Netanyahu and these people at Palunteer actually believe that Iran has nuclear weapons i don't think any of them believe that Iran has nuclear weapons uh I think the question is whether you believe Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons in other words it's on its way to getting nuclear weapons as you know Netanyahu has been arguing for 30 plus years that Israel I mean excuse me that Iran is on its way to getting uh nuclear weapons and it's uh only a matter of a month or a year depending on when he's making the argument before Iran will have a nuclear arsenal that's never proven to be the case and there's no evidence now that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons but there's no question as I've said before on the show that Iran has significant nuclear enrichment capability and that takes them close to the point where they will have enough file material for a bomb but even then it would take them a good year to build a bomb uh and then create a delivery system uh for that bomb so they're a good distance away from a bomb and there's no evidence that they are getting a bomb uh but you can't tell President Trump that or the Israelis don't Israeli military planners understand the basic uh rubric or even truism that you talked about earlier that you can't win a war from the air alone i would have thought so you know I uh I was actually quite surprised that the Israelis attacked on the 13th uh I didn't think they would do it i think they're basically jumping off a cliff here uh and I would imagine that at the lower levels uh in the planning process inside Israel a good number of people understand that uh the counter to that is that they did understand it and what they were counting on was that the Americans would come in and pull their chestnuts out of the fire but I would imagine that even uh a good number of Israeli planners understood that there were limits to what the Americans could do and furthermore you can't be sure that the Americans will come in i mean if you look at what President Trump is doing now uh it does look like he's beginning to back off that uh you know you don't know with him and I think he loves to create that uh impression his deceptions in Saudi Arabia his pretense of negotiations prior to the uh attack on June 13th as reprehensible as they were may be part of this plan who knows if this two-week thing is for real or if like our friend Sai Hirs uh maintains he's already decided to send the 30,000 pound bombs and they're on their way well they're not on their way and uh he's never said that he has decided to send the bombs uh which I think changed over the past two days as he's toned down his rhetoric quite significantly and at the same time if you look at the newspapers the mainstream media newspapers over the past two days more and more newspapers are talking about the problems that we would face uh if we go after Ford or more generally if we get into the war and furthermore more and more newspapers are talking about the fact that Israel is in deep trouble uh my comments uh about Israel's losing the war at this point uh would not have resonated with many people uh last week uh but uh today is a different story i think if you look at the mainstream media people are beginning to sense that the Israelis are in trouble just uh about an hour ago the Wall Street Journal posted a piece that the Israelis are running out of whatever supplies their Golden Dome whatever missiles their so-called uh Golden Dome uh uses and they're scrambling to get that stuff replaced by the United States street Journal has been a mouthpiece a lot of these people are my friends but the Wall Street Journal has been a mouthpiece for the Israelis and the Zionists for them to acknowledge it must they must have evidence of it well some people say that the Wall Street Journal is two newspapers in one one is the stories that are news stories in the first part of the newspaper and then there's the editorial page and the op-ed page and there's no question that the editorial page and the op-ed page is basically the propaganda arm the most important propaganda arm of the Israeli government in the United States but many of the news stories that they run about the war are actually quite good and you're now beginning to see articles appearing in the news section of the Wall Street Journal that say in so many words that the Israelis are in deep trouble perhaps uh BB Netanyahu wants regime change in Thran in order to stave off regime change in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem wherever the capital of Israel is today well there's no question that if he does not succeed if I'm basically right that he is going to be in deep political trouble he has started a war uh that involves huge costs for Israel i mean if you look at the damage that's being done to Tel Aviv that's being done to Hifa that's being done to the Israeli economy the costs here are huge and if he can't produce a victory if he has to quit without victory this is going to have devastating consequences for him personally and as I said before it's going to be a disaster for Israeli deterrence is this government about to run out of cash no no I don't think the situation is that dire and furthermore as you well know if it was that dire we'd bail them out what are the likely consequences of an American attack from the perspective of the Kremlin well I think the Kremlin uh has a vested interest in seeing this war shut down i think Putin has made it clear that he would like to shut the war down i I think Krem I think the Kremlin is worried about Iran uh I think that uh the Kremlin uh is closely allied with Iran and China and they do not want to see uh Iran defeated and I would imagine that people in the Kremlin people like Putin worry about that but they don't have to worry that's my argument uh I think the Chinese uh have a vested interest in seeing this war go on this is not to say uh that uh they uh are uh extremely happy about that situation but I I think the Chinese understand that the Americans are using up they're burning up valuable assets in this war uh that are otherwise uh needed uh to contain China in East Asia you do not want to underestimate the negative consequences of what we're doing uh on Israel's behalf for our situation uh in the Pacific the United States uh has been pinned down for a long time in both Ukraine and the Middle East which makes it very difficult for us to pivot to East Asia and this conflict now as it heats up and puts greater and greater demands on American military assets uh is a nightmare uh for the purposes of containing China by the way you want to remember here this is a very important point we fought a 30-day war against the Houthis you remember when President Trump uh Trump declared war against the Houthies and Right right was there unconditional surrender then no after 30 days we quit and by the way the main reason we quit is that we were burning up uh valuable uh ammunition that we didn't want to burn up and it was all to no effect because we were not defeating the Houthis but I would ask you this question if we couldn't beat the Houthis why do you think that either we or the Israelis can bring Iran to its knees do you foresee a circumstance under which the Russians or the Chinese would get involved militarily no if you're talking about them getting directly involved in the fight absolutely not uh if you're talking about them providing support for Iran uh economic support military support uh and diplomatic support I'd say the answer is certainly yes uh these four countries uh China uh Russia Iran and North Korea all have a vested interest in hanging together because they understand they're basically up against the United States Israel and Ukraine and there's no way they can let their guard down they have to support each other but uh at the same time I don't see uh the Russians or the Chinese getting into the fight and by the way as I'm saying here there's no need for them to get into the fight because I think the Iranians can take care of themselves especially if China and Russia are to provide aid militarily military aid and economic aid what role might the Pakistanis play if the Ayatollah is assassinated or if Trump drops the 30,000 pound bombs something dramatic like either of those events happens i think the only plausible scenario and it's barely plausible is one where Iran excuse me where Israel uses nuclear weapons against Iran uh the question you want to ask yourself moving forward is that if I'm correct that Israel is in real trouble and the Israelis are in desperate straits will they turn to nuclear weapons uh to deal with uh Iran's uh nuclear infrastructure uh and I think that's possible i do not think it's likely but it's possible and you're seeing more and more talk of it in the media and by the way as the situation continues to deteriorate in uh this fight for Israel there'll be more and more talk about using nuclear weapons and then the question becomes what will Pakistan do i don't think it would launch a nuclear war on behalf of Iran or any other country because that would be suicidal but there is talk that the Pakistanis might give a bomb to the Iranians or give a bomb to the Turks if they needed it uh so all bets could be off then and you do want to remember this is a sort of a separate but not really separate point that all of what is taking place is having hugely negative consequences for the non-prololiferation regime uh first of all you're giving the Iranians powerful incentives to go out and get nuclear weapons right moreover you're sending a powerful signal to virtually every other country on the planet that might view itself as an adversary of the United States or Israel to make sure it has nuclear weapons uh and this is just disastrous and furthermore what does Israeli behavior and American behavior these days say about our respect for international law it says that we don't pay any attention to international law unless we think it's in our interest