Judging Freedom - COL. Douglas Macgregor : US Abandons Its Gulf Allies

Episode Date: July 23, 2026

COL. Douglas Macgregor : US Abandons Its Gulf AlliesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Undeclared wars are commonplace. Pragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression with no complaints from the American people. Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government. To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected. What if sometimes to love your country you had to alter or abolish the government? the government what if Jefferson was right what if that government is best which governs least what if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong what if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave

what if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now hi everyone judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom today is Thursday July 23rd 2006, Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us now. Colonel, I've missed you terribly. I was away for two weeks as you know, and it's great to be back, and I truly appreciate your returning to the show

with us. So much has happened, and a lot is happening as we speak. Well, I just want you to know that in your honor today, which has been a very long day with podcasts, I am drinking Sicilian coffee. Sicilian coffee.

This is, I think, Mouretino or Mertino? Are you familiar with it? I am not, but when I visit your home, I want to try it. Well, I wouldn't want to visit my home right now. It's right. Anyway, the point is it's very good. It's excellent.

It's very good Sicilian coffee. And I just put it, yeah, it's... M-O-E-T-I-N-L. Maybe you can send me the link. I use Lavatza, which is also Italian but not Sicilian. Well, it's done a great job of getting me through to this point. Okay. I know it's been a long day.

I follow what you've done elsewhere, and I deeply appreciate your joining us now. Yeah. Is the Gulf erupting into a regional war? Looks that way. But keep in mind, there are some things that could block the total regionalization. And a lot of these are the ones that you and I have discussed before. On one side, you have the Western financial system and the state of the state of the the United States. If you woke up this morning, you discovered that at least on paper, oil had risen

to $90 a barrel, but that oil coming off the ship was now worth $140 a barrel. And I just got off the phone with somebody telling me that it's now beyond 100 on paper, it had reached, or beyond 90 on paper, it reached $100. The reason I bring that up is at the same time, the 10-year bond, you yield this morning when I woke up was 4.65. And it's now I'm told close to 4.7. This is what the federal government has to pay to borrow money. You got it. And the 10-year bond is what everybody looks into.

I mean, you know, if you talk to Luke Roman or Jeffrey Gundlock as good examples who really follow the bond markets carefully, they'll tell you, when you get to five, it's toast, you're done. We can't service the debt. We can't pay it. Everything will begin to implode. And, of course, on top of all of this, you have inflation that is rising uncontrollably. The Fed can't fix this.

It cannot artificially suppress rates. It can't extricate us from this mess. So the question is, when do we hit 5%? I don't know. Robert Barnes, who knows things from the inside of the White House better than I do, says that in the past, Trump was always counted. careful, you know, as soon as you saw this thing go over 4%, get close to 4.4, 4.5, he would, quote, unquote, taco. He's not to tocoing this time. So I think we're headed into really, really rough times financially.

And that could bring all of this in the Gulf to a halt because we simply can't afford it, can continue it. And the second constraint is, of course, missiles. We could run out. And we're already low on that score, and that's almost as bad as running out of oil. Because on the oil side, the Chinese who've been holding back, they're starting to deplete their own strategic reserve. And if they join, you know, these oil starvation club, the world's in a lot of trouble. All of us are in trouble. I'm going to guess that it's a foregone conclusion that the Pentagon did not consider all this.

We know they didn't consider the straight of Wormuz being closed. And why would they consider the consequences of being closed? Well, it's hard to understand. Everybody, the first thing you do is consult the Treasury before you do anything. I mean, anyone who's done anything anywhere for any reason is always done that. The man who never did it and behaved much as Trump as is Churchill. Churchill paid absolutely no attention to the burgeoning debt, the enormous quantities of money that were spent during the First War,

when he was Chancellor of the ex-chequer, he refused to revalue the pound and kept it at the same value that it had before the war, that is in gold. That did enormous damage to Great Britain. When World War II ended, and of course by the end of the first World War,

the debt to GDP ratio in the British Empire was 130%, which is roughly where we're headed. At the end of World War II, it was 240%. So we're on the same kind of path to imminent disaster. I wonder if the man in the White House who brought virtually all of this on himself understands this?

I don't know. He seems to be under duress. We've talked about that before. I think that he's adopted the Israeli position, which is whatever happens, Iran must be destroyed. I think he's there. He's also taken the position that we cannot back out

from Ukraine, even though we don't want to be involved, and even though we'd like to cut our losses and get out and can't abandon that because that's part of the larger global attempt, in my view, to fight with all of our means to preserve American political, financial, and military dominance, essentially to retain the 1991 global order, but also to put Israel at the center of it. Colonel, why is the United States building up man and material in the Middle East? Is the President preparing for a land invasion and 110 degree temperature? Well, I think there is definitely a desire now to look at what you can do along the

west coast and south coast of Iran. We don't have the ground forces to invade Iran. When people talk about that, they've got to understand that. Your army today is the shadow of its former self. It's minuscule. The forces that we have over in the Gulf region are quote unquote light forces. These are paratroopers and Marines. They have to be delivered by V-22s or helicopters.

