Provoked with Darryl Cooper and Scott Horton - EP:36 - Too Late to Stop the War?

Episode Date: February 28, 2026

Darryl Cooper & Scott Horton discuss the military moves being made by the US and NATO forces, foreshadowing an imminent regime change operation in Iran. They also discuss escalating tensions in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the ongoing war in Ukraine, including alarming frontline accounts and the leadership's shift toward seeking peace. Chapters: 0:00 Hello and Welcome 1:36 Global Conflicts and War Rhetoric 3:14 Trump's War Games: Iran and Israel 6:34 The Pressure on President Trump 8:58 Negotiations and Diplomatic Maneuvers 11:24 Iran's Nuclear Concessions 13:37 Congressional Dynamics and War Decisions 15:24 The Political Landscape of War 17:08 The Stakes of Military Action 18:38 The Role of Public Opinion 19:41 The Nature of Current Conflicts 22:20 The Propaganda Machine 24:36 Israel's Strategic Dilemmas 27:22 The Clock is Ticking 30:22 China's Growing Influence 31:37 New Alliances in the East 36:26 Escalation and Military Responses 40:47 Mediation Efforts and Diplomatic Tensions 42:48 The Consequences of War 44:48 The Importance of Public Pressure 46:45 The Role of Media in Conflict 50:28 Pakistan and Afghanistan Tensions 54:06 Ukraine's Struggles and Human Cost 57:20 The Reality of Warfare 1:00:41 Leadership and Warfare Strategies 1:02:26 The Future of Conflict and Resolution 1:04:46 Concluding Thoughts on Global Issues (Cleaned up w/ the Podsworth app. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://podsworth.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠) Provoked show site: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://provoked.show⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Darryl's links: X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@martyrmade⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://subscribe.martyrmade.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Scott's links: X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@scotthortonshow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://scotthortonacademy.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://libertarianinstitute.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://antiwar.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://scotthorton.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://scotthorton.org/books⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.scotthortonshow.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

All humans break. The difference between humans and gods is that gods can break humans. Negotiate now. End this war. You're watching Provoked with Daryl Cooper and Scott Horton, debunking the propaganda lies of the past, present, and future. This is provoked. Oh, man. Friday night.

Provoked with me and Daryl. Hey, Daryl. How are you doing, man. Doing all right. Doing all right. Trying not to obsess too much over all the crazy stuff going on in the world and focus on my work. But it's been tough the last few days. Yeah, it's hard to do history and current events at the same time.

Had that problem with the right and provoked. I'd be deep in Bosnia and then Russiagate. And then there'd be all breaking news about actual Ukraine stuff going on. I got to cover all it seemed like. It's like being a time traveler kind of. Well, it sure looks like we're going to war with Iran, although I couldn't tell you any good reasons why we got to. So we're going to talk about that tonight,

and we're going to talk also about Afghanistan and Pakistan. This time it's not Obama killing them all together. It's them killing each other, man, Afghanistan and Pakistan. You know, some limited strikes, but they're calling it real war. We'll see how far that goes. Some of the video looked pretty real. Yeah, and then Ukraine, too. You sent me some Ukraine news.

what for analyzing there, so we'll get to some of that. But here, so let's start with that bang old president there. Oh, no, that's the wrong one. Where is the right one? Oh, let's start with this one, man. I don't like this one at all. Share this tab instead.

Check this out, dude. So, hey. So what happened was I didn't actually click through and read the Politico piece because I'm a busy guy. But what I did was I did read the, the Jerusalem Post version that has the quotes in here. First of all, the headline,

Trump advisors, I Israel first Iran strike to boost U.S. backing for American assault. And then check out the quote here. There's thinking in and around the administration that the politics are a lot better if the Israelis go first and alone. And the Iranians retaliate against us and give us more reason to take action.

More Americans would stomach a war with Iran if the United States or an ally were attacked first, Daryl Cooper. I mean, man, okay, well, you're the historian. But so a couple of things come to mind immediately when I hear that. And the first thing is the story from 2007, when David Wormsler, the principal author of the Clean Break Strategy, and Dick Cheney's foreign policy advisor, was bragging at the American Enterprise Institute

that they had a plan to get the Israelis under Ehud Olmert then. to attack Iran, to force Iran to hit American targets as an excuse, really to force an end run around W. Bush to give him no choice but to go to war with Iran then, since Cheney wasn't happy with him not wanting to do it. And this is what was behind the EFP hoax in Iraq and all that. It was trying to force that. And that story was broken by Stephen Clements at the Washington note, but then it was double extra verified by Barton Gilman of the Washington Post,

and I forget who of the New York Times, and I'm trying to think, because I think there was one more, as Time Magazine or somebody else confirmed the same thing, that they were shopping this around. In that case, though, Daryl, W. Bush was the end

that they were trying to run around. They were trying to figure out how they could force him to do this thing that he was reluctant to do. In this case, we're talking about the White House, presumably with the president

in on the whole thing, trying to do it and run around the American public that don't want to do this. But they're talking about the same plan. The Israelis attack in a way that will force Iran to hit our guys, and then we'll be able to pretend that it's self-defense and we'll be able to rally the American people around the war in the name of the dead guys they just sacrificed. Which sounds to me like they, you know,

for various reasons, maybe don't realize the implication there, but they're essentially boasting of a plan to commit high treason and get Americans killed in order to force the American people into war. like it's Franklin Roosevelt at Pearl Harbor. Highest treason against the American people that you could possibly think of. We have guys at risk in Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi, UAE, Oman, all up and down the Gulf there, particularly in Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain. Tens of thousands of troops, sailors, airmen, etc. So, wow, you know, starting war, that's really bad.

But Pearl Harbor style FDR level treason, that's really, really bad. And here they are openly declaring that that's their intent. What do you make of that? Well, I guess the first two things that come to my mind, you kind of alluded to the first one already, is just, you know, just think of the message that that sends out to our guys and men and women that are out there right now. I mean, you're basically telling them that you are there as bait. That's what you're doing right now. In fact, there are people in the establishment, people who are in the planning and decision-making infrastructure,

who actively want you to get killed, that that's their plan. That's the first thing. The second thing, though, I mean, are they boasting about it or was this a leak? Because it makes me wonder if somebody in there is, you know, not too happy about something like this, if they leaked it and put it out there. I mean, because it does take some of the air out of the tires. obviously like your normie is not necessarily paying attention to every whatever that was, Politico story or whatever that comes out. But the fact that it is out there does, you know,

wouldn't seem to take some steam off it if they did try it. But who knows? I mean, it hasn't stopped them before. I mean, we're talking about a weird situation here, right? Where, where on one hand, Trump is under like an enormous amount of pressure, enormous amount of pressure to attack Iran. which is extremely strange to say because this is an 80-20 issue. Like 80% of Americans are opposed to us striking Iran, and yet he's under tremendous pressure to do it, which is, I mean, it's an indictment of, you know, of the, just the representative nature of our system, obviously, you know.