so I think in terms of the proliferation regime which has been very successful at curbing proliferation since it was set up in the late60s and early 70s this is bad news to put it mildly professor Mirshimer shouldn't there be a great debate in America about the nature and extent of our involvement in in a war that could be as uh disastrous as uh as is happening why should a person who changes his mind every 10 minutes meet in a windowless room with five people tell him what he wants to hear make this decision rather than great debates on the floor of the House and the floor of the Senate about the role of America in the world and we really want to kill Iranians oh it's very simple you can't have a great debate on any issue involving Israel it's just impermissible the lobby won't allow it and all the lobby's cutouts uh you see them in the Senate uh you see them in the House uh you see them in the media these cutouts working with the lobby will not allow us to have a debate and the reason that they won't allow us to have a debate is it won't come out in Israel's favor you want to understand that the main reason that we have an Israel lobby that goes to enormous lengths to shut down discourse about Israel and to smear anyone who was critical of Israel to ruin their career is because if you had an open discourse Israel would come out on the losing side i want to play you you alluded to this earlier and and a lot of these will you you're familiar with these are instances of Prime Minister Netanyahu in various venues testifying before Congress speaking before the United Nations addressing a joint session of Congress claiming that Iran is within months or perhaps his word possibly his word weeks of having a nuclear weapon this is a a CNN montage it's very effective watch this the deadline for attaining this goal is getting extremely is extremely close and Iran by the way is also outpacing Iraq in the development of ballistic missile systems that they hope will reach the eastern seabboard of the United States within 15 years by next spring at most by next summer at current enrichment rates they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage from there it's only a few months possibly a few weeks before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb the foremost sponsor of global terrorism could be weeks away from having enough enriched uranium for an entire arsenal of nuclear weapons that would place a militant Islamic terror regime weeks away from having the file material for an entire arsenal of nuclear bombs if not stopped Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time it could be a year it could be within a few months less than a year this needs to be uh refuted certainly the last statement that he made needs to be refuted in a in a public forum but he's not the only one here i'm going to play another one for you this is the George W bush Powell leadup to the invasion of Iraq history is repeating itself neither the United States of America nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation large or small every statement I make today is backed up by sources solid sources these are not assertions what we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence saddam Hussein and his regime have made no effort no effort to disarm as required by the international community saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction at this hour American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger they have ballistic missiles that can now reach deep into Europe and soon could reach the United States you want these people to have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to your cities today it's Tel Aviv tomorrow it's New York same thing over and over and over again listen I was one of the principal public opponents of the Iraq war before it happened on March 19th 2003 uh I wrote uh op-eds in the New York Times uh and the Chicago Tribune i helped pay for uh an ad uh on the op-ed page of the This is when this is when your your humble host here first learned of and began admiring you thank you and I can tell you it is the same story all over again you're up against the lobby right they the lobby works behind the scenes to put enormous pressure on media figures and on uh uh a and on politicians and on policy makers uh to support these crazy wars and people who have facts and logic on their side can barely get a hearing it's really quite remarkable it was easier to get something of a hearing back then than it is now the situation has only deteriorated with time in large part because the lobby has gotten more powerful but here we are again and uh you know for people like me you know the mainstream media has no use for us uh and uh thank goodness we have uh shows like yours because it's you know the only way the word gets out chris do we still have Anthony Wedgewood Ben the twominute version not not the intro or the followup just uh Anthony Wedgewood been on the floor of the House of Commons you probably remember him unfortunately he's no longer with us a great great two-minute closing argument against the Tony Blair government joining George Bush's invasion of course he lost that debate but here's what he said i finish just by saying this war is an easy thing to talk about there not many people of the generation that remember it the right honorable gentleman served with the six in the last war i never killed anyone but I wore uniform but I was in London in the blitz in 1940 living in the Milbank Tower where I was born some different ideas have come in since and every night I went down to the shelter in TM's house every morning I saw Dockland burning 500 people were killed in Westminster one night by a landmine it was terrifying aren't Arabs terrified aren't Iraqis terrified don't Arab and Iraqi women weep when their children die doesn't bombing strengthen their determination what fools we are to live in of a generation for which war is a computer game for our children and just an interesting little channel for news item every member of parliament tonight who votes for the government motion will be consciously and deliberately accepting the responsibility for the deaths of innocent people if the war begins as I fear it will now that's for their decision to take but this is a quite unique debate in my parliamentary experience where we asked to share responsibility for a decision we won't really be taking with consequences for people who have no part to play in the brutality of the regime which we are dealing with and I finish with this on October the 24th 1945 and the former prime minister from Beexton old will remember it the uh United Nations charter was passed and the words of that charter etched into my mind and move me even as I think of them we the people of the United Nations determined to save future uh generations succeeding generations from the scourge of war which twice in our lifetime has caused untold suffering to mankind that was the pledge of that generation to this generation and it would be the greatest betrayal of all if we voted to abandon the charter and take unilateral action and pretend we were doing it in the name of the international community and I shall vote against the motion for the reason that I've given up hard to imagine that Thomas Massie or Rand Paul or even Bernie Sanders would be permitted to make arguments like that on the floor of the House or the Senate well they probably would be permitted but they would be assaulted verbally assaulted afterwards and everybody would go after them hammer and tongue as is so often the case i would also note just to add to what Mr ben said uh that after World War II it was not only the scourge of war uh that we were trying to eliminate it was the scourge of genocide and we don't want to lose sight of the fact that while this war between Iran and Israel is being waged a genocide is taking place in Gaza on a daily basis and we're continuing to fund Ukraine on a daily basis let's not lose sight of that so the president of peace is funding genocide in Gaza and a losing effort in uh in Ukraine and is acting like Hamlet with respect to or wants us to think he's acting like Hamlet with respect to Iran who knows how this will end what are your last thoughts on this Professor Mir Shimemer well my last thoughts are I hope there's some way that this can be brought to an end uh I hope Trump has the good sense not to take the United States into this war uh and I hope that uh the fact that he's not been talking so hawkishly the past two days means that he's beginning to see the light and then I hope he goes to great lengths to get the Israelis and the Iranians to do something to bring this to an end am I hopeful that will happen no but that's sort of the best case I can make at this point in time professor Mary Shammer thank you very much we went beyond our usual time uh limit but uh appreciate deeply and profoundly your uh insight and your analysis we'll look forward to seeing you at your usual day and time next week i'm looking forward to it be well thank you have a great weekend coming up on uh Monday uh our usual presenters Alistster Crook at 8 in the morning Ray McGovern at 10 in the morning Larry Johnson at 11:30 in the morning and probably one or two of your other favorites before the day is out judge Npalit Tenno for Judging Freedom [Music] [Music]
Col. Macgregor Drops TRUTH BOMBS on Israel, Iran & Ukraine | The Geopolitical Nightmare EXPOSED by Eddie Hobbs Jun 21, 2025
In his first Irish interview, Colonel Douglas Macgregor, a decorated U.S. Army combat veteran, military strategist, and former Pentagon advisor, speaks candidly and in depth about the growing geopolitical crisis in the Middle East, including Israel, Iran, and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
From Israel’s influence in Washington to the realities of the conflict in Ukraine, Iran’s regional role, and NATO’s military capabilities, Macgregor provides a detailed analysis that challenges mainstream narratives.
