DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - School’s Out | DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou

Episode Date: March 5, 2026

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST. Today we discuss the US/Israeli War Against Iran:• The U.S. bombing of the Iranian elementary school that killed 165 people, many of them schoolgirls, included more targets near the school than has been initially reported. Satellite images suggest that the school was hit as part of an airstrike on a neighboring military complex — and that it may have been struck as a result of outdated targeting information. Satellite images show that the school and clinic buildings were both once part of the base. The school was separated from the base by a wall between 2013 and 2016. The clinic was walled off between 2022 and 2024. Did the U.S. ignore signs of scores of girls going to class?• Did the U.S. commit a war crime by torpedoing an uninvolved Iranian frigate, IRIS Dena, returning from a diplomatic visit to India, in the Indian Ocean, and failing to rescue its crew—something Nazi U-boat commanders did during World War II until the Laconia incident?• Europe is transferring assets from Ukraine to the Mideast as rising oil prices benefit Russia’s economy. Are the U.S. and Israel indirectly defeating Ukraine?• Likely 2028 presidential contender Gavin Newsom, criticized Israel, suggesting that the U.S. should reconsider its military support for the country, which he compared to an apartheid state.Also: • The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed attorney general Pam Bondi, to testify about the Epstein files. The 24 to 19 vote was a rebuke to the Trump administration.MERCH STORE: https://www.deprogram.livehttps://x.com/tedrallhttps://x.com/JohnKiriakouLIVE ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShowSPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8ZuAPPLE MUSIC: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-john-kiriakou-and-ted-rall/id1825379504

Good morning again. Thank you for belatedly joining D-Program with Ted Rogers. We are very, very sorry. We had some technical problems this morning. Streamyard isn't playing well with X these days, and that's sort of integral to getting this show up. Thank God we have Robbie West, our brilliant producer, to help us fix these problems. Otherwise, it might have been like another half hour. Anyway, it is Thursday, March 5th, 2026. Thank you so much for joining us. please like, follow, and share the show. Today we're going to, of course, continue talking about

the Middle East War. And notably, the aftermath of the bombing of that girls' school in Iran that killed at least 165 people, mostly little girls. The question is, I want to get into this with you, John, do the U.S. ignore signs that this was a school? And, you know, speaking of war crimes, did the U.S. commit a war crime by torpedoing that Iranian vessel, the IRS Dina in the Indian Ocean. We'll be talking about the effect of the Mideast War on the Ukrainians. And Gavin Newsom had some spicy stuff to say about Israel. I mean, spicy by Gavin Newsom standards. And Pambandi has gotten subpoenaed or is about to receive a subpoena from the House Oversight Committee.

That's interesting in terms of the Epstein files. So, oh, in terms of the aha slides, guys, we're kind of victims of our own success here. So many people are watching now that we're getting flooded with questions. So we didn't do the aha slides last night because we just couldn't have that many. There's no way we could even gotten to a decent percentage of your questions on that. So we may get back to that and we'll revisit it. We want to figure out a way to get questions from people who are not. watching live, but that system is not great.

So we'll figure out something else and let you know about that. In the meantime, if you are watching live on Rumble or on YouTube, please put your questions and comments and donations into the live feed, and we really, really appreciate that a lot. We are now, John, what, 23,000 subscribers on YouTube? Yeah, about 23,300 or something like that. It's fantastic. Thank you to, if you're new to the show, we appreciate you joining it.

This is a very fast-moving, high-engagement show where we try to bring you completely up-to-date on the breaking news of the day and try to tell you what it all means if we could figure it out. Okay. Seriously, this one of those mornings when I woke up, I looked at the news on my phone and just said, what the fuck? What the fuck happened all overnight? night. It's a, this war is spreading, whether we like it or not. It turns out that the Iranians bombed Azerbaijan during the night. Azerbaijan is the hosts an Israeli drone base, so that was inevitable. President Trump promised Iran's Kurds that he would support them, whatever that means, if they rise up. But remember what we said yesterday about this AEI idea to split

Iran up into five little countries, one of them being Iranian Kurdistan. It turns out that the three drones slash and or rockets that were fired at Cyprus day before yesterday did not come from Iran, which then leads to the question, was this an Israeli false flag operation? That's what the internet would have you believe. In the meantime, the Gulf states are still fighting and they're running out of surface-to-air missiles, defensive missiles. The Egyptians and the Jordanians are saying, please God, don't let the war come here. And the Israelis are bombing Lebanon. I mean, this is a bona fide regional war, the first truly regional war since 1973. I think it's bigger than that one too. It's more, more countries are involved. Definitely bigger than the 73 war. Absolutely.

