What Happens Next in an Iran War? Scott Horton Joins
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And there just ain't nothing in the world that says Iran is a threat to us in a million years. I can't tell you how many times I've heard it just in the last few days about Israelis crying. Well, they chant death to America and death to Israel. Oh, they chant that, huh? I got it in my head. I got it in my feet. I got it in my walk. I got it in my feet. I got it in my walk. I got it in my door. I got it in my head. I got it in my feet. I got it in my

Well, I'm joined by our good friend, the proprietor of Libertarian Institute, as well as Antiwar.com and the Scott Horton Show. Scott Horton joins us. How you doing, sir?

I'm doing good. Thank you very much for having me. It's great to see you again. And you're joining us live from Porkfest. How's it going over there?

A lot of ribs, David. A lot of ribs. No, it's actually short for porcupine. Actually, this is not about pork chops and ribs at all. It's about freedom because porcupine is the symbol of the Free State Project, which is a bunch of libertarians who all conspired together to move to New Hampshire and try to support each other, run for office, and to oppose policies and things to make freedom.

this small and already somewhat free state freer and better as a model of how to carry out libertarianism in America. And it's a pretty big deal that they host every year. And it's a great fun to be a part of. Although I'm never moving here because it's getting, it's really cold in the winter time. You might be aware. I'm a Texas boy. I'm not into that. Cold to me is when it gets down. We're like, Oh, we got a cold snap. It's going to get down to 27 tonight. Yeah. Run your faucets. Yeah.

Well, you know, I had to have you on in this midnight hour. We don't know what's going to happen next, but who better than to hear from Scott Horton? We had Colonel McGregor on. I interviewed him last, right before just a few hours everything started popping off with the strikes.

from Israel. Uh, and now we've got to have Scott and this for the clutch moment. Cause, uh, they're at the situation room night right now. And I heard that they're calling Scott to get the final say, is that right? Donnie, Donnie said, Scott right now, where's he at? Call the whole thing off. Mr. President, the Israelis are just using you, sir. They don't give a damn what happens to us. They don't. We've seen this before. Yeah. And I was just on a,

It's the weirdest thing, man. I was on a Saudi TV channel and they had an Iranian lady and she was a reasonable lady. She was not carrying water for the Ayatollah at all, really. She had plenty of negative things to say about him. And then the Israeli guy, man, the absurdity that they have to indulge in to rationalize what they're doing here and the trouble that they're threatening the American people with. You know, we're going to deal with the blowback from this for a very long time, man.

What does that blowback look like? You mean like people already in the United States now? What do you think that looks like? I don't know. I'm more afraid of Bin Ladenites in the country than I am any sleeper cells, although I think it's possible.

I do hear on the right rumors of Hezbollah types in the Western Hemisphere and particularly coming up from Mexico to the United States. I'm not discounting that. I can't say I've ever seen real credible sources where I was worried about that. But it would make sense from the point of view of the IRGC. They could funnel some guys behind the lines. I don't know. On the other hand, Europe would be a lot more accessible and might make more sense in terms of bargaining chip with the Americans that they can cause a lot of problems for our friends.

But, you know, if you're in the Itolls position, and this is what I've always said to you, and, you know, since we started talking 10 years ago or more, whatever it was, a

He's in a very weak position and he knows it. What's the Ayatollah going to do with a problem like the United States of America? Riddle our country with sleeper cells and attacks? Probably not, dude. What he's going to do is he's going to essentially put his hands up and say, look, man, you guys got no cause to fight me. I don't like you and you don't like me, but we got nothing to really fight about. And the truth is that that held from W. Bush all the way through last week when Trump told Netanyahu, you can do whatever you want and I don't even care what the lie is. You know, David,

Bush, W. Bush wrote in his memoir that he went before his highnesses, the king of Saudi Arabia, and said, oh, your illustriousness. I'm sorry. The CIA publicly told everybody that the Iranians aren't making nukes. And so I just can't launch an attack against them when my own intelligence agencies are telling me that my excuse for doing so is just null and void. So I'm sorry, but no. And

And he told Ehud Olmert the same thing. And David, he was George W. Bush. And Donald Trump was asked today, but didn't Tulsi Gabbard say that they're not even making nukes? And he goes, whatever. I like pretending to believe that they are. And so that's good enough for me. It was essentially his answer. He says, I think they were close. Like it's just a matter of disagreement rather than a matter of fact.