You're not going to get very far with those. And yes, it's 110 degrees. That has a big impact on the performance of rotor wing aircraft. It has a big impact on human beings having to operate in that environment. And when you begin to look at the availability of water, interestingly enough, the only island that has a fresh spring from which you can actually draw water is Card Island. All of the other islands are rocks. So if you're going to go there, you want to land on something like Abu Musa, well, you better

bring your own water with you. So that means what happens if you go ashore at Chabahar, even if you can get there, what are the Iranians going to do? I mean, there seems to be this view that the Iranian leadership will panic and immediately say, please stop, we're willing to trade whatever you want. Just give us back our islands or give us back Chabahar. I don't think so. I think they'll look at that and they'll laugh and think that we're fools to overextend ourselves. They'll encourage us to double down and make it worse.

And then they'll drop everything they own on top of it. And it'll be a catastrophe of an epic scale. in the history of ground operations of the U.S. armed forces. That's what I think. But we'll see. Colonel, the bombing in June failed to produce any result. The bombings in March and April failed to produce any result. Now we have bombings again in July, presumably going into August. What makes them think that the result will be any different?

Or are these bombings in preparation for some ill-conceived poorly crafted, poorly populated, as you just told us, nearly suicidal land invasion. Well, let's stick with poorly crafted in any case, whatever it is. I think you're absolutely right. It's ill-conceived and poorly crafted. But I'm beginning to think that he may be the victim at this stage of the gambler's fallacy. You know, the gambler steps up and he keeps losing.

But he decides, you know, he's won before. He knows what he's doing. he's smarter and he's going to go in there one more time and he's going to give it all and he loses everything. I think we're approaching that stage with President Trump before he gives up. He wants to be absolutely certain that he has committed everything available to him and done everything possible to win. And remember he has people like General Keene and General Kellogg and others telling him, sir, take Kark Island and you win the war. Even General West Clark was making those kinds of statements, much to my shock.

I don't think it makes a damn difference whatsoever to the Iranians, what we do on Karg Island. It's just an opportunity for them to wipe out ground forces and make our lives miserable. But I have a feeling he's caught up in some of that. And then you still have the promise of special operations. As we've discussed before, special operations, they're some of the best people we have. They'll do whatever you ask them to do, but they're not Superman, and they're very fragile, and things can go wrong very, very quickly. So, you know, I think we're at this point of let's pull out all of stops.

We'll make it one major big push and will succeed. Colonel, let's look at the other side of the coin. Might the Iranians attack and seize Kuwait? I mean, as I understand, it, correct me if I'm wrong. heavy concentration of U.S. troops in Kuwait. Yeah, well, Kuwait was always viewed as a potential platform for the projection of U.S. Combat troops to Park Island. If you look at the map, how far away is Kuwait from Karg Island?

It's a very short distance. And you want to minimize the amount of time that you're in the air. So it's natural that we would do that. On the other hand, could Iran invade it? Sure. Do they have to? No. you might instead see Iraqi, what would you call them, Iraqi army or Iraqi militias that are Shiite,

they could easily go into Kuwait and seize control of it, because the Kuwaiti military is in no position to stand up to them. It's kind of interesting because I and a lot of other Americans thought we were defending Kuwait and liberating Kuwait from Iraq, about 35, 35 years ago. Right, right, George H.W. Bush. That seems to be in another illusion. So, no, I think that could happen very easily, but they don't have to commit much of their own military power to that. The Iraqi militias or army can do that,

and Iraq is unambiguously aligned with Iran, another product of our many interventions in the region. Should the Iranians bother to? negotiate with Trump's real estate agents or is the Iranian view of American negotiators that they are utterly untrustworthy and incapable of making a commitment and sticking to it? My impression is that neither the Russian leadership nor the Iranian leadership or for that matter the Chinese leadership trust President Trump or anyone in his administration. They have no confidence in

the consistency of his policies, and most important, the stability of his administration. His decisions are unruited in any long-term, coherent, strategic view. They're all hasty and tend to be last-minute conclusions based on erroneous information. And he doesn't seem to think that whatever he decides to do will be remembered two weeks after he did it, that, you know, international investors are not going to go into any of these countries. They're not going to go into Ukraine. They're not going to go into the Middle East and repair or rebuild or reconstruct anything because they have no confidence that Trump won't start another war or reintroduce some other new