And with the drone factor, it's really easy for things to spread really fast. What do you, I mean, what kind of advice do you think President Trump received before signing off on this? I mean, you know, was he told that this will all really be done in a few weeks? It'll be just like Venezuela, but more so. You know, don't work. You know, don't work. I mean, the thing is, the United States has a very poor record of success in warfare in general, but particularly in the Middle East. You know, I mean, he knows this. You know, why was there no one at the table who had a strong enough voice to say,

be careful, Mr. President. This could really get spiral out of control very quickly and destroy your presidency. I think that people who genuinely believe their own problem, Propaganda convinced Trump that as soon as we start hitting Iran, people are going to rise up in the streets. They're going to overthrow the government. They're going to bring democracy to Iran. And everybody's going to live happily ever after. I really think that they bought their own propaganda.

I mean, so I guess the question is, how could they even believe their propaganda, given the fact that, like, this never happens, right? I mean, I'm not, I'll still, I'll totally stipulate to the, to the fact that a lot of Iranians would love to overthrow their government. But like, you know, the commentary we're receiving from Iran is that people are kind of like laughing at the Americans, at the idea that they're, that Iranians can do anything other than hunker down. I mean, now they've got the Israelis in the U.S. You know, bombing the shit out of their cities. So they're just trying to stay alive. And meanwhile, the government is completely Iranian. government and its security forces are completely intact and they're on a war footing.

So they're less inclined to have any kind of friendly view towards dissent or protest than they would under normal circumstances. I mean, this is not a way to encourage a revolution. No, this is not a way to encourage a revolution. And when I say that people are believing their own propaganda, I saw a guy last night on Fox news saying, you know, when the regime kills more than 12,000 protesters, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Nobody killed 12,000 protesters.

Those numbers came from an Israeli-supported think tank in Washington, supported by another Israeli-supported think tank in London. The numbers are just made up. I mean, obviously some protesters did get killed, but, hey, Americans. American security forces kill protesters, as we know. That's exactly right. I mean, I'm not saying it was two or six. But still, I mean, you know, yeah, these numbers are vastly exaggerated.

One is too many, but it's vastly exaggerated. Absolutely right. John, let's talk about the girls' school. This was a lead story on several major media outlets, late life and last night early this morning. There's new satellite information that shows. that indicates that probably this was a U.S. not an Israeli air strike. And it looks like the school. So basically, this is a very, like, I think a question that you have specific knowledge

to be able to help us with. So there, so satellite images show that the school and the clinic buildings that were hit were, in other words, these are not appropriate targets for a military strike. are adjacent to a military base that what but the military base was kind of split off it's all it makes sense it's not a sinister human shield plan it's government property and they decided to reallocate the use of the government property they put a wall up somewhere between 2013 and 2016 so a little bit over 10 years ago they separated the base and they created a school and a medical clinic and then the clinic was separately walled off a couple of years ago um and so the things

thinking is if we're looking to make excuses for the U.S. planners that they have out-of-date satellite information for the targeting. Okay. So I have two questions for you, John, and I've been dying to ask you this since I read this late last night. Number one, how incumbent is it on an adversary, on a on a on a belligerent to check out the to update the information about a target? before you fire. I mean, in other words, is it really an excuse to say, well, you know, we're going by 2014 information and that 2014 information says this is a military base. I'm sorry, we blew up a school too. And that's part one. And part two, which might be easier is,

I mean, before a drone strike, I mean, we all hear, I mean, the CIA and other drone operators, they carefully monitor the target site for days, weeks, maybe months ahead of time to see what's there to observe. I mean, obviously, if you were watching, if you were hovering a drone over that school, you would have seen parents walking their kids to school, dropping them off in cars. You would have seen little girls going in at 8 o'clock in the morning and leaving at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. You would have seen maybe school buses if they have them. You would have been able to say, like, okay, you would have seen these are, not adults. These are not soldiers. They're not wearing uniforms. Aren't they supposed to do that?

I mean, is that part of, is that like part of the rules of engagement? Yeah, it is. And I'll remind you of a couple of similar incidents in the past. In 1999, while the U.S. was bombing Serbia, we were bombing the capital of Belgrade. We bombed the Chinese embassy. Why would we bomb the Chinese embassy? Well, the official excuse was that the targeting analysts at CIA and DIA were using outdated maps and that the building had previously been used by the Yugoslav military. They sold the building in the mid-1990s. The Chinese bought it and turned it into. Oh, John, you are frozen. They're a new tree of defense.