When what he's really doing is just lying the Iranians in fact had not made any recent break out toward a nuclear weapon They were in the middle of negotiations with Trump. It's just a damn lie that there was anything going on here to preempt It's ridiculous. It's there. They're in the exact same place They were one year ago four years ago really ever since Trump is the one who got us out of the deal back in 2018 and to your audience so that if

especially for people who don't know me, like no one gloried in the destruction of the Democrats more than me. And the truth is I couldn't vote for the guy, even though I did root for him three times. I can never vote for the guy because of his devotion to Israel. And you have to understand that devotion to Israel is a security risk to the United States of America. He was never a Russian agent. And I defend him to the hilt on that. I got 75 pages in my book about how he was not a Russian agent. Every word of that was a lie, all of it.

but he was an Israeli agent. He always has been bought and paid for by Sheldon Adelson and his now widow, Miriam Adelson. And they're just Likud, agents of influence. That's all they are. And they've given him $600 million in total for his different campaigns and to the Republican Party and his name and all this. It's just...

It's an incredible amount of money. And in exchange for that, they have a deal, which is that Israel can do whatever they want. And he's friends with them anyway, right? Like drop him and Netanyahu on a golf course together. They're friends. They smoke cigars and hang out. There's no real discrepancy between them. And so Netanyahu is a source of unlimited funds for him on a campaign and probably personal basis, too.

And his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who taught him everything he knows about the Middle East, was extremely close to Netanyahu. Netanyahu would come and sleep in Jared Kushner's bed when he would visit in New York City, according to New York Times, like quoting a family. And so he's just – it never was about prostitutes peeing on beds or any of these still dossier lies, but he has just compromised everything.

And he just doesn't care. He has no, you know, people would say about Donald Trump, oh, he's anti-Semitic. He's so crude and this and that. And it's like, look,

The guy's from Queens. So like, might he have ever said a rude thing about somebody before or something? Sure. But you can see that he's surrounded by Jewish people and is very affectionate with them. His daughter is married to Jewish men, all of these things. That's just not evident. But even if that was true, well, then he's 10 times more racist against the Palestinians than against the Iranians and whoever. If he doesn't like the Israelis just because somehow he's

and somehow supposed to be prejudiced toward them, then he would be way worse against the Palestinians. If he was ever going to tell the Israeli or the Iranians for that matter, if he was ever going to tell the Israelis, no,

In his transactional mind, he would have to favor the other side more. And there's nothing there. The Iranians don't want to buy him off from the other side. Do you think he really wants to have a war with Iran here? Or what's he calculating here? I don't understand. Well, I have to tell you, I don't know exactly what happened here. He said he tweeted out today, right before this show, that

You know, we know where the Supreme Leader is and he needs to have unconditional surrender, total surrender, and maybe we won't kill him and stuff. And it's like, this is not, in my opinion, smart negotiation. I mean, I understand there's layers here and maybe he's saying one thing behind the scenes and...

doing his little shtick on the outside. But, you know, I don't understand here what the gambit is here, because if you take them out, it's, I don't think that they're just going to turn around and say, okay, BB, who do you want us to have as our new Supreme leader? You know, it's not going to work that way. It's going to be chaotic, just like it always is.

Yeah. And look, yeah. And that's like if you killed every last mullah, because as long as there's some, you know, prominent Shiite clerics in the country, somebody will be appointed to replace them as long as the state survives. And this is as we always talk about, man, I said the same thing about the Russians, right?

When they invaded Ukraine, that by the logic of government programs, now you ruin something. Now you have to keep ruining it worse and worse and worse because you box yourself into a worse position than where you were when you started. So like in the case of the Russians, they took all of the pro-Russians out of Ukraine permanently.

Well, so now they're stuck with a much more anti-Russian Ukraine, like for the long term, which means what? Possibly they'll have to take everything east of the river. Possibly they'll feel like they have to take Odessa, majority Russian speaking city, even if they don't necessarily want to join. And now they're going to be left with an even less sympathetic state in the end, a rump Ukraine run by a bunch of absolute Nazi lunatics.

