EP:39 - A Disastrous War

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Negotiate now. And it's cool. You're watching provoked with Darryl Cooper and Scott Horton. debunking the propaganda lies of the past, present, and future. This is provoked. All right, you guys.

It's provoked. All right. So recording on Thursday night because I'm traveling. And actually we plan this poorly because I won't be traveling until Saturday morning. But anyway, we're recording on Thursday to play on Friday.

It's provoked with the great me and especially him. Darryl Cooper, Martyr Made. And we have a very special guest, but I'm going to go ahead and let Darryl introduce him and take the interview from there. Go ahead, sir.

Yeah. So this is somebody I've been excited to talk to for a long time. I followed him on Twitter for a very long time. He's one of the best accounts on there when it comes to or on affairs, especially stuff dealing with Middle East and US relations in the Middle East.

But also, you know, you can find interviews and things. And he's been very helpful and like helping me keep track of sort of the broader issues. You know, the ever since this war started that I tend to get. If I'm left my own devices kind of very focused on the technical military details. And so, you know, he's really been a huge help.

So thanks for coming on, brother.

It's great to finally talk to you.

Thank you, Darryl. We're having me. It's been a while that we had to do this. So I'm glad that we finally made it happen. Despite the entire America first movement going down the drain.

But we're going to find a way to hopefully keep it alive with these conversations. So yeah. Yeah, hopefully the next time we speak will be under better circumstances. But I'll guess I'll jump right into it. You know, Scott's had a long day, so I'll take the lead here.

You know, the big news in the last 24 hours was that the Israeli's hit. The big natural gas yield, Iranian side, the facility, Iranian facilities on the big natural gas field. They share with Carter. And when I saw that news come through, two thoughts sort of immediately came to mind.

The first was that Iran is definitely going to hit back at infrastructure in the Gulf

States, which they did, which is something that the United States won't like. And the second thought I had right after that, though, was that Iran would hit back at the infrastructure in the Gulf States. And that's something that Israel probably really, really will like. You know, these pampered monarchies in the Gulf.

You know, they're they're saying what they have to say to stay on the good side of the United States and so forth. But, you know, these people are not like plain stupid. They're not wine. They understand that Israel and the United States are the ones who have devastated their region for decades. And, you know, are the cheap sources of instability.

It's certainly in this particular instance. And so it seems to me that Israel probably knows that they know that. If Israel is preparing for a future where the U.S. is not going to be this automatic on call attack dog for them. You know, it seems to me that it perfectly happy to see the Arab countries reduce to chaos as well. And so by hitting Iranian, by the Iranians, hitting the Gulf infrastructure, they kind of doing Israel's dirty work for them.

“So, I think we've got to start back for a second, and see sort of where we are.”

The American plan to the extent that there was a plan was to have basically 48 hours to 72 hours of conflict, the capitalization, the regime capitulates. Everything goes away, Donald Trump is a hero and America has another event as well on its head.

actually by Benjamin Netanyahu and his backers who happened to be very close with that administration. That didn't work out. And we are now in the midst of a long-winded conflict in my view. It's going to be a conflict that is going to be drawn out. It's going to be additional. It isn't our campaign so far.

And it has had a lot of tactical success, but tactical success, as you know, usually, unless it actually planned according to a coherent strategy, doesn't lead to strategic success or strategic victory.

In this case, we don't even know what the goal of the U.S. side ultimately was.

“I think we were sort of going into this conflict by Israel.”

And I think the Israeli end for this conflict is a kind of a state of affairs that is in no one's interest. It's not in America's interest of the Persian Gulf and the regions interest. It's going to mean a devastated perhaps civil war, rather than Iran. It will be that they basically have no red line when it comes to what they want in Iran. Regene changes a nice cover. There might be some best for our folks that they can convince that this is what they want to do.

But that's not really what is at stake here. For Israelis is to eliminate any potential adversary or rival for their regional hedgehog. So that's the goal and yet they cannot achieve the goal, absent U.S. support and U.S. backing.

And not just you know financial that we have been doing or even with military supplies.

They need the United States to take a lead in many of these operations. And so the United States is starting to waver because Donald Trump knows that this is the very unpopular war. They also know that not going quite well for that.

“So there are rumors of you know, are we going to do this? Are we going to do that?”

There's still kind of considering options. I think it's almost inevitable that we will double down. But if there's any president that can you know, all of a sudden pivot, it will be Donald Trump because he can claim any any defeat as a victory as well. So but in terms of what the Israelis want is to try to find ways to get more of the region involved.

More of the region involved in the war to get to close the offense today. Ronians that that was what the killing of Ali Lari Johnny signified. He was probably one of the most sort of out of the people who are in charge at this moment. He was one of the most of the western oriental. He was a content philosopher.

He could speak to the Americans. He would have found a way if it was possible. So eliminate that on the Iranian sides because that door. Also then close any kind of rule in offense to Donald Trump by getting in to commit to more and more.

More and more bad options ultimately.

And so this the fact that you are escalating in the first place. If you are actually, you know, sort of a superior military position. So there is no question that the American and you is really sort of a quickment.

“And military doctrine in a way more superior to the Iranians, right?”

So they do have the upper hand in terms of technology and equipment and weapons systems. And yet they are the ones that are escalating this. And the Iranians after the first response we tried to show that they are not estimated. They have basically prepared for this kind of war for half a century. So they are looking this time for a traditional war.

They know what they're doing. They're doing specific number of hits every day to Israel and to the Gulf. But they're not going out of their way to shoot everything that they have at one stop. So the Israeli side then is escalating because it's frustrating and desperate. And so I think we should understand what that means.

And the side that escalates in the conflict like this is the one that is trying to try to get every side more involved in the conflict. And so we are fast and quite quickly moving up escalation ladder. And unfortunately I think that Donald Trump is stuck in a escalation trap. So you can discuss what that means. But it is certainly not to the United States interest. It might tank his presidency and America has a great power status.

So it's something that's really a big deal. This is not an excursion as the president called it. It's definitely not an excursion. And I think I guess we're going to get there. But Joe Ken's resignation doesn't come because he's against striking Iran through aerial campaign.

He's with an advocate for it. It comes in my view because the escalation ladder is getting us to positions in which a kind of a ground force invasion and more and more. A Vietnam scenario would be impossible to afford. And I think seeing that and not being able to have any kind of consultation in to that decision making process is getting Joe but also others in the admin to reconsider what the position is. To literally want to resign heroically or try to sort of fill up the decision on sort of they prevent other in your cause.

It's also happening.

“And that's what I'm better in one sentence.”

We actually have, you know, if you are inclined to our America first or realist point of view, which I am.

Then we do have voices within the administration, but they're not being heard. But I think it is it is a very strange scenario phenomenon that bears good things. So I was talking there. That was just like a kind of a broad view and we can we can focus on that. I mean, in the past, whether after the strike on General Soleimani or last June, Iranians were very much. They were obviously very carefully being almost exactly proportionate in their response to whatever whatever actions we took.