Topics covered: – Israel’s influence over U.S. foreign policy – The true state of the Ukraine-Russia war – NATO’s limitations and strategic failures – Iran’s role in global geopolitics – Internal security threats facing the United States and Ireland
00:00 - Introduction to Colonel McGregor and Context of Interview 01:00 - US Strategy on Iran: Arrogance, Delusion, and Israeli Influence 03:00 - Netanyahu’s Claims on Iran and US Policy Compliance 04:00 - Potential Consequences of US Bombing Campaign on Iran 06:00 - Strategic Blindness: Lack of Clear Objectives in US Policy 08:00 - Military Vulnerabilities in the Gulf and Iranian Response 10:00 - Israel’s Military Decline and the Nuclear Wildcard 12:00 - Iran’s Resilience and Global Implications of the Conflict 13:00 - Russia’s Objectives in Ukraine and the Minsk Agreements 15:00 - The Reality Behind Ukraine’s Use as a Proxy Against Russia 17:00 - Ukrainian Military Losses and Western Influence on Tactics 19:00 - Russian Military Strategy: Methodical and Effective 21:00 - Putin’s Leadership and Resurgence of Russian Military Power 23:00 - US Missed Opportunities to End the Ukraine War Early 25:00 - Corruption and Collapse of Ukrainian Military Capacity 26:00 - Future Russian Advances: Crossing the Dnieper and Taking Odessa 28:00 - The Myth of NATO Readiness and Western Military Capabilities 30:00 - The West’s Delusion of Russian Threat to Europe 31:00 - Financial Power and US Foreign Policy Capture by Israeli Interests 32:00 - Why Trump’s ‘Two-Week Pause’ on Iran Was Always a Lie 36:00 - Destruction of Iran Tied to Strategic and Financial Goals 38:00 - The China Factor and the Belt and Road Initiative 40:00 - Global South Alignments and the Limits of US Power 42:00 - Vision for a Post-War Multipolar World: Great Power Conference 44:00 - UN-Led Ceasefire, Ending Aid to Israel, and International Peacekeeping 45:00 - Economic Collapse as a Catalyst for Strategic Retrenchment 47:00 - Final Reflections and Historical Analogies (Cleburne, Churchill, WWII)
Transcript
Introduction to Colonel McGregor and Context of Interview
[Eddie Hobbs] Tonight on Counterpoint I'm dealing with the hottest item in the world right now, and talking to somebody described as a brilliant but blunt military mind. Colonel McGregor masterminded the route of the elite Iraqi Republican Guard unit at the big battle of 73 Easting without a single US casualty, and in sandstorm conditions during Operation Desert Storm in the early '90s. He has a BS in engineering, an MA in comparative politics, and has a PhD in international relations. So unsurprisingly he's written several books, including on the reform of the US military. Largely unknown to Irish audiences, this is his first Irish interview. And you'll understand why he's like sand in the eye for globalists everywhere ,and especially for those who allow Israel to deploy the United States as a tool of its foreign policy. Colonel McGregor, you're very welcome to Counterpoint.
US Strategy on Iran: Arrogance, Delusion, and Israeli Influence
Can I just dive in and and ask you, uh you know, what in heaven's name is going on in the White House when we see that you've got a president President Trump who seems to think that naval power and air power alone can cause the unconditional surrender of a country as vast and as mountainous, and as well resourced as Iran, which is, I think, 79 times the size of Israel. I mean, it's a huge country.
[Colonel McGregor] No, you made some valid points. I think a mix of arrogance and self-delusion is really shaping policy in Washington at the moment, along with obviously the power and the influence of the Israel lobby, as well as the industrial sector that supports the military. There's a great deal of money involved in pushing this war, and people are setting aside reason and common sense in an effort to launch what you've described as a campaign of air and naval power on the assumption that this is going to change the situation strategically. I don't think it will. I think it's going to do a lot of damage, and I think there's a danger of a long war unless someone down the line intervenes to stop it. And at the moment, there doesn't seem to be any appetite to stop anything in Washington.
What I find extraordinary is that I've seen several clips of Netanyahu over the years, you know, making speeches, saying that Iran is about to get a nuclear weapon, and we actually have Tulsi Gabbard on the Trump administration team, saying that the intelligence is that they do not have, and are not near, the formulation of of a nuclear weapon.
[Eddie Hobbs] So is this just propaganda we're getting?
Netanyahu’s Claims on Iran and US Policy Compliance
[Colonel McGregor] Well, our friend Netanyahu has been telling us for the last 25 years that Israel is within a year, or two months, or two weeks, of a nuclear weapon, so this is nothing new. But his lobbying has been successful, and the enormous amounts of money poured into the re-election campaigns of members of the House and the Senate, as well as the president of the United States, have made an enormous impact. So I don't think this is anything new. The bad news is that the Israelis now have something they've always wanted: a President that will do what they want, a Senate that is frankly very obedient, and a House that's simply going to go along. So we're going to get this war. I just don't know that we know what's going to happen after we begin the bombing. I think there's an assumption that we'll have 100 aircraft in the air, any number of which are there to blast a quarter through integrated air defenses, and then bombers that will deliver I expect these large 30,000 ton or 30,000 lb. bunker busters. Whether or not they will perform as advertised is open to debate. And I suspect that we'll end up bombing, and bombing, and bombing, and bombing, largely to only limited effect.