And so then what are they going to do? David, now I'm projecting ahead another year or two from now. Then what are they going to do? Force march them all the way out, just wage a full destruction campaign and march them all the way to Romania? Or they're going to have to settle for now. They've created a worse enemy state in the new rump Ukraine compared to the one they were already dealing with. It's the same kind of idiocy here, where all

All along, the Iranians said, if you don't attack us, we won't make a nuke. Or that was the implication. We can make a nuke, but we're not making one. So don't attack us. And then our thing was, look, don't make a nuke and we won't attack you. OK, deal. We can stop right there. We had essentially a status quo that could last there. Now, America and Israel have broken that status quo and are much more likely to push the Iranians toward a nuke. Well, what's the solution to that?

regime change, a worse bombing campaign, total destruction of the state and its replacement by something else. Otherwise, all bets are...

that the ayatollah or his replacement is going to go ahead and change the fatwa and say actually god says we should make a nuke after all obviously we just gave them every incentive in the world to do that so then once you have a regime change in there now you're responsible for propping up a new government to somehow rule over every fighting faction in this land i mean and it's a huge country three times the size of iraq four times the population or was that reverse i forget

with all mountains is a huge country and And it's got Sunni Arabs and it's got a series who are I think Shiites but very different from the their Shiite ruling clerics and you have of course the Shiites and you know, whatever Baloox and all different ethnicities and sectarian differences all those can be Accentuated. I mean

what the we think what the shah pahlavi's son or grandson or something's going to swoop in and be the new monarch and everybody in persia is just going to bow down and respect their new royal highnessness and his authority over their lives now like no after their enemies who just bomb their country install them in power i don't know what they think is going to happen but i can see by the logic of their interventionism like what's the other choice let's say you're trump

You've now bombed the country. You got air superiority dominance even over the whole country, I guess. And so – but it looks like the Iranians are now going to dig a deeper tunnel and build some centrifuges and enrich up to 90 percent and try to make a nuke now. They're just going to dig deeper under a taller mountain, safer from your bunker busters, and get it done anyway. So what do you do with your Trump? You just have to maintain –

A full air dominance, American air dominance and air patrols over Iran and bomb every single thing that they do on the ground. That looks to us like it might be a dump truck full of dirt working on anything. And we're going to keep that up for how long? Forever. Where America is now the permanent air force over Iranian space. And and I mean, I don't know, man, at some point.

Somebody's got to come up with an actual reasonable solution. Remember the Colin Powell doctrine was you don't get into a war unless you know how to get out of it. You know that you're going to win quickly. You know the American people support you, and you know you have a real exit strategy. We don't have a real exit strategy here, man, other than sit back and let things now actually get worse. Let them now break out to a nuke and then go back in six months and then go back in six months or some idiocy. Wow.

It's such a bummer, man. And listen, again, I'm sorry, because I'm just going off. This is my third interview today and I'm cranky as hell and I haven't had enough to eat. But I have to say that, like, again, to reemphasize, you know, for your people, I'm a Texan. I'm an American. I don't give a damn about Iran. I don't care about Russia. I'm not on any foreign country side here.

You know, I'm for this country and the government of this country doing their best, living up to their responsibility to protect the freedom of the people of this country, our security and safety. And there just ain't nothing in the world that says Iran is a threat to us in a million years. I can't tell you how many times I've heard it just in the last few days about Israelis crying. Well, they chant death to America and death to Israel. Oh, they chant that, huh? Are you really telling me I'm supposed to be afraid of a chant because...

You can't finish that sentence, right? You can't say, and they have the capability to do anything about it, right? Because they don't. So instead, all you're telling me is someone is, that's right. That's right. And essentially trying to make Americans think differently.

that, geez, I guess we just don't have any choice but to do this. And quite frankly, like, not to be rude to any sect, but I went to government school too. And they don't teach us who these people are. They don't teach us who Sunnis and Shiites. They don't teach us who's Arab and Persian and Pashtun and what. They don't teach us who's doing what over there. Who has any, no one has any historical background to this. So what they're told is our leader, who we like, this is, I swear to God, man, I'm always in 2002. I'm

I always live in 2002. I'll never forget. I know always exactly how it was in 2002. We're Bush folk. He's a Texan. We like him and we trust him and believe him. And he says we have to do this. So we do. And that's it. What are you saying? You know better than the president of the United States of America? You're saying he's lying us into war for Israel? Why would he do that?

