Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 2/1/24 Matthew Hoh on What War with Iran Would Be Like

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

Matthew Hoh joins the show to talk about the dangers of a war with Iran. As Biden moves towards some kind of military response to the rocket attack that left three American soldiers dead over the weekend, Hoh has been gaming out what the first week of a war between the U.S. and Iran would look like. He and Scott work through different scenarios and discuss some of the big-picture political forces that have driven us to this dangerous point. Discussed on the show: “What the First Week of War With Iran Could Look Like” (Antiwar.com) “US Plans Weeks-Long Bombing Campaign Against Iranian Targets” (Antiwar.com) The Reluctant Spy by John Kiriakou “Rudy’s Ties to a Terror Sheikh” (Village Voice) The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright Perfect Soldiers by Terry McDermott  Matthew Hoh is associate director at the Eisenhower Media Network and formerly worked for the U.S. State Department. Hoh received the Ridenhour Prize Recipient for Truth Telling in 2010. Subscribe to his Substack and follow him on Twitter @MatthewPHoh  This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Moon Does Artisan Coffee; 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

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4 you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show okay you guys on the line i've got the great matthewho and uh as you know he was the great whistleblower from before the afghan surge tried to stop it his very best he did uh back in two thousand And he's been a great anti-war guy ever since then, a former Marine and with State Department at the time he's blowing the whistle.

And here he is, writing for anti-war.com. Boy, that makes me proud. This one's called what the first week of war with Iran could look like when logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead. Is the subhead there. Welcome to show, Matthew. How you doing, man? Good, Scott. How are you doing, man?

Thanks for having me on. Now, here's the thing. at the time we're recording this on Thursday in the afternoon they haven't started the bombing campaign yet however there's been a couple of leaks one to the NBC News and I forgot the second one but whatever they both say the same thing and we got the write up at the top anti-war dot com from Dave DeCamp today

I already talked with him about it that the plan is they're going to hit pro-Iranian and or Iranian they claim targets in Iraq and I guess in Syria and in Yemen and possibly hit Navy targets although I don't know if they're going to go that far but maybe they're going to hit some Navy targets in the Gulf and then the plan is that I get and this is going to last at least a week or so or something and that the Iraqi militias and the Iraqi government they're going to sit there and take it I don't know who

who they plan on bombing in Syria, but whoever they bomb in Syria and whoever they bomb in Yemen, they're all going to sit there and take it in the Ayatollah, even if they hit his Navy, is going to know better than to escalate in response because then things could get really ugly. And we all know that the Ayatollah doesn't want to fight. He knows how bad America could hurt his country if it came down to it. And we know that the Americans know how tough it would be to take on. Iran. So it looks like this is almost a political game, right? Like when Trump was shooting missiles at Syria over fake sarin attacks, they're like, well, okay, Ayatollah, we're going to do this and

then you do that and then we're going to leave it at that and they're trying to like a little bit of ground rules ahead of time thing and hope that they can contain it like that. But I wonder how worried you are that maybe that could be a problem and get out of control. very worried because at some point your luck runs out on that at some point something can can be pushed too far or the political pressures that are felt become such that you have the response the the the tit for the tat become such a thing that the tat that's in relation to the tit so to speak right is of such a blow that then the political pressures inside, you know, inside the countries, whether it's United States or Iran, require a response that takes you into a level of warfare that ostensibly

everybody didn't want. Right. Right. I think, I think it's safe to say the Biden White House does not want a war with Iran, right? I think it's safe to say, as you said, the Iranian government doesn't want to war with Iran. And I think they're all hoping that this looks like January 2020 again, where the United States kills Qasem Soleimani, the Iranians launch a bunch of missiles at Al-Assad Air Base, nobody gets killed, and everyone can then back off. You know, that's the best case. And, you know, the concern, though, is that there's so many other variables in here. There's so many other groups involved the political pressure on the White House by the Republicans and by some, you know, some members of the Democratic Party probably very quietly as well

because there is a, you know, a contingent within Democratic Party that, you know, being led by the nose by APEC is very, very much in favor of some type of regime change in Iran, right? So maybe there's that type of. pressure going on as well. But the danger is that whatever Joe Biden does, if it's not enough, there's a political cost to him, right? So he's got to deal with not just Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton and the others going on Meet the Press and saying, this guy's weak. He's getting our troops killed. He's not willing to stand up for these dead soldiers and their families. But you've got this presidential campaign where, you know, Joe Biden is behind. And Donald Trump, the first thing that comes

