Provoked with Darryl Cooper and Scott Horton - EP:54 - Iran War Restarting?

Episode Date: July 10, 2026

Darryl Cooper & Scott Horton discuss the war with Iran, arguing that escalation offers little for either side while major obstacles remain to any durable settlement. They also examine the weaker-than-expected military position, political pressure around the conflict, and the possibility of a limited exchange of strikes rather than a full ground war. They then turn to Israel, Iran, and U.S. politics, including Rahm Emanuel’s speech in Israel, the Democratic Party’s position on Israel-Palestine, and efforts to keep Israeli policy insulated from changes in American public opinion. They also discuss AIPAC and related attempts to deepen the Israel relationship within U.S. institutions. Finally, they review Syria and Abu Muhammad al-Jolani’s background, including his ties to al-Qaeda in Iraq, and connect that to patterns in U.S. policy toward Islamist factions in the region. They also answer listener questions on Ukraine and other topics and mention several ongoing book and course projects. Chapters: 0:36 Iran War and Israel Lobby 1:48 The Logic of the Iran War 3:42 Hawks Demand Surrender 10:02 Sponsors and Side Bets 11:16 Trump’s Mixed Signals 15:24 Israel’s Political Squeeze 21:29 New Books and Courses 31:32 Oil, China, and Iran 35:49 School Strike Fallout 42:49 Rally Around the Flag 45:45 Netanyahu’s Nuclear Lies 47:48 Syria’s New Ruler 50:09 Jolani’s Jihad Past 55:39 Al Qaeda as Tool 1:00:11 Ukraine and Super Chats 1:06:27 Skateboarding and Aging 1:09:18 Waco and Thermite 1:11:59 The Bible and Fundamentalism (Cleaned up w/ the Podsworth app. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://podsworth.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠) Sponsors: Expat Money: Secure your international Plan B: ⁠⁠https://expatmoney.com/provoked⁠⁠ Agorist Tax Advice: Pick up a free copy of the brilliant Matthew Sercely's Agorist Tax Toolkit at: ⁠⁠https://AgoristTaxAdvice.com/provoked⁠⁠ Scott Horton Blend Coffee: ⁠⁠https://moondoesartisancoffee.com/products/scott-horton-supreme-breakfast-blend⁠⁠ 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here we go. Someone's already claiming this is our year. Someone else said that last year too. A round of Jameson, Ginger, and Lime arrives at a table. Smooth enough for kickoff, smooth enough for extra time. New friends pulling up a stool. Debates about whether that was a handball.

Cheers rising like a roar around the room. Because match days are about the shared moments. How did Jameson to your match day lineup? Jameson, it's what you bring. Please enjoy our products responsibly. on the show. Libertarian right-wing fusionism centered around opposition to American foreign policy. 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 a provoked. Darrow me, Buki. Welcome to our show. How are you? I'm doing all right. Brother, how are you? I'm doing good, man. I've been power washing things all day, so it's basically the best day of my life. I love power washing things. Did you know there's a thing on Reddit? I had to quit Reddit because I was spending all

of my time addicted to power washing porn. It was destroying my life. I had to get off of it. It is very satisfying to do. You know, assuming you don't have to do it 40 hours a week or something maybe, but just that feeling of watching whatever it is just gets stripped off. It's pretty satisfying. It's like I've been cutting down a lot of trees out here with my chainsaw, you know, and just you got a big one there and you cut the wedge in and you start cutting it from the other side. And then it hits that point where it's like, boom!

And it's so satisfying. And especially when it doesn't go the wrong way and hit your house or something like that, like in the YouTube's. I've almost become a YouTube star because of that more than once, yeah. Careful, Cooper. We're going to talk about important things on the show. Are we going back to war? It's so funny, if you just judge the war by our thumbnails from our every Friday show,

the war's on, it's off, it's on, it's all. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Now it's back on, but I don't believe it. I'm sticking with my previous bullshit. I think that Trump and the new Supreme Leader over there are both in the same boat here in that neither of them want to go back to war. Neither of them can win.

Neither of them have anything really to gain from going back to war. America already ran out of targets. We hit as many as we could. It didn't make a damn bit of difference. We can't degrade their missile capability faster than they can use it on us. And so what? And then they've already been kicked up three pegs.

Any further conflict with the United States doesn't really do anything to benefit them that I can see. And so they've already won what they won. Any more war is just destruction and cost and worse that they have to make up later. So it seems like, but then again, there was every reason in the world not to do this in the damn first place. So I can line up all the incentives in my head that I want. It doesn't mean that it's going to work.

Obviously, we still have Hezbollah and obviously majorly Israel. We have endless quarrels in the Gulf where, as I am. understand it, Cooper, that America's trying to skirt the deal, and that's what they're not getting away with. That's what led to the strikes on the ships the other day, is they're trying to go through Elman's waters instead of Iran's and all of that. And then we still have the completely unresolvable nuclear issue, as long as America insists on being unreasonable, which they do, Washington does. So there's a lot to say that they can't work. There's these huge obstacles. But then again, all the reasons that we shouldn't have done it

are still in play for reasons why we need to wind the thing up as fast as we can we have nothing to gain. People are talking about all these neo-conservative hawks and whatever, you know, Mark Levin and who are saying, finish the job. Danny Davis, I was on his show. Thanks, Danny Davis, Danny Davis Deep Dive today. And he played a clip from me of Keith Kellogg saying,

oh no, the deal needs to be that Iran gives up all of their nuclear stuff to the IAEA with American advice. on the ground overseeing it all, and all support for Hamas and Hezbollah, and Iraqi militias and the Houthis, and give up all of whatever missiles they still have left over. And it's like, this is, used to be Donald Trump's advisor. This is a four-star, or at least a three-star general talking, Keith Kellogg.

Like, what we need to do is just line up all my magic wishes and make them come true. But I had no idea how to get between here or there. He sure didn't suggest how to get between here or there. Now, I'm just sitting you up to answer me and taking in as many of those things as you can into account and plus whatever else you think I might need to know. I mean, yeah, basically, I don't know even how seriously to take a guy like that.

You know, he's in a position where he doesn't have any responsibility for what happens. And so he can go out there and say, we need this, we need that. And if we don't get those things, he can say it's because his advice wasn't followed or whatever it is. You know, he can just say those things. He's not responsible for making it. it happened because basically what he's asking for, what he's demanding, is unconditional surrender

without having to do the work to procure one post. You know what I mean? It would have been like after Doolittle's raid on Tokyo, if we were like, all right, now put your emperor on his hands and knees and dog walk him to the White House, like, you know, you got to do the work. And none of us are prepared to do the work. Like, Americans are not ready for that. We don't want it. And, you know, Like, the thing is, like, doesn't it seem like, like, all the things you said about the untenability of continued military action, you know, and it's sort of having, having maximized the results from that pathway already, all that stuff is true. And, but, you know, it doesn't really look to me like there's any kind of a plan here. Like, the plan is we have to hit them because they hit us. All right, well, now they have to hit us because we hit them.

And, you know, we just can't lose face. We can't be the one who didn't. get the last word in. And it is difficult. Unless Iran decides, and I could think of some ways that they might see things that could lead them to believe this. But unless Iran decides we're going back to war, like real full scale, you know, kind of intensity. Yeah, I think that I don't think we'll be the ones who push it like that.