We had to apologize to the Chinese. We bombed. some other Chinese embassy in 2001 just before 9-11. I don't remember the circumstances of that. In 1991, when we were just carpet bombing Iraq before the liberation of Kuwait, we bombed a bunker that the CIA said was a VIP bunker. We believed that the Iraqi cabinet had taken refuge there. In fact, it was all the wives and the children of the Iraqi cabinet. We killed like 120 women and children in one fell swoop. One thing that frightens me, you know, we've been saying,

at least I've said, I believe that this was an Israeli attack because the Israelis have no compunction whatsoever about killing civilians. But now it looks as though it was the United States that attacked this school. Because of the location of the location. And then when Secretary of Defense, Hankseth, was asked about it yesterday morning, all he said was, we're doing an investigation, which means we'll likely never hear about it again. Yeah, I mean, in official speak, the investigation is kind of like Christy Knoem yesterday said there was finally going to be an investigation into the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Prady in Minneapolis. Investigation is kind of bureaucracy speak for, we know we fucked up, but we're not going to do anything about it. But at least we admit that we fucked up.

Right. I mean, so, John, I mean, the bombing in Belgrade, right, that's 1995, right? It's over 30 years ago. I mean, I know the military still had great satellite technology, but they didn't have real-time drone visual, the ability to put their eye on the sky, something 24-7 before they hit it. I mean, is it, I mean, in the, that's more like traditional bombing and using outdated information. Here, there's really kind of no excuse, is there? I mean, shouldn't it, like if you're going to hit a population center, shouldn't you be monitoring that site beforehand? You've got access to live feeds. I mean, the last time

we were in a war, we didn't have access to live feeds. Not really. Not on such a grand scale that we do now. And as you said in the intro, Ted, the drone operator should have seen children, little girls coming, you know, parents dropping off their children. They should have seen all this. You know, I'm reminded of a story that Daniel Hale tells. This was the reason why he became the U.S. Air Force drone whistleblower. He was told to launch a rocket against a target. And he said, But wait a minute, there are two little kids with him. And his boss said, Daniel was in like New Mexico or Nevada, and his boss was at CENTCOM in Florida.

And Daniel said, no, the boss said, it's not little kids. It's two goats. And he said, I'm telling you, I'm looking at them. They're two little kids. He says, fire or be court-martialed. And so Daniel fired. And he killed a nine-year-old girl and a 12-year-old girl. And then he said he went home that night and he told his girlfriend, I became a child killer today.

I can't even imagine. How do you live with that? I don't know. I don't. I really don't know. John, there's some breaking news. Reuters is reporting exclusively that Hezbollah's elite fighters are being dispatched to southern Lebanon to fight the Israelis, according to Lebanese sources. There's also breaking news that the United States.

States right now is in the process of bombing 30 Iranian police stations. This has been going on for the last 40 minutes, and it is apparently an attempt to sow chaos. Is, I mean, by the way, is bombing domestic, you know, sort of peacekeeper, you know, traffic, cop, police stations, is that a legitimate war target? I suppose an argument could be made. To me personally, no, of course not. But I guess an argument could be made that police stations are legitimate target because, in this case, the police report to the Ministry of Intelligence and Security. I suppose you could make that argument. I guess this is all part of degrading the Iranian government to the point where supposedly the locals will rise up and overthrow it.

Edith. I do think there's going to be an uprising, but I think it's going to be ethnic. It's going to be enclaves that they're trying to create. They're trying to, John, can ask you, by the way, I have to ask you about the monarchy aspect. So we're supposedly coming to Iran as liberators, right? So we're going to, you know, we're here to help you overthrow, as President Trump said, you know, this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for you to overthrow the yoke of the evil Ayatollah regime and for you to take over and establish democracy.

All right. So if we're doing that, why are so many people on the right pushing for the restoration of the Pelavian monarchy under Reza-Palavi? Two-part question. Why? How do you square saying that you're a democratic country bringing freedom with monarchy? That, by the way, is not something that, according to. to the polls Iranian people want.

How do you square that? And also I got to ask you about the video of Reza Pahlavi talking to Hitler. I'm well on record as saying that Rezaa Pahlavi is a clown. A clown who, were he to return to Iran, would not survive the walk from the plane to the terminal. That's how little he's respected in Iran. But he told Patrick Bet David on the PBD podcast, he doesn't want to go back to Iran. He's been in the United States since 1979. His kids were born in the United States.