Donald Trump's mouth after three soldiers are killed in Jordan is, if I was president, that wouldn't have happened, you know? And so does that type of political pressure make it so that, okay, this, what's being leaked about, we're just going to limit it to hit in these Iraqi groups that are alive with Iran in Iraq. And then we're going to try and kill some Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officers that are in Syria. And maybe we'll, we'll hit a, uh, an, Iranian frigate and that'll be it. You know, is that going to be enough, right? Or do they have to do it to such a level that, okay, this is greater than anything we've done before? But then that does, does that then cause the Iranians to have to have a response, you know, greater than say what their

response to the Soleimani assassinations was, which I think we all were very relieved to see that their response was so, was so held back that they were so, you know, there's a lot of and how the Iranians responded to them. And then, of course, the fear is that if what the Americans do, whether in the initial strikes or secondary strikes, a response to Iran's response to our response, does that then start to put fear in the Iranians that will hang on? Are the Americans serious? Everything we've heard for 45 years from the Americans about getting rid of us, about how

we are the greatest threat to the civilized world, about the evils of the Mullahs of Tehran, right? I mean, all that stuff, all the ghost of John McCain is singing bomb, bomb Iran. You know, is that, does that start making the Iranians think that, okay, is this really it? Are they really going to go for it? We know what the White House is saying. We know what they kind of feel, but what matters is what is the Iranian perception? And do they then go into one survival mode, particularly that they feel that their political leadership is now in danger? But then also, too, are they getting the point where they feel like, is this not just a political decapitation, but a military decapitation? Are they trying to knock out our ability to actually repel some type of very

serious and regime change-oriented military strike by the United States? So do we need to be one step ahead and basically kind of use it or lose it and go full bore on this? And do we need to launch strikes at their air bases in Qatar and in UAE and Prince Sultan Air Base and Saudi Arabia and so forth. And then you can see very quickly how this becomes this full-scale war that everybody is saying, no, we don't want. But, you know, Scott, if we teleport back, we build that time machine and go back, you know, 100 years to 1914, you know, most of those folks were saying, we don't want this war, we don't want this war, you know, even as there was all their precursors. I was just reminded of all the wars and the Balkans that occurred prior to 1914. I mean, so the analogy here, how

analogous this is. So, you know, that's the danger we're at. Despite what everyone's saying about how they're going to control this and how it's going to be just this very well-managed series of strikes that put the fear of God in the Iranians and it'll cause the militias that are alive with them to not step out of bounds any longer. And Joe Biden, this will shut Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton up. You know, how many, you know, you don't have to be an expert in military history to know that war is not controllable that this is not something you can manage that you know the inevitability of a getting out of control is very often what defines war and you know so that that's that's i think what what a lot of us are very afraid of as we as we wait to see what happens yeah well

and what you're describing here with this spiral this tip for tat thing i mean we're already halfway into it right this has been going on for months with american strikes back and forth with the militias in Iraq and in Syria. It's just that this was the first time they actually killed some guys. They had wounded quite a few in the past and there had been some real near misses and this kind of thing.

And they had killed a couple contractors going back a few years. They've killed about two or three American contractors, not in the last several months, but going back to say 2019 or so. Yeah, yeah. In the previous iteration of this, which was also instigated by the Israelis,

by the way. Remember, they were doing strikes into Iraq, which was what helped kick that thing off and or was it into syria i think it was in to syria but they uh i mean but but i think the point is we can keep talking about this like this scott right in a sense of like and then before that and then before that well that's the problem on both sides right is you identified it man is this is uh to go back to juster romando's old theory of libertarian realism that all foreign policy is based in domestic politics right and so that's right if Biden leaves this thing unfinished.

Well, that doesn't look good. But those same kind of incentives to one degree or another and with different wrinkles in them apply inside Iran as well. And we all know the Ayatollah Khamini is in charge, but we don't know who all is nipping at his heels and to what degree, you know, his meekness overall and his attitude toward the United States, you know, could really undermine him and possibly weaken his government, especially in a time when, for example, if we have a weak worth of airstrikes against Iran's closest allies in Iraq, America's closest allies in Iraq, by the way, well, other than the Kurds, but the same guys that you fought Iraq War II to put in power there back 10 years ago, almost said 10, back 20 years ago, and helped, not you, but the rest of them helped to defeat ISIS 10 years ago.