Because, I mean, when you, we've talked about this before, it's been a little while, but you know, when you get into the actual systems that were destroyed in the initial weeks of the war by Iran, on our bases, specifically I'm talking about the early warning systems, which are not replaceable, and the fad batteries, which we proved, you know, that one that we brought over from South Korea got destroyed in like less than a week. I mean, we've kind of proven that we cannot protect those things, which means we're in a much, much, much weaker position than, than we thought we were when we launched this war. You know what I mean? So like from a military standpoint,

and I happen to know this for a fact, I mean, the Pentagon, the highest levels at least, or well, the highest uniform levels, are advising against continuing this, you know, because they don't feel like they have been given any instructions as far as missions, like what the mission is that can be accomplished by blowing more things up. Sorry, to clarify, you're saying you have information from the Pentagon saying that they're advising against it.

Yeah. Yeah, I have friends who are, you know, he's not like the chairman of the Joint Chiefs himself, but they're in the room with those guys. And, you know, really the consensus at this point is if we're going to continue military strikes, let alone escalate, then we need a clear mission. We need to, so that we can tell you whether it's achievable, how it's achievable. But right now they're just not being given that by Hegstath or by obviously by the president. And like, as long as that's the case, I mean, the military is going to be really reticent. At the end of the day, they're going to follow orders, of course. But, you know, it really, you know, I wonder if there is an element in Iran and maybe a growing element that thinks that the

ceasefire in general was just a mistake, you know, that we needed it more than they did, and they did it, you know, for reasons that make sense, but that all it's really done, that we have no intention of living by any agreement that we are not absolutely militarily forced to accept. Anything short of that, we simply will not abide by it. And we'll find ways around it and, you know, just whatever it is. And so at this point, it wouldn't surprise me if there was an element inside Iran that just thinks that they're, you know, their best course forward. If they want to get to a place where they're past this, where they're done with it, is to just fight it out. And the problem, of course, you know, is nobody's putting armies on the ground.

And so fighting it out just means, you know, continuing on both sides to basically fight this as a terroristic war, where you're just sort of blowing things up, trying to make things difficult on civilian populations, trying to put pressure on governments by attacking, you know, infrastructure targets that upset the civilians. And so, you know, I do think we are at a military impasse, but I, you know, I wouldn't think for a second that that doesn't mean it can't just go on and on. Right. Yeah, exactly. The unreason of it all is no argument against it. Not really. Not in this century, not in my lifetime. That's not usually that goes. All right, listen, we got to do a little bit of business here. This is our new great sponsor, expat money. It's Mikhail Thorough. He's been an

expat, essentially his whole life and is essentially a real expert at how to live everywhere and where you can own property and where you can't and to what degree and what taxes are like and where you can park your money and how to have a plan B and save your net. So if you go to expatmoney.com Then they'll know that you're out here by way of this show. And you'll get your free booklet here. Plan B, Residencies and Instant Citizenships. That's expatmoney.com slash provoked. And as long as I'm at it, let me tell you too about Matt Sersley,

another great sponsor of ours. He is at agoristtaxadvice.com. That's agoristtaxadvice.com. And his deal is he hates the government as much as us, as much as you. And he wants to prevent you from, providing revenue to the central state as much as a lawyerly possible. And so that's what he's here for.

If you want a small business or your high salary type professional, and you have money and you mean to protect it from the man. And check out your new lawyer, Matt Sersley, at agoristaxadvice.com. So now, the thing about a lot of this, well, as Trump, you know, he says so many different things. And, you know, you guy and I got to read into it as best you can, like, you know, weigh the tea leaves and the criminology and the thing to sort of speculate, like, what he really means. Like, there was one statement that got a lot of attention, Darrow, where he said, yeah, now, as far as I'm concerned, I think the MOU's canceled. But you can tell he made that up on the fly and answered to the lady's question.

This was not like, he said this morning, okay, the new policy is the MOU is canceled. And if anybody asked, that's what I'm going to say. That was not what happened. Like, clearly he's just going, yeah, I don't know, it looks like it's canceled to me. And then today he's going, oh, but they're begging. They're begging for a deal. They want a deal so bad.

They're calling me begging for a deal, which means he's backing down and he's going back to the talks, right? Is what that's code for. Thank God, right? So, you know, I don't know. I really hate to put too much stock in the real world incentives against it. But like you're saying, your source is telling you that the Pentagon is telling him that, look, we don't want to do this anymore because we don't have a plan. We don't have a good strategy.

You've given us goals, essentially, force them to somehow forsake Hezbollah. Well, they're not going to do that, okay? You can drop an H-bomb on Tehran. Otherwise, Tehran is going to back Hezbollah. That's the facts of life, Jack. you know what? Israel shouldn't have invaded Lebanon in 1982 then. Tough shit. Those are the rules. That's the iron law of the universe. Israel's occupation, they stayed too long, they humiliated the Shiite people of Lebanon. Now they have a Hezbollah to deal with.

Tough. But there's no number of bombs we can drop on Tehran or some coastal city or some cave full of missiles that's going to make them change that strategic calculus. Forget it. Forget it. So what's next? Oh, their civilian enrichment. Well, what have they said this whole time? They've said, you can kill us, but we're never given up our enrichment. And then we killed them, and that's still their position, the ones who are left. So we're not getting anywhere there.

So you know what I mean? Like even if you're Donald Trump and you really like believing the things that you say a lot, if the chiefs are telling you, sir, we're actually kind of up against a wall here in terms of what we're able to do. then you have to accept that. That's just reality. So, you know what I mean? That's your Overton window, whatever window it is. That's your window that you're allowed to wiggle within.

You can blow up some boats in the Strait of Hormuz, or they can and then you can hit them back, whatever. But you're not calling off the talks. Not really. You know what I mean? Maybe temporarily, whatever, suspend them. But Switzerland has to continue because what other choice do they have? They really just had no choice here.

so. And I even, and that goes for Netanyahu too. I think he'll have to, at the end of the day, at the, maybe at the end of the negotiations, he will finally have to be reigning in. Just because there's no other way to continue. You know, people say no, he'll just insist on dragging us back in and continuing the war. Obviously, he's up against prison, and that's a huge incentive for him to mess around. But ultimately, he's going to drag us into a war that our president's already really given up on, right, and has no option to conclude. I don't think he's really going to disobey that severely. He didn't do that to Obama. As much as he threatened to,

he never dragged Obama into a war that he, that the president of the United States specifically said, don't you drag me into, you know? Yeah, especially given that, you know, in the Obama days, he still, like Israel still had the option of retreating to the Republican Party, which is what they did. And nowadays, if they turn on Trump or do anything that loses,

they got no home in the U.S. I mean, because the definitely, Democrats aren't taking them back. You know, maybe some of their leaders want to, but their base isn't going to let them. Yeah. Speaking of which, so that's a great segue into our next subject. Brought to you by Liberty Stickers.com. That's Liberty Stickers.com.

Everybody else's stickers suck. And this is a speech by Rahm Emanuel. Now, you might remember that he was a member of Congress, a Democrat member of Congress. He became chief of staff to Barack Obama. He's the one who convinced Barack Obama to drop close. in Guantanamo and to, you know, help to pressure him to escalate Afghanistan and a lot of bad things. He also, in fact, before 08, he was one of the leaders of the Democratic Party that in the elections of 2006, he had, he ran the DNC at the time, or the DCCC or whichever it was.