And so we're in a very strange place. We're getting, you know, the other thing too is we're getting so many mixed signals and so many just, forget mixed, just completely contradictory signals. You know, you'll get the Wall Street Journal coming out at 11 a.m. saying that, you know, Kushner and Wittkoff walked in there and they basically demanded that the Ayatollah send Trump a video of him on his knees begging him not to hurt him or something. And then three hours later at 2 p.m., you know, Axios or whoever will come out quoting the Iranian foreign minister or, you know, one of the Omani mediators saying, no, this was, things are going great, actually. And we're making a ton of progress and you know, we look forward to the next meeting. We've already agreed on principles. And so I mean, obviously there are, you know, a lot of this is just people are trying to manipulate and the story in such a way that Trump is backed into a corner where he feels like he has to do something. Otherwise, I mean, because look, man, like, I'll tell you one thing. Like, if by some miracle we managed to avoid this thing, you know, the Zionist establishment, the neocom. the Lindsay grant, they are going to go scorched earth on Trump. And part of what they're doing right now is trying to set the table, set the narrative table to let him know that if this doesn't happen, if anything other than you going in there

and throwing everything we got at Iran happens, we've already got the stories written. Trump's, you know, a coward Trump just shows how he's, you know, how his vice president has been cozying up to these antecese. They've got them all written already, you know, and they're letting him know them. And so, I mean, we'll see, man. It's hard for me to predict what happens. I mean, like, I don't know if you saw the interview

with the Omani foreign minister today, who's like the lead negotiator, but the lead mediator for the negotiations. And you could tell watching this guy. There's a 20-minute interview with Margaret Brennan on Meet the Press, and he's a very thoughtful guy. I mean, he was a very, you're listening to him, at least, assuming these negotiations are something, you know, that are not just a ruse to buy time to get our assets into place or something, you know, and that they are an actual negotiation. You watch that interview and it's hard to come away with anything other than a good feeling about the fact that he's the one in between the two parties.

But his feeling, and this is what he told her anyway, was that in his opinion, like both sides are, very earnest. Both sides are being very creative, very open, and earnestly trying to find a compromise. And one of the things he said today, and this was after he met with J.D. Vance today, which is pretty important, too. That's the highest level government official that's met with anybody involved, you know, of the negotiations other than Kushner and Wickcoff. After, you know, this was, he gave this interview right afterwards. And what he said was, I said a few really interesting things. First of all, that Iran has agreed in principle to give up all, like to give up their

stockpile of enriched uranium, all that, the 440 kilograms of 60%, they have agreed to, with, you know, oversight, whatever oversight is necessary to have that mixed down, diluted down to the lowest possible point, and then converted into fuel after that, which, you know, according to him, I'm not a nuclear physicist, obviously, but he said the conversion to fuel makes that process irreversible. They can't take that uranium and then like re-enrich it or something. And then they agreed to accumulate no more uranium. The second thing he said, which has been a key demand,

the second thing that he said is that he believes, this isn't something the Iranians have officially put on the table yet, but that he believes the Iranians are open to, And this is something that Obama was never able to accomplish, something Trump could hang his hat on if it goes that way, that the Iranians, he believes, are open to even having American inspectors in Iran to oversee these things along with international, you know, IA, EA people and whatnot. And so those are massive, I mean, those are huge concessions. After years of negotiations, however long it was that it took Obama, that he was never able to extract, that they that they have agreed to. and it seems to me that the Iranians are really bending over backwards to try to at least be, you know, be able to say

that they did everything that they could do short of just giving up their, you know, the core interest of their sovereignty. So if I mean, it was further than that, I mean, I think they said that, well, okay, so I'm sorry, I didn't get the first source in this. I read it from Larry Johnston and I interviewed him actually earlier today about that they actually offered also to have a moratorium on all enrichment for three to five years and then even then only enriched up to 1.5 percent, which I didn't even realize they could run their light water reactor at Boucher off that,

but still fine. Well, I don't think that's a huge climb down. Yeah. Well, this, I mean, I think this goes even further than that. Because the, you know, he also said that after giving up their stockpile and having it diluted down, and transforming to fuel, that they would, you know, that they would not accumulate anymore.

They would have a place where they could enrich uranium at a research university, like for research purposes, but that all of their fuel generation, all the enrichment that's intended to use uranium as fuel would be done outside the country. I mean, these are... That's how it was under the JCPOA, that they would ship their fuel out,

and the Russians would turn into fuel rods and send it back, and they would keep their actual stockpile of enriched uranium, very low, but and also, of course, there are big sticking points on the sunsets here,

but Donald Trump didn't have to tear up the dang deal in 2018. He could have said, hey, listen, we have an imperfect deal. I want to lift these sunsets. I want to improve the deal.

He didn't have to tear it up and do this whole, you know, maximum pressure campaign or any of this. Now he's, looks like he's trying to get back in the same deal and call it better. But whatever.

I mean, I mean, the Omani foreign ministers believe that, And I feel like he wouldn't go out and say something like this unless he had some confidence in it. You know, his belief that the Iranians are open to having American inspectors on the ground in Iran. I mean, that's really something that, you know, Trump could boast about that would legitimately be significant. And, you know, it's very interesting, too, because after that interview, man, I don't know if you've looked at, the neocons are freaking out.

I mean, you've got people saying that this is just blatant, unacceptable foreign interference in our political process. How dare he go on TV and say these things? That's like Richard Goldberg. You got Lindsey Graham going out there and saying, if any deal is being considered, just know that it's going to have to go through the Senate first. Of course, if Trump wants to go to war, they're actively trying to block the law that Rokana and Thomas Massey are trying to push through to make the Senate have a say in it. that's one of the craziest things about this whole scenario is that we literally have a situation where Congress, especially the establishment of both parties, is fighting tooth and nail for them not to have the power of having a say in whether or not we go to war. I mean, I don't know if that's

ever happening war. And it's not demanding war. While demanding that Trump, while demanding that Trump the president take us to war and declare war himself and take the responsibility, and like you're saying, vowing to fight to preclude any deal that would, you know, tend to... It's because they don't want to put their name on this. Like, you know, to the people in the establishment in Congress, like, it's a win-win scenario to them if Trump attacks a run. A, you know, their paymasters at A-PAC, everywhere else, get what they want, and everybody's happy on that front.

And B, if it all goes to hell and it ruins Trump's presidency and makes damn sure that J.D. Vance or whoever else, Marco Rubio, has no chance. chance in 28. As far as they're concerned, that's great, too. All of these people who are cheering this on, they all hated Trump until like yesterday. They still hate his guts. You know, that's that kind of thing doesn't change. They all hate him. It's all transactional. You know, Lindsay Graham, the Ben Shapiro, Mark Levin, these people were swearing they'd never vote for Trump. They don't, they hate Trump's guts. And if he ruins himself by doing this thing that they want him to do anyway, that's just win-win for them, you know? But the thing is, you got a lot of people,

especially in the Democratic Party, who are under a huge amount of pressure from their donors to support this, who do not want to put their name on it, though. You know, and so part of me wonders, like, and rather worries that whatever date they said, I think it is scheduled for next week now, a vote on Massey and Conna's bill, that that's almost, like, a deadline for this war to start, because Congress does not want to put their name on this thing. And, you know, it just, it's the same as, I mean, they even tried this with the authorization of use of force before Iraq, you know, you still, even then when it was basically like, yeah, it wasn't a constitutional declaration of war like in accordance with, but it was a, you know,

Congress approving us going to war. It's what it was. And so they did that. They had that vote. But even then, they tried to be like, oh, I didn't vote for us to go to war. All I did was vote to authorize the president. to have the authority to make this decision. It's ridiculous.

They tried it then. They sure as hell don't want to put their names on it now. And we'll see. I mean, it's very interesting. Yeah, they learned from Libya, right? Where they tried to pass an authorization to authorize the Libya war and they couldn't get it passed. They tried to pass a thing, you know, Kucinich's thing to stop it. They could pass that either.