Potential Consequences of US Bombing Campaign on Iran
In the meantime, the situation on the ground in Israel gets worse with each passing day. Their so-called "Iron Dome" is a sieve. They're running out of munitions. They're running out of rockets, and missiles, and at the same time they still find enough air power to strike the poor, tragic people in Gaza every night. So it's a terrible situation. The entire world is lining up against Israel and the United States, and we're not entirely sure just exactly what the Russians and the Chinese, along with virtually all the Muslim nations across the world, will do once this gets underway. But I don't think they're going to be very friendly to us.
[Eddie Hobbs] Yeah, can I just just ask you then, and I know it's tricky, because you're looking in from the outside, but from your vast experience in this field I just want to put it to you: I mean, it just doesn't seem to be a a thought-out strategy here. It's more like a reflexive response, kind of a a reflex rather than thinking it through, after Afghanistan and Iraq, and all the other wars beforehand. It just seems to me that the only winners here are those that are making money out of war.
[Colonel McGregor] Well, they may make money this time, but whether or not they'll come out unscathed is another matter. But your basic point is correct: we have no strategy per se. Strategy assumes that you ask critical questions: (1) what is the purpose of what I'm doing, (2) is my method, my use of military power, going to achieve my desired goal, and (3) when I'm through, what do I want things to look like? In other words, what's the end state I'm seeking? i don't see any of that happening. What I see instead is impulse, and emotion, and the thinking that if we do enough damage, we will "get our way." This is foolish nonsense. And you know the first thing that springs to mind was the decision by the British to go into World War I, which made absolutely no sense strategically whatsoever, and cost the British almost a million dead, and certainly more than two million casualties. What was the purpose? To defeat Germany. What are we defeating Germany for? Germany wasn't even an enemy at that point. Germany posed no threat, as the chief of the admiral said. You know, it's the same thing. It's emotion.
Strategic Blindness: Lack of Clear Objectives in US Policy
And I think they had some other ideas that, "Oh, well, this will help employment, and if we don't do this, our successor administration, or government, will do it anyway. So why not do it? I mean these are the stupid ideas that drove the British Empire into World War I. We're not even that sophisticated. In my judgment, people don't seem to think there's any danger. They seem to think that America will sail through unscathed, when there are enormous dangers to us, not the least of which is that the price of oil will go to $7 a gallon for gasoline. It's already up over $75 a barrel. It's very easy to cause these commodities to go berserk, into the outer stratosphere. That's going to hurt working families, it's going to disrupt our supply chains, and eventually everything we want is going to be a lot more expensive. You know, it's a bad situation, and for some reason we're setting all that aside on the assumption that we will bomb our presumed enemy in Tehran, and Khoumeni will fall apart, get on his knees, and beg forgiveness. It's crazy.
[Eddie Hobbs] Is that picture you paint, is that because the Iranians would immediately hit, I think there's 30 or 40,000 U.S. Army personnel, military personnel around the Gulf, around the Straits of Hormuz in particular, that they could block. I mean, is that why you see oil prices going so high?
Military Vulnerabilities in the Gulf and Iranian Response
[Colonel McGregor] Well no, it's not just the losses we will take. We're certainly going to lose some people. But I've just been told that we have successfully evacuated our troops on the ground in Bahrain, and the officers that were there in the headquarters. I'm sure we'll try to get as many people as possible out of harm's way, but truthfully, we don't have the air defense capability to defend all of these bases that reach from the Persian Gulf all the way up through Iraq, Syria, and into Jordan. Then of course we have who knows how many -- 40, 50, 60 -- vessels at sea, not including the submarines that are out there, and those surface vessels are not invulnerable or invincible by any means . They'll be targets. So I don't think we can be certain that we'll come through this without many losses. I think we've already seen F-35s shot down over Iran, and at least one F-35 pilot and Israeli in Iranian hands. I think we're going to see more of that. And of course, that's always difficult once you begin not just losing the lives of US servicemen and women, but when you lose pilots that fall into enemy hands that's a huge issue. And people here at home are accustomed to bombing with impunity. In other words, for the average American, war is something that happens on someone else's soil. And so most people don't pay much attention. This time it's going to have an economic and financial impact.
And then we have, what, an estimated 30 million, 31 million people illegally in the United States, most of whom came over into this country over the last four years. And we know that large numbers of them, even if there are a 100,000 out of 30 million, are very dangerous criminals, and in many cases terrorists. So we might see terrorist action inside our country as well. And we just don't have the forces here to protect this entire country with 330 million people. It's a bad situation. We're taking unnecessary risks, and we're involving ourselves in something that we don't need to use military power to solve.
[Eddie Hobbs] Yeah, just before we get to that Colonel, the potential solution, can I just ask you about Israel, and its position? I mean, if Israel's own military assets start to degrade, in other words, the use of missiles and so on, and it gets into an existential or desperate corner -- it is a nuclear power, surely that makes the situation quite dangerous, even though it's only on one side, and it's still extremely dangerous for the region isn't it?
Israel’s Military Decline and the Nuclear Wildcard
[Colonel McGregor] Oh absolutely. And there is the danger that the Israelis will say to us, "If you don't eliminate our opponent, then we'll use nuclear weapons." In other words we could be held hostage to Israeli use of the weapon.
There's a problem though for the Israelis, right? Now let's say a third or more of Tel Aviv is being destroyed. How much of Haifa has been destroyed is anybody's guess. Large numbers of Israelis have been killed or wounded, their lives have been disrupted, their economy is in ruins, and their air defense capability, air and missile defense, is almost non-existent. We can't resupply them with everything they need. In the midst of this situation, we're supposed to go in and "solve the Israeli problem" by beating the Iranians into submission, either by destroying their nuclear facilities, of which there are at least three, two of which are far below the surface, and cause regime change. In other words, to successfully kill, murder, or destroy people at the top of the organization. Those things aren't going to work very well. There's no no certainty of anything.
And then finally, as we were discussing earlier, what are the Russians, and the Chinese, and others going to do? I mean, are they just going to sit there and watch Iran pulverized out of existence? I don't think so, because I think in people's minds today, whether you're China, or Iran, or Russia, you say, "Well, if I don't go to the aid of Iran, am I not actually the next on the list?" In other words, what's the incentive to stay out?
Iran’s Resilience and Global Implications of the Conflict
So I this is a very dangerous situation. And you talked about Tulsi Gabbard, who's the Director of National Intelligence, and she provided the truth to the best of her knowledge, which is that the Iranians are not building a weapon, and they don't have a weapon. But that's really irrelevant at this point. I think the real goal is to destroy Iran as a large nation state, to weaken it, and then to replace its government. I don't think you can do it with air and naval power alone. Not even close. But that's where we're headed.