I think, you know, at the end of the 12 day war when they launched the missiles at Qatar, I mean, it was very telegraph. And I think if I remember correctly, they launched the exact same number of missiles that we dropped bombs. Sort of a long range, you know, nonverbal communication going on between, you know, the two sides. This time, it seems like Iran is a very different mentality. And this, this most recent hit on their, on their natural gas facility, they did not respond proportionately.

They escalated. They hit several more and did a lot more damage than they themselves took.

“And, you know, I mean, it kind of, I think that, you know, if you want to establish deterrence, you have to sort of create situation where the other side.”

You know, you can't just respond proportionately forever because that gives the other side full initiatives and allows them to sort of tailor their attacks on you to what they feel like they can handle at any given moment. And so that probably plays into what you're describing is the escalation line, maybe you can talk about that. Yeah, sure. Well, I mean, the, the special letter is really being driven specifically by the US and Israeli side, because it is really side. But it is, it is true that the older leadership, the late Supreme Leader homine and the people were close to them.

Look, however, most in their 70s, you know, they had, they were kind of the first generation of the revolution stills.

They had become more, more and more cautious. They didn't want this war. They were very reluctant about this war, because they need the cost of this war. And, so again, let's have no illusions that this war is costing, they wanted, you know, the Iranians, the, you know, the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the infrastructure, the huge damages and increasingly people will die. So it's not something that they walked into really nearly, but at the same time, they realized that after that, you know, Israel is precisely running a madman kind of campaign when it comes to war.

They doesn't have any red lines, it acts as it pleases, it decapitate heads of state. I mean, this is, this is a big deal. Then you, you know, traditionally or conventionally, the idea of, you know, killing off head of state is something that terrorists do, right? Because they're non-state actors. States have this level of civility with one another, no matter what kind of ideology they had. I mean, we had a, the height of the full world, it was unthinkable.

That either, I mean, forget about the nuclear weapons per second, just even the idea of us eliminating, you know, the heads of state of another country.

It's not something that was ever discussed, doing World War II the same thing. I mean, even attempts that were made, attempts to hit their life were made by, you know, German opposition groups, not by and, you know, not necessarily by, you know, direct the campaign by a medical, well, Britain. So the idea that we are going to go and eliminate heads of state itself is something that's very, I don't, out of us, you know, out of interest in relations. I think we should, you know, emphasize that, but in it, that in itself shows that Israel acts in a very rolled way when it comes to international politics.

It doesn't have it lines, it escalated, goes to, you know, infrastructure, it hits civilians, it does whatever it wants, and it considers that sort of an unapologetic use of force, right? And it doesn't have any forms or moralisms about that.

“It had moralisms been somebody attacks them, but it doesn't have any sort of moralism when it comes to attacking others, which is very cynical, but that's what their view is.”

So the, the Iranians during the 12th day war still were following this kind of like proportionality, and, and before that, for the past, you know, escalations, from 23 onwards, there were rounds of this, as you know, and, you know, true promise, true promise, two of these are the various things for operations that they use. There are a lot of strategic patients, so for example, when when the Hamas leader was eliminated in Taran, there was no immediate response from the Iranian, right? And then this was a, this was an attack on on sovereign Iranian territory killing somebody that they had enlightened, but in any case, they didn't respond.

And, and that was creating a lot of backlash within the Iranian decision-making structure, saying why are we responding these people will not back off, back off. So that's sort of that kept on going to get onto until we got to the 12th day war, but even during the 12th day war, first of all, it wasn't entirely, I mean, it's a very interesting, to consider, right?

Hamas is not an Iranian proxie, but it does, but again, you could see that, it did not to hesitate, did that to other commanders in the field. So, and President Trump, you know, with Israeli support, had done that to Israeli money before, but Iran seems to have been entirely shocked and stunned by what happened.

They were prepared for attacks, and even a war with Israel, but they did not account for a decapitation strike under, you know, the first hours of the war.

I'm talking about the 12th day war. And so that, and itself caught them by surprise, it had to, they had to sort of reorganize themselves and change their kind of command and control structures. But the regime is not just a, you know, one person's system, it is a deep total state, and so yeah, it had various levels of redundancy to be able to cope. But over the 12th day war, they started to hit back, but still in a proportional way.

And also, they were always worried about the United States joining the war, so they were trying to back channel, they were trying not to get America angry.

Again, this kind of hesitancy existed.

“So, what was the, what was the, I mean, the result of that?”

I think immediately, it created a perception of weakness in Washington and with Donald Trump. I was, I think one of their most, they wanted to work, but you know, most severe mistakes.

They thought that they were acting in a rational way, but then they did not appreciate the cognitive psychological impact of war.

And as you know, war, half of war at least is a war of narratives is a propaganda war. So you look, you go from the first accounts of the war where Rubio Distance is America from, from the, from the war in the first hours to the first 24 hours when Donald Trump comes on, it says, "Oh, actually I did it. You really was consulting and everything was great." And I, I wanted to take credit for it, right? Why did that shift happen? Because there was this impression that Iran is, is weak, that Israel is right, that Iran was a paper type.

The same question held all the way till the resumption. And this is not a new war. This is the resumption of that war. That would, that war had only paused. And you know, I think we, those of us who follow international politics or Iran experts knew that this war was going to come back.

“And so that, that's what happened. And this time around, the Iranians were prepared. They had a very different, more disaggregated, decentralized defense doctrines.”

Going to escalate, you know, and which is possible, you know, why didn't the war and who is on the escalate the war within the, the categories of escalation. So if you hit the Iranian energy, Iran is not going to hit a different unrelated sector, but it's going to hit that sector in various countries. That's the level of escalate. But even in this more, I think there's the real proportionality that just ingrained to the Iranian doctrine, even if they're trying to act like that, you know, try to be mad, they can't do it. It's just a different, they want the, as a state and the civilizational state acts and have a different strategic doctrine than it is real about as a, as a new state.

So it's just, it's very hard to do that, but at the same time they're looking at long-term conflicts. So Iran thinks that if it goes into a war, now it has to sustain a war for months, it's not years. That's the mentality. So they're trying to escalate proportionally within what they have and it means that they have preparing for not just an acute conflict and confrontation, but actually something that's going to be lying long-winded. So I think it's a different type of war. I think the United States isn't expected.

And that is why the Iranian response, I think the capacity to response was underestimated.

“And I think at this point, you have to acknowledge that Iran was not a paper tiger, then Iran did have various capacities that Iran has been strengthened because of this war, not weakened, not even the same strengthened.”

I'm choosing to words carefully. I think strategically Iranian position in the Persian Gulf has become pentamount to doubt of a hedge fund. There's no, there's no tactical scenario to change that. And all of these were Iranian advantages that it gets from strategic depth and geographic advantages that it wasn't really using prior to these conflicts. It was willing to give Donald Trump a win because he didn't want this war. And now, because Israel, we have a situation in which Iran is actually benefiting, pushing and asking for better terms than it was two or three weeks ago.