And he made sure to, that the Democratic Party favored all the pro-war candidates in the primary and worked against all the anti-war candidates in the Democratic primary in those six. And in every case where the anti-war candidate won anyway in the primary, they won in November. And in every case where Rahm Emanuel succeeded in keeping the anti-war candidate out, they lost. So that's who he is. He's a piece of shit. And in fact, his father said some kind of quote, because someone asked him, well, gee, with Rahm Emanuel up there, is that mean that Barack Obama is going to be a good defender of Israel?

and his father said, yeah, well, he ain't there to sweep the floor, is he? So that's who Rahm Emanuel is, Mayor of Chicago, okay? So that's all I know about his biography, but that's all you need to know, okay? But anyway, so he gave this big speech in Israel that's essentially supposed to be center-left liberal, Democratic Party, you know, desperation trying to cling on and prevent themselves from being totally swept away by the left over this issue, which they are being completely crucified.

on right now. And then written as tough love to the Israelis. And essentially what he's telling them is, listen, I'm your guy. So you listen to me, right? Well, I'm telling you, your blank check days are over. The American people are pissed off right now. And they're not going to put up with these grand schemes of greater Israel. The West Bank, forget about it. We are doing a two-state solution because we have to. And I don't know how serious about it he is. Obviously, he can't get anywhere near the presidency. Maybe he'll be chief of staff again.

But he's, I guess, trying to set the tone for the center-left liberals for the Clintonite democratic machine of like what is their new position on Israel-Palestine here. I mean that, but I think he's also just a concerned Zionist, you know? Like, if I had that disease, that mental disease,

I would probably be saying the same thing. if I was, you know, if I really cared about the future of Israel, that's the message I'd be trying to get across to them, is that, you know, it might be even too little to say you're losing the American people. I mean, because, you know, like short of a proven Iranian nuclear attack on, you know, Wichita or something, I mean, the people who have turned against Israel on the left and right, especially you look at the generational breakdowns, that is not something that's going to change, you know, because of war ends or because this, this is the kind of like deep,

visceral, emotional, especially since people have been attacked and forced to defend this, you know, this position in public for which they'll be attacked by people, seeing people that they like to listen to, be attacked, you know, for, for voicing opinions that they themselves hold. That's how you, that's how you forge views in people that stay with them until they go to the grave. And it's, you know, it's going to be, these aren't, these are not, the support for Israel is not subject to sort of a policy change or a shift in tone or anything like that. I mean, you know, I think that a lot of the ships have already said, I think that's why they're pushing so hard right now for the merger between, you know, the Israeli Ministry of Defense and the Pentagon, you know,

and all of the different things they're trying to put together there because it's like, it's like they're taking out an insurance policy against American public opinion, you know? Yeah. Yeah, they know that their time is short. Like, we can't have our relationship with Israel subject to the democratic process, like, because we know how it's going to go. So we have to take it out of that and put it over into this other container, you know? Right. Yeah, it's insulating Israel against the democratic process and the possibility that aid could get turned off. The American people with a vote in the Congress could just insist that we're not doing this anymore. You completely abet all their

research projects and development projects and everything with the Pentagon. You play the Lockheed game of spreading out Israeli money, Israeli military industrial money in each little congressional district all across the land so that every single congressman or as many as possible are blackmailable on, oh, Congressman, you can't vote against that. That's 300 jobs in your district or whatever it is as they do. That's clearly what they're doing there is trying to protect themselves from the will of the American people. Yeah.

And honestly, I don't even think the whole thing about cutting off the official aid package, annual aid package to Israel, I really think it's kind of a red herring. It's like they'll find a way to get that money through one channel or another. I mean, it'll make its way over there through, you know, some vehicles that don't get accounted for in that way on the federal budget or something like that. They'll figure it out. And they'll be able to say, hey, we don't get aid from the United States anymore. And so, I mean, I think that's why you even have, like, Netanyahu saying, yeah, it's probably a good idea because they understand, you know.

But, yeah, I mean, if they don't, if they don't do that, then Israel is going to have to, you know, carry out their threat to go be buddy buddies just with India and, you know, lean on them as their superpower savior. So, because they're not going to have the U.S. Yeah, goodbye Israel. India, you can have them, dude. You can have them. Not worried about that at all. All right. We got more news to cover here, and especially along these lines. But let's do a little bit of bidsness here.

Everybody, guess what? Martyr Made has a substack. What is the American Century Part 1 that just came out today, Darrell Cooper? Very interesting stuff that looks like. Yeah, so it's just a series of essays and interviews that I'm going to be doing for, I don't know, probably a little while.

I mean, it's going to be a long series. going to be thematic rather than, you know, chronological. And just go through the history of the American 20th century and, you know, really kind of pick apart the underlying forces that drove events and then get into some of the actual events. And so what I'll do is I'll write essays like this first one here on the emergence of mass society, you know, mass communications, mass democracy that really, I think sort of is the context in which, you know, all the other events of the, you know, all the other events of the 20th century take place and really kind of everything kind of follows from the emergence of the public as a political actor that I set the table with this one. I'll be covering a lot of

different topics and so I'll write essays but then I'm also going to bring in, you know, subject matter experts and enthusiasts on various topics to discuss things and interviews. And I'm open to suggestions, you know, for topics to cover, people to talk to about them, etc. And so I'm going to be doing this on the substack because I've been leaving my substack. people just hanging for too long because I've been just laser focused on this next episode of the World War II series, and I've been kind of hung up on it lately. I'm pushing hard to get it done by the end of this month. But, you know, I need something that I can do in the meantime that I can devote a couple hours a day to and still get some regular content out to the substack people. And I can't do that by picking topics I know nothing about

because there's just not enough time to research those and do the World War II series. and live my life. I mean, so this is, you know, this is a topic I've thought a lot about, read a lot about, and I can do, you know, something I can put out, you know, a weekly piece doing two or three hours a day and then getting back to the World War II series. So, yeah, I'm excited about it. It's going to be fun. And I encourage everybody who's not already a subscriber to check it out.

By the way, I know you got some stuff too, but I forgot to tell you, I'm going to have to buy a couple of those stickers, right? So I went to a new barber recently, like this week, just this week. And I get there and dude has a Rothbard shirt on and a taxation is theft sticker on his little mirror there where you look at your hair. And as I got there, he was like, are you, are you Daryl Cooper? I was like, oh, yeah. He's like, oh, he's a big fan. Everybody in there is a big fan.

And I was like, you must be a Scott Horton guy. He's like, hell yeah, I love Scott Horton. That's how I found you, et cetera. So I got to get him a sticker and bring it down there for him next time. Very nice, dude. We got really great stickers, man. LibertyStiggers.com. Everyone else has stickers are not any good.

Hey, listen, also I got a substack. Not that I'm jealous or anything, but check out my substack. I finally published chapters W. Bush and Obama on my substack of my provoked audio book. They are all the way done there. The Obama chapter is eight and a half hours long. Just Obama. Bush is, W. Bush is only like four hours,

something like that. So that's very good. And then check out this, Darrell Cooper too, dude. Blam. APEC, the tip of Israel's lobbying spear, a new course at the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom,

hosted by the great, by the dare I say, heroic Grant F. Smith, America's foremost chronicler and critic of the American Israel lobby, the real history of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. And just look at these chapter titles. Founding of A-Pact, Zionist activism, Truman, Ike, JFK, LBJ, Nixon and Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, final thoughts. Oh yeah, dude. The whole whole, dirty, nasty, disgusting history of the Israel lobby mucking around in the United States of America. Isaiah Kennan and his bastard spawned the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

And I'm sure the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, it's bastard spawn spawn spinoff is in there too and all of these things. And I actually haven't had a chance to consume it all yet because I've been double checking and making sure there are no bad takes left in the two audiobook chapters I just published publicly. I think they're still, I think they're okay. But then I'm starting this next. I'm knocking this the hell out, man. I can't wait. And I, you know, everybody out there watching or listening to this. Like, I, we all love going and listening to Scott Horton, tear up neocons, and we like these courses and stuff.