[Eddie Hobbs] So Colonel, we've been talking about the Russians, and there's a great bit of confusion about this, because we're constantly being sold the idea that the Russians are going to invade Western Europe and all the rest of it, but my sense is that's not the Russian objective at all. I mean, in your professional assessment, what are the Russians attempting to do, and where will they stop?
Russia’s Objectives in Ukraine and the Minsk Agreements
[Colonel McGregor] I think it's important to understand a couple of things. I'll address what the Russians are about, but then we have to understand what the Russians have confronted in Ukraine. The Russians quite frankly, when they first entered Ukraine, did so because their citizens in Ukraine, in other words Russians, were being treated very badly as second-class citizens, and in fact, in many cases, they were simply being killed, murdered. And Putin had tried through the Minsk Accords to come to an arrangement that would allow Ukraine to stay together as this multinational, multicultural state in return for which the Ukrainians would respect the Russian people's desire to speak their language, to live in their communities without being forced to "Ukrainianize." Well, he discovered that was hopeless. And he also saw very clearly that we in the west, particularly the United States, and its principal allies, Germany, France, and Great Britain, were trying to transform Ukraine into a kind of military battering ram that could be used against Russia for the purpose of not just recovering Crimea, which was historically never Ukrainian, but also destroying the Russian state. People decided that it was in the interest of the United States and Europe that the Russian state be destroyed, and that its country be carved up into pieces . And one of the things that was particularly obnoxious to the globalists that currently rule in the West, was the existence of a Russian Orthodox Christian country,. The idea that Russian ethnicity, language, culture, and religion, were things that should be preserved, was anathema to the people that are globalists. I mean, you're facing something similar to this in Ireland. We are facing something similar to this in the United States.
The Reality Behind Ukraine’s Use as a Proxy Against Russia
So ultimately, Putin throws up his hands, and recognizes that he can't allow this to go on. The Minsk Accords were a fraud, as we later found out from Chancellor Merkel, who admitted that the Minsk Accords were simply offered to buy time for the Ukrainians to build up their military capability. So he moved into eastern Ukraine -- he didn't go very far, and he did not go in with guns blazing -- because he thought he was sending a signal to the West that the West would take advantage of, and find a way to negotiate out of the problem.
Well, he discovered two things. First of all that the Ukrainian military was far more potent than he anticipated, and that the West had absolutely no interest whatsoever into coming to any sort of arrangement that respected Russia's legitimate security interests. So then he found out that he didn't have an army that was strong enough, and capable enough, to do the job. So eventually, he pushes back the Ukrainians, and then goes over to what we call a "strategic defense". And the strategic defenses always worked very, very well, Eddie. And in World War I, for instance, the advancing German forces never moved beyond Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Poland into Russia. That was their limit of advance. And they established strategic defense. The Russian army was utterly destroyed attacking the German strategic defense in World War I, and ultimately lost the war. This time, the Russians turned the tables. They established the strategic defense. And then on the bad advice given by the US-UK senior military leaders, the Ukrainians began launching pointless attack after pointless attack into the teeth of these defenses.
[Eddie Hobbs] Sorry Colonel, does that account for the the numbers you gave earlier in our discussion on the deaths that the Ukrainians lost at least 1.5 million dead on the battlefield?
Ukrainian Military Losses and Western Influence on Tactics
[Colonel McGregor] That's very important to understand. That's not a made-up number. That's quite real. That number has been compiled by many different sources, by looking at graveyards that are filled to capacity, and new ones that are being opened, looking at hospitals and the number of dead that were removed from the hospitals, and then the many, many more thousands of people severely wounded who will never live normal lives. and when you look at those numbers, and you look at the things that are eventually announced in obituaries, you come up with 1.5 million as a good solid number for the numbers of dead.
And you have to look at these monstrous operations in which tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers were sent to their deaths. You know, one of the most famous was down in Heron where they attempted an amphibious assault across the Demper River. I mean, a monumentally stupid thing, but who did you have advising these people? You had U.S. four stars, and UK four stars and three stars, egging them on. And the Ukrainians were annihilated. So the Russians spent a lot of time on the strategic defense until finally the Ukrainians were so weak they can't put up much resistance at all. So you still have, occasionally, a little pocket of resistance, and the Russians have been very interested in avoiding unnecessary casualties. We estimate that they've lost between 110 and 120,000 dead, and that they probably have as many wounded, although the difference is that the Russians have a very good system of evacuating wounded, so that far, far, more wounded recover from their wounds and return to duty. At the same time, they become very methodical and deliberate in how they approach their enemy on the battlefield. And they're willing to do it slowly, taking as much time as necessary in order to avoid losses. In fact, I've said it many times, I think in the history of Russia, no Russian leader has expressed and demonstrated more concern for the lives of his soldiers than Putin has.
Russian Military Strategy: Methodical and Effective
So the Russians have come out of this thing, to this point, infinitely stronger. From this very small army, which was designed for nothing more than border defense, or regional defense, they now have probably the most professional and capable ground force in the world, and they're quite capable of launching major offensives, but they're not interested in doing that. They would like to come to an end. They want to put this to bed. The problem is that we won't allow it. We keep shoveling cash, and now increasing these medium and long range strike weapons, that only require a very few number of people, many of whom are westerners, in any case contract people that used to be in the British, American, or German militaries, or French militaries, and these are more annoyance weapons than anything else. They're not going to change the the fundamental outcome on the ground, but I think they're getting very close to realizing that they're going to have to march to the river, and they're probably going to have to cross it and take Odessa, because Odessa will then eliminate an outlet to the sea, and that outlet is still very, very vital to the arrival and introduction of weapons and military equipment into Ukraine. And at the same time, I think they're probably going to have to cross the Yer River and go straight into Kiev. They've got to destroy this regime. And that's not something they really want to do. Remember that Kiev is very unique in Russian history. They don't want to see it damaged in any way, but they're coming around to the understanding that there's no alternative to this, because we haven't allowed this to end.