um nine and a half uh those same guys uh if if they start bombing them that could really change the incentive structure of domestic politics inside iran about are you just going to let them get away with this and for that matter in bagdad that these are supposedly our friends the americans and and we have guys we have what five thousand guys station i think almost entirely in Kurdistan. I don't know if we have any in Shiaistan right now in the Shiite parts of Iraq. But if did anybody wonder what happens if the Americans left in Iraq get attacked by the Iraqi government and their allied or even just the militias without the army, but even especially with the army? And do they really think they're immune from that? Because going back 20 years,

in Iraq War II, the leaders of the Supreme Islamic Council, who are now the government, and Mokhtad al-Sauder, who's the most powerful Shiite leader outside of government, they had all promised that if you guys go to war with Iran, we'll kill you. You might be putting us in power, but that doesn't mean that we won't shoot you in the back. So don't try it, pal. So, if they really, this would be

the biggest bombing campaign against the Shiite government that W. Bush put in power there in 03, in 04 and 05 this whole time there've been limited strikes against Khatib Hezbollah here there one in Baghdad but they're talking about a real ass bombing campaign against our Iraqi allies so that can change everything over there you know I'm right you know this conversation not not what you're what you and I but the general conversation about this policy about the U.S. policies in the Middle East and particularly say the Iraq policy it's it's so convoluted It's like, you know, watching kids go through a playground, right?

You know, climbing through the tubes and over the bars and across the rings and, you know, contorting themselves to get through this kind of obstacle. It really, I mean, like there's no straight lines here at all. And there's also, just to get back to a point you were making earlier, there's such personal memory, such personal history, such personal interest in this for all of us, whether we realize it or not. I mean, one of my first memories is, you know, as a six, seven-year-old kid, is the hostage crisis in Iran, you know, and the hostages, and I grew up in New York and the hostages came back into West Point, you know, that's where they brought the hostages to in 1980. And, like, that wasn't far from my home. So, like, the big deal of how that was and everyone's tying yellow ribbons around the trees. And then one of the next memories I have, you know, a few years later is the, uh, uh, uh, uh, embassy and then particular the barracks bombing in Beirut in 1983, done by those evil Iranians. So, you know, my young mind, my seven-year-old, 10-year-old mind was just informed about how the

Iranians are evil, right? And that's just, it's not like the script on that from our media has changed much, you know, or from our political leaders have changed much over the last 40 years or so. And the Iranians have the same type of, of, you know, cultural and historical memories and legacies, and even more so, because we were the ones who kept the Shah in power, that police state. We're the ones who, you know, is Jimmy Carter who gave the thumbs up to the Iranians to launch that brutal, horrible eight-year war. You know, I mean, and in sanctions and so forth and so on, you know, all this impacts people. You can't, I mean, none of this is clinical.

None of this is just academic. So, you know, this idea that is this the culminating point? At some point, this process has to reach its culmination. And is it now? Hey, you guys, did you know that I don't just write books? I publish them. Well, the Institute does, and I'm the director, so yeah. 13 of them now, including my four.

We published five more in 2023. Lori Calhoun and Tom Woods books about the COVID regime, Joe Solis Mullen on the fake China threat, Jim Bovard's latest, last rights, and our managing editor Keith Knight's domestic imperialism. And we've got more great titles coming in 2024. Check them out at Libertarian Institute.org slash books and help support our anti-government efforts

at Libertarian Institute.org slash donate. And thank you. Hey, y'all, Scott here. Let me tell you about Roberts & Roberts Brokerage, Inc. Who knew? Artificial bank credit expansion leads to price inflation and terribly distorted markets. If you've got any savings left at all, you need to protect them. You need to put some, at least, into precious metals.

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noticeably, you left out al-Qaeda's entire war against the United States there because that's not Iran. That's right. It was not Hezbollah what knocked our towers down or even killed the Cobar towers. But you know what's, it's interesting. I had never read John Carriaco's book until recently, and John wrote this book in 2009. He had a, and I didn't realize that it was that old. But when I was reading it, and there's a foreword from Bruce Rydell in it. I said, why the heck is Bruce Riedel writing a foreword for John Carriacco?

At that point, even 2009. He's a bit of a hawk for people who don't know. Rydell is, he's good on Yemen, but he's been very hawkish. He recommended the surge in Afghanistan that you tried to stop, for example. Go ahead. Right. But by 2009, I think, Scott, it was clear.

It had been clear for many years. Hezbollah did not do the Coal Bar Towers bombing, correct? Yeah. And they tried to say that it's a reigning back Saudi Hezbollah, which is, I guess, does exist. But it was so clear. And this is, you know, Gareth Porter has like a four or five part story about this. Michael Sawyer, the former chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit, also is absolutely certain about this.