But they couldn't pass the authorization. I think that was the last time they tried, you know. I mean, if I don't even want to do authorization at all anymore. If you listen to people like Tucker, who I've spoken to him about this privately and he's been, you know, he's on Megan Kelly last night and then his own show recently. I mean, he spent a couple hours with Trump last week one-on-one talking to him about this very issue. And he says that Trump does not want this war. He knows it's a potential disaster and he doesn't want it. if that's really the case,

like if that is genuinely the case, to me the move is obvious. Just say, look, I want to vote on this. Rokana and Thomas Massey's bill, Republicans pass it. I want you to weigh in. I want Congress to exercise your constitutional authority and let me know here.

That at least gives him political cover if they do vote for him to do it. And if they don't, it gives them the... It gives them the... Yeah, that's how. Obama bail out of Syria. Yeah, exactly. And so it gives them a... Yeah, that's how he bail out from. Or it gives him political cover. And to me, like, if he, you know, whether or not he does push for that to go through before he takes action is really going to tell us a lot about whether he's actually serious about wanting to avoid it or not. You know, because he has an out right there on the table. Well, so that's my next question for you is, and this is just like with Iraq War II,

on one hand, you have to debunk the lies about the weapons of mass destruction. On the other hand, you have to debunk the lie that this is about weapons of mass destruction, right? That's a pretext for war. We all know they're not making nukes, and we all know they don't intend to. We all know that they know that any president, including Obama, would start an aggressive war and bomb the crap out of them if they broke out towards a nuclear weapon. it'd take them at least months, maybe a year to make one.

And the assumption is, I think it's a safe one, that the satellite offices of the Pentagon would know if they were breaking out toward a nuke. If they were really trying to make a new, any president, they've already, they've all vowed would stop them. And the Iranians know that they just don't have the time to do it. So that's not what this is about. The question is whether Trump is going to try hard enough

to cut a reasonable deal on the nuclear program to take that fake Gossusbelly off the table so that then he doesn't have an excuse for war. That was what Obama was doing with the JCPOA. Netanyahu back then was beating the drum for war so hard. Obama's like, man, we need extra better inspections and a restricted program and all this to dial the tension down to,

so to take the excuse for war off the table. And so that's the choice that's before Trump here. He clearly does not have to do this at all. But if he wants a way out of it, he's got to be able to cut a deal that says, I'm satisfied with this very low level of enrichment and expanded inspections and whatever and satisfied enough that now I don't have to do it. But no one should believe that our government believes that Iran is going to make an atom bomb and then use it on New York City like Mark.

Levin was saying the other day. Some of the speeches I've been seeing from senators and congressmen about this issue. I don't know. I know you've been a busy man moving this week. So I don't know if you've had time. But bro, they're like, it's almost, it's not almost, it's insulting how, how just effort, like, how low effort the propaganda is on this. It's just insane.

I mean, you literally have people marching out there. I mean, first of you had Mark Levin the other day saying that Iran has nuclear missiles aimed at American cities right now. That their goal, that if we don't stop them right now, they will destroy Western civilization and kill hundreds of millions of people. That came out of his mouth. And you've got senators saying, I mean, just the most ridiculous things, President Trump's not trying to start, not starting a war in Iran. He's trying to end the war in Iran. It's like, just incredibly stupid stuff that shows that they have, you know, just other things where they're talking about what Iran is actually doing,

that Iran is pushing hard to build a nuclear weapon right now when nobody says that. I mean, I don't think even like Israeli intelligence would like put that out. Just like nobody says. It's like, Wesley Clark pulled that on Dave Smith on the Pierce Morgan show the other day that like, oh, they fooled the CIA into concluding that they weren't seeking nuclear bomb back in 2007. But I believe they are. And they didn't have a chance to say, then how come they don't have a giant pile of?

of them. You know who's been making bombs since 2007 and a little bit before that? Kim and his father before him. And they've got like upwards of a hundred atom bombs now. You see how that works? If you make atom bombs and you keep making them and making them and making them, then you acquired them. Here Iran has been making atom bombs for 35 years and they still don't have a single one. But yeah. And Wesley Clark, you know, if he says he's a Democrat, so that means that you can really trust him since he's the opposite of these Republican militarists, man. That's consensus there, Darrell. You see how that works? Yeah, and it's, you know, this is a, the Iraq war was obviously just a war of raw aggression,

a total war of choice on our part. I can at least in that situation say that like, well, yeah, that's all true, but, you know, we were crazy back then, you know, a year and a half after 9-11, the country was nuts. And we were just. looking for somebody's ass kick. That doesn't justify it, but it allows you to sort of understand the headspace that like somebody like George W. Bush was in at the time. This is like out of nowhere. I mean, there's nothing, there was no pretext. There was nothing that happened that like suddenly we have to address this right now. There's nothing going on. They're not enriching. Nobody says they're even enriching right now because, you know, the, the facilities are damaged and

they haven't like got them up and running again. So like, this is completely. completely out of nowhere and Tucker nailed it the other day on his show. Tucker pointed, I mean, he said it perfectly. He said that it's not urgent for us. It's not urgent for anybody in the region, any of the Arabs or anybody else in the region. It's not urgent for anybody except for Israel because they, they're looking at the polls. They understand that they have alienated Americans irreparably, you know, that their support, the only cohort that they have support with is like Republican. over 50. And even then, it's like 56% or something. I mean, you talk about like anybody under 50 and they are so underwater, it's ridiculous. And they're, you know, the fact that they've, like, the way they've responded to that, the way they've tried to deal with that through censorship and attacks and cancellation and, you know, all of these things, it's made it so that that alienation is permanent. It doesn't matter what they do. Zomers who don't like Israel right now are going to. going to dislike Israel the day they die, you know, 70 years from now, whatever. That is baked in.

And they know that. And so they know this is their last chance to use America's military to go knock off their number one enemy. It's their last chance. They have to do it now. And if it doesn't happen now, and I would even go so far as to say if it doesn't happen this week, they're probably not going to get it done. And they know them. And so, you know, given Netanyahu's messianic mindset, that I mean, I think I wouldn't put desperate measures past them right now. I mean, right up to, you know, right up to attacking Iran while they're on the phone with Trump and Trump's telling them not to do it. I mean, I think that they would, you know, be that desperate.

And so, I mean, you're right about the polls. I had a great tab here to show, but I haven't trouble with my, my junk. here, man. I was going to show you this poll result. I was reading for some reason the horrible Michelle Goldberg in the New York, New York Times. Oh, I know because it was the headline was how Israel lost America forever. And she has this poll where it just shows that they flip with America's sympathies with the Israelis and Palestinians have flipped. And I'm sorry, I forget the numbers off the top of my head, but more Americans sympathize now with the Palestinians than the Israelis. And by quite a bit,

And the line graph was pretty severe too, and it's just the violence and the pictures on social media. Can't get over. And it's still every day. They're still killing kids every day over there. Anybody on X can see it, you know? So you're right about that, that time crunch. They know that there's only nothing that they can do over.

If the rumors start to pass from the scene, that trend is just going to accelerate and accelerate. I mean, Israel is going to be, yeah, I was going to say Israel is on its way to being a, you know, 1970s, 1980s, South Africa in terms of just polling and how people feel about them. That's where they're headed in the United States, which is like, you know, their eggs are all in this basket.