Putin’s Leadership and Resurgence of Russian Military Power
And remember that Donald Trump, who boasted he could end it in 24 hours, and never understood the complexity of the issues at stake, nevertheless could have already brought this to an end by doing a couple of very important things: (1) end all further military aid to the Ukrainians. Now people say, "Oh my god, how could you do that?" Well, you can do it. If you want to stop the dying, stop the aid. So the first thing you do, and that means no more cash, and we estimate about a third or more of all the cash that we've sent into Ukraine, and probably the same amount of military equipment, has ended up being sold on the black market. Remember, Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. So you have battalion commanders in the Ukrainian army, along with brigade commanders, and others, and generals, and colonels ,stuffing cash into their pockets at the expense of the Ukrainian people. And they continue to pretend that they have 100% manning, or 90% manning in many units, when in fact they're below 50%. They haven't reported all the dead because frankly the Ukrainian state doesn't want to have to pay the widows and orphans. And at the same time, that means that the pay for these dead Ukrainian soldiers continues to arrive, and that pay then goes into the pockets of the officers. I mean, the corruption is horrendous.
The other thing that we needed to do was to get all of the Americans in or out of uniform out of Ukraine. And that's something that President Trump could have done as well. But President Trump has turned out to be the sort of person who is much more of a politician than anybody gave him credit for being. He likes to be a little bit pregnant. In other words, he really doesn't want to bring the child to term, he just wants to be a little bit pregnant, look pregnant, but ultimately not produce the baby. So he has been unwilling to take the kind of decisive action to end the war that's needed. And of course this has helped the globalists in Western Europe stay in power.
US Missed Opportunities to End the Ukraine War Early
So I think at this point two things are happening: (1) the Russians are advancing -- they will eventually do the things that I just outlined -- so I think that the Ukrainians will end up losing everything east of the Neper River, along with Odessa. They're talking about sending 10,000 Russian troops to protect the Russians in Moldava, so that means there'll be a lifeline from Odessa to Moldava, where you have Transnistria, which is a Russian republic left over from the Soviet. That will happen. And then I think President Trump will gradually, gradually, slowly, quietly, reduce the aid to a trickle, and he'll pretend that he's walked away, that he's no longer interested, and he's not going to be part of it.
So his dream of getting a Nobel Peace Prize for intervening to produce peace has given way to embarrassment. Everything he's done has failed. And he has also failed, and most important, in restoring some sort of normalization to relations between Russia and U.S., which is vital and essential. We have no interest in being in a state of permanent hostility with the Russians, or they with us. So those are the problems that continue. But the war, from a purely military standpoint, is effectively over. People will continue to die, sadly, because no one in the west will stop it.
[Eddie Hobbs] But if you take the bogey man that's been presented to to us here in Ireland, and in Western Europe, of this hardened Russian military machine coming towards us, or coming towards Western Europe, I mean absent American involvement, I mean even with American involvement, in a conventional war, NATO seems to me to be all over the shop: Diverse views; clashing opinions; poor coordination. I mean, I'm just looking at it purely as a lay person, I don't see this at all. I mean, is NATO capable of, or currently capable of any kind of defense of Western Europe? I don't believe it will happen, but that's the bogeyman that's presented.
Corruption and Collapse of Ukrainian Military Capacity
[Colonel McGregor] Militarily, I would say that it couldn't fight its way out of a wet paper bag, okay? And remember, you're talking about multiple states, with multiple military establishments. Some are very small, almost all are undermanned, and underequipped, certainly not prepared in any way, shape, or form for the kind of warfare we've seen waged by the Russians. We forgot that war is ultimately still an industrial process. You have to produce weapons; you have to train people; they have to be disciplined, and hurled into the buzzsaw. And that's something that takes time for which the Europeans are completely unprepared. The Russians are not interested in moving any further west than we compel them to. They don't want to rule Ukrainians.
Future Russian Advances: Crossing the Dnieper and Taking Odessa
Listen: these people have known each other for a thousand years. I told you earlier, while we were off camera, that I grew up with large numbers of Ukrainians, who were all Western Ukrainians, people from the area that we call Galicia. In most cases, these people are incurably anti-Russian. Putin doesn't want to rule them. They don't want anything to do with them. In fact, right now the biggest problem is that the Poles, with whom they've normally been connected as part of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, want nothing to do with them. And I don't see them reorganizing into the old Austrohungarian Empire anytime soon, where many of them also lived and were quite happy. The problem is that we don't understand the depth of the hostility that exists in these places towards the Russians. The Russians don't want to rule or govern any of these people, but they also don't want these countries, whether it's Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Slovakia, Western Ukraine, or Romania, any of these places used as a platform from which to project power against Russia.
The Myth of NATO Readiness and Western Military Capabilities
And the people that continue to try to do that are largely Americans, with the support of the British, French, and Germans. It's catastrophic. It needs to stop! We need to get on with life in the 21st century. This is not 1920. It's not 1960. But when you listen to people, the globalists, it's hard to tell. They don't seem to think in those terms. And again, remember the banks in London, the banks in New York City, the financial interests, have been very frustrated. Because they thought that Putin could be removed from power, which, as completely fantastic as that sounds, people actually believed that would happen. They believed that Russia was weak; that Russia could be bullied. And ultimately, when it fell apart that they could move in and strip Russia of its natural resources, and abuse its people as they saw fit, now that's failed, this same mentality has now moved into the Middle East. And many of the same people that pushed hard for this war in Ukraine are now pushing very hard for Israel's bid for regional hegemony against Iran, with the same goal in Iran. This war is not just about Israel, and nuclear weapons in Iran. That's misleading, because the Iranians don't have nuclear weapons, they have not wanted them, and no one in their right mind, Eddie, wants a nuclear weapon on their soil if they can avoid it. So that's why the non-prololiferation treaty has worked for the most part, not because we ran around and enforced it, but because most everybody said, "We don't want this stuff." And even where you have nuclear weapons, in India and Pakistan, the weapons have actually produced a degree of stability between those two countries, and probably they've avoided wars as a result. And right now we just saw a flare-up between Pakistan and India, and it became very clear that no one was going to go to the nuclear level.
So what are we doing then in the Middle East? Well, we are harnessing our military power, our great economic strength in the United States, ,to this Jewish state that wants hegemony in the region. And we've convinced ourselves that if we back their hegemony over everyone in the Middle East, and I would argue to some extent Southwest Asia, that if we do this this will be good for us. And Persia is another place that has enormous resources like oil and natural gas. Those are not the only ones. But those are the biggest. And I think that's it's misleading, and it's not going to work. They're not going to be able to do to Persia what they wanted to do to Russia. And the Russians, and the Chinese, and the Indians ,and the Pakistanis, everybody else knows that this is the real agenda. It's not just to eliminate nuclear weapons that don't exist. This agenda is to move in, take over, rip apart Iran, divide it up, make it into some sort of pliable vassal state of greater Israel.
The West’s Delusion of Russian Threat to Europe
[Eddie Hobbs] The United States of America seems to be almost the foreign policy arm of the state of Israel. It's headscratching stuff for the rest of us looking in from the outside.