And, and in fact, there's a great piece by old, what's his name in the village voice, Nat Hentoff. I think it was, no, was it, I'm sorry, it wasn't Hentoff. I'm so sorry. It's about Rudy Giuliani and the Terror Sheik or something. And it's about how Giuliani was doing private security services for Sheik Althani in Qatar. And how, if I had this right, it's been a long time since I read this. So I'm pretty sure in Qatar there.

And then the Cobar Towers was just on the other side of the fence. And that was where they had launched the attack from. And that it was Bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who had done it and their guys who had done it. And that then Althani had helped them escape when the, FBI came hunting for them. Apparently, they sent the Waco killers, the hostage rescue team, to grab them. And the Al-Dani made them wait overnight and Litvin Lutton and Khalid Shah-Mohama get away. And they were actually apparently going to try to grab him for that. And I interviewed a CIA lady one time named Storer, Cynthia Storer. And she insisted to me that, well, it was

Al-Qaeda and it was Iranian-backed Saudi Hezbollah, both working together who did it. But she can't explain to me how she knows that but she swears that is true but right but gareth porter debunked that uh i thought quite thoroughly and you know there's also a front line pbs front line all about john o'neill the man who could the man who knew i think it's called who he was the fbi head of counterterrorism yeah and when they talk about the cobar towers part of that they talk about how the saudi's had spun up this whole tale and that louis free bought it And that then on the plane, on the way home, O'Neill told Louis Free that, come on, you don't believe what they're saying about all this Hezbollah stuff, right? They're blowing smoke up your ass, chief.

And then Louis Free, who was like this Opus Day, extremely conservative Catholic, pretended to be so offended at the use of the word ass that he wouldn't listen to John O'Neill about this weird al-Qaeda stuff anymore. And if the Saudis wanted to blame it on the Iranians, then they'd... they blame it on the Iranians. But meanwhile, who was it that got killed? It was American airmen enforcing the no-fly zone. So it was the most important thing in the world that the truth had been portrayed to the American people of what happened there and what was behind this, that you have, forget Iran attacking from across the Gulf for no reason. This was the bin Ladenites attacking a very important direct and symbolic target for the very important reason of getting it through your dad's head then that boy we better get our troops out of Saudi Arabia where I mean

we can bomb Iraq from the Gulf why do we have to have bases in Saudi to bomb them just so the Air Force can share with the Navy on the bombing runs let's just have the Navy bomb them then you know and anyway yeah but the thing about is that it shows like as you're just saying there that you had people like bruce whidell who will who know what happened and they still lie about it they still blame iran even though you had what 18 19 american service members most of them kids killed yeah right i mean they're still there will i mean it's obsession with iran you go back to the 2017 that michael vickers wrote that op-ed in the washington post about how the u.s missed the best chance to be, you know, to weaken Iran with the Syrian Civil War.

Vickers was the, he ran the special operations and low-intensity conflict department for the Pentagon under Obama. So he would have been, he was the guy in charge of that war. And was later, yeah, he was Deputy Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, so he got promoted. Okay, yeah, yeah. And so he writes his op-bed after the Obama administration's out in the Washington Post saying how the Syrian Civil War, this was our best opportunity to get Iran, basically, right? We're going to, this half million people killed there had nothing to do with Syria.

It was about Iran. I mean, this obsession with Iran, and you see it too. I mean, Susan Collins, the senator from Maine, after January 6th, she writes this Abed saying, I thought it was the Iranians who were attacking this building, right? I mean, so where your head would have to be at to think that, Jesus. So the obsession, the obsession, right, with Iran, that has, I mean, so, and then, then you get to the next stage where, okay, who's making these decisions? And, well, okay, it's coming down to Jake Sullivan, most likely. What's Jake Sullivan? Jake Sullivan's a politician. So he is not looking at this from strategic point of view. He's looking at this from a political point of view. And politics always trump strategic anyway. You got tactical operational, strategic, political, right? And so that's a concern. people saying, well, we do need to do a little more than we should because it'll make us look tougher, you know, and they're just going to have plenty of people within D.C. who agree with

them because, again, this Iran obsession, this mania that exists. But your point, though, about what are these troops doing in Iraq and Syria, you had a great piece a few weeks ago, Scott, about how they're bait, how they're basically a tripwire. Absolutely. I mean, the ostensible reason for them being there is this counter ISIS campaign, but what are they doing? They're fighting the guys who are, you know, they're fighting the guys who fought and defeated ISIS. Yeah, right? I mean, like, and so the whole thing is, you know, there's, there's some more, oh, the other point. Well, why are they in Syria? Well, one of the things is, you know, it stops this land bridge that connects Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Lambridge is what idiots call a road, you know, I mean, but,

It was an obsessive term that they used 10 years ago. But this idea that we are going to stop the Iranians from coming across and connecting physically with their Syrian allies, I mean, this is this obsession with Iran. But the point being, too, is that they are bait. And those three service members getting killed in Jordan, their deaths did exactly what many in Washington, D.C. want to have happened. Put the president in a position where he has to launch a major attack. It can't be a handful of cruise missiles.