If George Bush says we have to attack, then it must be that we do. But the truth is, as we've all found, that that's not true. Right. It wasn't even the Taliban that did 9-11. We could have only killed al-Qaeda and left the Taliban in power. We didn't have to go to Kabul, much less to Baghdad, to Tripoli, to Damascus, and now to Tehran. It's insane. We should not be doing this. What do you think? What do you think? You know, I want to get it. I have two questions here. Like.

Give us some background and some insight into the Persian culture. It's such a mystery for people. We're not allowed to know anything. They're totally isolated, so you're not allowed to hear anything. What are these folks... This is a different ballgame than Iraq in a lot of different ways. This is a different ballgame than Libya and so forth. So...

Afghanistan. What should people know about the Persian spirit, the culture? It seems to me they've shown incredible restraint through all of those different volleys back and forth, trying to say, let's make a deal. And then you kill everybody on their negotiation team, and they're still allegedly saying, let's make a deal. I mean,

I mean, good lord. That's right. Do they have a history of doing, you know, I don't think they do, of suicide bombing and terrorism, or would they do something like what they did in Iraq where they kind of created these militias? I mean, what's this look like? Yeah, good question. So

First of all, they did support Hezbollah in a suicide bombing campaign in the 20th century. The last one was in 1999. So those kind of tactics are not exclusive to the bin Ladenites, although they are much more likely to be the ones to attack the West with those kinds of tactics.

Although, of course, as you and your audience know, they're also much more likely to be under the control of the West and our allied intelligence agencies like the Turks and the Saudis at any given time and serving American interests. As long as they're killing Serbs and Russians and Shiites, the bin Ladenites are A-OK with Washington, D.C., Tel Aviv and Riyadh. So just so that we're clear on who's really the greatest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, it's Uncle Sam. As everyone here knows, since Jimmy Carter, that's never changed.

And but now compare as as we did on the list there, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Syria. These are all our terror wars. And yet Iran is a much more powerful country than them with a much larger military. But then again, you know, like same as anywhere. Security is a government program. The IRGC and the Quds Force. I mean, these guys are extraordinarily corrupt.

Many of them, I think, have probably thought that their latent nuclear deterrent was enough to keep them out of this kind of trouble. And they apparently are just not prepared for war. The Israelis were able to destroy their anti-aircraft sitting out in the open, all of their missiles, virtually all of their anti-aircraft missiles last October. And then again, this time, whatever was left, they got in their initial sweeps.

and apparently have air superiority or even total air dominance over much of the country, if not all of it. I don't know if there are still some SAMs there or not. These idiots think that these people are belligerently trying to take over the world. They don't even bother to get the air system going again.

That's right. And yeah, they're at the very least, they're incapable of defending themselves in any real way. I mean, they've launched volleys of missiles at Israel, but those are essentially just a tantrum, right? Like those achieve nothing tactically. This just looks like a school beat down of like bullies, you know, to a country that. And they have hit Tel Aviv. I mean, they shot a lot of missiles and they did get a lot of hits in.

But yeah, just like a kid losing a fight, they're getting some hits in. But go back a little bit. If you think about the Trump years before when he killed Soleimani and when there was a tit for tat over Shiite militias in Iraq allegedly attacking American soldiers. And when remember they I think it was in the latter of those was when they shot down the drone.

And everyone in the government was badgering Trump to escalate the war. And he went ahead and let the ayatollah get the last word on that. And the same thing when he killed Soleimani,

Was when the Ayatollah hit back and hit a base in Iraq, but he hit an empty corner of an American base and no offense for killed, although some guys got concussion shocks and stuff, but no one was killed. And clearly, so this was like a symbolic strike. The same thing when the Israelis last year, they bombed the Iranian consulate in Syria and they also killed the leader of Hamas in Tehran with a bombing. And, uh,

So then the Iranians responded with a volley of missiles at Israel.