So I think it's a different standpoint. Again, this war is going to get paid to everyone. And the question becomes, "Who have a higher tolerance for paying for maximum paying to experience as well as who has better resilient and who has better real power to continue to fight this war?"

And it isn't existential conflict, or yes, there's Donald Republic, but also Iran is a state. If you care for this, although what Israel has been doing to the region and what it has claimed to want to do to Iran, and also Turkey, but it's not just limited to Iran. So we are being this, and Iranians are acting as if just a existential conflict, which it is for them. So when countries actually have existential wars that is threatening them as you see with Russia and Ukraine, they act very differently than something that's a war of choice.

They all kind of on defense, Donald Trump definitely is on defense, even Israel is not going to put ground troops. It's relying in America to put its troops to fight it.

But the fact that if this was an actual conflict that was existential and part of our vital national interests, that would be a debate. Americans would sign up to go to war. So one would argue that the cartels in the south is something that's much more of a pressing concern to Americans than a war in the Middle East over oil than we don't even need because we're energy independent.

“So just putting that in the context of American politics, I think it's not an existential conflict for us. It isn't existential conflict for some of the else.”

And so that is going to impact this as you make.

Yeah, that's very similar to the criticism that a lot of us had at the outbreak of the Ukraine war and we got started getting really, really involved in that is that this is a war of choice for us. It's not for Russia and you really probably shouldn't get yourself into fights where there's that much of an imbalance in terms of motivation. You mentioned earlier that this is kind of becoming an attritional war and you know, maybe the sort of initial thought that somebody has when they hear that is like, well, Iran can't possibly win that.

I mean, we obviously have so much more in terms of resources in everything that Iran does. But you know, the other side of that is that Iran has in a way like a lot easier job to do than than we do. You know, we have to inflict enough damage and enough pain, I guess, like if this is the goal to either crumble the society, which it seems very resilient so far, or to get them to tap out, which seems extremely unlikely. They, on the other hand, really just have to show, they have to come out of this and be able to show that, look, you can take out 90% of our military capacity and we can still keep the straight away moves close and the whole energy sector of this region shut down for 10 years if we want to.

You know, because it doesn't take that much, you know, I mean, you, you don't have to shoot every tanker that tries to go through the straightaway moves. You take out one a week, one a month and you complicate the whole situation, you know, you.

“Also, the straightaway moves are not closed. I think that's a very important distinction.”

This is why I use the word control, right? It's it's one thing to say that the audience just when they had no other option and they just, you know, it's way bunch of mind and just blew up the region. So close traffic and for everybody, they didn't do that. They have basically there, you know, basically having using smart bombs to precision drones and other other types of selected, you know, attacks to give you safe passage if they want and not if they don't want. So, for example, China has been getting the oil that wants as an India called the Iranians and Modi negotiated for Indian vessels or to also pass.

So this is not, this is, this is not a sort of a madman theory of closing down and shutting down all traffic is actually the kind of hegemonic or dominance doctrine, which Iran has proven that it basically owns the traffic there and it can control it.

“And so if you are trouble, then you won't pass, but if you work with the Iranians, then they will guarantee your passage. And that's what's giving them leverage. That's just on the straight-up on most question.”

And notice today in the news Steve Wickoff was giving an interview, I can't remember with who.

And he was announcing that we're considering lifting sanctions on about 140 million barrels of Iranian oil that's currently floating in tankers on the sea right now.

And, you know, I guess the idea of being that that's 10 or 12 days or so of supply that, you know, that's the support, I think it was marked for China. That will, you know, we're using their oil, their own oil against them. We're going to allow this onto the market. That's going to keep oil prices down for, you know, maybe a week and a half to weeks and that's going to buy us some time to prosecute this war.

And so, you know, I can be sure that if you were to go back at the beginning of this war and the first day or two of this war, the plan was not to be lifting sanctions on Iranian oil 20 days into it.

So, you know, it seems to me that that's sort of a, it, it, it reads a desperate question. >> Right, I just, what, I, I question all mean exactly. In weeks of this operation, I, I mentioned that in a, in a tweet, I think yesterday or a couple of days ago. But after the attack on the, on the south-east, yes, because by the way, shared gas through the car, and we had promised the car is no more attack on things that touched them after September.

“And yet, this was another attack, and they got very angry at us, and that's why that's part of the reason for Donald Trump's, you know, to social posts, all of a sudden denying any knowledge of,”

I mean, the attack that all, the entire admin was the saying in the morning that everyone knew about and, and it was supportive of the person with supportive of.

But that also goes to the way that we have to understand this war. This is another conventional war between superpowers, right? With, like, you know, we have F35, what kind of, you know, supergeets do you have? It's, it's, they want us to even have a very affordable air power. So, this is not that kind of a war. This is not a cold war or 20th century combat conflict. This is the perfect asymmetric war for a campaign. It's like Vietnam 2.0, with, with drone technology, strengthening the hand of the asymmetrical power here.

Iran, to actually have precision guided munitions that perhaps the Vietnamese didn't have.

So, so it's allowing them offensive capability and capacity to tactically hurt the other side to, you know, go after, you know, their targets that they want to go after. And actually have precision in doing so, and now that midwaters and the interceptors both being gifted. They will have a better chance with lower number of launches to get higher penetration rates, and that's being proven by, by satellite imagery. So, that's the tactical slide. So, they do have that power, but ultimately, the way that Iranians are seeing this is, we are, the pain threshold that we have to, you know, exact on the Americans has to be outside of the battle as well.

So, economic, energy, and, you know, psychology of this war, really. So, the straight-and-forth loses one, such data points. But then you have others such as, you know, not just the energy, they can go after, distillation plans or electricity grid or, you know, infrastructure as well.

“That's what the precision munitions gives you. And also they can escalate later on, because again, they haven't used their most sort of advanced generation, third, fourth generation missiles very much.”

And they were waiting, because they have fewer of them, to have a weaker area defense, let's say, Israel and other places. So, their first spend on defense was to go after the region in terms of the Persian Gulf countries, with the short-range ballistic missiles, and rather drones, something that they didn't use even during the 12-day war, and they have tens of thousands of them, not in the thousands. So, so, we have to see this in terms of what does that do economically? In terms of energy costs, what does it do to the paycheck of Americans? What does it do politically?

To Donald Trump, right? There is a midterm coming. And they are actually considering this in a holistic account of what war means. And so, that's the way that you measure pain. Now, there has been no air campaign ever in history. That has successfully changed the regime or got in them to capitulate. So, they have history on their side, and there are what are called a middle power, a regional state, that has staying power as a civilizational and during civilizational state and power. And so, it's able to leverage its social solidarity as well as geography and strategic depth to be able to project power like this, be resilient.

And so, that has now shifted the strategic picture in the Persian Gulf. I don't know how the United States moves away from this.

“And that's why I think there is a trap, because Donald Trump, no matter how he wants to spin this, it's very hard for him to say, we have gained anything out of this.”