Heck, it can't even look like we've been doing in Yemen, you know, with 12 or 13 attacks. This has to involve B-52s and B-2s and B-1s. I mean, this has to be, I mean, this has to be a real, you know. So the point, though, about those troops is, I get into this a little bit in my piece, is what happens if the Iranians, as we were discussing, get into a survival mode, a user or lose it mentality, or their obsession with us, because they have their hawks, they have their hardliners as well, they've had their people who just not even an obsession, just 45 years of this, we've had enough. Now, now is the time to have it out with the Americans, like that

type of motivation and maybe a little bit more strategic thinking behind it. This is our way to force the Americans out of the region ultimately. And then some political things, too. I mean, they have elections there as well. is going to get elected when their country is getting picked on, particularly by the Americans, you know, I mean, we've had enough, who's going to stand up against these guys? So the idea being, they launch enough strikes against our air bases in the region and all those Gulf monarchies where our air power is not able to provide the support to those garrisons we have in Syria and Iraq. And those garrisons we have in Syria, Iraq, that's what they're dependent upon, just like

our small combat outposts and fobs and such that we had all throughout Afghanistan, you know, that's one of the reasons why the Afghan Taliban wouldn't mass and attack those small outposts because of our air power. Right. You know, I mean, they don't want to get, they don't want to get massacre. You group up together and, you know, you lump up together in a group and the Apaches and the A10s and the B-1s are going to come in. Hey, let me ask you, man, I read that Hezbollah has tens of thousands of rockets and missiles. And then I just imagine that that means Iran has hundreds of thousands of rockets and missiles that can cross the Gulf there. Is that right?

Why wouldn't they? They've got enough that they're producing enough that they can give their surplus to Russia. Do you know, do you have any, like, special knowledge from when you were in the service that they have at least X amount or anything like that that you can tell us? No, no, I don't know anything like that. But I would say just this, 45 years of the regime trained pressure from the U.S., the, again, they're on Iraq. war, the assassinations, the sanctions, the bullying, I mean, the attacks, I mean, all those types of things, if people are just going to assume that the Iranians are not ready for a war with the U.S., I don't know what to tell you.

I mean, they could be as incompetent as we are and not be as prepared as they should be, but you want to put your money on that, you know, so you have to go with the expectation that if Matt Ho can think about this, right? You've got to believe the Iranians who have fought in one wars, right? I mean, when we killed Qasem Soleimani, we killed arguably the best general in the world for this century. You know, name me a more successful, more competent, more respected commander than Qasem Soleimani was throughout the entire world for the last 25 years. Well, we certainly don't have anyone who's going to make it into the top 10 of that list. You have to admit that a lot of his success was because he had George Bush and Barack Obama serving under him and carrying out of his orders in Iraq, especially, you know.

Yeah, I mean, hey, you know, if you got the American Air Force and the American, you know, carrier-based jets, you know, behind you, that's going to help. But, you know, a lot of – And look, I'm always – maybe longtime listeners this show are sick of this by now or whatever, but I got to assume that there's new people all the time. And I think it's so important what we're doing harping on all these. Sunni Shia stuff. I mean, I think people notice, we don't sit here and talk about, well, what are the differences between the Sunnis and the Shiites way? Who cares? That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about America's actual enemies who shed American blood. They're the radical vanguard edge of the Sunni side of this thing. The bin Ladenites hate us because we're too close to their governments. Meanwhile, our government doesn't really care about that. Never mind the people. in New York, the innocent civilians on the planes and in New York, they don't even care about their own guys

who were killed at the Pentagon, Matthew, because what they care about is they hate the Shiites more, because one, more than anything, that's what Israel demands, but two, also like you're saying, they're still not over the Revolution of 79, where they

declared independence from us. And then, you hear him talk about Iraq War II, they act like Iran killed five or 600 American in Iraq War II, and they just mean Iraqi Shiites did. They're just lying that Iran was behind that, as I demonstrate in the book with a little bit of your help, in fact, citing you there. But meanwhile, it was the bin Ladenites who were the vanguard edge of the Sunni insurgency

that killed 4,000 of our guys in Iraq War II. But they don't want to talk about that. They hate the Shiites more, even though it was only because Petraeus attacked them, that we were even fighting the Shiites at all in that stupid thing. I know a guy who tells a story about being, you know, he's a captain, I guess, in Sauter City in the summer of 2003, and this cleric comes in and wants to talk to the commander of the region and they shun them, they tell them to go home and we're not going to talk to you, you know, and it's McTada Al-Sotter, right?