We've got to get out there and push this stuff on people who aren't like already enthusiasts. You know, I was talking, and why I say this, I was talking to my doctor this week. Great guy, older guy. wonderful guy. Smart, really smart, obviously, you know, just, yeah, he's his doctor. And we were talking about Iran and bro, the things that came out of his mouth. Like, I was just, but he's like, well, but, you know, I mean, if, you know, Iran, I mean, we do know, right, that their whole plan, their whole reason for existence is to destroy Western civilization, right? And if they get a bomb, then, you know, we're not going to find out because they tested it. We're going to find

out because they lobbed at Tel Aviv, because they don't care if they die. And I'm like, I don't even know where to start. You know? It's just like, I don't even know where to start. And what I need to do, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to send them a link to the right academy courses. And I'm like, please just go through this. And then we can have a conversation because this is just ridiculous.

Dude. He's an educated man who follows the news and like is, you know, he's not like, listens to podcasts and stuff. He's not just some rando like Normie who, you know, heard about this, overheard somebody talking about it on the subway or something. It's crazy, though. Yeah, I know a skater. I don't know if he's still bad on things. I still know the guy.

He's a good guy. And I remember having a conversation with him in the parking lot at the skate park in, like, 2006, 2007. And he was highly educated in every stupid, idiot, wrong Iraq war talking about. point, right? Like, he, he read Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds, you know, instapundit every day. And he had the entire case against Saddam Hussein, like, wired, right? But like, are you kidding? You know what I mean? But, like, man, he was good at that. So. And it's more because, like, sometimes for, for guys like us who, like, I, or at least myself, like, I find myself sometimes, like, almost so taken aback that because I'm not used to sort of yeah you know like when I'm arguing with

somebody that I disagree with on one of these subjects it's like we start way over here and when someone starts way back here I'm like oh my god I don't even remember how to get back there so that we can start the conversation normally there's just so much stuff that's like kind of doesn't need to be said and as but yeah the academy would be great for that and I'm going to send him a link actually as soon as we're done find the right course and send it and look i mean whatever the books and therefore the courses are all just full of things that piss me off right like that's all they are are just collections of outrages those are the things that i can't forget so those are the things that make it into the book right so but they're good like going back over the the audio book i'm like man

this is really good so and same thing the courses are just based on it really is you always denigrate your writing. You're like, oh, you're like, oh, I have like a lot of information and cite the sources and stuff, but I'm not any kind of a writer. They're easy to read, which is what a good writer does. Like, it, you know, it's not Cormick McCarthy and, you know, nonfiction prose, but it's like, it's easy to read. Like, you pick it up, you read a chapter, you don't feel like you have to slog through it, you know? So you should give yourself more credit on that front. Oh, thanks. Yeah, I do try to, because it's so many different things, I do try to do a light touch on each thing and only cover them as much as I absolutely have to.

There are only a couple of places in Provoked, for example, I really beat a dead horse to death. Like the NATO promises, the Ukrainian Nazis, Russia Gate. That's about it. Where I'm like, look, man, this is controversial. So let me really prove my point here, like, and go above and beyond here. Nobody ever made the case about the NATO promises as good as I did. Because I got all the different things all in one place for you.

And I didn't know what to leave out. So it's all in there kind of, you know. know, comprehensive deal. But then the fact that I'm not a good writer is actually a benefit, right? It just means that I'm very brief. A lot of these chapters of these little subchapteres, they don't even end with a conclusion paragraph. They don't even end with. So what did we learn? Right? Like, they don't even have that. They just like end with a quote or something. And then just on to the next subject, man. And because what was I going to do? Go back and add more stuff. It was already a thousand pages long. So anyway, so yeah, it should be brief enough to get through.

I'm glad you liked it. And you were supposed to write it, so especially I'm glad you liked the way I did it compared to what you had in mind. Also, I wanted to bring this up because I still get asked this a lot. People interview me a lot. And they ask me about this fourth-dimensional chess stuff

and how this is all about Trump's brilliant plan to monopolize all the world's oil and all of this. Here is his Treasury Secretary saying, look, the Chinese are the only ones who are getting Iranian oil at this point. Everybody else on Earth, is so afraid that America's going to turn the sanctions back on that they don't want to do anything.

They don't want to move a muscle. So they are getting ships out of the Gulf, but those are ships coming from Kuwait and Bahrain and Saudi and wherever. But Iranian oil, Iran, sorry, China is the only country that's buying it from Iran at this point. So again, like we're talking about last time, America's empire in the middle of the east. We're just securing, we're running this era.

And look, I suppose there's a possibility that Netanyahu or his friends convinced Trump they're like, yeah, and this is going to give us the leg up against China somehow or whatever. You know what I mean? But this is how it's played out. Remember, just a couple of weeks into the war, he was demanding that China come help and open the stray to Hormuz for us because he would have to do it. And when he went to Beijing, he reportedly asked Chairman Xi to ask Iran to please open the stray, and he told him no. And then so now this whole whole thing. whole thing. China's the only one getting Iranian oil and they're buying it out of discount.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the only people I really, I hear that argument from are people who want there to be any other, any answer other than Israel dragged us into this war. Like this is their sort of, this is their out. This is their sort of, you know, their escape route from that. And I mean, yeah, look, I mean, I guess from a strategic standpoint, if you control a choke point or control natural resources, then that's strategically helpful in many ways, sure. You could make that argument. But the idea that, you know, we went to war because of that is obviously silly. You know, I did see that we were using, and this is, I think, one of the reasons that Iran lost patience with the memorandum of understanding is that what we did is we said,

okay, we're going to lift sanctions, you know, temporarily, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. and then we just behind the scenes use massive diplomatic pressure to just tell everybody you better not buy that you better not and China was the only one that told us to piss off and we probably didn't even try it with them

but like once you know when that's the case when Iran's calling you know people who should be their customers countries that should be their customers and they're saying oh we can't do it sorry we just you know met with the ambassador in the US we just can't and all the ships that end up going over to China I saw I saw somebody talking about a bunch

of Iranian ships were like we're just oil ships were moored off of China full or anchored off of China full of oil still. And they were saying, yeah, China doesn't want their oil. It's like, no, it's just that China's taking all of it. And so it's a lot and it takes time to process and like offload. But yeah, it's just a question of like whether, whether we have any intention of really being serious about this. You know, if we have any intention of trying to reach, you know, reach an arrangement that allows us to move past this five-decade-long sort of impasse

that the two countries have been at. And so I don't think as long as Trump is president, I don't really think that that's going to be the case. I think that Trump is entirely focused on, you know, he's interested in public perception, and that is it. I don't think he cares about anything else, in public perception specifically of himself. And so I think he's perfectly content.

to sort of just drag this out, occasional tit for tats, okay, we're back to the table, okay, now we hit them, they hit us, now we're back to the table for two and a half years until it's somebody else's problem, you know, and if he's still alive, he can go on Fox News and say, oh, if I was still president, by God, you know, this war would have ended.