People talk about all they're cozying up to India or whatever. It's like, good luck with that. Yeah, have fun. Like, they need the United States. This is an absolutely unique relationship that they cannot replicate with anyone else, you know, this period of time where they had this, you know, this mass population. probably, I mean, tens, maybe 100 million people in this country

who are evangelical Christian types who just bought in to the, you know, idea that the 1948 founding of Israel was some kind of a founding, a biblical prophecy fulfillment. And so that's going away. Their support has melted away already, and this is before the boomers have even really,

you know, really kicked off the scene in massive numbers. And so they're going to be, you know, themselves. You know, not a, not a 50, to 49, not a 60-40. Support for Israel is going to be a 30-70 or 20-80 position, you know, issue in the United States very soon. And so the clock's ticking, you know, and they want to turn the Middle East to dust before that happens. And, you know, we talked about this a little bit last week. Their goals in Iran, to the extent that, you know, there are any honest hawks in the American establishment, you know, just people who aren't just in the tank for Israel taking their money

and blackmailed by them or whatever. Like, honest talks, you really think that this is something we got to deal with for whatever reason. You know, their goal is not to have Iran turn into Syria and spill out all over the region and destroy all of our other allied Arab countries and Turkey and everything else. But that is 100% Israel's goal. Because it's a, you know, for them it's a double win. Iran gets taken off the board and all the rest of the Muslim countries in the region have to deal with the fallout for the next, who knows, decades maybe, you know? And so they really want to get that done and they really want us to do it because, A, they can't do it themselves. And, and B, you know, it gives them a sort of, you know, it gives them this diplomatic umbrella as if, I mean, it's the thing, this is the joke about

this entire situation is the idea that, you know, this is somehow at all between America and Iran. Like, we have a problem with Iran and we're trying to deal with that. And then there's also Israel that that is just complete and total nonsense. I mean, this is, again, the polls show 20% of Americans think we should strike Iran. This is not even remotely a controversial issue in the United States. Well, you know, it's funny because our government is owned by. by the Israelis and that is it. They always say that, you know, there are a greatest ally

and there are unsinkable aircraft carrier over there. And then I always like to joke that like, yeah, but we don't have any Air Force bases in Israel, right? They're not a strategic asset to us. We have advanced weapons stores over there, but they always just raid them and take those weapons and kill Palestinians with them. And now for the first time,

they've actually stationed F-22s in Israel to fight in. in service of Israel. Nobody in the world thinks that, yeah, the empire is now putting its client state to use and is going to have its client state go fight its war. Nope, it's the other way around as it has been for a generation. Yeah, it's made one purpose only.

Those F-22s are amazing airplanes, but they are, you know, their interceptor aircraft. And they have one purpose being, or rather two purposes being there in Israel. One is that they can go up into the air and help intercept incoming. cruise missiles and drones and things like that. But then most likely they're there to help clear a corridor,

an air defense corridor, if they can, for incoming bombing runs. And so, you know, there's only 11 of them, but they are amazing planes. And the fact that they are there, I mean, what do you think about what China's doing? That's very interesting to me, man. Like, for them to be going and taking pictures of our deployed aircraft and ship, and putting them out open source on the internet, that's a pretty direct, you know, confrontational act on their part. And it does show that they've got some level of serious investment in this

because there'll be a long time before certain people in the American government get over the fact that they're doing that and whatever else they're doing behind the scenes. Yeah. So I talked to Larry Johnson today again, for people not familiar, a former CIA officer, Sonar 21 is this website. where he writes and he does interviews and stuff all the time. You can find them on the YouTube's there. Scott Wharton Show is my other show.

It'll be on there soon. So one of the things that he emphasized was that there was a new tripartite pact that was signed last month or maybe earlier this month between Russia, China, and Iran, where it's not like an Article 5 war guarantee, but they pledged, you know, material support for each other. So this is, you know, pretty big deal. So you had the Chinese not just posting those pictures, but passing them these sophisticated radars

that are supposed to be able, you know, long wave radars, they're supposed to be able to detect stealth. But we talked about that last week. But also the Russians, and I think you mentioned this last week too, the Russians have sent them the SM-4s. S-400, yeah. Oh, S-400. I used to know the name of that a couple things ago.

I don't know how many of those units they've sent them. I believe it's confirmed that they've sent some. I don't know how many, though, but that's, that is important. I mean, those are. And he was saying to that he said that Alistair Crook, and I admit this, that Alistair Crook had, you know, shown, I don't know, but I like that guy. He's a very good guy. He was one of the very first people to talk about CIA support for the terrorists in

Syria in 2011, early 2011. So very reliably. And Johnson said that Alster Crook had figured that. all of the taking out of Iranian anti-aircraft in the June war, June 25 war, that that was all done by sabotage from people inside the lines or, you know, close quarters, you know, attacks on them rather than airstrikes. And that Israeli planes, he said, didn't even enter Iranian airspace, that they took out, you know, everything they did from standoff ranges,

which I didn't know about that, you know, that could be true. You know, it wasn't what was reported at the time, but I don't know. I really don't. But so it leaves open the question. And look, the nature of the way that the war played out last June obviously leaves open the question of how hard the Ayatollah would fight back in the event that Trump does start bombing him. You know, if you go back to the W. Bush days, the Pentagon told W. Bush, man, we don't want to do this for one main reason. And then we had 100,000 troops embedded with the Shiites fighting in Iraq,

who were all going to get stabbed in the back like Order 66 in Revenge of the Sith if we started bomb in Iran. And the leaders of the Madi Army and of the Bada Brigade had all sworn that they would, you know, fight for the Ayatollah. So that was a big one. But it was also all those bases in the region and everything else. They said, we don't have escalation dominance here. They have too much power to fight.

On the other hand, you look at it from the Ayatoll's point of view, Actually, America has an extremely powerful Navy in Air Force and can put firepower on stationary targets, at least, to devastating effect, and including civilian government targets, as well as military targets. So if they want to really beat the living crap out of Iran, they can, and the Iranians know that.

Now, I had told them those that there's only so much they can do. And last June, they just fired a symbolic level of missiles, the same as they did after the assassination of Soleimani. That, like, here's just a little bit of a open-hand slap so that you can't say we did nothing. We're not pacifist. We've got to save a little face, but all the predictions that they're going to launch every last missile they have,

then again, you know, that could all be right because if the very state itself is threatened, that is, I guess, what the textbook would say that you would expect a regime to do, especially a supposedly religiously inspired revolutionary regime. They're going to absolutely fight tooth and nail to the very end.

And after all, our troops are right there within missile range, right? So why not hit them if it has nuclear weapons, including the United States, it's considered, it's doctrine that if you were about to get, your government is about to get overrun and wiped out by an enemy, you unleash the nukes. I mean, that's like, that's considered

a legitimate response to something like, you know, that kind of a threat. If Russia ever feels like, you know, the NATO tanks are coming through and Moscow's like going to be taken down, everybody would expect them to unleash your nuclear weapons. This is what anybody would do, who has them. And so, you know, if Iran really does feel that way, that, you know, it's either, you know, one of the problems is, like, Trump can come. out and say, you know, I want to do limited strikes or I want to do X, Y, and Z that, you know, that'll keep this thing contained. But, you know, if you're on, Iran doesn't know if it's on day two of a three-day limited strike package or if it's on day two of a three-week devastating strike

package that's going to wipe them out, you know, they don't know. And so you run into that same, the same problem that nuclear power is always game out, which is you get into a use it or lose it scenario, you know? And he's just supposed to sit there and, like, wait until their missiles get blown up in their bunkers and just that's it? Or do we just use them, you know, and try to... Because, I mean, the other thing is, too, is, you know, the... If you listen to, like, J.D. Vance, for example, I thought this was very hard to understand.

