Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 10/3/24 Kyle Anzalone on the Iranian Missile Strike, the Invasion of Lebanon and the Ongoing Slaughter in Gaza

Episode Date: October 6, 2024

Kyle Anzalone was back on Antiwar Radio this week to talk about what’s happening in the Middle East. He gives an overview of the Iranian ballistic missile strike on Israel, the IDF’s invasion of Lebanon, the recklessness we’re seeing from Netanyahu and the pathetic submissiveness we’re seeing from the Biden Administration. They end with a quick summary of the slaughter in Gaza, which hasn’t stopped as the world’s attention shifts to Lebanon. Discussed on the show: “US officials quietly backed Israel’s military push against Hezbollah” (Politico)  Devil’s Game by Robert Dreyfuss Kyle Anzalone is news editor of the Libertarian Institute, opinion editor of Antiwar.com and co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Will Porter and Connor Freeman. Follow him on Twitter @KyleAnzalone_ This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For Pacifica Radio, October 3rd, 2024, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all, welcome to show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director of Anti-War.com, and I'm the author of the book, Enough Already. time to end the war on terrorism.

You can find my full interview archive, more than 6,000 of them now, going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show and all the other podcatchers and video sites and things. Today's guest is the great Kyle Anselone. He's the host of conflicts of interest, and he's the news editor at the Institute

and Opinion Editor at Anti-War.com. Welcome back to the show. Kyle. How you doing? Doing well, Scott. Thanks for having me back on. Really happy to have you here. so tell me what's going on in the world so scott there is a lot happening in the world most of the headlines capturing the attentions of americans are focused around the middle east where iran conducted a pretty large missile strike on israel targeting at least three military sites it's unclear exactly what the damage from that missile strike is but several of the missiles did make it

to the ground they were able to penetrate israel's iron dome and it does seem there was some damage at Israeli military bases. Right now, the IDF is saying that there were only two soldiers who sustained minor injuries. And then one Palestinian man in the occupied West Bank was killed when shrapnel, either from an Iranian missile or an Israeli interceptor, landed on him and killed him. So that was, as far as we know, the only death. And of course, that Iranian missile barrage was a response to three Israeli actions. The Israeli invasion and attacking of Lebanon, and particularly the killing of Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of Hezbollah, as well as an IRGC commander who was with him at the time, and also the assassination on July 31st of

Ismail Hania, who was in Tehran to attend the swearing-in ceremony of the new Iranian president. And so that was a real embarrassment for Tehran, and they were looking to respond to that. And so we had then Iran launched those missiles. And now, Scott, we are waiting to see the Israeli response. The Israelis say they're working on something and they're talking about targeting Iranian oil fields. This was also tweeted about by Lindsey Graham. And statements from the White House are saying that we're supportive of Israel. The most detailed statement we've had is from Jade Sullivan, who said the U.S. is working with Israel to ensure that Iran pays serious consequences for the missile attack.

Yeah. And then, so talk about the hit on Nassarala and what's going on in southern Lebanon. So this was Saturday when Nanyahu was at the United Nations. He ordered this strike and just pumbled Beirut with round after round, a 2,000 pound bomb, crushed sits residential buildings in the process and ended up killing Nassarala when he was in a bunker meeting with other top Hezbollah officials. And so that was a major Israeli attack. But they've also been hitting targets across Lebanon, particularly civilian targets. Tel Aviv is claiming that Hezbollah has hidden rockets and missiles and all kinds of residential structures. And so now they have to blow up all these homes in southern and eastern Lebanon. There's really no evidence to back up Israel's claims here. But that's what they're using to widespread strides against Lebanese-like villages in southern Lebanon.

It was described as one of the heaviest days of bombing of the 21st century. And then what about reports of their invasion of southern Lebanon? So we had reports Tuesday morning, the IDF, said they were launching limited operations, targeted raids in southern Lebanon and said those operations were underway. Wednesday, Hezbollah and the Lebanese military refuted those claims, saying that wasn't the case. And also the UN peacekeepers operating in the area said they had seen no evidence of battles breaking out inside Lebanon between Hezbollah and IDF fighters. But on Thursday, we did have reports of the IDF operating in southern Lebanon and Israel taking at least eight casualties, at least eight of their soldiers having been killed. Asbalah claims the death toll is far higher that they've destroyed three tains, that they ambushed these eight Israeli soldiers. and they've also planted bombs and structures that Israel has moved into and then detonated