stupid idea that puts everyone at risk. So the short answer is no one trusts us at all anymore. And then you add to it again what we were talking about before, the fragile financial, condition. I just don't see any good news right now as we move toward the fall. None. After 100 days of this, do you have a comfortable handle on why Trump started this war? Yes, I think you pointed this out and others have, and I think they're right. Donald Trump, in the last administration, wanted nothing to do with the war against Iran. I saw that up close. I don't think that this time around Donald Trump really

wanted to go to war. After all, he joined this conflict after Netanyahu launched it. Do you remember? We were late to the party. The Israelis began bombing and then the phone rang and he said, okay, and we got on board. But I think that he was told, and I think he believed it, by people in the intelligence business, particularly the Israelis and some of his close advisors, the people that he personally trusts, that this would be over in three, four, maybe five days, that the government would collapse, either through assassination or sheer terror. And then the Iranian population would rise up and remove the government, which he was led to believe everybody hated. Well, that failed. So when regime change was a dead end, what was the goal? The new goal was, well, we've got to

bomb and missile the Iranians into submission. And effectively, that means we've got to compel the disintegration of the Iranian state and the country. That's really what the Israelis want in any case, just as the NATO globalists in France, London, Germany, all want to see Russia fragmented, divided, and then effectively destroyed and then exploited, obviously, by their financial friends. And I think that's the same thing going on with Netanyiola. And unfortunately, with President Trump, whether or not he's always understood that or he's sort of come around to understanding it but can't get off the train.

I can't judge that. Do you think that Beijing and Moscow would allow Ukraine to be toppled? Ukraine? Excuse me. Iran. Iran. I'm sorry. No, absolutely not. Which is another reason why you shouldn't have started the war. I mean, you should have been smarter and said, look, maybe what you said was right, General, and maybe we would be successful at what you're suggesting, but it's very high risk.

And historically, the United States has wanted to avoid war, particularly with Russia, but certainly since Eisenhower also with China. But that never came up for discussion, or it was just dismissed out of hand as irrelevant, because, after all, both China and Russia are really developing countries. with modest military power, right? What is the, what kind of shape is Israel in now? And why does it appear that it is not participating in Iran War 3.0? That's an interesting question.

I don't have one answer, what I can say or what I've been told, things that I've been told, answers I've been given by different sources. One is that this is an opportunity for Israel to stay out and give President Trump plausible deniability in the event that the Israelis decide to use a nuclear weapon against Iran. They want to create the illusion that whatever they do is separate and distinct from the United States. This is ostensibly for our benefit so that we are not caught up in the chaos and destruction that will result from an Israeli nuclear strike.

That's one answer. I don't know if that's true or not. Secondly, conditions inside Israel are terrible. The population is miserable, but 80% of the population still continues to support the goals of the war, which is the total destruction of Iran. The third possibility is that this is, you know,

a deception operation to lull people into a false sense of security to turn away from the Israeli front. Now, I don't think that's going to work because, first of all, the Kurds have been vigorously attacked, and they were considered to be the most likely Israeli allies on the ground in its war against Iran. I think that's over. The Iranians have systematically targeted all the possible American and Israeli bases and installations. The other thing is that the Iranians have now systematically stripped away all the radars

missile batteries and so forth in the air and missile defense category that surrounded Israel in Jordan and in other Arab countries. So if Israel does come back into the fight, Israel is very open to dangerous and annihilating attacks by Iranian missiles. Switching gears, Colonel, can President Putin resist the temptation? to attack the munitions plants in NATO countries that are producing armaments being used to kill his troops and even to kill civilians in Russia? I think so. And I'll explain why I think so. President Putin is laid out very clearly for the population what he's trying to do and where he thinks the war is hitting. Now, from the

Russian vantage point, the good news is that Ukraine is falling apart. Of course, evidence for that is everywhere except in the Western media. Right. And the Western media says they're winning. And, oh, they're winning and they dismiss their defense minister and two top generals while they're winning? Well, you know, that's typical for us. I'm sure that they found a new military geniuses to replace the two that were there. And Ukraine is running out of manpower. There is open rebellion in many parts of Ukraine against conscription, even in the westernmost part of Ukraine, which is by far the most virulently anti-Russian based on its tragic experience with the Soviets.

So I think on the good news for them is that Ukraine is really falling apart. Secondly, he's tried to get people to understand something. The war is going to be won on the battlefield. It's not going to be one in the air over. Western Europe, it's not going to be one in the Black Sea, it's going to be one on land in Ukraine. And that we, he's saying that we, the Russians, are very close to eliminating the final fortress cities that were the last major obstacle to reaching the Nepper River. We know they have plans for Odessa and they have plans for Karcliffe.