Other than, just say, we have killed some of their leaders or decimated their navy, which is, that's not even necessarily true, because they don't really have a navy in the way that we have a navy, or it's like saying, we eliminate it in their air force. They don't really have an air force, a bunch of like F-boards, anyway.

You know, this war from the American side and from the President side was about two things.

“Nuclear enrichment, which, by the way, shouldn't be an issue. Iran has always insisted on having a sovereign nuclear enrichment.”

Nuclear enrichment does not mean nuclear weapons, but we have, because of push by this, really, we have changed our red line. And the President has changed his own red line about nuclear weapons, to include not just nuclear weapons, but any capacity for nuclear weapons down the line.

So, they are targeting all dual-use technology, and that's the way that you get into a position in which no deal is ever possible, because everything can be dual-use.

So, you then you're asking a country, not to have any kind of technologies, and that's exactly what happened.

“After the nuclear enrichment red line, we got the missile technology red line, and missiles are the last deterrence.”

Imagine if you're on the have missiles on drones today, well, then it has to capitulate, right? So, it couldn't exact pay.

The country would need to any sovereign state, it would need to have a defensive capability, or a retaliatory capability, at least in a symmetric one.

And in the Iranian case, they have spent a lot of energy to try to indogenize that supply chain and that technology. So, not something that they import, they do import some preliminary parts, or some, you know, sodium percolate that could be used for solid fuels in the rockets, which country doesn't do any importation. But they do have a domestic supply chain, something that we actually lack in America for many of the things that we do. And so, it's, it's, it's a lot has been isolated because of our expansion, but they have also tried to, this is a revolution about self-reliance.

And so, for all the costs that they have paid, and for all the draconian measures that they have put on their own people, they are also deeply resilient and self-reliance state. And so, I think that's something that even the Shah didn't have, the previous sort of model our team, you know, because, you know, the time had so many beautiful gadgets that all the Trump would like to stay big, beautiful American did best, help of the line, but it was all dependent on American support and logistics. So, as soon as the Shah was coupled, Iran couldn't use most of them doing the Iranian rock war.

“That we want to rock more both strengthened the regime. That's why I haven't been saying for months, that when this war happens, as all of the Republic will get strengthened, part of that is just the rallying factor against against the foreign enemy.”

For any political state, if there was an invasion on America, what would we do? We would sort of come together, even if it's Biden, it's president, doesn't matter who's the president, or if you're anti-Tromb, you would still come and support the new settlement, because it's an invasion. That's a normal human reaction to your community. But in this case, it wasn't just that. It was also that their entire perception, the entire rationale of the revolution was about sovereignty. In a way, they wanted a revolution united the left and the right elements at the time.

But all of them agreed on one thing, and that's that Iranian sovereignty should be iron-class. That 15 years before we were talking about, we were talking about sovereignty in the middle of the year. So it was a populist sovereignty revolution. And it added with the just elements. I mean, hello. Thank you about our own situation today. We have many of the same sort of troops in our own kind of society, because when we feel like we are powerless, we want to talk more about sovereignty. So the Iranian did the last great revolution of the 20th century, and that was all about sovereignty and sovereignty lines.

Every time the focus moves away from the foreign affairs and international pressures and enmities and wars, they have serious problems, because it's very hard to manage the Iranian society half of which, more than half of which, is very liberal and westernized. So they have serious issues there, but then as soon as there is a war, as soon as there is international pressure, that works to the benefit of the system, anyway. And so I just saw the repeat of this happening, and I didn't, I couldn't even see how the United States changes that picture other than then demoing down every turn, because it cannot fathom.

Now I will do you, you know, destroy any target that you want, still anyone that you want and who, and yet you can't get any wins strategically. That dissent is something that's very hard, specifically for Donald Trump, who is a very personalistic person. He's trying to figure out who is running around, nobody is running around, he wanted to see that, is like saying who runs the Soviet Union, or who runs China, yes, there is, you know, President Xi, but China would survive the absence of Xi. It's what these modern Toto states are, is the same, by the way, America is the modern Toto state, that's what, what is the state, not a modern Toto state.

Now, it's very different from the saltiness of, of the, of the Persian Gulf, or, you know, Venezuela, even on these other countries that, that don't have the tradition of statehood and modernization over decades and centuries.

“Again, you don't, you can't get a modern Toto state over a decade or two, you need to have long term actions that, that sort of do that for you.”

The modern Toto state in Iran is not a creation of the Islamic Republic, it's a long term, the development that has happened since the Iranian confrontation with modernity back in the 19th century. So every, and we kind of, from here, whether it was monarchy or even the monarchs and then the, the, I told us, doesn't matter what the political system has modernized the political thing and use it as leverage for whatever it is that they want to do. That's, that's the difference that I think needs to be understood.

Hey, I want to jump in here for a second.

I interviewed Joe Kent today, and I don't know. I think I got the second published interview. I'm obviously talking about the person. I'm interested in hearing you guys discuss in and/or more importantly, what all you think. His perfection from the government represents what difference you think it'll make, you know, politically and that kind of thing.

Let article.

“I, I think Joe is a hero for doing what he did.”

I don't know him personally. I, I know him through our acquaintances, but it's, you know, every, everyone who talks about him talks about him as. Man of principle and, and, and off most integrity. I think we see this in the letter, we see this in, in the way that he resigned. I think that my view is that he resigned because he knows as, as the, as the former director now of the.

National counterterrorism center have access or had access to the highest level of insult to know what might be coming under down the road. And he wanted to distance himself from that. I think some of the options that this administration might consider for the sake of Israel and for the sake of saving face at this point. It's, it's truly atrocious. It, it, it, not going to make America safer.

It's going to evaporate American credibility. American moral standing if we, I mean, I'm a realist. I don't bring any moralism into my analysis, but if you are, if that's your thing also, you are, you're in trouble.

And, and ultimately, it's not going to change anything other than create a lot of misery for a lot of people, including many American families, not just the ones that are going to be.

Hang higher gas prices and, you know, higher prices for consumer goods and food and, and everything else. But also, bodies, American bodies might be coming home again at a large level. It'd be start committing ground troops. And also, then, there is, there is this sort of what the nuclear scenario of all this would be. Which we can discuss later, but I think that's a big deal as well.

But I think this sounds a signal that there are people on that administration first of all that are unhappy. And he's opening the door for them to also have the courage to leave.

“That's why they're coming out there and they're trying to criminalize what he did.”

Yeah, that should worry, concern all of us, the FBI. I mean, what is it doing? What's happened? What happened to Charlie Kirk? Why don't we actually figure that out?

First, before we go after, you know, an American hero who was, before you love him times.

And he walked away and actually took to the global war in terror and actually has been defending the president and his previous kinetic actions they were on. And he has fought the Iranian and the Iranian proxy for years. So I think his record is unimpeachable on this. And it should raise concerns about that. And also, showing that America first is no longer beholden to Trump.

I think America first needs to understand that it is something bigger than Donald Trump. That America first actually, we know from history, it comes from a long time before Trump was even alive. So America first is a common sense strategy for putting American interests first and doing things that are in the national interest period. And doing certain things when even the administration itself, today, Radcliffe said, "So we will be a sense of the first day, we didn't this because of Israel."