You know, the day I was inaugurated in 2029. Like, it's just, that's all I think he cares about. Man, it, God, I hate hearing you say that because it sounds impossible, but then I have immediate flashbacks to Joe Biden and his people. Like, well, we got to make sure. They're like saying in 22,

we've got to make sure that the war continues at least through the election of 24th so that we can get Biden reelected on the war. God dang, dude, you're going to drag this thing out. How long now? You know what I mean? Now here we still are fighting that one. I wanted to mention this too, dude.

I owe this guy an email back, I guess. I mentioned this on, it must have been the Rogan show, was the one that got me a response from the guy about, guy emailed me in good faith saying he didn't buy it about this school. And I provided him some evidence and reason to believe about the American strike on the school. But after that, I looked further and I remembered better what I was talking about that I had screwed up.

And I went and found it, and I never did email the guy back. I should find him and email him because the two best pieces of evidence right away, video and visual-wise, for your own eyeballs edification here, okay? Is that we have, from the New York Times, we have overhead footage of this IRGC base,

which this school building, everyone agrees, used to be part of this base. Then they built a wall between this building and the base and made it to school, but like 10 years ago or something, a long time ago. But they have New York Times published pictures of every single building in this compound is hit with the exact same signature strike. They all got hit by Tomahawk missiles, okay? Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, and including the school too,

they all have virtually the exact same pattern of damage to them all. Then it's the Washington Post that has a still photograph of what's clearly a Tomahawk, cruise missile hitting not the school, but another one of those buildings on that base. Okay? So this is like, Your Honor, I don't have a conviction maybe, but I have probable cause at this hearing to hold this thing over for trial here. Okay? We have a still photo of a Tomahawk hitting an adjacent building.

We have the school hit and we have overhead footage of all these buildings seem to have been hit in the exact same way. Right? So like, that's good enough. right there. That's pretty proof positive right there. Then we have official sources, although unnamed, but Pentagon sources,

as well as White House sources, meaning either Trump's direct staff or the National Security Council sources, told the New York Times that it was a DIA mistake, a targeting mistake by DIA. So, and they were saying there are preliminary, our

preliminary investigation says, yes, it was us, but it was an accident. Sorry about that. Actually, not sorry about that, but it was an accident based on bad targeting data, defense intelligence agency's responsibility. That was what they told in New York Times. Now, CNN, and I know it's CNN, and look, what can I say? They completely destroyed their credibility forever with their Russiagate hoax and with, you know, so much of the absolute insanity that they push. They turned themselves into MSNBC over the last, you know, what, 10 years and completely disgrace themselves. They had that one great story about al-Qaeda in Yemen

driving around an American armor personnel carriers. But other than that, they've just got nothing to show for themselves. So take it for what it's worth as far as the source, but this is exclusive U.S. commanders bypassed warnings about outdated intelligence ahead of the strike that hit this school. So what the story says is

that they were warned that we should not go ahead with this stuff until we go back and double check it all because this stuff hasn't been reviewed in a long time. And then they just said, nah, forget it, it'll be fine, you know. Which is amazing, by the way, that we spent months building up our forces in the region and nobody went back and double-checked the target deck that's been there for you.

That's just insane, but part for the course, I guess. And it says here that they knew immediately what had happened there and whatever. Yeah, this is like I'm glad that the guy who wrote you, you know, was coming to you in good faith and everything. I can tell you for an absolute fact. from people that I, the same people that I know at the Pentagon, we know what was us. Nobody doubts it was us. The people inside know it was us.

The question is, who's responsible? Was this information that was passed to us by Israel? Was it the DIA? Did they not, like, these are the debates that are being had and the things that are being investigated. The question of whether or not it was us, I mean, you know, I remember when it was still kind of unclear, I mean, you know, you have obviously like just the circumstances at the time,

It's like if I do a drive-by shooting on your house and kill you and your wife and your daughter's in the bed and I say, well, yeah, but that was actually Scott went in her bedroom and shot her in the head. I didn't actually do that one. I'd be like, you probably did that one. You know, it's kind of ridiculous. Like, just second of all, like, this was in the initial set of strikes before Iran started launching back drones or cruise missiles of their own. And, you know, a stray anti-aircraft missile. you know, that's trying to shoot down something and, it's not going to kill 160 girls. It's not going to blow up an area that big. Those missiles are, they're fragmentation missiles that are meant to punch holes in airframes, you know, of aircraft and missiles. They're not high explosive sort of large impact missiles that are going to kill that many people. And so it's just, it's just ridiculous.

It was obviously a cruise missile. The picture was obviously a Tomahawk missile. As soon as I've seen a lot of Tomahawk missiles, I've been very up close with them. I've seen them launched a million times. It was obviously a tomahawk missile. And it was definitely the case. The other thing is they were trying to say it was like a, you know, it was a stray or this or that.

The thing is like those things have multiple redundant navigation systems. Like we 100% were trying to hit that building. Right. The question is, you know, whether we knew it was in there or whatever. But, you know, at a certain point, it's like, who cares? Like, it doesn't really affect. to my opinion that, I mean, yeah, it would be worse if we did actively try to go kill a bunch of little girls. But at the same time, it's like, if I do that drive by on your house and be like, oh, I was just

trying to hit Scott. I wasn't trying to hit your daughter. It's like, I don't really care. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's still criminally negligent homicide either way. And yeah, I agree. There's no, there's no way they missed. They were trying to hit that building. It's just they were not being careful about what was, what that building was and who was in there. And, you know, they did a double tap on it too. And the families came to Yeah. Well, because all, yeah, they did, yeah. And look, I said before, it was Adam Johnson, the leftist media critic,

who pointed out that the death toll, at least I think they revised it down slightly to like 150 or whatever. Originally it was like 168, 167, something like that. So you include the mystery leg in Oklahoma City. That's the Oklahoma City bombing death toll right there. Only instead of 20 children, the entire building virtually,

you know, a few teachers, but otherwise virtually the entire building children and virtually all of them girls. And then, you know, it's funny because I didn't put this together immediately, but this was obviously part of what we were talking about. The people of Iran were supposed to rise up and take the opportunity with the bombing campaign to overthrow their government and all that.

And all it did was lead to the rally around the flag effect where, as we've seen this week, millions, literally millions of people came out in the streets. for the funeral for the Ayatollah comedy. And I don't know if you saw this, they took his body to Najaf in Iraq and billions came out for him there too. Well, this is the rally around the flag effect.

To quote Bill Clinton, the Oklahoma City bombing saved my presidency. How do you know, do that in an Iranian accent. Now you're an IRGC commander. I couldn't even do the Bill Clinton accent. I hate that son of bitch so much. That was what he said. The Oklahoma City bombing saved my president.

presidency. He said that on Air Force One right after the election, November of 1996. And he said the people rallied around the country and me as its leader against the forces of darkness of the terrible right-wing radicalism and the thing. Of course. Of course they did. In fact, that was what the terrorists were counting on, McBae and his neo-Nazi buddies. But what they hoped was that the FBI would then go launch massive crackdowns against Nazis and militias across the country, and that would force them to fight back and bring on a cataclysm, right?