He's an American, basically. He's a little rich kid. He doesn't want to go back and actually work. So, but what is the U.S. trying to stand up a strong man in the name of democracy? a strong man that the Iranian people overthrew a family that they did not want leading them and the thing too but the palavi family it was only in power in Iran for you know 50 years yeah not even no not even right years yeah yeah yeah that's right that that that was it there there's there's no like history long history of this family this dynasty sitting on the

called peacock throne. They were usurpers. Well, it feels like, by the way, though, it feels like if Donald Trump were president instead of FDR in 1944, you know, we'd have his allies calling for the restoration of Louis the 16th great, great, great, great, great grandson. Exactly. It's so weird. It's ridiculous. All right, let's do some questions. Soden, thanks for the 4999. Very generous donation. Hey, guys, this good morning, this war is sickening. And seeing the former crown prince prancing around TV talking like he's going to lead the transition. I even got

sicker when I saw James Mitchell on another podcast talking about Abu Zabuday. Zabudheda. That's right. Why hasn't he been charged? Yeah. You know, I saw that. I saw that interview. It made me, I wanted to drive to

Tampa and strangle him myself. Don't do that. You know, this is the thing about Mitchell and Jessen, James Mitchell and Bruce Jensen, the two contract psychologists who created the CIS torch. And who were thrown out of the APA, right? The American Psychological. And we're thrown out of the APA. And I'm proud to say I had something to do with that.

Thank you. Good. I was contracted by the APA to help them write a new set of principles, which we call the Brookline principles that govern APA member psychologists in, national security interrogations. And what we ended up saying is that no APA member should be taking part in a national security interrogation. They're mutually incompatible. But anyway, Mitchell and Jessin, these guys, listen, this, this was the defining event of their lives coming up with the torture program. This is what's going to be in their obituaries when they die. That's true. And so

they have to be out there repeating the lie over and over. and over again so that they can trick as many people as possible into thinking that torture was worked. Torture worked and it was ethical. So these were the assholes who basically retro-engineered the SEAL program. The SEAL program. That's right. Did you see the video of Pallavi talking to the Germans? and so these German pranksters, and he really thinks he's talking to an actual German, and the guy is literally dressed like Hitler. He has the Hitler mustache.

He has the hair, and he's like, we're coming to bomb Iran. We can't wait to bomb Iran. It's going to be great. Pallavi's like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And then I took careful note of Pallavi said, you know, we need as many people as possible to join this cruise. crusade. Kind of a loaded word in the Muslim world, no?

Very much so. And you know, there's actually a little bit of historical basis to this this joke. And that is that Reza Pahlavi's grandfather, Shah Reza Pahlavi, the father of Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, during World War II, didn't necessarily ally himself with the Nazis, but he enacted a policy that he called the third power policy. And the third power policy was it was like neutrality plus where he's like, I'm not getting involved in this fight between the Axis and the Allies. But I do want to invite German engineers to come to Iran and help us, you know, create an electrical grid, have water treatment facilities.

we'll have a rocket program, you know, all this, all this stuff the Nazis were doing, he wanted a piece of that action. So in the end, I mean, for all practical purposes, he ended up allying himself with the Nazis. I mean, that's kind of like the, isn't that kind of like the grand mufti of Jerusalem, who also kind of like the enemy of my enemy is my friend, Latang kind of thing? Oh, yeah, very much so. Which, of course, Zionists can't never stop talking about. I don't blame them, you know, but still.

Jacob Decker, thanks for the 99. Is there a strategic value to beginning the war during Ramadan? Good question. Also, were the insurgents in the Iraq War, Iranian proxies. Well, during Ramadan, yeah, people are hungry and thirsty, right? And they generally, you know, I mean, I know having fasted during Ramadan, it's hard. People are weak. I mean, during war, I would imagine you're allowed to eat and drink.

It's an exception, right? Your travelers are allowed to eat and drink. People involved in manual labor. There's other exceptions. Yeah, if you're sick, if you're traveling, you're working in the heat, yes. Although people, but even in my experience, people who are devout, like in Afghanistan, even manual laborers or construction workers, they still don't do it, right? It's kind of like, I know I have the out, but I don't want to.

You know, and there's been studies that show that, like, the Islamic world loses, like, billions of dollars in productivity, car accidents, mishaps at work during Ramadan. I mean, do you think, I mean, what do you think of the Ramadan timing? Yeah, I think that it was done on purpose. At the very least, because the Israelis know that not everybody, is going to drop the fast in a time of war. They're going to, they're going to try to continue to fast because they think it makes them better Muslims.

And so, yeah, I mean, it was like, it was like the, you know, Arabs attacking Israel on Yom Kippur, for example. They caught the Israelis by surprise and for Washington crossing the Delaware Christmas Eve. Exactly. Exactly. Because gentlemen don't wage war on Christmas Eve. As everyone knows. But we're not really gentlemen.