Financial Power and US Foreign Policy Capture by Israeli Interests
[Colonel McGregor] Well, it shouldn't be headscratching at all. You have to look at the people that control everything, and you have to look at the financial power that the oligarchs wield inside the United States, and frankly in Western Europe. Always answer the first question: "Who's got the money?" Because we have a government that everybody universally recognizes now is the best government that money can buy. In other words, if you sat down with President Trump and his advisers, and you asked the question, "'How many senators do you, President Trump, actually control in the Senate?" In other words, if you put forth some proposal and said, "I want you to vote for this," how many can you deliver? How many do you know, with absolute certainty, will vote for what you want? And then ask the question, "'How many of the senators in the Senate right now does Mr. Netanyahu command and control? Well, Mr. Netanyahu has a lot more power and influence in the Senate, and in the House of Representatives, than Mr. Trump does. And we're seeing a lot of evidence that a great deal of that influence reaches into the military, because the commander of central command, this man named General Michael E. Kurilla, is apparently enthusiastic beyond description to go to war with Iran, and spends most of his time with Netanyahu in Israel. This is a very strange development, but you cannot separate what's happened from financial power.
Why Trump’s ‘Two-Week Pause’ on Iran Was Always a Lie
[Eddie Hobbs] Yeah, I totally accept that, and can I just ask you if you this arbitrary two-week window that Trump has announced is a political device to buy some time, which it wouldn't be his first time, you know, giving the 90 days after the bond market gored him a few weeks after his rose garden speech about the tariffs, what happens to Israel if at the end of that two-week period, Trump just decides, "Actually, we're not going to do anything?"
[Colonel McGregor] Well, I have some bad news to deliver. That decision's already been made. The two-week pause is a lot of nonsense. If anything, I think it's another attempt to mislead the Iranians, but I suspect that, at this point, they know when they're being lied to. They were lied to during the negotiations. Remember, we played along with them on this uranium enrichment business, and frankly, had we wanted it, we could have had something very similar to the JCOP, the joint comprehensive agreement that was reached under the Obama administration with Iran. But we didn't want that. And so at the last minute we suddenly announced no enrichment whatsoever under any circumstances. Putin actually intervened and offered what he thought would be a solution, where the enriched uranium could ultimately be stored for Iran by the Russians. That was never, never on the table. There was no interest in that. The interest was in establishing the regional hegemony of the Jewish state over all of its neighbors, No. 1, and bringing the oil and gas fields throughout the region under the control of the West. Go back and look at the city of London banks; go back and look at the banks of New York City. That's what it's about, especially now since we've lost the war against Russia. Russia's not going to give up anything that it currently holds. And where were all the resources, with the exception of agricultural resources, which are still substantial west of the Nemper River, everything is in Russian hands, whether it's rare earths, things like lithium, uranium, and so forth, or coal, iron, you name it, all of it -- and oil and gas -- it's all in Russian hands. And the opportunity to rip apart Russia and exploit it is passed. So having lost that, they've turned their attentions to the Middle East, and they want now to do to Persia, or Iran, what they were unable to do to Russia Israel is leading that charge. It's in the vanguard, if you will. But this is way beyond this argument about nuclear weapons. And what I just described is at the heart of this. And we have decided to bankroll and support Israel in its bid for regional hegemony, because we see ourselves benefiting financially and strategically from the destruction of Iran. Again, I disagree, and I don't see any reason for it now.
Destruction of Iran Tied to Strategic and Financial Goals
You also have another feature that can't be ignored, this outrageous nonsense about the great threat that China presents to everybody. The Chinese have been building this One Belt-One Road, which is essentially beyond even the Silk Road that the old Mongolian armies used to protect, that enriched China and brought all of China's specialized goods and manufacturing to the West. We're talking about something much more substantial, that reaches across Eurasia, reaches all the way into Africa, and ultimately will become a highway for commerce on a scale that no one has seen for thousands of years if ever. We don't like that. We want to stop that, because we decided to oppose it. But we forget that we are not a continental power. We don't live in Eurasia; we don't live in Europe, or Africa; we live in the western hemisphere. In North America, we could still benefit from the One Belt-One Road. That is because we could build a fast, sealed lift. We could build high-speed rail back and forth across North America. We could probably outpace the movement of goods in many cases from Shanghai, all the way across Central Asia, and down into Iran, if we wanted to. But we're not interested in that, so we've turned instead to destruction as our asset: go in and try to destroy what the Chinese have been financing and building. I don't think it's going to work either, because most people are not afraid of China. China does not have armies massing on their borders. And somebody said "Well what about the Chinese debt trap?" Well, debt trap is what WE have been running for years, and the debt trap puts various countries in the global south badly into debt, and then we dictate to them how they're supposed to govern, how they're supposed to elect their officials, how they're supposed to nominate the people that are going to going to run their countries. It's ridiculous. So I think we're playing a losing hand. And I think Iran's been waiting for 20 years for this, and has been preparing for it. Iran also has the backing of Russia and China, as well as all the Muslim countries in the world, and the tacit support of everybody else in the global south. And I don't see very many Europeans rushing to join the war effort against Iran, except of course our friend Keir Starmer, who seems to want to do something with his Lilliputian Navy and Lilliputian Army.
The China Factor and the Belt and Road Initiative
[Eddie Hobbs] And can I ask you, this is a difficult question, but let's just assume that these things play out the way you've described, do you see, for example, the possibility of a Eurasian economic block developing? You know, a combination of Berlin, Paris, Rome, and Moscow coming together because the Russians have the commodities, Western Europe has a lot of technology and intelligence and depth, and all the rest of it and that would balance out? In other words, that could become a regional block? You have the United States, obviously, in its part of the world, and China in Southeast Asia, do you see that as a possibility on the other side of all of this, because Berlin and Moscow, you know, going back years, have never been bitter enemies. Once you take out what happened in the last century, if you go back over the last 350 years, Berlin and Moscow have every reason to cooperate, and the two world wars were anomalies.