I mean, I understand that he... I get that he's trying to allay domestic concerns about this, but, you know, he went out and said that there is zero possibility that this will become... some kind of a protracted conflict. There's no possibility that that's going to happen. And I get it. He wants to, again, allay concerns, but you're also sending a message to the Iranians that,

you know, we understand the political situation here in our own country. It's not in favor of this going on. And so the Iranians, like, they have no reason, you know, to buckle once the shooting starts. Like, they have every reason to believe that as long as they hit back and maybe avoid doing something like sinking a carrier

that really might just sort of put Trump into a corner where he feels like he has to go all in or something like that because I don't think. There's a lot of people who think that if they sink a carrier or something that we're going to limp away and call it quits, that is not going to happen. Yeah. And so.

Good news is those things are really hard to sink. I saw a thing where they were throwing away and all one. Yeah. It's impossible to freaking sink, bro. Like that's one thing a lot of, in fact, all of our modern ships, like, they're incredibly difficult to sink. We had this like older, not even one of the DDGs, one of the D's, the old Spruance class ones that we were testing out. We decommissioned it. And so we were testing out a bunch of our weapons on it.

We hit it with the five inch guns. We hit it with a couple harpoon missiles. We finally had to, we hit it with a couple torpedoes still wouldn't go down. We literally had to send us EOD squad onto the ship to plant, explosives like they were blowing up a building to sink that thing. And so these things are well engineered. They're very hard to sink, and carriers are the hardest thing to sink of law. Incredibly difficult.

Well, with that said, we've never had anything, any ship hit with a hypersonic missile before, which has a completely different, you know, sort of means of sort of dealing damage, you know. Like a lot of hypersonics don't even have explosives in the warhead. It's just the pure speed of the thing coming in. it's like a comet hitting you. And that's where all the force comes from. And so we don't exactly know what happened there, but they're very hard to sink.

And, you know, I, yeah, it would be, it would be very surprising to me and probably to, to everybody if the Iranians just took a, you know, took some shots and didn't, and didn't escalate just for all the reasons that we just laid out. Yeah. And it's interesting because, you know, again, if you listen, I, after, after we could off this. You've got to watch the interview with the Omani foreign minister. It's only 20 minutes.

And he is almost begging Trump. Give us a couple more days. Like, we are, we have a deal in hand right now that he believes both sides are essentially, they need like another couple days that, and this

thing can be done. And you know, to not, like to not give him those couple days, like we agreed to have this guy mediate this dispute, you know. And when you do something like that, like there's certain obligations that come with that, you know?

Like, everybody's seen like a movie or a show where there's like two gangs that are at war with each other and they both go to a third gang and they, you know, he agrees to sort of, you know, pick a neutral territory and mediate, you know, a parlay. And if one side shows up

and ambushes the other side and starts shooting, everybody knows that's the bad guy, you know? Because not only if you, have you done something to dishonorable to the enemy, but you've disrespected this third party who agreed to, like, put his name on the line for you, you know? And so when he's there basically begging you for just a couple more days, if you don't give it to him, after watching that interview, him outlining what the Iranians are prepared to give up,

and him essentially just begging for another couple days to hammer out the last bit of detail, to me it just shows that this whole thing was just a ruse again to get our, to buy us time to get our assets in place. I mean, that's it. And, you know, look, this is, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this potential conflict is so much a war of just sort of whim. It's not even like, like a war of choice makes it sound like, you know, it's not strong enough. It's like a war of whim, you know, this is just something that somebody woke up one day and decided to do. There was absolutely no event that served as a pretext for it that if we do attack Iran, any American that gets killed on a ship and an air,

craft at a base. Any American that gets killed will have been murdered by Donald Trump and Benjamin at Yahoo, period. On the other hand, if Trump manages to avoid this somehow, if again, that is his actual desire, if that happens, then I know a lot of people out there, including myself, who have been extremely critical of him, we've got to give him credit for that when the backlash comes, because the neocons are going to go scorched earth on him. And, you know, this is one. One of the things that I was talking to somebody who's a right-wing, hardcore critic of Trump, and I was making this case to him. And I was saying, like, look, man, like, Trump's a transactional guy.

He probably is not under any illusion about the fact that people like Lindsey Graham and Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro hate his guts. But the way he looks at it is, if I do what they want, they'll support me. If I don't do what they want, they won't support me. if your position is if Trump does what you want, you won't support him anyway because screw him. Why should he listen to you? Why should he care? I mean, you'd be like, oh, you should just do the right thing.

But it's like, yeah, American politics. He's a calculation above everything else. So that's, yeah, man. And look, he ran and won on this twice. And, you know, he clearly desperately wants a Nobel Peace Prize and all these things. He wants to be known as a great peacemaker. Now, it's a lot easier, like we're talking about with the Congress, you know, the way they push and pull. It's a lot easier to be a great warlord.

We come to rule Washington, D.C., take the country to war. They'll love you, you know. That was what the Democrats stood up and clapped for at the State of the Union was when he threatened Iran, you know. Just look at Bush and Cheney now. That's not what the people want. The people want peace, you know? I mean, Bush and Cheney, those wars are universally agreed to have been complete and total disaster. Total waste of money, waste of life, waste of time, everything.

Total disasters that where everybody agrees we're sold to us on lies. Everybody knows that now, right, left and center. And yet Bush is still, you know, he's back. He's one of the boys. Like, he's cool. You know, he's hanging out with the Obamas and Nancy Flitt, whatever, you know? And so, like, it really does just go to show you. And so, you know, I've heard from people who have not steered me wrong in the past.

who are very connected, that this thing is all but decided, and it's just a matter of timing at this point when we go. But I don't know, man, I have to, like, at least, I have to retain just like a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of optimism just because, you know, yeah. There's no question that he told the military, get ready, if I tell you to go, be ready to go.

That is a fact. You know, no question about that. But I think that Tucker is right that he's not decided yet. He probably won't decide until it's actually the order to go. I don't think he's going to decide and then give the order to go in a few days. I think he could change his mind up to the last minute. I think public pressure matters a lot. You know, his legacy and all of that stuff.

And I don't think it's too late. You know, there were people who said in August of 13, while we're going to invade Syria for al-Qaeda now, and there's no way to stop it, but people rallied against it. And, I mean, all credit to Breitbart at that time, they were like the headquarters of all things like right-wing media at that time, and they railed against that thing.

And all the Republicans called their congressmen and said, I'm not falling Barack Obama into battle for al-Qaeda and Syria. I'm just not. And if you vote for this, we'll never forgive you, you know? And that was it. You know, the entire Republican right refused to support that war. And Israel wanted it bad. There just wasn't enough compared to the phone absolutely ringing off the hook with people saying absolutely not. And, you know, especially, you know, the Tucker tactic

of saying, look, you know, I support you, but don't do this. That's the right way to do it. You know, that your base are the ones who are opposed to this. As you said, the people like Lindsey Graham and Mark Levin, who always hated him because they, saw him as unreliable on this issue. They're the ones who are fair weather friends and all of that, think that they can use him and exploit him this way. So I don't know what Tucker told him, but I'm sure, I know he tried.