We're Americans. Oh, and we're the insurgents in the Iraq war, Iran proxies. We're the insurgents in the Iraq war, Iran proxies. A lot of them, sure. Yeah. A lot of them were. You know, it's like during the Vietnam War, a lot of the bands of Viet Cong were. Russian or Chinese proxies.

Sure. Some generous donations to thank without comments into Tupor Chats. Thanks, Sarah Clinton for the 99. Much appreciated. Sarah Clinton also welcome to becoming a subscriber. Zissi Karajianis. Thank you very much for $29.99 Australian dollars. Thank you.

So that's much appreciated. Okay, let me get through some of these. Then we can talk about the boat. John, go ahead. I'm sorry. Somebody asked me if I want to reconsider my analysis that the CIA can slow walk a president when they disagree with a policy. No, because I'm going to say the CIA agrees with this war. The CIA supports this war.

When I was at the CIA, even like I'm talking way back in the day. It was all about Iran and destroying Iran and they want to get it done. John, this is Aaron Arnold. Have you looked into the 9-11 Shadow Commission? Yes, I've tried. So what this is a reference to is an email in the Epstein files from a guy, I think his name was Ed Epstein. He's no relation to Jeffrey Epstein. He sent an email to Galane Maxwell and asked Galane Maxwell if she wanted to be a member of the Shadow 9-11 commission.

He said, very secret. Nobody knows about it. Do you want to be a member? And she just wrote back and said, no, not interested in being a member. To me, that's explosive information. Like, what was this thing? So I went back to look. There's nothing else in the other.

Steam files, nothing to explain what in the world this was, if it was just a bunch of rich losers getting together in somebody's living room, or if this was a quasi-governmental, governmental, or, you know, governmentally approved shadow body, there's nothing on the internet. Nothing. I have no idea what it was. I have nothing to add to that. More breaking news, Washington Post says that the that Trump is offering U.S. air cover and other support if groups within Iran and Iraq rise up against the Iranian government. Of course, you know, put them in touch with the Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs. That always works not great.

Yeah, without coming out and saying it, what Trump is dangling in front of them is an independent Kurdistan. that's what he's doing here he won't actually say the words because it's not u.s policy but he's hanging it out there for them just to see if he can get him to take up arms what about other you know i could also see the baluchis you know yeah there's rising up and trying to split up azari's maybe not yeah you know baluchistan is a very interesting place um it's it's rough on both sides of the border, it is sickeningly poor, where people are like legit starving to death on both sides, Iranian Balochistan and Pakistani Balochistan. But most of the area is wasteland. There's a terrorist group there called the Balochistan Liberation Army. And most of what they do is

they just kill policemen. They'll just, you know, raid a police station and open fire, just kill all the policeman. I can't imagine Balochistan being an independent country. I think the Pakistanis would invade and just kill everybody. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Again, this is part of the American Enterprise Institute map of five little independent countries carved out of Iran. I mean, can you imagine what a Pandora's box, these assholes want to open up? I mean, it will have wars raging for years. we're still dealing with the aftermath of Libya destroying that. We're dealing with the aftermath of Iraq. This is how we got ISIS.

This is how we got slave markets in Libya. These people are crazy. They just want to destabilize the entire world. Yeah, they really are. This is crazy. And don't forget, we overthrew the Libyan government 17 years ago. And it's not getting better. Dark work is at.

asking us, will China use this quagmire and depletion of U.S. allied munitions to do what, to do what they want to do with Taiwan, whether that's through diplomacy or military action? The Chinese do not have a history of expansionism or imperialism. I know. That's why I think it's so weird that the Americans are so paranoid about it. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, real quickly, Greyhorse, thanks for the $5. As I saw recently that John's going on Hassan Piper's stream, a lot of his rhetoric is anti-American. His community is also extremely toxic,

especially to the left. Curious as to why you're associating with that. I'm not going on Hassan Piker. Hassan Piker reached out to me, and I said, no thank you. I've got nothing schedule with him. Blatex. Hey, guys, it's crazy to me that Israel said that Turkey is a threat

while attacking Iran and Lebanon is the U.S. as much, that much of an Israeli bitch that they will attack a NATO country for them. Well, we were going to, we were threatening Greenland. I mean, everything goes. Hey, let me ask you a question, Ted. Yesterday, I'm in Miami filming my TV show. And yesterday, a couple of the guys that make up the crew asked me if it was true that the U.S. is preparing to invade Ecuador. And I said, I would not be surprised at joint military DEA operations in Ecuador, but an invasion of Ecuador doesn't make any kind of sense to me. What do you think? What are hearing about this? Well, I've heard that the, I have heard that there are going to be joint operations, you know, against the, you know, the drug cartels. So Ecuador is obviously taking the lesson of Venezuela and trying to avoid that by cooperating with the U.S. and the DEA.