those structures killing more Israeli soldiers. So at this point, the casualty count on both sides is unclear, but at least eight Israeli soldiers are dead and Israeli soldiers are operating in southern Lebanon. All right. I guess back to Iran. So I saw where when they launched the missile strike, the president, the new president of Iran, had put out a statement on Twitter, I'm very roughly paraphrasing, saying, look, we're just trying to get our symbolic hit in here, but we could stop fighting right now and saying that

they don't want war. So is that because he's a darn dirty liar? Or are they really trying to back out of this thing before it gets worse? Or is it too late for that now? Yes. I think it's pretty clear really since 2020 with the assassination at Qasem Soleimani that the Iranians are doing. everything they can to avoid an war with the American or the Israelis. Whenever the U.S. or Israel assassinations high-level officials that are either, you know, Hezbollah, Hamas, Iranian officials in third countries, then Iran is going to issue a response. And so we saw with the, say, after the assassination at Qasem Soleimani at the Baddad Airport in 2020, Iran did attack a U.S. base in Iraq.

But at the same time, that strike was limited to a corner of the base, and it was telegraphed in a way that America was able to prevent any U.S. troops from getting killed. And in the same way, when Iran felt the need to respond to Israel blowing up its consulate building in Damascus earlier this year, and they carried out a missile strike on Israel, they did so in a way telegraphing it 72 hours in advance that all those missiles could be shot down before reaching Israel so no one was killed. And we saw that again with this most recent strike where, yeah, Iran did carry out 181 missiles. Many of them were able to hit their target. So this is an escalation over what happened earlier in the year. But at the same time, they didn't rain down missiles on Tel Aviv, end up hitting a bunch of residential buildings, things that Israel is going to be forced to feel compelled to respond to. Rather, it seems they maybe destroyed some military equipment and injured just a couple Israeli soldiers. So this is certainly something that Israel and the U.S. could back away from, but I don't think that's what Netanyahu or the White House wants to do.

I think there's, I don't know about Joe Biden himself or Kamala Harris, the vice president, but I do think there's people within the reigns of the Biden administration who very much would like to see a war with Iran at this point. And who do you mean by that specifically? So Amos Hochstein, who is Biden's special envoy to the Middle East and Brett M. McGirk, who's another U.S. diplomat representing the Middle East. And I say this specifically, Scott, because these two men advocated Israel invade southern Lebanon earlier this week. They told the Israelis to go ahead and do it that has Bala's weekend, and now is the time to make a historic decision on the ground. And so, you know, they have to know that an Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon is going to lead to dread war with Iran at some point in time. And if they're

advocating for this as political is reporting, then clearly they won war with Iran. Well, they're certainly willing to risk one. Now, as far, I guess, you know, I talked with Danny Davis yesterday and he was saying, well, I guess we'll really know Netanyahu's intentions based on what he does now. If he lets things sort of settle down, as he did after the last one, which Davis thinks is impossible politically for Netanyahu, or whether he goes ahead and as you were saying, bombs oil fields and or civilian nuclear facilities that they have. They do not have a nuclear weapons program according to every American intelligence report since 2007. But anyway, if they bomb Iranian oil facilities and or civilian safeguarded nuclear facilities,

that would then presumably cross the Ayatollah's line where he has no choice. but to then go ahead and fight. And clearly, look, it's not that he's a good guy. It's only that he's in a position of weakness and he knows it. What's you going to do? Take on the United States of America? But the thing is, yes, if the Israelis bomb him bad enough, then it's on. And America will probably have to intervene to help Israel do it anyway.

And with Biden up there running this show, I mean, who knows? He'd probably just pull out a quarter and hypnotize him and have him to say whatever you want. Right. Well, and to add to all this, you know, proof that Israel and the U.S. are angling for war with Iran, it was reported by the Lebanese foreign minister. This was a discussion on CNN that he was having. And he explained that Nasrallah had agreed with the U.S. and France to a 21-day ceasefire in just the hours before he was killed. So this was going to be a 21-day ceasefire that was backed by the U.S. and France that hopefully Netanyahu and Israel were going to agree to. And it was going to pave the way for a deal in Gaza, which would then allow for a deal between Hezbollah and Tel Aviv to ultimately end all the fighting in the Middle East. And so this was set up again by Washington and Paris.

And then Netanyahu said no to it. And not only said no to it, he then went and assassinate the man who had green. read to the ceasefire. Oh, man. It's anti-war radio. You know, Kyle, Anzalone from anti-war.com, I would like to say that that's unbelievable, but of course it is completely believable. And it ties into what I was just saying about the absolutely brain dead and absent president of the United States. And we could be facing a major war here. And again, as you said, Kyle, this comes from the Christian Amampur show, her interview on CNN of the Lebanese foreign minister. Go ahead and repeat that part of the show.