Israel has interest that is not our interest. He's kind of messaging from the administration itself. It's clearly signaling that we are there for Israel. This is not an anti-Semitic trope. Israel is not every Jewish person in America. And most of the many of the Jews here in America, American Jews are against the war.

And I think by putting himself out there, Joe Kent has allowed for others to come out. Now, I also want to say something in terms of other restrained friends in the admin who choose not to resign.

“And I think that's also a respectable position because they are deeply worried about if they resign.”

Who else can kind of come to replace their position? Maybe someone may, you know, with more either manufacturing intel, if they are in the position that they can do so, like close to gather it's position. Maybe they would actually push the most direct honey in the most devastating tactics and operational ideas to the president. Again, this is a personal choice.

I understand those who resign, I understand those who don't, but it just shows that American first thought is anyone that can claim to actually be American first.

And not make it into a cultural personality. Can clearly see that this war on Iran is not in America's interest in their 40s on American first. I got a call from a friend, Barack War, combat vet guy, Army, who knows Joe Kent fairly well. And right after Joe issued his letter, and he called me very worried.

And the reason he was worried, he said, you got to understand who Joe Kent is, like this guy's never quit anything in his life.

And for him to do this, to speak to what you just said, he said the only reason I didn't talk to him about this or anything, but like the only reason he could think of is that we're about to do something really, really stupid that he just can't be a part of.

“It's the only thing he could think of. And so, you know, when I stepped back and just sort of look at where we're at right now, this 48-hour war that we're three weeks into.”

It seems like the administration has accepted on some level that Iranian regime changes, probably not something that can be accomplished within an acceptable timeframe for us.

Just due to the effects on the global economy, the fact that we're already drawing down troops and weapon systems and munitions from other critical theaters like the Asia Pacific.

And as you said, too, of course, the midterms are coming up, you know, the new I atola does not have an election in November yesterday. And so, you know, and I think even if Trump doesn't care what happens in the midterms, a lot of Republicans do, and so there's some pressure that's there. The Israelis, you know, they may, they might think there's been some indications that they seem to think regime changes unlikely at this point too, but as we talked about the beginning, they keep taking steps that are clearly designed to take away our offerings and to keep this thing going as long as possible.

And to escalate it and bringing in as many other parties as possible, right? Very similar, I guess, too, you know, in a way to when we took out Nord Stream 2, the sort of cutoff the possibility of Germany may be looking for, you know, a route to peace with Russia in Ukraine. So, there's all these reasons that, you know, it looks like this can't possibly go on forever, you know, the economy, the politics, the diplomatic price, all that, and yet it seems impossible for Trump or Netanyahu to really take an offer amp that would give into Iran's primary demand, which is, you know, they talk about reparations and all those kind of things.

So those sound to me like demands that are meant to be climbed down from, but I cannot see how Iran can back down from their primary demand of getting some kind of enforceable guarantee that this is not going to happen again. If we were to give into that, not even Trump could talk his way around this being anything other than a total disaster, like a real military defeat, and it's impossible for me to imagine his ego allowing him to do that. And so, you know, and it's almost impossible to imagine the Iranians accepting anything less because, you know, as you said, they've taken a huge amount of damage, and they know that we can retool a hell of a lot faster than they can, and so if we come back for around three and nine months, they're going to be in a much weaker position than they're in right now.

And so the rational choice is to die on this hill, you know, fight it out right now. That's that's clearly, I think, the rational choice for the Iranians, but given our forced structure and our defense industrial capacity and the midterms and the economic and diplomatic problems, all these things that indicate it can't go on forever, you know, you counter that with what I just said, like, what do you think are the chances that we will find a way out of this, or that one side,

“somehow beats the other end of submission, you know, by the end of the month, by the summer, by the end of the year. I mean, where do you see this going?”

I mean, that's a great question. It's very hard to read the tea leaves on that I just think that at this point, just putting aside, I think we all need this war to end. It doesn't serve anybody, especially in the North American.

ever expanding climate. And I think that those are the kind of choices. So again, Donald Trump, I think to his credit, realized in the first 24 to 48 hours, this is not going the way that the thought that it was going to go, that they have actually given a lot of spiritual people, as I wrote in an article on her, by March hearing, this guy who, that was what he would demand, he would want, he was creating, and that really suffered charge that's followers. The liberal Iranian, especially in diaspora, we're celebrating on the street in the opening champagne bottles,

but then in Iran there was a kind of like, you know, he had, there was all that symbolism about how he died in this like Holy Monterey Ramadan,

and like, you know, he looked like the symbolic sort of heads of she is the first and the third among, you know, basically martyred.

And so that's the psychology of martyred and dying, standing up and resistance, really, I think translated. So I think, in a way, his death was the greatest gift that he could give the regime,

“then more than his 37 years in charge, and the greatest gift that we could give the regime. So that's why I mean,”

it's just, it's just, it's so easy to think from our sort of Hollywood lens, we're going to eliminate the guy and everything is going to go, and that's not how it works, and most of these other cultural domain. But yeah, go ahead, let's go. Yeah, I think you just answered this, but I was going to say, so the more are the chances than of the day dreams,

because after all, America does have a lot of money, and he has really stood when we handed to them to also spend.

So what are the chances that, and I know the way things are now, it doesn't seem like these groups are taking us up on their word, but let's say, what keep really bomb and regime leaders, middle managers and lower and lower down the chain as much as we can,

“and then they start pouring money into groups like P jack and the K, the monarchist mercenaries,”

maybe John Dolla's suicide bombers, a zeroey separatists of whatever description or SUNY Arabs from the Southwest, is it completely crazy to think that the West using those levers could actually go ahead and combine with a massive air campaign, to tear Ron apart and into massive civil war? That was the Israeli plan, it might be, but it obviously failed. So the Israeli plan was to create this entire sort of account or narrative about the war that the Iranian regime is illegitimate, you know, telling or promising people that there will be regime change,

that we're going to bomb everybody and the Urak home to the street and take charge, and at the same time the most side was playing these SSN groups in eastern Iraq and western Iran, the Iranian courts, which, by many of these groups work as you know very well with the Israelis, as well as the Americans. Not so much the author is because if you think about it, both the Supreme Leader and the President are authory Iranian. So the author is not no interest in this and they also, because of Turkey and Turkey is full with Azerbaijan, they kind of thought this as a problem.

They didn't want to spill over, they didn't want this kind of this land of regime change. You don't, they're not poor regime change. So Azerbaijan know, but Kurdistan was certainly what they wanted to do on the M.E.K., which is the tools that they use all the time in the M.E.K. It's called the Mojjahidin Cal, which is the people's Mojahidin is a combination of Islamism, with Marxism.

“It's like the worst thing that you want to imagine, it's a cult, it's only supported by the most notorious characters in Washington, D.C. with the Giuliani and Pompeo, or their lobbyists.”