[Colonel McGregor] Remember that in 1914, when the British and the Russians attacked the Germans, that was the first time that a German-speaking soldier had shot at a Russian, or shot at someone that spoke English, ever. And no one had fought with the Russians in Germany since 1763. So that war was, to put it bluntly, hugely stupid and destructive. And we're still recovering from it. were still dealing with the problem inevitably it created the conditions for the Second World War other words where World War I ends World War II begins again then we got involved again because of the British and we set out to destroy Germany and we set out to destroy Japan once you destroyed Germany and Japan left huge strategic gaps and that meant that communism could flow in everywhere which it does if anyone won the war at least temporarily it was communism not us the British Empire destroyed itself mr churchill did more to destroy and bring down the British army than a British Empire than any other single person in the history of the English-speaking peoples uh the the notion that they put monuments up to the man is incomprehensible and he knew that FDR stupidly believed that Stalin was morally superior to to the British and their empire Global South Alignments and the Limits of US Power whatever you didn't like about the British Empire shrank to insignificance next to the Soviet Union you know here's a man that murdered at least 20 million people before the Second World War even broke out so there were no concentration camps or massive prisons in Germany until 1941 and even then most of it was in Eastern Europe the point is we destroyed ourselves in the west now fortunately based on the prudent observations of men like George Kennan who predicted that eventually the Soviet Union would fall apart on its own it does we did not win quote unquote the Cold War the Soviet Union fell apart for reasons of internal contradictions and then unfortunately we went in in the 1990s over the objections of many very prudent economists and political figures and we tried to make it worse we tried to rape Russia and we sent people over there to do it putin stopped it and he spent the last 25 years reviving Russia as a great power he's been successful i don't care if you like him or not i don't care if you approve or don't approve of his methods he has revived Russia instead of welcoming the fact that Russia is a Russian Orthodox Christian country that it's led by someone who actually does care about the lives of his own soldiers and people someone who's raised the standard of living and improved things we now have the same group of people that wants us to destroy Iran have been working hard to destroy Russia now in a recent um just finally in a recent article I think it was in zero hedge you suggested well one potential model I think it was a five-step solution kind of global solution to to try and get a balance of power and some some sense of sanity back into what's going on um could you just walk us through that excuse me i'm happy to do so Vision for a Post-War Multipolar World: Great Power Conference unfortunately I don't have it in front of me okay but I I had five steps yeah and there is no chance whatsoever that Washington will take any of them because the underlying it wouldn't it wouldn't be your first time making suggestions to them that they'd find upsetting but I specifically laid this out because this is where we Americans must go in the future i think all of this nonsense is going to end with Iran it's going to end badly for us and for the West and we're going to have to change how we do business with the rest of the world as well as what we're doing inside our own country so the first thing is that you go to this body of people that everyone in Washington loa and despises it's called the United Nations you go to the United Nations Security Council and you ask for a ceasefire support for a ceasefire between the two could we do that absolutely if we did it would it work it could be done then we we immediately halt any more aid to the Israelis until they stop murdering people in Gaza and for that matter increasingly in the West Bank and they've already done a lot of that in southern Lebanon but what's happening in Gaza is straight up war crime murder that needs to stop and then we need to look at troops from a non-aligned countries that could come in and secure Gaza well we're never going to vote for that because the Israelis don't want it and Mr netanyahu as I pointed out earlier has greater control over Washington than Mr trump and then finally I suggested the president convene a great power conference now who would sit at the great power conference the United States Russia China India and Brazil now why those why are we bringing in Great Britain because it is not a great power anymore and in fact Britain would probably do everything in its power to sabotage it but China and and Brazil Brazil is not a great military UN-Led Ceasefire, Ending Aid to Israel, and International Peacekeeping power but it's huge has tremendous economic resources and it's a it gives Latin America representation and a stake in the international system then of course India should be self-explanatory as China i mean the two of them represent what almost twothirds of the population of the planet should they have a say in how this sorts out i think they should and then of course the United States but the United States at the at the moment is led by people who want hegemony not just for Israel but for themselves they don't understand that military hegemony on a global scale is bankrupting it's it's disastrous financially you know we we are going under financially we're headed into the economic abyss right now we're going to watch the bond market implode as soon as this war with Iran is unleashed by the US Air Force and Navy it cannot go on and I always remind Economic Collapse as a Catalyst for Strategic Retrenchment people when did the British leave India they left it in 1947 and 48 because the debt to GDP ratio was 240% in other words when did the British leave when they couldn't afford to stay that is going to happen to us and it would have been infinitely better had we behaved with some degree of foresight and wisdom and recognize the limits of our power as well as the limits of our interests but see the men in Washington don't care what America thinks or what Americans want in fact they say "Look we control the media we control finance we can dictate to them what their interests are." and they won't pay any attention why well most of the time Americans don't pay attention to politics we live in a a wonderful country a big country most of us most of the time are busy trying to put food on the table earn a living and see the the latest football game that's changing because we have unrest in this country right now in places like Seattle Los Angeles and other major cities and that unrest is not even widely reported but we've got serious problems but the assumption is we can drown those fires if you will with mountains of cash i don't think so i think we've run out of that option we can't just print anymore so we're we're nearing the end and I guess we're going to have a an Armageddon-like end because of this insanity in Iran i hope not my greatest fear is the Israelis when they realize that this is a dead end will threaten the use of a nuclear weapon and if they use one then I'm afraid someone else somewhere will provide a nuclear weapon for use against them and that'll be the end of it well look we're nearing the end here as well uh to to use your phrase uh I want to thank you for coming on your first interview in the Republic Final Reflections and Historical Analogies (Cleburne, Churchill, WWII) of Ireland long long overdue it's been an absolutely fascinating discussion i know that a lot of people who will watch this will think the same thing and they would like me to thank you on their behalf for bringing such clarity to the table you remind me by the way h of a of a of of a character from the Civil War we were talking about it just before camera uh Patrick Ronan or Francis or Patrick Ronan Cleburn who was the um I don't know if you know about Cleburn but he in January 1864 suggested to the horror of the Richmond brass that they should free the slaves to fight for the South and he didn't progress much further but he was the best fighting general they had in the Confederate army on the Eastern Front um you know Stonewall Jackson was on the other side on on the western front um on sorry you have it I think you have it reversed yeah the other way around I was about to correct myself yeah so anyway h but that's very interesting I I because I know that um your your forthright thinking and clarity and bluntness uh hasn't won you uh has hasn't won you many many plaudits amongst the nest of people that you've described but h but the the one thing that I'm getting from all of this is is to follow the money follow the money and if and if the money runs out you know then the then then the whole thing comes apart i mean I I think that's the the takeaway for me it's very interesting what you also said about uh about Russian the Russian objectives and the and the and the traditional closeness of Berlin to Moscow and so on so we'll see how it all plays out how the next two weeks are going to go uh in the um in in in in Trump's great gambit uh of trying to uh trying trying to uh thwart a major a major nation with just air power and naval power um I mean it's extraordinary stuff but but there you go uh I'd love to have you back again at some stage in the near future Colonel uh as as things develop and we can we can uh we can compare and contrast what has happened against what we've discussed okay Eddie well thank you very much and God bless the Irish and I pray the Irish continue to fight for Ireland that's a battle they need to win yes indeed thanks very much thank you very much