It was, I don't know, low hundreds. And they gave them advance warning of three hours. In three hours, we're going to launch this attack. So they let America and Jordan and Britain and France get in position to help Israel to shoot down most of those missiles and drones. So in other words, this was a symbolic thing. This is the Ayatollah saying, now listen, I can't just do nothing. But it's also him, one, being old and just like...

experienced enough to understand what a position of weakness he's in against the United States and what little deterrent he really has. And so even though like if we put our forces on the ground there, I would expect for their army and their Navy what's left of them, even if they have to mobilize themselves as militias, they would bite us to the death. They're like right now, what is their army doing? Are they like moving into Iraq and then from there attempting to strike at American targets in Kurdistan? No, no.

Is their Navy closing the gates of Hormuz and attacking American ships or their missile forces, attacking American bases in Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain? Not yet. They're not. And that was always the threat, that even if Israel started the war, we would get dragged in because the Iranians would hit back at us because that was their only bluff. Otherwise, why wouldn't Israel hit them if America wasn't going to restrain them from doing so? So if Iran is so restrained and sleepy and whatever, you know, and all these –

and not aggressive, why haven't, you know, United States and Israel been able to make a deal with them to get them to be a vassal state like the rest of the, you know, countries, Saudi Arabia and others? Why couldn't they make a deal with them, you know? That's it. I mean, you just said it, right? Because America will accept total obedience or nothing less. Yeah. So they want Visa and MasterCard in every store. Is that the deal? If it's not already there?

I mean, there's something to that. I mean, honestly, it really does. All of our problems with Iran beginning in Tel Aviv. And what's Tel Aviv's big problem with Iran? Is it a city of London issue? It's their nuclear program. No, no, it's their nuclear program. It's just that Israel, and it's not only Netanyahu, and this was the position of Sharon and Olmert as well, that any nuclear program,

Is essentially the same thing as the nuclear weapons program and so this is I again I just did this interview with this Mossad guy X military intelligence or whatever from Israel and that was what he said his civilian nuclear program plus chance Equals nuclear weapons threat and which is just bogus, but it's just you know essentially implying that

that there is the danger here when in fact Netanyahu himself admitted that even if Iran had news, he didn't fear a first strike. He just thought that talented Israelis might leave Israel in a brain drain that would hurt Israel economically because people just think, hell, I'm safer in Miami. And they would just leave and come to the United States if they had the opportunity to. And so we're supposed to get into war for that? We're supposed to help start a war because another country is worried about a brain drain? Yeah.

Are you kidding me? I think he banned them from flying out of the country. I heard. Is that right about this latest situation? You can't leave the country right now or something. Is that right? I'm sorry. Who can't? Israel. I heard that online. I don't know if that was confirmed or not. I'm sorry. I don't know. I'm not sure. People leave right now. Israel.

What do you think is the reaction of the population? We've heard Iran has had a very young and allegedly pro-Western population. I don't know how they can be pro-Western under the circumstances, but do you see them putting up a vicious fight

Like what we saw with, again, Iraq and Afghanistan, these endless guerrilla warfare? Or do you think that they're just going to say, all right, well, I guess we're just going to go along with this kind of thing?

Well, I mean, listen, in all of my years of looking at this, I never saw anyone advocating for a ground invasion of the country. If they can decapitate the regime by killing the Ayatollah and the mullahs from the air, or maybe some kind of limited special operations mission on the ground or something like that, that's one thing. But I don't think anyone...

Like even the worst of the neoconservatives, certainly that I've ever seen, would be advocating for an actual American military presence on the ground to occupy and pacify the country to wage some kind of counterinsurgency. The problem is, who do they think they're going to parachute in there to inherit the power?

Mujahideen-y cult, communist terrorist cult, or the son of the monarch, you know? Why not his granddaughter, right? That's what I'm saying. So I don't know what they think. What do you think is the likely scenario, though, just gaming it out a little bit, if they try to decapitate, if they take out Ayatollah

if they take out the nuclear bases, which they may be trying to do right now as we speak, what is the long-term Persian sentiment? Are they going to put up a fight in some way or another, or are they just going to submit? I don't know.