But, again, they are just tactical units, they are, and then are used on, you know, most of the users themselves inside Iran. They are the group that actually originally sort of revealed the panes that you don't have a nuclear program or nuclear technology infrastructure. And that's how this whole entire nuclear fire got blown open. They work, again, very close, they used to work with the Saddam regime, with the bachists, and Iraqis doing the 80s to fight against Iranians. So, again, these are very, like, unpatriotic tools of foreign entities.

And, and so, they had that.

And then, it's really, it's basically, turned the power of theists, the sort of the people who support.

I don't like to turn monarchies, then, because it really power of the, is basically using his personal sort of connection as the personal part of it. The fact that he's well known as the former crown prince, he's using that credibility to then adjust the fire and rationalize Israeli actions in Iran.

And now the war has actually come, so he's no longer, this kind of, like, conspiracy theory that was the Palavis was inadvertently Israeli.

So, the idea was to get airman warfare to getting the liberal Iranian out of the streets with most of that support. And, and also attack Iranian borders to courtish groups. That has not transpired for better or for worse, in terms of their Israeli strategy. The Americans didn't want, we didn't want this, the White House didn't want this as much. Because the goal, I don't think, was regime change.

“Trump was happy to say, "Fine, you know, if you want to collapse the regime, it's my money never supported with the Palavis."”

I think that's important to, to note. And the idea of state collapse, because in Iran, you're not going to get regime change. You're either going to get state collapse, serialization, civil war, and refugee flows, and a failed state of that. I mean, for this to happen, this is the level. And, you know, and the IRGC will do, you know, long time fighting, insurgency, until it sort of restabishes control.

You get something like this, so that Israel can continue to come in, and find out where everything is, and go without what they did to Syria. That's really good. America doesn't have that interest, because America still understands that these huge states. We can't, we can't have state, I mean, America didn't even want state failure in Syria, let it own.

So, America didn't ultimately, like, the Trump administration didn't want this serialized situation in Syria, but only one.

“So, that's why they worked with the Turks and the Saudis, and Tom Barr,”

to try to stabilize the situation after Ahman Oshar got to power. But that was, effectively, my change from the Russian Iranian coin to the Turkish coin. But that's not going to be so easily achieved in one. The American position, though, has to go back to the offram. Again, Donald Trump realized that this is not going to plan.

So, immediately, try to reach out to the Iranian and say, let's do, let's have another ceasefire, immediately. But the Iranians, to, I think, to their rational credit and also to what Dallas said, realize, well, that if they accept the ceasefire, they have just absorbed the costs for no benefit. And this is the war that they want to finish this.

“They want the shadow of war. Look, the revolution happened in 79, ever since then, I think one can easily make the case that Iran has been under a shadow of war.”

Both the President, I mean, the rhetoric of Iran has been hostile to the rest, but I think anyone denies that. Anyone has had thoughts, and it has had been attracted to American soldiers in the region. But from the Iranian perspective, this is our part of the world, and the Americans are projecting an American, and Israel is an American outpost. So, they are trying to get America to leave, but also America from the very beginning said, no. And we're going to be threatening war with the Islamic Republic, or Iran, and sanctioned them, and that's a form of economic war, and do maximum pressure and maximum pain to get what they want.

And the Iranians prepared for this for 47 years, and now the war has finally came, and so they're prepared for this war.

They know that it has to be an additional war, and go long enough for the other side to really lose interest in fighting it. And that might mean months, it might mean years, and it's for this reason that I'm very, very, so again, I don't think the Iranian side was willing, especially the IRGC, the more security time is, you know, the hardened Islamic Republic. It's ready to do any kind of negotiation until it gets to the point that it knows, it has more demands than it did the poor. It wants acknowledgment of nuclear enrichment rights, it wants missile defense, and makes this okay to both of it know limits. It wants the continued, it will have the continuous control over the state of our music that I think from this point on it will be irreversible in the Iranian fire.

And ultimately, it wants to find a way to both, you know, revitalize the economy and do rebuilding, but also not be subject to constant threats. We know that the war with the U.S. ended, so they want a kind of a non-aggression pact with the American, I think they'll be even happy to have it with Israel. That's the level of non-aggression pact that they will be looking at. But they were not going to give up any of those things that have gone to these wars from this really perspective. And from that, from the Israeli angle, they have every interest in trying to escalate this to get the region involving, probably before we go out to the show, I saw this report from the Iranians, from the IRGC, spokesman who was saying that there is reports that we hit, "I'm going to Saudi Arabia."

We want to say that we are very open about where we hit, and we have hit all these recently, but we haven't hit "I'm going to go," and that's designed to get Saudi Arabia onto the war, and then basically they call it a Zionist pact. So they keep saying that some of these attacks are also done through the Israelis to get the region to join on the Israeli side now.

It's very unpopular because it's a very strange circumstance because the majority of the Arab population, the region, is true Iran and Islamic Republic. The governments are in, and even though the government is increasingly getting domestic and social support, and it does have a base of support, there is a percent or so, that's very committed and willing to die for the cause. It does have a problem with many Iranians, majority of Iranians that find Islamic Republic legitimate from their perspective.

So it's a circumstance in which a lot of secular liberal Iranians don't understand why Iran does the things that it does, and why it wants to fight Israel, and they see it as the Iranian poll. But then the Arab streets actually see Iran as the Liberator and the only state that's standing up to, to this sort of Western imperialism, so they are all in on the Iranian agenda.

So it makes it very complicated, but ultimately because the Israelis want America to be dabbling down, America is kind of looking at the options of what that would look like.

It wouldn't look like a ground invasion at the level of like Iraq. I don't believe that will happen.

“But I think what's being considered is sort of the total and limited combat units, special forces, 82nd airborne, and 5BS operations to try to secure a certain thing.”

So that could be securing the carc island where we want to export most of its oil. It could be securing other distributed islands that, you know, that the Iranians used to control the Persian Gulf. It could be that the or both of them could be falsified for and they run in American operation into deep into Iranian territory to recover the 400 kilograms, 60% of which uranium, which you don't know where it is. I don't think Americans also know where it is, I mean that sounds like a suicide mission. So again, whichever aspects of this we focus on, there will be, I mean, these troops as excellent as they are in combat, and I don't think any country has better special forces.

You will be, well, we'll be setting targets and you know, if there are in these islands or in these like nuclear underground bunkers, you know, they will be basically just pounding. And they want to actually expect it on a one step why because it wants to, it's very large for us to kill Americans and raise the cost and they're based on the cost question that we're talking about earlier, but so the American exposure is low. America is not for Israel and America are now deliberately increasing if this goes through American exposure to Iranian ground forces.

Again, Iran has two million people ground force, at least 250,000 IRG stick ground forces.

These people are not doing anything basically during this war, and they can be deployed at any place. Even the threat that Scott mentioned about the Iraqis rising up and taking cities to suppose something that was considered by the administration as you know. Is something that the Iranians, you know, were ready, you know, they were ready to go in and actually take the war to Iraqis Kurdistan.