I mean, like, there's stories like that. All of us have these stories, particularly if you're- I don't remember my source anymore, but there was one where it was like this cute little blonde Cupcake daughter of a Republican donor who had been appointed to the provisional authority there, who was for some reason the aide to Vice Roy Bremmer. And he said to her, who's this Mukta-Al-Sauder guy? And she said, oh, he's just some minor cleric. In other words, I haven't bothered looking it up, and I don't know, but I just heard his name a

couple times, so I'm just going to go ahead and bluff and tell you that he's not a big deal. when actually he's kind of the biggest deal out of anyone in the whole country. There's a reason they renamed Saddam City, Sauter City the day the statue came down. You know what I mean? Come on. You know, in the inanity of this, it externs further because you know right now there are also people in D.C. who are excited about the prospects of this war because this would stop Iranian support to Russia, right? So we've got to bomb Iran to hurt Russia. I mean, so you just have this this this this type of thinking that is just uh you know i'm struggling to find the right words

here because it it's it's ludicrous i mean this makes no sense uh but again you're getting into this is about the politics of it which is what you let off with uh but this this desire for iran you know getting back to maybe say a discussion about penac the project for a new american century you know i mean like that was the crown jewel right was iran and why i mean but then it goes back to this obsession about 1979. And it really is about as an empire, you cannot be offended the way the Iranians offended us, disrespected us, as they did in 1979. I mean, and that just, and even though that is 45 years ago, it still matters because that's what a lot of the senior folks cut their teeth on. When Joe Biden was on the foreign relations committee, you know, he had been

a senator for five years or so at that point, I guess, right? I mean, this stuff is just imbued in him. And of course, it just transfers down. You have, you know, this idea that these people are acolytes. And certainly that's the case. That's the case. Yeah. And it is, it's so ridiculous, especially when, you know, Ronald Reagan was able to do deals

and sell Ayatollah, sell the Ayatollah missiles just a few years later, you know, in the game of real politics. You just work things out, whatever, no hard feelings, and then figure it out. You know what I mean? What are you going to do? Stay enemies forever. You don't have to. It's just a choice.

But the problem is they're just big enough, probably just big enough to maintain their independence. And America's just not going to be friends with any country that they can't completely dominate and control, you know? I guess they've kind of settled for influence in India. I don't think they totally poned India. They're willing to deal with them. But only because they hate China more, right? we'd probably be picking a fight with the Indians just for being big enough to stay out from total American hegemony over their policy.

I mean, are there any monarchies that are not on our payroll that we don't sell weapons to, right? Certainly not in the Middle East. We like monarchies. We like monarchies, right? We tend to like dictators, you know. It's not very difficult. I've done this a number of times. Steven Semler.

I don't if you ever heard Stephen on your show. Stephen's great. I'll send you his stuff. He does a lot of really good data. and graphs and things like that, just put out something yesterday about, you know, our weapon sales last year, which totaled $238 billion. Yeah, I read it's the biggest export. Yeah.

Just as a point of reference, we export about $175 billion worth of agriculture products, right? Just so this to... And a lot of that is imperial gun to their head forcing them to buy American grain, and they would rather have their own. Yeah. Yeah. But so if you take that list of who we... sell weapons to, who we send cash to, who we train, you know, all that stuff is up. And you match it up

with like an organization like what Freedom House says, you know, Freedom House, the NGO that's, you know, basically it's funded by the U.S. State Department, you know, and people like Dick Cheney and Richard Pearl sit on their board of directors, you know what I mean? So this is not like some organization that Scott or I are sending a monthly $10 donations to. But, you know, if you match up all all the countries that we sell weapons to, with the list of countries at Freedom House, again, a state department cut out more or less, you know, you find that three out of four of the countries that the United States sells, that are monarchies, that are dictatorships, that are military regimes, autocracies, whatever, three out of four of those, the U.S. sells

weapons to, right? We supply weapons to 75% of the world's dictators, basically. And then when you get in the human rights stuff, it's even worse. So there's 12 countries in the world that have the death penalty for LGBTQ people. You know how many of the U.S. sells weapons to it? I'm going to say 12.