Well, look, I know that typically the more conservative presidential elections over there, you know, during the great revolution of the nine, the Obama people made a big deal about, and these were any D and USA ID backed groups that were out there with their green flags. And they were supporting a guy who was part of the Iranian revolution, 79 Musa V, who's like somewhat of a reformer. But, you know, he wasn't,

to abolish the theocracy and instill a liberal democracy, but it was like he was the most liberal out of anybody. And so a lot of people in downtown Tehran came out to protest, just like a lot of people in Austin protested Bush's war in Iraq. But do you think...

represented the will of the people of Texas during that time? Of course not. And so right after the election, I mean, all the polling results came in from all wide and varied places that showed that the Greens lost. The more conservative candidate won because there are more people out in the countryside, and they tend to be more religious and more conservative, just like everywhere. And so you can show me a mob in Tehran that

Possibly. I heard someone reference a very zoomed in, closely cropped photo of about 25 people celebrating. Like, oh good, it's a new era for us over there. But I think, how can you be free if you don't have independence? Right?

Right? How could anyone celebrate if you and I lived under theocrats in America? How could we celebrate their overthrow by a foreign invasion and bombing campaign that installs people who are favored by those foreigners? They could never be our true representatives, only our new overlords who we would have to resist one way or the other. And so...

You know, if there was a magic wish, we could just make every theocrat in Iran disappear. And then the next day and for the next six years, everyone is allowed from even fistfights. Everyone can only and that's just magically enforced. Everyone can only negotiate and come up with a new democratic system where everybody is fairly represented and whatever. That probably still wouldn't work. OK, and that's with magic.

But without that, with America just removing the regime there and saying, good luck, Persians, I bet you guys will figure it out, you're almost certainly begging for civil war. And then you're going to have people on all sides, all the neighboring states chipping in to protect their own interests and all the rest. Could be the reverse of Iraq War II, where we've got Iraqi Shiite militias fighting in Iran, Sunnis and Islamists.

Aziris and whoever at Bay or God knows what. I mean, I don't want to go off predicting crazy things, but look,

This is the biggest, most heavily armed, most complicated of all the countries that we've attacked in the last 25 years. Yeah. So what do you think? This is going to be the easiest one to solve? Probably not, right? I don't know. Are there already strong fault lines that would be easy for a civil war to foment into already in the country? You know, obviously. I don't know about that. Yeah. No, listen. I mean, David, when we got attacked, Americans rallied behind W. Bush. Right.

Now, his approval rating might have been zero since 9-11 happened on his watch. Instead, his approval rating went up into the 90s because the American people were telling the pollsters to tell the world, you can't mess with USA. We are one when it comes to facing down you. And wouldn't we expect that to happen in every country around the world? I interviewed a guy who was

reporter in Sana'a, Yemen, who said, well, we're all Houthis now, which of course was not literal, right? They're not Houthis. The Houthis are this Aadid Shiite sect, this one tribe from the Asada district in the far north of Yemen. But the

But they had taken over the country, and then America, Saudi, and UAE started carpet bombing them. And so then every many patriot said, well, I guess we're with him. We're with our George W. Bushes, if it's him or you, dropping bombs on our head. So at Fancy Pants University, you know, at Harvard or Georgetown or whatever, they call this the rally around the flag effect. I mean, imagine –

Honestly, dude, imagine how absolutely horrid. I mean, on a real level, like on a just try to really go this far in your mind. Imagine how horrible the tyranny of Florida would have to be before you welcomed a foreign regime to come and kill them for you and some of your neighbors while they're at it.

Can you imagine the horrors that would have to be going on for you to welcome any other country to come and intervene and secure your liberty for you? No, I can't even imagine it. I can't even imagine ever what it would take to have Americans, to have Texans invite a foreign regime to come and liberate us from our own government, no matter how horrible it was. And we've had some pretty bad regimes in Texas, I'm here to tell you. In America, we have. Bill Clinton used to be the president. Remember that? Yeah.

Yeah. So do you, do you, uh, when you see the, um, looks like they're going to go ahead with some kind of aggressive, continual aggressive action, uh,

does that mean that they're probably going to respond with the closing of the straight and everything and economic, you know, pain back? I don't know. Okay. So on the first part, yes, I think you're right. And I think by they, I think you mean the United States of America is going to jump in here. I think as I, I'm not a military expert, Dave, you have to forgive me, but I believe that my understanding is that the Americans have given the

um, Israelis, 20,000 pound bunker busters, but we've got the 30,000 pound ones, the deep, deep earth penetrators, non-nuclear bunker destroyers. And that essentially the idea is it'll probably take the United States using those to destroy the Natanz and Fordo facilities. My understanding, and I I'm traveling, so please forgive me if my data is incomplete on this, but I think that this is right so far is that,