“And that's why war is on and the Taliban need to basically Emily heads up the courts in Iraq.”

The Iraqi courts with the Iraqi army and the Shia mobilized units basically created the buffer zone on the Iran's behalf to prevent the Iranian courts from doing anything to Iran.

Because they knew that the Iranian army was going to come in and already one of the hardest places in the Arab world is the American base, which basically is a common for a lot of most out of Israeli operation in the region. Iran has made it clear that places like Arab world, places like, you know, like in Kuwait, all these places that were used to see into Iranian territory and see where this missile factories are and where the launches are. A lot of that is, you know, they have made it clear. They're not going to allow for any of that to come back.

And the Iranians, they do have a lot of patience. They have made their name in strategic patience. But if you think about what they did with Iraq, after Iraq, they vowed that they will make sure that Iraq will never threaten them again. And so one side of them, which they was removed. Iran has made Iraq, part of its strategic picture. So there's no threat from Iraq to Iran.

“But if Saddam was still in the picture, this would have been a very different war, for example, right?”

So this is the kind of -- so the Iranians are under super-derivariability. He was and they've completely neutralized it and actually have gained strategically from the, you know, do you want wars and wars in endless wars in the Middle East? It's so in a way Iran and Israel. And this is a very strange scenario. Israel does certain things that it's calling for itself.

But it doesn't make any sense from an American perspective, right? And I think it will want you to agree on that point.

“And even if you are against the Islamic Republic, I think you should be, you know, you can't see that the Islamic Republic did become stronger during the wars in the Middle East.”

That happened on behalf of Netanyahu, all of them. I still don't know why we attacked Iraq from the rational perspective. But it makes a lot of sense based on the project we are creating break and what Netanyahu's view of the world is. And that's a very different view. I mean, sometimes they are the joke. My view is very much the close to the idea in the 80s. I think there is openly a deep relationship to be made between Israel and the real estate and Iran and the real estate. And that's what the -- at the height of the revolution, at the height of the rhetoric, at the height of we're going to eliminate and, you know, Israel and go to, you know, Jerusalem.

Israel is very, very supporting Iran through Iran contrary to fight the Iraqis. That's based on the periphery strategy that they had. It was Netanyahu, Sharon, but also it's talk about being who started shifting from this after the Cold War.

“And that really put us in a very different strategic environment. I think that is a very nonsensical, unrealistic posture from Israelis.”

So, you know, Israelis that I talked to -- I see that if you're older, if they've remembered the 80s, I think they tend to agree with what I'm saying. And it's -- you know, it's a more sort of new Zionist Israelis who don't -- who are really threatening the longevity of Israel. And this is one of the -- the more sort of security oriented realist Israelis understood. You know, there is no -- ultimately, Iran is not going to invade Israel and Israel is not going to invade Iran. They don't -- they're thousands of miles apart.

And, you know, they can actually use, you know, their relationship to make sure that their other rivals or adversaries don't get powerful enough in balanced other countries.

“And that's -- I mean, again, I think the logic of power and power balancing as a realist triumphs over or Trump's this kind of ideological cost-stream.”

But yet we are having groups in America, we are having groups in Israel today, and promoted by Netanyahu for his own kind of new kind of ideological cost-stream. But they are effectively apocalyptic and engaged in eschatological psychosis, and they just -- it's very divorced from the reality of power and what that means. So, I -- I think that it's scenario as Israel still wants America to fight this war. I think it will be ultimately successful in getting Trump to double that. Because the Iranian also don't want it, and they have eliminated -- they will continue to eliminate anyone in Iran that would be Western oriented.

And allow for Iran to be more hawkish so that, you know, hawkish elements in America, hawkish elements in Iran, and the war to low escalate. This is what they didn't have us. They -- you know, the time you are most supported have us on that Hamas while. Because you want that American view of the world to really get it's place, and do the kinds of create the kind of environment that you think you can capitalize on.

I just don't see how Israel ultimately in 10 years will have capitalized on this.

But again, because they have a very -- they overestimate their own power, but underestimate the power of regional states. That's specifically Turkey Egypt and Iran. It's very different what Israel can do to Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, but even in Gaza, they haven't been able to eliminate all of the Hamas leadership after all of this, you know, the economy and reckless and a steady bombing. So I don't see how they are going to do this to a -- to a country that -- that is, you know, three times the -- you know,

the -- you know, the -- at least the size of Western Europe, or three times the size of Germany. So it's a very different kind of environment. But this all raises -- I want to raise this. There's another scenario other than the ground warfare is -- well, we are not getting what we want. And imagine the -- what we do with the ground forces that the -- the special officer, which is going to probably going to be the next step of the latter, that's going to fail on American stock. What are we going to do? We're not going to go put, you know, a hundred thousand troops deployed them to go and conquer specific parts of Iran or even go to Marshal Tehran.

So what's the next step? Either we have to, you know, step away from the escalation of the latter. Or I think the Israelis are going to pressure us into something that's very, very dangerous. And I think that is practically a nuclear weapon. I don't use that lightly. I hate fear, I'm hungry.

and therefore if that might work on Iran and get them to finally calculate, well, this didn't work in Japan.

Japan actually surrendered because of the ground forces of Soviet Union. And it was going to do this anyway. Truman was actually doing this to show the might of the American power, and he was able to use it because it was the only nuclear state at the time. So the devastation of the more crisis, and the question of whether or not these really have the -- how they were able to do that themselves or actually are going to throw this on us as well.

I think we need to have huge red lines starting now. So what is it that America is going to do to prevent the hand of Israelis either to use the attack from nuclear weapons themselves, or force us to do it in the hope or the illusion or delusion that some sort of a nuclear attack on Iran is going to change the trajectory of this one, get the Iranian signature. You're only going to get all the reasons that they want to pound Israel back with whatever commercial force that they have.

And they already will kind of consider moving towards the nuclear weapon because of the fact that, you know,

“this is probably the only way that they can establish deterrence because they think that the American side is not being irrational.”

And so we need to really think about why we are here. I don't believe in the conspiracy theories of, you know, they have something on the president or work off. I think it's easier to question than that. And again, if someone can show me some evidence of how Israelis kind of like manipulate us, I think I'll look to see it. But I actually think of the difference.

So there you are. I think Israel is the only country that has nuclear monopoly in the region. It wants to prevent nuclear parity by any other country, no matter whatever cost, we have lines and it will try to protect this as long as possible. But it's using that and it has, you know, used that for 67, but really since 1973, on Nixon,

to try to basically call nuclear blackmail us into doing what they want.

And so if you consider the 12 day war, we went into the 12 day war by trying to say, well, okay, Israel has this war. It's all about nuclear weapons again, but we are going to run for their defense. We're going to cover them. And from our perspective, we said defensive war, we're also going to sort of sweeten the deal, because they're so worried by actually eliminating obliterating as the president said,

the Iranian nuclear capacities and facilities. And it was B2's and do it operation in line of hammer. Okay, well, what was actually revealed by that war is that Iran has all these missile cities and we only know half of it, if even that. And that they can outlast and continue to pound Israel as soon as it's quite small.