I mean, man, I saw his monologue. He did that great monologue and an interview on Wednesday all about this. And so he must have really, you know, told him everything he needed to hear there. but I would say like people should call that White House comment line. It's, you know, I don't know if they don't take calls on the weekends and all. But certainly on Monday, if it hasn't started by then, people should just call and say in a positive way, we support Jared Kushner's negotiations here. You know, that's, you're doing the brave thing by negotiating a peaceful resolution.

That's the Trump we want. Trump, the Peace Prize winner, you know? I can tell you. Tucker and I were. texting back and forth with each other when he was in his car, in the car, leaving the White House. Like, oh, yeah. That fresh. And we were texting back and forth for a lot of the rest of the day. He left that meeting convinced that Trump does not want this, that he wants a way out of this,

but that he is under extraordinary pressure, even more than, you know, having Lindsey Graham give a mean speech about you on the floor of Congress kind of thing, that, that, you know, he's trying to figure out. I mean, look, you know, and part of the thing is, too, you know, all the big buildup of forces, I mean, I think the leaks that we've heard are probably true, that Trump really did think that this would just get the Iranians to buckle. And that that was the hope and the plan was to do that. But once they didn't, it's like, okay, well, now you kind of made your bet a little bit.

Because now, unless you can come away with a deal that is significantly better than, you know, it has something in it that you can point to us significantly better than the JCPOA, then, you know, I mean, Mark Levin's going to call you a coward and say you're slinking away and bound to tariffs anyway. And so, you know, but there's another meeting scheduled on Monday, which, you know, after last June, it's hard to put any stock in this kind of stuff after the way we handled the outbreak of that war. But there is another meeting scheduled on Monday.

And as of now, Rubio is still scheduled to go to Israel. second and third of March, which is Monday, Tuesday. And I kind of doubt they're going to start shooting missiles at Iran and inviting retaliation when the Secretary of States in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. So who knows, maybe that's a, you know, maybe that gets canceled, the, you know, the moment, the days he's supposed to leave or whatever. I will say this, like the inner schizo in me comes out a little bit on this. I, you know, I was poking around in like some of the dark corners in the internet.

internet and like all of this stuff is true this is doesn't necessarily matter to anybody in the american system but it does matter to some people you know rubio's going there on the second third of march which coincides with perm which is the jewish holiday celebrating the massacre of 75,000 persians in in the book of esther it just happens to be a blood moon that night you know and you have like your book of revelation seven revelation six twelve says saying that the moon shall become his blood, you know, in the final days. And then this is even crazy. Did you crash call your office, please.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, I got an even better one for him. It, the blood moon. This is on March 3rd, 3.3 peaks at 3.33 a.m. Oh. And yeah, and 3 is an incredibly significant number in Kabbalah. And it, this is, like, the icing on the cake. And everybody can look all this up.

This is all true. The number three in. Kabbalah represents, it's a highly significant number that represents a third party or third element coming in and ending a conflict between one and two. Oh, there's prophesied that Marco Rubio, see, the Lamb of God in the great book is Marco Rubio. Not David Corret. It's a little on the nose, man. It's a great problem with the, you know what?

That's as plausible a theory I've ever heard about Marco Rubio as any. All right, let's change the subject to a different war. Pakistan, going to war with Afghanistan. Now, I know what you're saying, that wasn't it the ISI that put Taliban in power in the first place with Bill Clinton's authorization back in 1996? And the answer is yes, of course. And then you're saying,

but that whole time from like at least 2005 through the end of the war, Pakistan was back in the Afghan Taliban against the United States there, right? as a hedge against Indian support for the Tajik's and the Uzbeks and the Hazaras in the regime that America built in Kabul. And you'd be right about that too. But now the Pakistanis say that the Afghan Taliban are, one, giving safe haven to the Pakistani Tariki Taliban inside Afghanistan, who are still tacking Pakistani government targets. And they're in league with the Indians who are maintaining their influence that America, you know,

bought for them back when. And it seems like it's mostly small skirmishes, but there's been some air strikes now on Afghan Taliban targets down in Kedar and in Kabul. They showed in the New York Times here they had some pictures of some destroyed buildings. Let's see. Uh, yeah, where'd it go? Well, maybe it was something else I was looking at that had where there had been some airstrikes that had taken out some, some arm's depots and things like this.

So, you know, one side has nukes. I doubt they'll use them. But I wonder if the Pakistanis are regretting all that time that they spent stabbing America in the back, back in the Afghan Taliban against our guys there. And now they don't like them and are dealing with this. So that's another potential very tough war. You know, hopefully they'll, someone will pick up the phone

and help to negotiate something there. You got anything for us on this? I saw that the Saudis who have a mutual defense pact with the Pakistanis now said that they're ready and willing to send aircraft to support Pakistan if needed. And I listened to an interview with the Pakistani, I want to say it was the foreign minister today on Al Jazeera. And man, it's so crazy. Like when you listen to like, when you listen to world leaders, that really, really hate each other. It's kind of jarring, you know,

because everybody always kind of like couches their terms. Like, you know, at least like when they're like not on Fox News or something like that. Like if they're on international like stage, they couch it in some kind of, you know. I mean, he was just, he was just like talking about there's not an honest Indian in the world that we can talk to. And they're in Afghanistan directing all of this. And, you know, it's no. coincidence that this all kicked off right after Modi visited Israel because it's all part of one larger plan to distract and harm Pakistan like while all this is going on. I mean, it was,

it was pretty wild and kind of refreshing, I guess, to hear somebody who actually says what he thinks on, you know, with that level of directness. But, I mean, it doesn't seem like this could really turn into anything particularly, particularly destructive, like at the scale of, you know, like say a war with a round or something, just because the Taliban doesn't have the kind of combat power as far as I know. I mean, I did see some videos. They were,

they'd clearly learn to use some of the equipment we left them. But, you know, a lot of that equipment is, once you start using it, it starts to break down. And once it starts to break down, you need repair parts that they don't have and they can't make. So, I mean, yeah, I don't know.

It was surprising, though, to me. I didn't see it coming. I didn't realize that, I mean, look, the Pakistani Taliban, that's a nasty, nasty bunch. I mean, they've had these skirmishes going on for months. I interviewed a guy about it. An Afghan living in the Netherlands or something had me on his show,

and then I interviewed him. And he was to explain all this a couple of months back. I'm sorry, I forget the guy's name. Dude, what about that article I sent you about Ukraine and the Daily Mail? Yeah, so we have that here. Now, and I have another one on Ukraine to talk about two. And we're almost at the top of the hour, and then we need to at least take a couple of super chats for our friends here.

Thank you, everybody, for tuning in, by the way. Good to have you, like, and subscribe and all of that stuff. You want to tell us about this piece in the Daily Mail here, Richard Pendleberry, after four years of covering this horror, I'd bad dreams so I can go back home, and I fear we're on the brink of a greater disaster, which we are wholly unprepared. Yeah, dude.