Oh, close, 10. Iran was the one outlier. I put until a couple of years ago, it was 11 because we were selling weapons to the Afghan government. I mean, in the 1980s, Gene Kirkpatrick, who was a legit neoconservative from the Social Democrats USA and who became Reagan's UN ambassador,

she wrote this important article saying, look, we back authoritarians against the totalitarians. They lean right. That's good enough for us. This is the Cold War, damn it. And we're up against the Soviet communists. And you know what? The Soviet communists are just about as bad as they could be.

So if you need an excuse, that was the best one that you're ever going to come up with. Right. But now that they're gone, let me check my watch here. They've been gone for 33 years now. now that they're gone how can you justify this for a little bit of oil or a little bit of Israel or whatever it is we have to keep a military dictatorship in charge in Egypt holding ridiculous Saddam Hussein like elections where the winner gets 98% and whatever with and we don't get upset them when he gives gold when they give gold bars to one of our senators not just any

senator the chairman of the foreign relations committee they give the guy gold bars right you know i mean we don't get upset with it i mean the whole thing is so farcical but then we get back to the point of well if it was just that it was just about scumbags like menendez getting paid off to you know give out information about the u.s embassy in cairo and to help what was that whole deal about help sell uh halal products or something like that you know i mean that was that if that was it okay we can laugh about it but the reality is is these policies the result of our empire have now gotten this position where we are facing this potentially really catastrophic war with Iran and that's this whole thing is about Israel too look we yeah we said that we've said

nothing about that we've said nothing in this conversation yet about the genocide that's occurring well that's the whole thing of this right is the what started off this current round of fighting in Iraq is America supporting Israel bombing the hell out of Gaza In retaliation, the current round of fighting, of course, began on October the 7th when Hamas broke out and killed a bunch of civilians, as I've seen in my own eyes, as well as a bunch of Israeli military guys. And then, yes, also apparently, quite apparently and well reportedly, the Israeli government killed a lot of their own people as well. I don't think anybody knows exact numbers. But anyway, that is what started this all off. and just in the larger sense of imperial power.

And, you know, we're talking about field marshal, Fata al-Sisi, the dictator of Egypt there. Without the Soviet Union, and who knows, I mean, we've got nothing but Clintons and Bushes and Bidens and McCain's running things over here, and they're all very evil and whatever. But without the Soviet Union messing around over there, and without Israel and their needs, you would think that America could probably just deal with whoever's in charge in Egypt, and it'd be fine.

You know what I mean? Well, not. Like, Islamic jihad is not going to take over the place. When the Muslim Brotherhood won the election, you know, they barely had any power for the short time that they were even in charge there. But it's really because of Israel that America must support the military dictatorship in Egypt, the kingdom in Jordan, and a big part of the rest of them around the region, too. oil has a lot to do with it. But the incentive structures are very skewed in favor of this little Jewish state that doesn't even have any oil. And I know people make a really big deal about the gas field offshore Gaza, but I think it's a small deal and not a big one. Exactly. I don't

think it's enough to, you know, and the Israelis own that anyway. They own it more or less anyway. The Palestinians are going to put out oil rigs there and get the oil themselves. Israelis we're going to allow that. Come on. I mean, Israelis are going to do whatever they want regardless. Right. And the field goes all the way up to like Cyprus and off the coast of Lebanon and whatever. So it's all going to be shared by multinational, whatever, that Israel course will dominate. The one thing I will say about Egypt and I was reminded about this. And maybe I actually, I probably didn't know it. And I can't remember who I wrote, I can't remember where, who wrote this. But, you know, when NASA was in power, there were no American military bases in the Middle East. Right. And like that type of thing of like we have to have a dictator. in charge. Otherwise, things aren't going to be so smooth for us. We can't have all these bases. One, there's the idea of having vassals and them being pliant and cooperative, right, helping our policies, particularly Israel First policies. But then the other thing, too,

is that like, you know, how can we be an empire if we don't have these outposts? How are we going to export $240 billion in weapons if we don't have foreign militaries, that are eagerly going to buy them up, right? How are we going to have 800 military bases in the world if there are nocers out there, right? How do we have an empire with people who are going to oppose us, you know, and be popular because there are strong nationalist figures who are representing a history of, you know, resistance to occupation, you know, and so that's what the empire hates, anything that's an affront to it, right?

And we get back to, okay, why are they so obsessed with the Ron going back to night? it was an affront to the empire how dare they do this you know they should know their place kind of thing uh you know and and but here we are you know with wondering what's how is it taking so long so long to for the united states to launch his attacks because we're getting our aerial refueling tankers in place because we've got to move the b52s to diao garcia or to whatever it is right i mean like is that the reason why it has been almost a week yet you know or Are they just building, you know, I think it's probably that, as opposed to we're building dramatic anticipation, you know, for the moment, right?