So then there's really question we can not only get nuclear material and dual use technology in Iran and eliminating any capacity in Iran for nuclear industry or nuclear technology, also eliminating any kind of missile medium to long-range missile system that we want my views to exact hang on Israel

or at least have a second strike capability.

“And that is why I think we went back in this time around, and I think Donald Trump might have been, you know,”

if Nixon with all of his realism and all of his rational thinking. I think the greatest foreign policy thinker that we have had in the post-war era. If he was he was forced and he and Kissinger were forced to go to Israel's defense conventional in 73. Donald Trump could easily be told that we're going to start this, we're going to go to war. Let's say Iran doesn't attack America, there's an imminent threat in that regard.

And this tick for attack continues. Well, at some point, you're going to ask later to a level in which Israel is going to use nuclear weapons. So some death threats of nuclear weapons against Iran might be just actual poll that rings America into the war in the first place. And this time in an offensive capacity, well, let's eliminate death threats. So there's really, you know, don't actually use nuclear weapons.

But the magma effects of this war, the strategic disaster that this war has caused for the administration, but it actually makes that more likely, which is why previous presidents basically told that they're going to get lost.

“And so, including in the Bush administration, right?”

I mean, so this is, like, the Iranian territory in which the American neokon didn't, wouldn't consider. And I think this is the first time in my life. So I'm not been a critic of the rockwork on the very beginning that has been the formatted in my experience. But it's the first time that I think the real is anti-stablishment voices as well as the establishment. You're, you're, so liberal internationalist, you're neokon, David Patriot Patriot, David Patriotist.

Why? Well, because it's strategically, it doesn't invest any of our interests. Actually, it's empowering the Iranians. It is having far-reaching systemic effects around the world in China, in Russia. It, it's making all of, it's actually creating the European access that the kept climbing has been created against. That's actually kind of forcing them into this kind of allies, even though they are very different that they don't want to add better lines.

And so ultimately then, we are in this position in which this might escalate into this kind of a neokon election, the first since 1945.

And that is, that is a death blow to American credibility, to American power. I think it's going to fundamentally reshade the world. But even if that doesn't happen, I think, for me or the, the, we have to consider the systemic effects of America's power and its decline.

“In America was, in a uniform moment, that's why we have all these basins in the Middle East and the first place. They all happen in the 90s after the first Persian Gulf War, right?”

So we ended up, you know, surrounding and encircling the Middle East and Iran in the 90s, just supposedly allegedly provide protection and make sure the free full of oil. And ultimately, the Iraq War, the war on terror, our endless wars in the Middle East, and the financial crisis, it rolled it up power to the point that you're no longer seeing signs that the Unipolar moment has ended.

I think that the first sort of siren call of that was the Russian war in Ukraine and the fact that we kind of expanded NATO to get this war and that was a disaster.

But we are not seeing the full picture until they won't war. I think the Iran war will be remembered as the culmination of the rupture. And we are, and everyone would clearly see what we are talking about a serious, when we're talking about the end of the Unipolar moment. And that we are then in a post-unipolar era, where all of the post war rules of the rules based system, but also the very conception of the globe, as we considered it, is ending. And we're not moving towards another kind of great power competition, we can ask on China, but actually a different arrangement of the world.

“And I think the various regions in which regional powers will have much more influence on much more resilience and much more a say as to what's going to happen in their newer problems.”

And I think that's something that the only again modern president that kind of recognized that with Nixon, the often really, I think, ring back the Nixon doctrine to be able to continue to be a great power in this era. But the culmination of the rupture and the end of American supremacy, global supremacy, global heterogeneity, illusion of global heterogeneity itself. I think that's, those will be the lessons of this war. And I just hope that we realize that before we commit thousands of lives and trillions of dollars to a cause, which will only make it more painful and maybe threaten our own great power status.

As the regional hemispheric power, which is basically one Donald Trump and the people who wrote the national security strategy, the Donald road doctrine wanted. So this is those against all of the logic, I think there is, again, I think realism is not passivism, so there is a logic to what that document was trying to do. And we call what it says, it says, in the Middle East, it's perfect, it's peaceful, we have no business there. It is right. We have destroying that peace and that stability and we have done it over years and decades.

Or, we're just taking a measure of it, but also because we have misunderstood the wrong regional powers. Those regional powers are no longer going to be bullied and intimidated by our conventional military rights, I would talk there. Well, as we move toward what seems inevitably a rebalancing of our in the world. First, we got to make it through this gauntlet, as you said, without dragging ourselves into a catastrophe, we're not going to recover from.

“So, I think we'll go ahead and let you get out of here, man, I really appreciate your time.”

I'd love to have you on more as this, if, you know, hopefully this thing ends tomorrow, but as this goes on, this has been super useful for me as your stuff always is Scott, you got anything.

No, just gratitude, it was really interesting hearing you go over this stuff from your perspective here, I learned a lot, so thank you very much for joining us. Where can people find you, bro? My Twitter, I'm sure you guys are going to put all the information, but my ex account, which of many of you can see the name on the bottom of the screen. So, they can find that at art online, there's also the website that we have for our institute, Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, website is pstplomacy.org, just pstplomacy.org.

And I think that's something that is important for our policy, because it's very America first in that regard.

And ultimately, agon, agon is a little bit more high-brow intellectual magazine that focuses on radical realism, a very niche perspective on more of the fairs, and not just find a fairs. It's, you know, a lot of my work, I'm an international political theorist, a lot of my work focuses on modernity and the crisis of the various crises of modern literal order as well as other faces. All of modernity as a part of them.

“And so, I think to see that in that way, I think is the goal of agon, and so I think a lot of your listeners, especially Darrell's listeners, might appreciate the work that agon.”

Yeah, that kind of stuff is actually why I really started following you in the first place, so I have this war end, so that you can kind of get back to folks.

I don't want to ask you. Exactly. I also too, but yeah, it's agon Mag.com. Definitely definitely definitely agon Mag.com. So, my listeners are a lot more high-brow than me, so don't count them out. Of course I am. And I'm just saying in terms of, I know Darrell.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it was a good experience.

“Of course, I'll be happy to collaborate with her and talk any time you guys would.”

Thanks, brother. This was the pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Bye bye.

“All right, Cooper, that was a good one, man.”

Yeah, I love those ones where all I have to do is kind of throw out a little red meat and he'll just take over and run with it for a while. And those are the easy ones. That must be a lot of likes to interview me. All right, well, I've had it. You're my eighth interview of the day today of people who've been interviewing me, and I've been interviewing people all day.

Everybody go check out my interview, Joe Kent, and retweet it, and here, let's play this outro and get out of here and we'll see you all next week. This has been "Provoked" with Darrell Cooper and Scott Horton. Be sure to like and subscribe to help us beat the propaganda algorithm. Go follow @Provoked_show on X and YouTube. And tune in next time for more "Provoked."