Help me understand, and as best details as you can, set the stage for what were these negotiations before Israel somehow lost their partner for peace here. So, Scott, what the Lebanese foreign minister was explaining on CNN was that Hezbollah had agreed to a 21-day ceasefire. And this 21-day ceasefire was actually going to pave the way for the end of fighting across the Middle East. And you could imagine why the White House would have really wanted this deal at the start of October, as many Americans are going out and beginning early voting after a relatively poor debate performance by the Democratic vice presidential candidate that this could be a real win for the Democrats to be able to say that we were able to tamp down tensions in the Middle East and maybe not say bring peace, but at least bring a meaningful reduction in the amount of fighting going on. on. And so there's going to be a 21-day ceasefire, Scott, which means two weeks before the

election, if this plan was followed through, there would be a big announcement of a wider ceasefire where Israel stops the fighting in Gaza, so no more fighting between Hamas and Israel and the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel would stop, and therefore the Houthis would end their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. And this would all been announced just days before the election, a massive win for Joe Biden, and Netanyahu rejected that, but not only did he reject it, he rejected it. And then he killed the man on the opposite side who accepted the ceasefire deal from his backers that was, again, proposed from his backers, the U.S. and France.

It's absolutely baffling. Yeah. Well, you know, they always do this. Sheik Yassin, famously the founder of Hamas, with a lot of help from Israel. People can read Richard's sale and UPI and Andrew Higgins in the Wall Street Journal all about that, Robert Dreyfus in his book, Devil's Game. But when he finally said, you know what, enough of this, I'm old and almost dead, we should make peace and go ahead and I'm ready to recognize Israel within 67 borders. Let's make a deal. That was in January of 2004.

And so he was an old man in a wheelchair and they killed him with a missile right when he was renouncing violence and saying he wanted to come to terms. I guess Arafat is lucky that they let him live for 20 years after he recognized Israel within 67 borders. Right. And it's already happened two times in the past year as well. The Hamas negotiator who worked out the deal in November of 2023 that led to the release of 100 Israeli captives and Palestinian detainees in Israel, as well as a seven-day ceasefire in Gaza, that was at least some reprieve for the people of. the strip who had just been bombarded day after day for almost an entire year, minus that week now. Scott, they killed that negotiator. And then just again, July, at the end of July, they killed Hania, who was working on the deal and who had agreed to several deals with that Joe Biden proposed and that Yahoo kept adding new conditions and Hamas kept agreeing to it. And they

agreed and they agreed and they agreed. And then finally they killed him, even though he was capitulating to their increased demands, like Israel was going to continue the occupation of Gaza and have control of the Philadelphia corridor. Hamas was essentially willing to agree to this as long as the killing was stopping. Israel just isn't willing to stop the killing. Hey, you guys coming up this October 7th through the 11th, join Miguel Thorup, host of the expat money podcast, the heroic Ron Paul, the great Tom Woods, Doug Casey, Mark Faber, Tom Luongo, myself and many other great speakers for the online expat

Money Summit, 2004. My presentation will be on the subject of my new book, Provoked, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine, which is not quite out yet. And learn how you can reclaim your freedom by moving abroad, legally reduce your tax bill,

and protect your assets. More than 8,000 people attended last year. And it's free. My guy's Kyle Anzalone and Dave DeCamp from the Institute and anti-war.com will be joining a panel discussion as well. Just go to 24.xpatmoneysummit.com for all the info. That's 2224.xpatmoney summit.com. Well, I guess it was just a matter of time.

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Well, folks, sad to say, they lied us into war. All of them. World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq War I, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq War II, Libya, Syria, Yemen, all of them. But now you can get the e-book, All the War Lies, by me, for free. Just sign up the email list at the bottom of the page at Scotthorton.org, or go to Scotthorton.org slash subscribe. Get all the war lies by me for free. And then you'll never have to believe them again. All right, now, I have to object to something that you said on the basis of it being way too

reasonable and therefore inapplicable in this scenario I think quite possibly he said it would make perfect sense for the Biden government to want to get a win here in terms of a ceasefire and end of the war and a deal with Hezbollah and eventually

Hamas and one that the USA was behind and can take credit for sure but you're a decent human man you got to look at this from the point of view of a Democrat and I admit that I didn't watch the debate because my hull just cannot stand the cringe. I will implode and die.