And they aren't very far from Karcliffe. And these are two Russian-speaking cities that it was made clear from the very beginning the Russians really, really would like to have back. And I think they know now that they must have them back, particularly Odessa. So those things have happened. And the third thing that I would point to is the return to the battlefield, if you will, of General Seroviken. Seroviken was the Air Force General who effectively took over operations that were in chaos, straightened them out, brought order to them in Ukraine in 2022 and 23 and established this defense in depth, which was the beginning of this thing that I keep referring to his ISR strike.

He understood that very well, going all the way back to O'Garcoff and the Soviet general staff that talked about the orbital recon strike complex and so forth. And he's built that. He has now been summoned back to Russia. he was effectively exiled to Africa because he had publicly spoken out in support of Progoshan's views. You'll remember Progoshin who led his small challenge to Moscow to rebel against Putin. Proggeon went the way of the Buffalo. And I think Swardoviccan was harmed by that, but he's now rehabilitated.

He's back in the saddle. He wants this thing over. and he is the man who has now taken over striking operations. And that's important because we have to understand the striking operations today shape the ground fight. This is not a situation where we... What does that mean, Colonel? Well, that's what I'm going to try to explain.

It's beyond what we saw during World War II, where we dropped lots of bombs on the Germans and then attack them on the ground. This is much more sophisticated. You're talking about an array of... strike weapons that can be concentrated in key areas along, let us say, an axis, an operational axis of where you've got ground troops moving forward. They can protect the advancing ground troops with air and missile defense, and they can minimize attacks from the flanks from these

drones, which is really how they do a lot of damage. They strike in depth. And they can do this in a way that preserves the lives and the security of the follow-on forces. Because what the Russians have become good at is they've become very good at advancing along the front lines in battalion size, brigade size, and smaller elements, and eventually systematically encircling, then moving in and finishing off the enemy. But that's a two-week exercise for any large town and longer for any really large city. It's time consuming, but it saves lives. And that's what Putin was concerned about, saving Russian lives.

Well, he still is, but now they have the ability, I think, with Soroviccan in charge and being in charge entirely of all the strike assets to create what I think will be a new battle space, where they can move faster, more decisively, all the way to the river. Then the question is, what do they do when they get there? I still think Odessa is a target down south. And remember that General Soraviken was the one who told President Putin, I know nobody wants to do this. We crossed the river.

We took Herson and we got to get rid of it because we don't have enough forces to cover the entire front. Let's get out of Herson. We can exact a terrible price from the Ukrainians when we turn it over to them. And we'll regain it in the future. Well, I think we're in the future. And we're going to see it all regained quickly over the next few months, I think. I just want to take you back to Iran before we leave Colonel Axios is reporting. This just broke a few minutes ago.

Trump is close to a decision on a massive attack on Iran. What would that mean? That means everything he owns, I think, short of a nuclear weapon. That means all the B-52s, B-1s and B-2s that he can mobilize, along with all the fighters and all the ships at sea that launch missiles. And that will be a multi-directional, multidimensional attack. We'll come in from the north, from Israel, and from the Mediterranean. We'll come in from the west across Saudi Arabia,

and will come up from the South, from the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden. And I think that's what's probably going to happen. I think the Iranians know that, and they're preparing for it, because it's the inevitable outcome. This, as I said before, this is the final massive offensive that is supposed to win the war. This war is not going to end on a conference table. No, no. Judge, I can't see us going back to the 14 points.

I think that if this fails, and I would say when it probably fails, even if it includes the use of ground forces, which privately I, hope it doesn't. This is the end. This is the final, you know, final effort. And so the uncomfortable position the president will find himself in is strategic failure in the Gulf in the Middle East, on one hand, and a rapidly deteriorating economic situation at home and a financial system that's imploding. I mean, what a terrible position to be in. It makes Herbert Hoover look well off. Wow.

Colonel, thank you very much. I know it's been a long day for you and it has here as well, but your analysis is extraordinary and deeply appreciated it, my dear friend. Thank you for letting me lead you into conversations about both hotspots. We'll look forward to seeing you again next week. Hey, if it weren't for the Sicilian coffee, I couldn't keep a, you know, I noticed you were drinking a lot more coffee during the interview that I usually do. Yeah, all the, all the, all the,

Sicilian coffee is almost gone now, so that's it. I can go to sleep. Sleep well tonight, Colonel. Thank you, my dear friend. Bye-bye. Bye. Coming up tomorrow Friday, at 8 in the morning, the recently retired Marine,

Jim Webb, are American troops prepared to kill Iranians? And then at 4 in the afternoon, the end of the day, the end of the week, our Intelligence Community Roundtable, with Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern, and Joe Kent. who will, well, you'll be seeing more of them. Thank you for watching, Judge Lepo Tano for judging Freedom.