And probably is kind of pushing on an open door because drugs are a huge problem there. The government probably could use the help. So I think this will probably be, you know, this is a point, the tension probably has vanished with their agreement to work with the Americans. I would think, for the time being. What do you think? Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right.

I think what's right. Terrick is asking me, in my opinion, about Macron's recent comments regarding proliferation, hilarious considering that he's proliferating. So for people who haven't been following this, France under Macron has offered to spread its nuclear umbrella to other NATO allies across Europe to say, basically, hey, if you were nuked, we would nuke your nuker on your behalf. So in other words, we're not just, you know, it's not just mutual. assured destruction for us and our enemies, it's, you know, you and, you know, are together.

We're, you know, three musketeers in all for one, one for all. I don't know. I think it's very crazy to me that Macron, who is such a lame duck, the lamest of all lame ducks is writing checks like this, that he's never going to have to cash. Ali's asking, are the Arab countries going to have to worry about bringing in food with the closure of the strait of Ormou? Good question. I know that Kuwait has a food supply for a year, but whether about Bahrain or Qatar, any ideas? That's a good question, man. Food can't come in by air, too. Right. The airports are closed.

We could helicopter it in from Saudi Arabia. You can't feed an entire country by helicopter. No. Well, there was a Berlin airlift, right? I mean. Yeah, but that was massive. That was a a massive, it took the entire U.S. Army Air Corps. Have any other countries started to support either side of this war? I think countries are trying hard to stay out for the most part. But Spain, for example. Spain just caved. They did?

Yeah, they caved because Spain, Trump threatened to cut off all trade with Spain. Yeah, but then the European Commission came out and said that the, that the European Union's founding agreement is that if one country is the subject of a trade attack, it's considered a trade attack on all countries. And so the entire European Union would have to cut off trade with the United States. Oh, okay. You know what? And you're right. So it says here, the White House had lied about Spain. CNBC is saying Spain rejects the White House claim that it agreed to cooperate. Yeah. It says it will not be vassals. Okay, so I saw the report from the White House.

Silly, stupid me, I believed something the White House had to say, God, when am I going to learn? Robert, do we have an ad? We did not. Okay, that's weird. Okay, all right, that's fine. Private intelligence, this is number two. Private intelligence, like NSO group, Pegasus and Black Cube,

different operational cap work for and with unit 8200 what's your assessment john this is a john question of the capability of these yeah they're all former special forces guys so they're all very highly trained the only difference between what they were doing uh when they were special forces and what they're doing now with these intelligence community contractors is they're getting paid a whole lot more money but yeah these are these are badasses dangerous happy to kill however many number of people they need to kill. John D. Cacafiller. Question for the fillers.

Eastern Europe and Russia is my jam. Mid-East is over my head. I keep hearing that if we back this or that group, it's best for us. Can you give us a no-b-s assessment of the players? I'm just going to, I'll just want to do the first part for me, and I want to hear the, you can do the rest, John. It's not good for us to be involved here at all.

Anyway. No, this is a middle-in situation. There is no panacea here. You can't, you can't just, you know, back one side or back one group or five or ten groups and expect that everything is going to go well. The Middle East is exceedingly complicated. And when it comes right down to it, everybody hates everybody else. So this is... That's a T-shirt. Robbie, write that down. I want to have Trent do a T-shirt that says that. Quote, John Kirooku. Hey, guys, really enjoying the show.

Do you think Israel's growing ties with India are driven by strategic interests? Could India's vast global diaspora benefit Israel in foreign intelligence, John? I love that question. That's a great question. And the answer is, yes, literally everything Israel does is to the strategic benefit of Israel. They don't do anything for altruistic

reasons. The Israelis and the Indians and the Indians have long had close diplomatic relations. Even though there aren't very many Jews in India, they find themselves in agreement on a lot of major international issues. And so they've had close diplomatic ties, close trade ties. military ties. In fact, you remember one of the major Al-Qaeda slash Kashmiri separatist attacks was on specifically Jewish centers in Mumbai, a Jewish synagogue, the Jewish community center, and then hotels where they tried to kill Westerners. So yeah, those ties are close and they're longstanding. What about the diaspora? You know, there's no downside to, to being friendly with a billion Indians.

And they are all over. They're all over. They're all over the world. And, you know, they're not the wealthiest people in the world as a whole. And so they might be susceptible to recruitment by Mossad. If they happen to be in sensitive positions, that extra 500 bucks a month might go a long way in helping them to make ends meet. Why not? Let's talk about the boat, right?