But I did read that Tim Waltz sticking to the script attacked Donald Trump for not bombing Iran in that debate, just as Kamala Harris did in her debate with Trump a few weeks ago. And that is the point of view of the Democrats, who I read this morning, Kamala Harris, is going to do a joint appearance with Liz Cheney. There's the same tactic that Hillary Clinton did in 2016, running around doing events with Robert Kagan and saying, look at what a horrible warhawk I am to try to win over defective Republicans,

defecting Republicans. But what is that going to do to the Democrats' base? Does the Democrats base care that they're slamming Trump for not bombing Iran? Because in 2016, that was a big part of them staying home. Hillary Clinton saying she wanted a no-fly zone to protect al-Qaeda in Syria. They have suicide bombings to commit and heads to chop off, she said. And we need to get in air wars with Russian migs over Syria to protect them.

And she lost. But this is what the Democrats are running on now because they think this is smart. Hey, if Liz Cheney likes me, and everybody knows how much. much everyone in America, especially, Republicans love Liz Cheney and want to do whatever she says. And this is the smart way to win those swing votes, the Democrats figure, Kyle? Yeah, and I think the real problem with all this, Scott, is the message it sends to Benjamin Netanyahu, which is the further he escalates, the further it's going to escalate the support that he receives from the United States. Because no matter what he does, Trump is going to say, well, if I were president, I would have supported. Israel even more. And so this would have been even more successful and even a bigger victory and a

more beautiful victory. And the Democrats have decided that, no, they actually have to be more aggressive than Trump on this rather than taking a reasonable stance and say, hey, we're going to rain in Netanyahu here to stop the killing in the Middle East. They're going to say, no, we're going to give Netanyahu everything he wants and more, which I think is ultimately going to hand the election to Donald Trump, which maybe from Netanyahu's perspective doesn't seem like a bad deal because it's been reported now that Donald Trump has agreed to allow Israel to Annette's the West Bank in exchange for quite a bit of money from Merriam Adelson. Yeah, and for people who think that sounds a little outlandish, when I first heard it,

I was like, wait a minute, is that really right? And then I went and found it in the Israeli media that, yeah, as simple as that, quid pro quo. And who knows whether, you know, he'll exactly follow through on that. Well, and Scott, the reason I believe it is because during the first Trump administration, he just redrew the map around Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights and recognized that Syrian territory as Israeli and it's never going to be undone in Washington now that it's done once the embassy was moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, now it's in Jerusalem. So I do think there's reason to think Trump is just going to go ahead and make these moves. and even if he waits until the last year of his presidency and does it on his way out the door as a second-term president, nobody's ever going to undo it. And so I do worry it will happen if Trump will get re-elected. And Nanyahu really does see all these kind of political dominoes laid out in front of them where the further he escalates now, the further the more and more U.S. support they're going to give him and maybe even get direct U.S. attacks on Iranian oil and nuclear facilities.

that the U.S. will conduct or at least help him cadet. And then the election happens. The American people reject the Democrats because they let him down this path to war. Trump comes into office and then allows him to annex the West Bank. I mean, it seems all laid out and would play out very well for Netanyahu. Except here's the only break on that. And it's not the USA. You're correct about that.

But if there is a break on it at all, it's all the Sunni kings. they're working so hard on this Netanyahu doctrine and maybe he's completely changed it now with the absolute failure of last October the 7th and maybe that has you know changed the dynamic but it has been about trying to align this Sunni group against Iran and the Shiites and if he goes that far kicking all the Palestinians out of East Jerusalem and or even maybe even not with the ethnic cleansing campaign, but even just officially legalizing the annexation, making it from de facto to de jure. That could really ruin relations with the GCC, with Turkey, and, you know, I don't know. I'd be interested, and this is something to keep an eye on, man, is who's a real expert

in how stable Egypt and Jordan are right now? Because there's got to be, you know, political pressure from below in those countries has got to be through the roof right now as this is going on and they have these sock puppet dictators there. You know, Saudi Arabia is a little further removed in the rest of the Gulf, but I don't know, it might even be a safe bet. Trump might as well be running for president as the Lakud Party candidate right now. Well, you know, Scott, I'm not sure if it plays out the way Netanyahu thinks it will, but I wouldn't be surprised if he believes that the U.S. is willing to bribe all these Sunni

kings and dictators to essentially oppress their people and take the Palestinian issue off the table. He's had that successfully done with the Egyptians and the Jordanians for decades now. The Emirates are bought and paid for. The U.S. just elevated their status. The Biden administration was willing to offer Saudi Arabia a Japan-style defense alliance and potentially even a nuclear program to get them to normalize relations with Israel. I mean, we're talking about billions and billions and billions of dollars of bribes that Washington is willing to dole out to these Middle Eastern kingdoms.