They have not, the Israelis have not attempted thus far to completely destroy the facilities at Natanz and Fordow. They've hit some supporting facilities, electrical plants and things like this outside, but they've not attempted to destroy the centrifuge facilities yet.

um and so that could either take special operations forces on the ground like dropping in the airborne something like that to try to do that or it could take dropping essentially a bunch of bunker busters down the same hole in a row hoping to dig deep enough to get to these deeply buried facilities uh you know under thousands of feet of granite supposedly or a thousand or two thousand feet or whatever so um

Whether they'll be able to accomplish that, whether the Israelis can accomplish that without the United States, I don't know. And I have to tell you that I've been told by people who know lots of things that I believe are familiar, have a reason to know that America is absolutely ready right now to jump into the war and that they intend to. And I was told that it couldn't begin as soon as yesterday. And I was very relieved to see Pete Hegseth

on Fox News announcing that, yeah, peace through strength. In other words, we're not quite going yet here. The way that he said, I forgot the rest of his statement, but he essentially made it clear that we weren't going quite yet. But then Donald Trump is tweeting today, as you said in your introduction, he tweeted in all capital letters, unconditional surrender. Now, he didn't put a deadline on that, but the implication there is

That you're not messing with Benjamin Netanyahu. You're messing with the president, United States messing with you are resisting the will of the president of the United States now. And you're going to find out is is the implication there. And then if America jumps into the war, what will Iran because they still do have a Navy. They still do have some missiles. I don't know how many missiles they have. They may have.

far more than they've already launched or they might be almost out, David. I really just can't tell you. The rumor all along has been that they have tens and tens of thousands of these things, that all of our men in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar, and Saudi are hostage essentially, and in Iraq and in Kurdistan as well are essentially a hostage to their forces. Of course, when you talk about the Straits of Hormuz, for the audience not familiar, this is the narrowest part of the Persian Gulf. From a boat in the middle, you can see both sides.

And, um, it's very narrow and it could very easily be closed really with just threats or a couple of missile strikes on civilian tankers, uh, or just the declared intention that they would sink any tanker going through that port. As long as America is treating this way, they get all the whole world hostage on the oil price there. So that would be like a Naval battle or something, or how would they do? I mean, they can probably just mine it. Right. Uh,

I'm just saying, what would America do? Would they have to do a naval battle or bring in some air attacks? I'm not sure. Like what it would take to close it, what it would take to reopen it again, and that kind of thing. But I have read years ago that

All it takes really to close the Straits of Hormuz is convincing Lloyds of London that they're not going to ensure any shipments going through there. And that's a lot easier than literally closing the Straits, right? You just make the threat and you make it economically impossible for civilian fleets to go through there. Now, Donald Trump could do, and I think it was Trump that did this before, although it might have been Obama. I'm sorry, David, I forget. But I believe one...

I think it was Trump in his first term who at one point said, oh, yeah, well, I'll guarantee I'll insure any shipping going through there with the American taxpayer. Lloyd's of London won't do it.

But even that only goes so far. I mean, if the ships are really going to get sunk, then I think those operators are going to be very hesitant. And just the threat is enough to send markets completely crazy, which ought to be a huge disincentive to Donald Trump, which is trying to keep the bubble from popping right now. So here's some deflationary pressure he doesn't need. And then you got, you know, I'm concerned about

Now that he looks like he's going to do what B.B. wants him to do on this one, who's going to be next? I mean, they just keep going one after another. Was it going to be Turkey? Who's next on the NWO hit list? They've been going through one by one and just making each country a disaster. Who's the next chaos zone?

You know, there are some Likudniks that never forgave Jimmy Carter for making peace with Egypt or Bill Clinton for making a deal between Israel and Jordan. I mean, you want a clean break? Let's get serious, man. You know, go for greater Israel. Greater Israel means all the way to the Euphrates River, pal, all the way to Kuwait. And they got the greater Congress all up on there. You know, man, they got the... They sure do. They sure do, man. Yeah.

That's right. I mean, we are just, you know, I'll tell you what, for anyone in your audience, hell, if they made it this long, they must love me. Everybody, please call and don't just call the White House, but especially the White House.