I mean, I heard. I'm talking about the war between Russia and Ukraine. Yeah, so when I sent this in a text message in a group chat to you and Dave Smith, Dave responded that he's going to go listen to a martyr made podcast now to have something like light and refreshing to like clear his mind. It is so dark, man. Like, you know, he's talking about in there how Ukrainian soldiers are, like, that he's either witnessed or gotten direct stories from people, that they're cutting off body parts of their dead comrades in order to provide proof that this person was killed so that that guy's family can get compensation from

the Ukrainian government, that one guy cut off his friend's head because he was trapped under a bunch of rubble and he couldn't get the body out so he cut the guy's head off so that his mother could give her son a Christian burial. That's where we're at with this, this damn war, man. And I don't want to, like, I know my grandma occasionally peeks into this, so I don't want to swear. But man, just anybody remotely associated with this catastrophe, they're going to have a lot to answer for one day, even if it's not while they're here on Earth. Because what a freaking nightmare. I mean, just a total, they just had another exchange of bodies. You know, it's so, so ridiculous. Like, you always hear all this, there was somebody the other day. It was, it was an actual, like,

I don't know, I can't remember if it was a foreign policy analyst or a government official, but somebody who is a well-known person was talking about how the Russians are, losing 40,000 people a month and they just can't sustain this much longer. This was like this week they were saying this. Well, they just had an exchange of bodies, exchange remains so people could get their, you know, their sons back and bury them. And the ratio is just insane. Like, over the last year, the Russians have given the Ukrainians like 17,000 bodies and the Ukrainians have given the Russians like, literally like 500, 600 or something like that. And so the casualty ratio are clearly insanely against the Ukrainians.

You know, just every day more and more of these videos come out of wives trying to defend their husbands who were getting yoked up on the street to be sent to the front line of people trying to fight these guys. I mean, this is a slave war, essentially. I mean, this is like a, you know, not to say it's not still motivated, like, you know, Ukrainian nationalists who were out there fighting,

and obviously the ones who were going around rounding people up must be, you know, into it somehow. But, you know, when you're reduced to that level, when you're going out and having to physically subdue people and throw them into the back of a van so that you can go give them three days of basic rifle training and send them to the front line, that's a slave war. You know, that's like an old school, like slave army. And it's so disgusting. And now we've got, I mean, we've got the word now that, you know, the Russians came out and said that they've got intelligence that the French and British are, you know, talking about providing nuclear weapons

to Ukraine, which, I mean, you know, on one level, it's like, I guess you can't be surprised about anything anymore these days, but man, like, are they that crazy? Are they really that insane? I don't know. I really don't anymore. I don't think so, man. That would be absolutely the end of the non-fliferation treaty. And just, I don't know, man. I mean, I hate to argue that cooler heads will prevail, but that's the kind of thing that's just so completely stupid. Look, there's one more on Ukraine here. Real quick, I want to share with you. Share this tab instead.

This is Andrew Bolitsky, who is, you know, I'm always picking on him because he's a Hitler-loving Nazi. He's a nice Vermont liberal, right? Very anti-war, kind of calm, cool-headed guy. So he's the leader of, was the patriot of Ukraine gang, part of the Social National Assembly. directly descended from the OUN, UPA that served the Nazis in the Second World War.

And anyway, so he's the founder of the Azov Battalion, later the Azov Brigade, and then now it became then the third separate infantry division and then also split the 12th Special Operations Division of the National Guard. But he leads the third separate infantry division, which has now been christened the Third Army Corps. He's one of the most important Army generals in the war

and it's probably, you know, fourth or fifth place for vying for power to be the chief executive in the future here. An extremely dangerous guy, and he's author, you can read on anti-war.com,

I reprinted his whole speech on the blog there, racial, social nationalism, which is some pretty lunatic Nazi claptrap type stuff. Anyway, so point being, he's an extremely important general in this war,

now promoted to general, and he says, listen, what we have to do is we have to whoop up on the Russians real good and get this to a stalemate. Right now, the Russians are winning. If we can get them to a stalemate, then we can negotiate, not from a position of strength, but from a position of a stalemate, at least,

from a position of having halted their advances, then negotiate. So this is as far to the nationalist right as you get there. And he's essentially saying, yeah, we lost and we're losing this much of all of Lujansk and at least virtually all of Danyetsk, you know, four-fifths of it or so, plus the third or so of Soproja and Kurson they've already lost.

And who knows exactly what he has in mind there. They don't really say in this article. But I thought it's worth pointing out here. I finally just, and here's some news, I finally finished recording the audio book. I still have a lot of editing to do. but I finally finished recording the audio book of Provoked. And there's a lot of it in the coverage of the war in that book where I talk about,

you know, Biden and Zelensky government officials admitting all along that they're never going to get Crimea back and that they're never going to get the Dombas back. And it's going to be a matter of negotiations. The only question is when and can we get in a position of strength before we deal and all of these things. And so here it is four years later of just steadily losing more and more and more territory. And here he's still saying we should. shouldn't deal now. He's saying that they got to somehow, you know, halt the Russian advances

before they can deal. But anyway, my point is just to me, it's a major concession from even the furthest right military leadership in that country that like, look, daydreams are fun and everything, but we lost the war. We can lie about casualty numbers all we want. Doesn't make them true. Doesn't change the reality on the ground. So might help with American Webster. and flows, but doesn't change the reality of their manpower. So I just thought it's worth pointing out that and call it confirmation bias if you want, Scott Horton cites the Nazi he hates when he agrees with the same assessment, but fine, there you have it.

Even Andrew Bledski admits that all romantic visions of Ukraine aside, the reality is the Russians have taken back in Novo-Russia, that's it, and the Donbass. and so that sucks for you, but it is what it is. And I don't like this honesty and especially on things like this. So there's that. Now, let's take a break real quick here and just let me tell you about Matt Sersely.

He's a lawyer, not an accountant, he's a lawyer, and his thing is he knows you're trying to run a business and that you're trying to not give all your money to the government. And so what you should do is you should hire him so he can help you pay them as absolutely little as possible because they are the state and they are the enemy. They should be starved with all revenue and you should spend that money on your own family instead or reinvesting it in your own business to make it better.

So you call Matt Sersely. He's not here to help you cheat. He's here to help you stay exactly within the letter of the law and protect your assets. So do that. And then also check out this, man. This is my gigantic project. It's a huge success of Scott Horton Academy and get positive feedback from it all the time. I have spent a lot of years studying the Middle East and Eastern.

Europe and I wrote some books about it and stuff. And here's me giving courses so that you guys can catch up with all of my anti-war stuff that I learned and how it all works and including a lot of stuff. So check that out at Scott Horton Academy.com. And then now Mr. Darrell, let's look at the comments, see if we can do some super chats before we get out of here. And I do have to get out of here. I got some.

Can I make one quick request? You do whatever you want. Yeah. So I think we're at the point now. where when we're talking about somebody like Andrei Beletsky in his like racial, social national party and things like that, instead of calling it Nazi clap trap, I think we're at the point now, we can start referring it to Zionist clap trap. How about that? Oh, there you are. Thank you. I like that. They have a lot of things in common, those guys. Hardcover for provokes. Yes. Good question. So here's the answer to that. As I'm going through the audiobook, oh, my God, I found 10,000 errors in there. I mean, I call. Zelensky Putin or whatever.

I mean, I just absolute misstatements and typos and just idiot. Oh, my God. If I hang myself, don't think, oh, it was a CIA conspiracy. It was just the pros. I'm not a writer. I'm a radio guy. Anyway, yes, I haven't made 10,000 corrections. Now I'm going to read it through one last time.

And then I am going to put out a hardback version. I'm also working on, that is, I got a buddy working on a hardback version of enough already. with all the footnotes put in it, which I left out the first time because I was in such a dang hurry. So we're going to have the hardback version of that, and then I'm going to fix all typos and update a little bit

and put out a hardback version of Fools Aaron, too, if I can, sometime this year for those things. And oh, sorry, I should have put that on the screen. Someone actually asked that. Yes, I'm working on that. Fear and Loathing as a book. You know, Daryl, we had talked about writing a book about Palestine at one point.