So the IRS Dina went to this joint military exercise sponsored by Modi's government in India. So in other words, it's in the Indian Ocean. That's over. It's on the way home near Sri Lanka. When a U.S. submarine torpedoes it, it goes down. A few dozen people survived, I should say. They weren't rescued by the Americans. The Sri Lankan Coast Guard picked them up.

Muslim were severely burned. Yeah, I mean, when you see the video, I mean, it's not surprising. I mean, apparently it's the first torpedo fired by an American vessel since World War II. So speaking of World War II, a lot of people have been pointing out that in some ways, we're worse than the Nazis in this respect. Because Nazi Germany, U-boat commanders, did routinely pick up sailors, who survived the downing of, their vessels by U-boats. They would put them in lifeboats or bring them food, water. They're supposed to or take them as prisoners or give them directions to where they needed

to go. That stopped after something called the Laconia incident in 1942, where basically the German U-boats were doing that. And then an American plane came and bombed the Germans. And so the Germans were like, oh, if you're going to do that, then we're not going to do that anymore. But what are the rules of the sea here? Where does international law have to say?

What to, you know, is this a war crime? What is this? I mean, it's gross, but what is this legally? It's awful. It was not, it was not a violation of international law to torpedo the boat. They're in international waters. We're in a state of active hostilities. It was a violation.

Are you allowed to go, even though it's thousands of miles away from the war? Does that matter? I mean, could they have done this in the middle of the South Pacific? Sure. Definitely. What the crime that was committed was not rising to the surface once the, once the Iranian boat was destroyed and rescuing the survivors. We pushed to rescue this and we just sped away.

It was only because the Iranians before the boat was seen were able to get a distress call off that the Sri's. Sri Lankans came and rescued the handful of survivors. Interesting thing, the Sri Lankans, they made a series of statements yesterday, both Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense, and they were very, very carefully worded statements. I was very interested to see this, where they said, they went to the extra trouble of saying that we are signatories to the International Maritime Treaty on, you know, water, born rescues or whatever the heck it's called.

And so because we are signatories of this to this treaty and we respect the rule of international law, slap at the United States, we sent the Navy out to rescue the survivors. That was what the Americans were supposed to do. The Americans were supposed to rescue the survivors. Did the Americans know that? We wrote the treaty. So what do you? What do you think happened here?

I think that we just we just don't give a shit anymore. I mean, we just ignore treaties that we don't like. This started with George W. Bush where it was clearly a violation of both domestic and international law to torture prisoners. And we did it anyway. It's the same thing now. I mean, and well, with that, I mean, I remember, John, you have a, this is your area of expertise. for sure, but I seem to remember there were even arguments before the torture program like was known to have actually occurred, like in favor of torture appearing in the op-ed

pages of newspapers like the New York Times. Hey, we should torture. Torture. Torture is great. Remember those? I mean, so that was a discussion that happened and then, you know, we find out. So it seems like as a society, they grease the skids for the torture program, like to, you know, degrade our morals and our adherence to the rule of law. Here, there's been no, I mean, hell, we still haven't heard, we haven't had a speech from the president yet explaining why we're at war at all. But, I mean, in terms of, you know, oh, we're not going to ignore this. We're not going to rescue sailors anymore.

I mean, that's just sort of, I mean, did the word go out from the, from the department of the Navy to, hey, don't worry about it. It's cool. Or? I think so. And with Pete Higsef as the Secretary of Defense, barking the orders from the very top, and having replaced all of the joint chiefs of staff who were not Trump supporters with Trump supporters. Yeah, I think that's the policy. Crazy.

Thanks for the $10 from U.S. Triple X A-Rod, U.S.C. Triple X. You have consistently said that the DOD and government bureaucracy can slow walk presidents and their crazy ideas. was that analysis wrong? Why are there no adults stepping up and seeing these actions are insane? No, I don't think the analysis was wrong. I think that the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community actively approves of and supports overthrowing the Iranian government. F. You so. Thanks for the dollar. Apparently we have been, we want to invade Ecuador because they voted to stop drilling in the Amazon. Isn't that like the Stephen? Donziger thing? That's Ecuador.

That's exactly what Stephen Donziger's case was. By the way, for people, I mean, we only have five minutes left, so there's no time to get into it. We should have Steve come on the show. He's a neighbor of mine. Stephen, I urge you to Wikipedia, Stephen Donziger. Your jaw

will get the floor. You will not believe how corrupt this country is. Quick, five bucks from Ray. Thanks a lot. John, how happy are you that I Patch McCain lost his primary? Oh my God. I called a friend of mine. As soon as I saw the early returns showing that he was losing by like 12 percentage points, I called a friend of mine who, well, I'll back up.