The action is in the reaction of the opposition. But instead, because he killed so many children, all the militia guys around the country, even the Nazis were like, forget you, do? We don't want anything to do with that. And so, and the FBI, I don't know, for whatever combination of reasons, did not go and do mass raids against various armed groups,

right? they probably called them up and told them, you guys don't want any trouble with us, right? And they were like, right. And that was the end of that. It really destroyed the militia movement at that time. Actually overnight, rather than leading to the reaction. But that was what he was hoping would happen,

would be that it would make everything worse for everyone and leading to supposedly the victory of his side in the end. But anyway, yeah, that's what happens when you bomb a school full of little kids. People get mad at you, not mad at their leadership, who got them into this mess, right? Shocker. By the way, it ain't just the American people that Netanyahu has been lying to

about Iran's nuclear program. I thought this was funny. This came out at Alster Crook's website this week. Netanyahu actually claimed in an interview, and you see, he's being sly here anyway. He's avoiding an outright lie. If you're charitable to him at all, in an ironical type of a sense,

what he said was that, Iran had nuclear weapons in their grasp or like in their hands, which is not exactly saying they already had one, right? It's saying that they were on the cusp or they almost did or whatever. But then he got in huge trouble politically in Israel. And Gadi Eisencott, the former chief of the IDF, Naftali Bennett, the cause of September 11th and once in future prime minister of Israel, and a whole bunch of other important politicians.

and media people came out and called them out for it. And so there's just an outright lie that Iran had nuclear weapons or that they were making nuclear weapons. And at some point, Darrell Cooper, there's a line where when an Israeli prime minister lies, people just can't stand for it anymore. Like, look, man, stop telling me things that I know for fact are not true, okay? Kind of bothers me, you know? I mean, they have more dignity than a lot of the people I know

who are still supporting Trump, honestly. Like, I would just, it drives me crazy when I, to see people, I'm like, I understand you have a side. I understand you have like a perspective, but you're a human being, right? You don't like being manipulated. You don't like being lied to, you know, if somebody walks up and tells you a lie straight to your face, like, you know, you're supposed to have a visceral reaction against that. You're supposed to get angry. And for people to just keep swallowing it, it's so gross. I guess Israelis, you know, they take themselves a little more seriously than a lot of people I know.

Tough. Man, and especially after this one, too. I mean, what are you going to do about this, Daryl Cooper? Trump says Syria's president, Abu Shara, they're calling him now, respected by everyone. Yeah, not respected by Trump, though. Did you see that clip where Jolani's sitting there like a good little boy, nice and quiet, and Trump's bragging about how he gave going. on to the Israelis. Oh, look at what I did for them. I gave them Golan Heights. Nobody else would do

that. And Al-Shara was just sitting there saying nothing. Because I mean, what's he going to say? But it's like, geez, man, that is just like, and I'll bet Trump is so ignorant to these things. He probably doesn't even know that that's the equivalent of just grabbing him on camera and rubbing his nose and his own piss on the carpet or something. But, I mean, it was sad to watch. And I, you know, I'm talking about al-Qaeda and ISIS commander. And I was still feeling bad for him. Yeah, why do they call them Jolani? Yeah, exactly, right. Yeah, that's where his family is from.

Oh, God. So, look, man, the ironies, they just compile and pile on top of each other. So here are these two cooks are loving each other in this picture. Trump, as we talked about, I guess last week or the week before Trump was proposing, maybe we'll send Syria in to take care of Hezbollah for the Israelis, since the Israelis can't seem, to kill a Hezbollah without taking down an entire apartment building. We can rely on the superior morality of Al-Qaeda

compared to the most moral army in the world. But then, so my problem is, man, is I carry these grudges. And I'm so... Clear your notifications. What the hell? What happened? Clear your notifications. What the hell? Man, I'm not looking at my notifications.

You leave me alone, dude. I'm not looking at those. Rubio. This guy, Ruby, OBO, Secretary of State, advisor to the president for national security affairs. He says, today, POTUS informed Congress of his intent to rescind serious designation as a state sponsor of terrorism. You know, now that the country's been taken over by Al Qaeda, I was going to get through that without laughing, but I couldn't get through it without laughing. I'm sorry, everyone.

This historic step opens new possibilities for economic opportunity and recovery, giving the Syrian people a chance at greatness. And so then my problem is, is I says, nope, this is treasoncy because this is from, this is from Jolani's interview with PBS Frontline, as evidenced in the link provided at the bottom, PBS Frontline interview with Abu Muhammad Al Jolani. And here they asked, say, man, when did you go to Iraq? He says, well, I went to Baghdad right before the war broke out. And then when the war broke out, I went to Ramadi. Then I went to Baghdad. Then I went to Syria. Then I went back to Iraq, and I fought in Mosul. And there I was arrested and put in prison in Abu Ghraib, then Camp Buka, and then Kropper in the Baghdad airport.

And then the Americans handed me to the Iraqis, and me in the Shiite regime, which held him for a while, and then they let him go. And then the interviewer says, well, you told me the other day, you never met Abu Mosabels Arkawi? You see how the interviewer is working so hard to rehabilitate this guy? You told me the other day, you never met Zarqawi. Isn't that right?

You can look at Wikipedia and it says that you were close to Zarqawi. And then Jolani says, well, most of the information on the internet is false. It has no more than 2 to 3% truth to it. No, I didn't meet Zarqawi. Zarkawi was mostly present in Fallujah and Ramadi and around this region. And I was in Mosul during that time. I was a regular soldier. I wasn't involved in any major operations

that I would meet Al-Zarqawi. So you see what he's saying there? He's not saying, look, man, Zarkawi and his guys were doing something totally different than me. He's saying, I was just a foot soldier. He was the boss. I was in Ramadi, or I was in Mosul, he was in Fallujah, so our past didn't cross.

So like, you know, don't get carried away. But then he says, I wasn't involved in any major operations that I would meet Al-Zarqawi. Zarkali had a tight security. protocol surrounding him. It wasn't an open battle warfare. It was more of a security battle, i.e. insurgency, guerrilla warfare. So people were in hiding. They weren't meeting each other, as is happening here now. So were you friends with Sarkawi? No, because we kept ourselves

separate for operational security, see? And then the guy says, well, but did you work under his command? Was he a leader of the insurgency that you were fighting with? And Jolani replied, yes, as a general commander. He was the general commander. After he pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda, oh, that was when you broke with him? No, after he pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda, many of the Iraqi factions joined Abu Moussabas-Arkawi. And I was part of these factions that joined him. After he declared his... It reminds me of that part in... To the war. In Gladiator, where the guy's like, I didn't say I knew him.

I said he touched me on the shoulder once. Yeah, yeah. I didn't say I knew him. I said he was the high commander whose every whim I lived to serve, according to my blood. Oh, not that he would ever reduce himself to be on my level. He was the general. I was a private. You know, that was his answer.

Yes, of course. He was my commander. the commander of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which after they killed Zarqawi in the summer would have been July of 2006, it was June, I think it was July 2006, they renamed it the Islamic State of Iraq. And that's the same group that was later ISIS.

He just called his faction Al-Nusra, but he was sent from Iraq to Syria to found the Al-Nusra front by Abu Bakr-Baghdadi and I'm an Al-Zawahiri. And when there was a split between al-Baghdadi and Jolani, Zawari anointed Jolani and took Jolani's side. Now, you might say Baghdadi was the more violent of the insane apocalyptic killers with his insane caliphate,

but I would say to you that Zarkawi, pardon me, Zawahiri is the one who knocked down the towers in New York City. and so that makes him the more moderate guy because he favored Jolani over Baghdadi? No, I don't think so. Jolani took his blood oath to Osama bin Laden and Zarkawi. And look what he says here. After Zarkawi pledged his loyalty to bin Laden, that's when I joined him.