I do have an outline for it, huh? Yeah, I like your idea for how it might be structured. It almost is like a Q&A type thing. But Fear and Loathing is like if I were to try to just transform that podcast in the book, the difficult part is I mean it's so derivative of existing, you know, existing works that I would just, I would feel very self-conscious about putting it out there as a book. Doing it as a podcast a little bit different because I think people think of them

differently and just for my part, you know, I look at it as something I'm very openly sharing other people's work with you. But yeah, I don't know. I've had some offers from various publishers about that and stuff and I just, I've always been

just a little too self-conscious about it, I guess. Yeah. So what we had talked about was we would take like all the, all the bogus cliches that design is used. We have no partner for peace. They love it when we kill their children

more than we don't love killing their children or whatever Goldemeyer crap, you know, that they come up with all this Hasbara slogan. And then we would go through and explain why those slogans are a bunch of crap, why none of them are true. And that's why they rely on these catchy and kitschy little things to get people to repeat, you know, to basically shut people's minds off. So you stop arguing and you just repeat the little cliche.

So I thought we could do some damage with that. I just hate writing like a reference book one of them on. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I just, I hate writing books, man, and I always just overdo it, and I just, and I hate Israel. I don't want to write a book about Israel. And in fact, I think we'd even decided then,

you know, what we could do, we could still just hate Israel in front of people and through other mediums and not write a book, man. Writing books sucks, dude. Maybe someday, I don't know. I'm changing the subject now. I don't want to think about writing a book anymore. It's the worst part of my life.

Libertarian Overwatch. I forget this guy's name. It was a unique name. But we got to make friends. This guy, you got to subscribe to his substack area, but he's really great. He has been putting out a serial type deal there, like every Wednesday, on the color code of revolutions. And you know how I was really thorough on all of them in Provoked? Well, he's even more thorough.

He goes all the way back. He does Slovakia and Albania and Croatia and, of course, Serbia. and then now he's getting into, he did the Rose Revolution, now he's doing the Orange Revolution Part 1 and 2, and it's just fantastic, absolutely fantastic stuff

on the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, USAID, George Soros, and the not Iraq War, but all the rest of the regime change industry going on in Europe, you know, in the Clinton and W. Bush years there. So far I move forward.

It's really, really great stuff. Libertarian Overwatch. He's called on substack. And so, very good stuff there. Happy to recommend. And those are just fascinating, the color code of revolutions

and how they got away with it all and everything. So much great stuff. All right. Thank you guys. I want me to read your comment out loud. You gotta give us some dollar. Here, this guy says,

oh, it's Derek Wheeler. We're publishing Derek Wheeler's book. Did you know that? Oh, it's so good. He was like, man, he'd think he could maybe publish the book. And I said, I'll tell you what, don't give me a rough draft.

Get that thing all the way, for me and send it on. Let's take a look. Oh, my God, it's so good. It's better than my book. He knows all this stuff that I don't even know, and it's all in there, and it's all really good, and it makes me, it's one of those books where I go, oh, man, I didn't know that. That should be in my book. And now it's too late. Oh, no. Brilliant genius. Brilliant book. And it's coming out very soon, like before the summer. Sometimes it takes a little while and get these things in in process here at the institute. But we publish books at the institute, and Derek Wheeler's is great. Now he says here.

Oh, Senator Kennedy says, I told he's going to drink American blood from a boot. I'm not sure if that's hyperbole or not. I really like that guy some of the time. That Senator John Kennedy, he makes me laugh when he picks on these liberal judges and stuff, but I hate to hear that he's such a tool. Hey, get this.

So my congressman is, oh, it's on the tip of my tongue. Whatever. Plain old Texas, Walsby guy. But guess who's running against him is, I want to say it's John Connolly, but that's the governor almost got shot. No, but guess who's running against him? It's the shamwow guy.

Oh, yeah, that's your congressman. Nice. He's running in the primary. And his name is, his name, his first name is, his name is Offer Shlomi. And he's from Israel. And I'm like, oh, it's John Carter. I want to say Connolly for someone.

John Carter is my congressman. Cookie Carter, Republican, you know, probably Baptist, you know, whatever. Plenty Zionists. Plenty. He's on the defense appropriations committee and he doesn't cause trouble, Daryl.

He's one of the guys. But nope, not good enough, man. They're bringing in Offer Shlomi who beat up a hooker. And is the Ronko guy still around? Maybe we can get him to jump into the race. Seriously, man. All right. So this guy, get this.

Did you know this? Wesley Clark. in the files, sucking up to Jeffrey Epstein asking for money. Is that right? Is that true? Well, I believe you because you gave us five bucks. At this point, at this point, if you're over 50 and involved in politics and even a tangential way, I'm surprised if you're not in there, it seems like.

It just seems like that guy was so connected that, I mean, he had his hands on everybody. Yeah. Do I tell you I had a dream that the other Scott Wharton was in there and everybody was? to have me. And I was trying to convince them. They're like, no, it's not me. And then in the morning, and they didn't believe me, in the morning I went and checked,

but neither of us are in there. So that's good. Obviously, I'm not. I'm nobody, but he's, you know, a law professor and things. He's a New York City guy. He could have, you know, but he's not in there. What is Israel's long-term plan?

Do they think they can hold all their neighbors in chaos permanently, even if they lose American support? I mean, I guess. You know, worms are in a clean break, or maybe it's in coping. He doesn't exactly say we should smash all these countries into their smallest tribal warring factions. But he does say, you know, these states are all very artificial and they really are made up of these smaller warring tribal factions. You know, he's sort of, and so, yeah, that's the deal. What is the clean break?

The clean break is the clean break from Oswald. low. The clean break is, since the Netanyahu fan murdered Yitzhak Rabin, we don't have to do his two-state solution deal. Forget it. Which it was always a half-ass two-state solution deal, but they said, we're not even doing that. He said, we don't have to anymore. And what we'll do is we just have peace through total dominance over our neighbors. And so that was the doctrine. So, and then as we've talked about before, you know, it's part and parcel of Zionism, on one hand, very contradictory, right? They need American support.

On the other hand, they need the narrative that everyone in the whole world hates you just for being Jewish and it's a good thing we're here to protect you. And that, of course, that's what all states tell their people. But the Israeli state is, you know, they push that stuff really are that kind of paranoia. They like saying the whole world is against us and that's what's good about us. That's what proves how right we are, is that everybody disapproves? They're just jealous of how awesome. Like that Louis CK bit where he's like,

the girls, oh, he's just upset because he can't deal with how awesome you are, dude. Like, yeah, are you sure that's what it is? It just can't deal with how awesome you? All right. Anyway, man, we might have run out of super chats here, Mr. Coop. You want to wrap up for us here? Oh, putting me on the spot.

Yeah, thanks, everybody. buy coffee with Scott Horton's name on it. Go visit the Martyr-made Substack and have a great week. Hopefully, when we talk to you next time, there will not be smoldering ruins on all sides of the Middle East. This has been Provoked

with Daryl Cooper and Scott Horton. Be sure to like and subscribe to help us beat the propaganda algorithm. Go follow at Provoked underscore show on X and YouTube and YouTube. Tune in next time for more provoked.