And so if Netanyahu thinks that this is going to work, I wouldn't blame them because it seems like it has so far. Yeah, right? I could see it, right? Mohamed bin Zayed and Mohammed bin Salman just telling Kushner, hey, man, we're raising our price. You better get on the phone to the Federal Reserve and have them print some more money because, we're going to want to double that shipment of fighter jets you promised us whatever their price is right the american people can afford it what's Biden saying about iran i know he told them well you better not doing thing than they did something is he promising to back israel in a conflict with iran those are the we've gotten the kind of boilerplate

statements that you would expect from biden and kamala harris which is Israel has a right to defend itself Iran are terrorists. And so we have to defend Israel against the Iranian and the Iranian terrorist proxies and that we're going to support Israel in responding to Iran. Again, I think Sullivan gave the most dread statement saying that Iran will face serious consequences for this. Biden met with the leaders of the other G7 nations this week. And they agreed to increase sanctions on Iran, which I'm guessing is relatively meaningless. The U.S. has already heavily, heavily sanctioned. the Iranian economy and of course all of our allies comply with our sanctions and so that really doesn't add anything to the sanction burden being faced by Tehran so I would assume that Israel is

in is being reported that Israel is preparing a military strike in Iran again likely targeting oil facilities all right last and I'm sorry because certainly not least important here is the poor Gazans I read this morning the BBC said hey remember that strike on the school that killed 13 children and a bunch of other people last week. Well, the Israelis now tell us, there's the BBC talking. Israelis officials say there was one Hamas guy that they were hunting. And they had quotes from this little girl talking about seeing all her friends and family torn to shreds.

And that's just one little anecdote out of what's happening in the Gaza Strip. Can you give us a short update here? Yeah, and for anybody who wants to update, Dave DeCamp at anti-war.com has been doing these roundups from Gaza every single day where he goes over all the kind of official deaths that he could find that are solidly reported. You know, a lot of people, unfortunately, are just dying beneath the rubble being shot by Israeli soldiers as they walk across, you know, beaches and Gaza in search of food. And, you know, those stories are never told and those bodies may never be counted.

But Dave DeCamp is doing his best to talk about all the worst Israeli strides, including yesterday there was a strike on a school in an orphanage a couple dozen people were killed including women and children and then they bombed an area in conunis where there was only i think maybe one person again like you said they were looking for and ended up killing dozens of people i think 40 people they also had some tanks firing in that area it's just absolutely horrific what the israelis are doing and again at this point sky like you're saying they're claiming that they're doing this to hunt single members of Hamas. I guess we shouldn't be surprised because they have been doing this all along,

you know, dropping bombs on houses full of family members when Hamas members came home. And again, these people weren't actually members of Hamas in any way that could be proven in court. It was just the AI Israeli algorithm that claimed that, you know, their social credit score when it came to Hamas was too high. And so that put them on the strike list and them in their entire. entire families were just wiped off the face of the earth. And so it's a horror show day after day in Gaza. There was a couple weeks where the bombing had slowed just a little bit that the daily deaths counts were in the like 20s, 30s, 40s range. Yesterday, Israel up to the bombing quite a bit again. And so maybe with these escalations in Lebanon, Netanyahu sees an opportunity to increase in Gaza as well

and not have as much international scrutiny. There are reports that Netanyahu is considering a plan that would ethnically cleanse the entire northern half of the Gaza Strip. They've carved what they call a Nazarene corridor across the Gaza Strip and everything north of that. They're going to give people one way to leave. And if they stay, they're going to consider everyone else a terrorist. They're not going to let any food to enter.

And they're just going to, I guess, bomb them all until there are no more. or they starve to death. So the situation in Gaza is looking very, very bad. Well, for people out in the radio audience who don't care at all about Palestinians, if you care about Americans, you got to understand that this is all at our expense. In our name and American civilians are virtually certain to be slaughtered in terrorist attacks, waged as revenge for American support for this horrific and unjustifiable sin

of this slaughter, this war, so-called war in the Gaza Strip. Happened before, it's going to happen again. So, you know, not that I'm the one threatening you. I'm saying we should not be doing this. And that's it. Again, anti-war radio for this week. Thank you so much for your time, Kyle.

Thank you, Scott. That's Kyle Anselawn from anti-war.com, and he hosts the great show Conflicts of Interest. And I'm Scott Horton. I'm here every Thursday from 2.30 to 3 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week.