Call and email them. It's very easy to contact the Donald Trump White House. Please do that immediately and call your congressmen and senators and just let them know that you are Trump people. You are the part of the MAGA movement that supported him because he promised not to do this.

And that you just won't stand for. And he has to know that like, oh my God, am I really going to lose my coalition here? We're not just talking about Tucker Carlson and a couple of influencers on Twitter. You're telling me that I am losing my voters?

that they are turning their back, that they really thought I meant it about the no new wars thing. And man, he has to know that we care. He has to know that this matters. Imagine Donald Trump's counsel is in the White House right now and no one is bothering to chime in that, hey, man, we are getting flooded right now with opposition to this, Mr. President. You need to know these people swear that they love you and that they pray for you every night. And they're still saying, please don't do this to us.

So that has to be at the very least a part of the conversation or else how can he react to it, David? He has to know that the people will not stand for it. And look, I know it's much harder on the national level than on the state level, but it is true that they take note when the people are pissed off.

And most of the time, you know why? Because most of the time, people don't even bother saying anything. Most of the time, people don't care about anything unless it's their pet little bill that they want for their little handout or whatever. Otherwise, Americans are totally disengaged. So if the phones are ringing,

And the email box just keep digging. It matters. They notice and they, I don't know how much it could ever mean to them compared to the real power politics at play. But it has to be the case that they know this is not the commies and the liberals and the progressives and the wokest and the wimps calling. This is not Nancy Pelosi's caucus calling. This is MAGA. And they're saying America first does not mean what Donald Trump says it means. America first does not mean what Benjamin Netanyahu says it means.

America first means defend America first. Let Israel fight their own wars and leave us out of it. Yep. I can't say it better than that. I appreciate you, Scott, for coming on. And can you share with us your latest book and where people can get it? It's a great one.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, man. It's called Provoked, How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine. And as I said, I take Donald Trump's side in there a lot. I blame him for a couple of things because I'm a fair guy. But he was treated extremely unfairly on Russia issues, obviously on Russiagate, especially in his first term. And quite frankly –

David, I'm just 100% convinced, 100%, that if it hadn't been for the Russiagate hoax, he would have solved the ongoing Ukraine civil war, and he would have had a permanent agreement to keep Ukraine out of NATO in his first term, and the ongoing Ukrainian war right now would have never started. It would have never gotten to the point of an actual Russian invasion. I can't understand why he's not more reasonable with Iran-Ukraine.

Like, you know, he hangs out with Kim Jong-un, talks about how they look slim together. Where is that? Ayatollah? I'm telling you. You can't do that? You can't do that with Ayatollah or somebody like that? And David, we all know the saying, right? Only Nixon can go to China, right? Because everybody knows he's an anti-communist. He's not doing this because he favors Mao. He's doing this because it's what's good for us right now, okay? He's a strategist and he's figured out that this is smart to do.

And so it's the same thing. Ronald Reagan made nuclear agreements with Mikhail Gorbachev and George H.W. Bush as well. They got rid of – we had 40,000 nukes and they had 70, and we got down to 7,000 each.

because of Ronald Reagan, because of Republican presidents negotiating with America's enemies. And this is exactly what W. Bush should have done. W. Bush should have put General Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, on the plane to Baghdad and said, listen to me, Saddam, you're going to do what we say. And then he would have said, fine.

And then everything would have been fine. And it's the same thing with the Ayatollah right now. Donald Trump could go to Tehran. He could go to Moscow. He could go to Beijing. He could go to Pyongyang. He could come home and be Trump the Great. There's no need for us to fight with any of these countries at all right now. And it's just because he puts Israel first. He's essentially just bribed. He's bought off by the Israel lobby. And he doesn't know why he should care more about us than them.

No one's ever made him choose, and certainly not in a way that was compelling to him. That, oh, if I favor Israel, I'm sacrificing my actual American supporters who I'm taking my oath to serve. To him, ah, no, the American people love it when I kill people for Israel. Why would they mind? So he has to know that we do mind very much. Yeah.

I appreciate you coming on, Scott. Thank you. Check out my books. Thank you, man. And go to antiwar.com and libertarianinstitute.com for more of Scott's commentary and other great writers as well. Take care. God bless you, God. If not himself, there's not. To say the words that you hear.

I'm not the world's old one who knews. The record shows I took the road. I took the road. The record shows I took the road. I took the road.