I had briefly dated this woman. We are still friends. And we were watching a movie one night. And her phone pinged. It was like midnight. And the text was from Crenshaw. And he says, what are you wearing? Yeah.

So I text him back and I said, hey, Crenshaw. This is your boyfriend. You should have been like I'm wearing what she's wearing. What's your wife wearing? Asshole. Jesus. And then he texts back, sorry. Oops.

Yeah. Ask your fucking wife what she's wearing. Excuse my language. At midnight. And his wife is gorgeous, and she stuck with him through the whole eyeball thing, and they've got a little baby at home, and shame on him. Whatever. Allie, thanks for the 499, we will look into the military targeting thing.

Thanks for the 1199 British pounds, what would cost France, the UK, or Germany to join the war offensively to strike Iranian soil? How likely is it big fan of the show? I think it could happen. I think it could happen, too. I mean, yeah, that's a good question, though, John. What do you think? What inducement would they need? God, I don't know. I mean, the world is changing, like literally every single day. Alliances are changing. Policies are shifting. It's like impossible to say. Joseph Campbell, thanks for the five bucks. Have the reports about Mossad agents trying to sabotage oil refineries in Qatar in Saudi Arabia? What are there? How about those? What are your thoughts? Say that one. I'm sorry. This is about, there are reports that the Mossad's,

trying to sabotage Katari and Saudi. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I totally believe it. I do. I totally believe it. Gutter's a strong U.S. ally, a great and true friend of the United States. But they also support Palestinian human rights. And like, oh, God forbid the Palestinians should have human rights.

Remember, the Israelis bombed Qatar. First of all, they killed the Palestinian chief negotiator. And then they threatened to do it again. So they hate that we're close to the gutteries. They hate that we have a military presence there, and they just want to make trouble. Chris Ferry, thanks for the Fiverr, what are the odds of a domestic military recall for this war with boots on the ground, similar to the post-9-11 recall of veteran Marines? That ain't zero.

No, we talked, we touched on this yesterday. And I think I said that, you know, a week ago, it would have. have been zero. And yesterday, I'm calling it 50-50 at this point. I'm with that. Meadstreet Street, thanks for the 999. Did we see the ex-Marine who was protesting the war in a session of Congress and they broke his arm pulling him out of the room? You can hear the snap clear his day. Yes, sickly. I had him on my show, deep focus last week. He is, this is Anthony Aguilar. He is an incredibly brave, patriotic American at the veteran intelligence professionals for sanity. We just gave him Sam Adams Award for Integrity and Intelligence.

This guy put his life on the line to feed hungry Palestinians. And this is the treatment that he gets on Capitol Hill. As they were dragging him out of the hearing, they literally snapped his arm. And the right wingers online are, they're spinning it. And they're saying like an agitator. They don't mention that he's a veteran. The veteran of special forces. Disgusting.

Dem Will, thanks for the 20 pounds. Two more. The Trump administration used Anthropics Claude A.I. to support planning and Intel analysis during strikes against Iran. Anthropics strongly objected. Okay, I don't see the rest of the question. But yes, apparently they're still using anthropic technology. But thanks for the donation.

Last question. Sam Dungan, thanks for the 99. And if we didn't get to your question today, I'm sorry. But thank you very much for putting them in. And please try again tomorrow. It wasn't Aguilar. Forgive me. Forgive me.

It's not Aguilar. My mistake. I apologize. Thanks for pointing it out. Okay. What is the likelihood that Iran uses their superstonic missiles? Do you think they would use them to attack a land target or a warship? Love the show. I guess my question is, do they really have them? If they really have them, they're going to use them, I think. Do you think there's a possibility that it's bullshit? Like, they were bluffing? I don't think so. I think it's for real. So they'll use them? I think that they'll use them. I would have by now. Well, unless you're trying to,

unless you're trying to, you know, just escalate, escalate, escalate. That's what both sides are doing here. That's why it's so crazy. You know, we said the Iranians were going to do it, but now the U.S. says they're going to just do the same thing. Like, there's no, there's no landing in sight. John, thank you so much for, as always, always a great, in this case, 50 minutes.

I prefer a full hour. We are here Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. Eastern time. We'll be back tomorrow, 9 a.m. Eastern Time. Please stay tuned for TMI with Minilat Chan and myself in just a minute. DMZ America podcast with Exiled Iranian editorial cartoonist Nick Kalser. Very interesting, cool dude, had to spend time in prison for drawing cartoons in Iran. He'll be on at 11 a.m. Eastern Time. That's in an hour.

Stay tuned. Thanks a lot. Bye, John.