He's loyal to the Butchers of New York City, and that's America's guy in Syria now. And why? There's only one reason why Derek Cooper, you already know the answer man, Zionism, because Zionism necessitates that America hates the Shiites more, even than the guys that hit the Pentagon. And no, it wasn't a missile.

It was Flight 77 piloted by a couple of guys who'd been handled by the CIA and Saudi intelligence services in the lead up to the attack. These are our guys, as long as they're killing Serbs and Russians and Shiites, even when they kill our guys in the process, even though during Iraq War II, they were the vanguard of the Sunni-based insurgency that killed 4,000 out of the 4,500 American soldiers and Marines that died in that war.

Whatever man, Israel hates has Balamore, Coop. Get it straight. I was talking to a buddy of mine who is kind of just getting informed on this stuff, and he brought up that, you know, it's crazy that a decade after 9-11 were essentially helping, fighting alongside, you know, know, al-Qaeda and Syria. And it's like, yeah, I mean, it seems crazy if you're just walking into this space for sure. But then if you know, if you read Scott Horton's work, and I have given them

all your books, you know, you realize that al-Qaeda, that period from 2001 until, until, I guess, the Syrian war, I mean, there were some other things still going on in southern Russia and stuff. But that was really just like this brief period where we had a divorce for public relations, you know, reasons with al-Qaeda. We were friends with them before. We're friends with them now. You know, maybe not friends, whatever. I'm sure we wouldn't have them over for dinner. Trump probably would have, you know, Jolani over for dinner. But- strategic allies. Yeah, strategic allies that work together and, you know, they've been a

cat's paw for us and we've helped them achieve some of their goals. And plus they're just, you know, they're a very, they're a very useful tool in the way that, you know, by a strategy that goes all the way back to when the British were still running the region. You know, when you go back to the 1920s and the British were looking around in Palestine, Transjordan and saying, we've got a problem with all of these, you know, the Arabs are starting to get really restive about our presence and especially about the belligerence of these Zionists that are coming in here. And one of the things that they did was they, you know, they looked at the situation and saw that the Palestinian Christians who were mostly in the cities,

mostly engaged in commercial activity, you know, commerce and things like that. They were sort of, I guess you would say, like more just socially and economically developed than the Muslim population was, you know, in general. And so they were taking the lead on opposition to the British, you know, to organizing the opposition to the British presence and the Zionist presence that was coming in.

And so what they did was they started actively promoting, you know, hardcore Islamist types because they knew that that was going to alienate and push the Christians out of the movement and give them an excuse if they ever needed one to go in there and regulate, you know, because look at these crazy Muslims. And so, like, this is something that's happened again and again and again. Israel's used it. You know, we've certainly used it. It's very, very convenient for us.

Like, they'll do our bidding. And if they ever get too far out of control, we have every excuse in the world. know, to say these are the bad guys and we're going to be the good guys and go get them, you know. It's been a, it's, it's been a long, long game. And, you know, it's like what it does now, I mean, what it really does, the, during the Cold War, they were really useful just because our, you know, our big concern then was not Islamic theocracies or something. It was the pan-herivist, you know, it was the secular dictatorships in Egypt and these other places, all of which have been destroyed now, by the way, all of them. And,

you know, the hardcore Islamist types, you know, they weren't friends with Nassar. Nassar put them in jail. He'd killed them, you know, same with like the guys got in Egypt now. But, and so they were very useful because they prevent, you know, people who are radicals like that, they prevent unity. And this is a case in like any movement or anything when you're trying to resist. It's actually really great for the, for the oppressor, for the one who, for the aggressor, if the most radical crazy exclusivist elements get control of the resistance because it just narrows their appeal so much

that they can't really ever mount anything serious. Yeah. In fact, that was one of the propaganda lines against Assad, that it was a saw that was behind ISIS to make the rest of the insurgents. Dude, you wish, but no. It's insane to like see something like that said on TV. And it's like, I know you know you're lying, but man, like, you look like there's always been

propaganda on TV, on the news and whatever, but you couldn't have gone on like Charlie Rose and said something like that. I mean, like, you just, people had enough, you know, they just realized like this is going to make me look really, really stupid. And I can't let this pass without saying something about it, but there are just no standards anymore. Yeah. And Michael Weiss and the Daily Beast, boy, were they on it, man. back then. All right, now it's time for the Scott Horton-flavored coffee super chat questions for Darrell Cooper part of the show. All you do is you go to Scotthorton.org slash coffee. I don't know about you, Darrell Cooper, but when I wake up in the morning, I got one thing on my mind. Coffee.

I got to brew coffee, and I got to sit around and I got to wait for it to be done, and then I can drink it. That's my only priority. And so, yes, it's very good. And then right around two, I start feeling like taking a siesta, and then you know what I do? I march down there. I make more coffee and I drink it and it's so tasty. You know, it's part Ethiopian, part Sumatran, Scott Horton show flavored coffee and I like it and it's free to me as long as everybody else keeps buying it. So go to Scott Horton.org slash coffee and get you some coffee and then I'll get a little bit of money and share it with Daryl. All right, now let's do some super chatters. You got some chatters in here for you. Should we start at the top, start at the bottom? You go ahead.

You know what I'm me? All right, let me see you. What do we got? We'll just start at the top. Thoughts on Trump talking about showing Ukraine how to make Patriot missiles. By the way, Smith course is amazing. We need to convince Massey to take it so he can really take them on. Oh, great. I mean, look, it's not, the Patriot missile system is not,

especially the missiles themselves, are not at such a high level of secrecy that it would be, you know, it would be that far out of sort of the norm. I guess for us to allow the Ukrainians to produce them themselves. Like most of the super top secret stuff is the computer program and the things that actually run the combat system. The missiles themselves, if they wanted to start, you know, I imagine we would probably do something like allow them to manufacture most of it, but we would send them some of the computer circuit boards and stuff

or we would upload the firmware on a secure channel. There are certain things we'd probably want to keep from them, but it's not any kind of a game changer. I mean, if Russia realized that they were doing that, they'd blow those factories up. They might blow them up wherever they are now, you know, even outside of Ukraine. How long do you think?

Let's just say that there's some spot in the Carpathian Mountains over there on the western border where they could hide it pretty good and the Russians couldn't reach it. How long would it take to spin up a factory like that to the point where you actually turn from things out? I mean, we would have to do it. We would have to like send people over there and man it up and train the people.

I mean, they wouldn't be able to do it in the context of a war like this. And, you know, look, the air defense, you know, systems have, they're not, they're not any kind of a game shoot. We've seen this in Iran. It's definitely true in Ukraine. You know, them being able to pump out some more Patriot missile batteries that can miss incoming Russian cruise missiles or, you know, is not going to make a big difference. And so there's a lot of, we can talk about this next week, but I mean, there's a lot of propping hand out there about what's going on in Ukraine right now that is just, you know, if you follow channels that that translate Ukrainian media

and comments from Ukrainian leaders over there, military form, some of them former, they understand the reality of the situation is that they're pissing Russia off by hitting targets, you know, in Russia. They're making things more difficult than the Russians would. like them to be, but the Russians continue to gradually advance and take strategic ground. That's what's been happening. It's what's still happening. You know, Russia took the southernmost, the southernmost city of the four cities that kind of formed the Ukrainian fortress line that they've spent at this point, you know, 10 years building.

And that was a, you know, it's not something that heralds the immediate end of the war, but it's a major blow, you know, it makes, it opens up. huge areas of the southern part of the country to Russian operations that are more or less undefended. I mean, like, you know, there's still some, you know, they've got some backup lines there, but no kind of like fortress line like they just pushed through. So we just seem, we and the people who run that government over there, you know, really just seem intent on, you know, fulfilling the sort of the thing that was almost said as a sick joke at the beginning. of this is, you know, they're ready to fight to the last Ukrainian. And it's, oh, hey, I'm glad you

mention that because guess what, there's a new book coming out. Here, let me pull this up, man, because it goes along just right there with what you said. Amazon and then Aaron Mate. And because what it is is he's got a new book coming out, man, and it is, here it is. Check it out, dude. This is the book that I was terrified that Aaron was going to publish before I could get provoked done. I thought about him every day for two years.

Oh my God, Aaron Mata's book is going to come out before mine. Oh, my God. Their blood, our bullets, the hidden story of the U.S. Russia war for Ukraine by Aramette. And then it's, oh, our books put out a thing the other day. It's got a heavy emphasis on Russiagate, which, of course, he was a trailblazer

in debunking the Russiagate hoax. He's one of the best investigative journalists in America today, if you ask me, a really great guy. And so, yeah, well, as it says here, Washington's cynical foreign policy did not just detonate peace in Europe, but also deranged politics at home. Controversies around Russian Ukraine played a pivotal role in three consecutive U.S. presidential campaigns, driving the national hysteria known as Russiagate, as well as the first impeachment of Donald Trump. So how the Russia-Ukraine conflict came to be and how brutal proxy war with existential stakes for humanity can finally be resolved. So I can't wait to read that, dude.

And how many pages does it say? How many pages can be? Uh, 450 pages. So, rookie numbers. Yeah, you know, he must have had a good editor. I refuse to let my editor edit my book. He just fixed my typos and stuff. He's like, you want to cut this out?

No, okay. What is your favorite trick to do on VERT? Oh, was my favorite trick to do? do onvert. Yeah, you don't talk to me. Well, the best thing I ever did onvert was a backside lip slide, like a perfect Chris Miller haul ass all the way

across backside air on the other side, backside lip slide. And I only did that once. I pulled a few backside lip slides onvert, but the original ones were all like wheels on the deck, er, er, and kind of come in slow and what, but like I did one perfect, like, eat your heart out, Chris Miller, you know,

awesome backside lip slide onvert. Right now, if I'm Lucky a feeble grind to faky. Maybe backside air, lean to tail. My bag of tricks is getting light. Yeah, well, the consequences of wiping out are getting more and more serious as you get older. I've definitely found that out. Yeah, I got lean to tails, but they're only like one foot tall.

Do I found that out like in jiu-jitsu where I crossed this point where, you know, like when I was 35, I could confidently say that I could kick my 25-year-old self's ass. Like, I could do it. Like, my 25-year-old self might have been, like, in a little better shape, a little, you know, more athletic, whatever. But I had some experience on him. I knew a lot more. At this point, my 25-year-old self would destroy me.

Just kick my ass without even breaking a sweat. And I go out there sometimes, dude, and, like, I'll go to the Jiu-Jitsu gym. And there'll be some, like, you know, there'll be like a 19-year-old Asian. kid who's 150 pounds, like 30, 40 pounds lighter than me. It is just all over the place. And I'm like, oh, my God. Like, somebody grabbed this guy. And then I find out he's like a state champion high school wrestler or something.

I'm like, all right. I just, I need a place. You know how they have, you ever seen that gym curves that's like only for women? It's like a 24-hour fitness or whatever kind of thing, but it's just for women. They need one of those for like just people over 40, like for jujitsu. Just all old guys kind of bumming around. trying not to hurt each other because it's brutal going with these kids, man.

Well, so we got that for skateboard ramps. If you skate the big ramp, then, yeah, I hope you like having all your peers in their 50. We're some old-ass dudes. That's the best thing about skateboarding is I literally know dudes that I've known since the 1980s, since 1986, 1988. You know, I know my whole lifelong, dude. Good bros.

In fact, see Thursday night? I might go skateboard after this, dude. I think they're out. Well, let's wrap these questions up and get through these questions and get you out of here then because I got to go water some trees. Sounds a lot easier than it actually is

because it involves carrying five-gallon buckets full of water, you know, half an acre to... My house goes to get vert at the three night might be a little bit harder than it sounds like. Josh Boycett, he asks if I have read books named A Fortunate Life by Albert Facey and Tobruk by Peter Fitzsimmons. No, I have not, but

I wrote them down and I will order them and check them out after we are done here. Scott, do you have a Waco breakdown from your readings in the Academy or past interview? Does he have a Waco breakdown? Yes, I do have a thing on Waco, not for the Academy, because I already did it three years ago. I did a 13-hour-long podcast with me and interviewing the best producer, Dan Gifford, who produced the best. documentary on Waco, the Rules of Engagement, and with the author of the best book on Waco, David Hardy, who wrote, This is Not an Assault.

And I sat down with the two of them. I went out to L.A., and we all sat down for three days and recorded all about every aspect of the Waco masker. And then I edited it down and started out 16 and 19 hours, something like that. I got it down to about 13 and published that. So you can just find that. If you just search my name in Waco,

I also gave a speech about it. it at Porkfest if you want the short version. I gave a speech about it at Porkfest a couple of years back. That'll get you caught up. Yeah, and don't get the short version. Do the long podcast. I listened to it when you first released it and it seemed like, you know, at first sounds like it's, oh man, that's like really long

and that's a lot of sort of, it's not repetitive at all, it will really break. I listened to it over the course of about three or four days and it was great. So I highly recommend, just go find that. Cool. Thanks, man. Yeah, that's good. Okay, cool, man. I don't know.

Any other big ones on here? One that the easy answer for me is no, maybe you have a different one. Nanothermite. Do you guys know much about it in the history of its use? Very interesting. Sounds interesting, but no. Well, I know that there was a giant German gun that they could not destroy with bombs. So they sent in guys on foot to destroy it with thermite.

It just essentially burns really hot and can melt through steel and stuff like that. So there are a lot of conspiracy cooks who say that they use thermite to bring down the towers, which is a bunch of crap. They used airliners to bring down the towers, dude. But anyway, boy, that's going to get me in a bunch of trouble, being reasonable. And pressure washing is greater than caffeine. Well, that's true, but you can do coffee while you're doing other things. You really can only pressure wash so much. And who can afford the water bill around? Dr. Pepper Fund. Thank you, JDA 2001 for the Dr. Pepper Fund. We'll be a spent appropriately.

J&B, we'll have to talk about that offline somewhere. It's a great question. It's a very interesting question that you ask. But he says sincere question, how do you take the Bible seriously and also not drift into a level of deep fundamentalism? That's a fascinating question that I'd love to talk about. I don't know if Provoked is necessarily a place for it. Nope is a good place for it, man.

Yeah. We'll hear next week and ask that question earlier on and I will address it. I'll put that on the list for next week. Yeah, and I'll stay out of it because I don't want to be a dick. All right, see you guys. 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 tune in next time for more Provoked.