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I mean, I think you've got to ask, how dug in is Khatib Hezbollah? Like, did they not just go home? These are militia fighters who were like, you know, semi-professional adjuncts of the Iraqi army. Who says they're going to wade around with a giant red target on their head, you know, bomb me? And that's a good point, because where does, where does the Iraqi army end and where does Ketibha Zabala begin?

I don't think we know. And they're not going to bomb the Iraqi army, are they? I mean, you're going to talk about a final break with their policy of 2003 through today. The, you know, the thoughts, too, is that people have to remember about these groups that we're talking about in Iraq. in Syria is they're very competent, they're very experienced. Again, these were the guys at the for some reason, yeah. Right. I mean, like, they are being so like the threat to these American bases is real. You know, Balad Air Base or El-Assad Air Base could get overrun, you know, and certainly all those small bases in Syria. We've got, I don't know, like a dozen bases in Syria or something

like that, you know, all these small little things. None of us had heard of Tower 22 before, you know, before, you know, a week ago. I mean, so all. these small little bases, you know, again, that were relying upon American air power for the defense. Speaking of Jordan, I mean, why do we have to always assume that it's only ever going to be the Shiites who are intervening on the side of the Palestinians here when we know that 100% of popular opinion in every single one of these countries is on the side of the Palestinians here. That's, that was my point. Oh, man, I'm sorry. If they could reach out and touch our guys in Jordan, why can't they reach out and touch the king of Jordan?

You know, I mean, the idea of exactly that of why, first of all, the other thing that provides security for these small bases is local security. So we've cut deals with the locals who are in charge. You've got local Iraqi army units, you know, that kind of thing as well. That's how three of our Rangers got shot in the back training al-Qaeda there back in 2016. That's exactly right. I mean, so, you know, if you're, if you, those local groups there, those local groups there, those local, power centers, they may very well, say to themselves, you know what, America's time here is up. You know, this is the end. One, on a moral level, on a, you know, metaphysical level, on a level of, you know,

where is my alliance lay? It is with the Palestinian people. My uncle and my aunt and my cousins were all killed by an American bomb back in 2007. You know, I mean, like all this type of stuff swirls together as well as then too maybe just the hard coal realities that are put in front of them whether that's cash whether it's going to be hey there's going to be a 1500 PMF troops here tomorrow uh you know maybe you know that all that okay you know what we're not going to defend the americans tomorrow you know like that kind of thing very easily happen all right so that's a good place to change a subject to one last subject here because you know i have have a very thorough imagination of how bad this could get if it really just becomes like the ayatola announces all bets off if you believe in god it's time to stand up to the americans holy crap like we saw what happened in o four when the iatollah sistani said that in iraq said i want every shiite he said i want anybody who believes in a lot go outside tell bush you want one man one vote and then they did and they got their one man one vote they own the constitution they own the whole government ever since that day

You know what I mean? Like, that was it. The Ayatollah does that. Either Ayatollah does that. It calls all Shiites to arms in the region. I could see how absolutely freaking out of control that that could get. Like, God knows what all. But I want to go the other way with it, which is, nah, they get away with this tit-for-tat BS.

Look, we know you didn't do the sarin hoax. That was Al-Qaeda, but we're going to pretend to believe it and bomb you for an afternoon. And you're going to take it and not do anything. and we're going to, because nobody really wants to tangle with America, that's a pretty big bully. He says he just wants to punch you one time, you know, I don't know. So that's how they want to play it. Let's say they get away with that. And let's say that really the worst that happens in this whole thing is still just what's happening in Gaza.

That this America and their Shiite nuisance problem stays exactly what it is, ultimately. We don't go to Tehran. We don't go to Baghdad. Nobody's going back to Baghdad only by air, but even then maybe not, you know, to such a degree. So I'm looking more, or I wonder how you see the long-term consequence. I guess we still don't know the extent of the like permanent cleansing of Gaza. Who's going to be allowed to come home and to what end and with what reconstruction and all these things that are, whether they're going to be completely cleansed out of there or what.

But I just keep thinking that, man, it's. levels of violence so much lower than this and so much less well publicized than this is what caused our al-Qaeda problem before I mean it was Bill Clinton bomb in Iraq from bases in Saudi as we mentioned like with the Kobar Tower attack there but it was also American support for Israel and Palestine and Lebanon in the 90s which helped turn this whole Islamic jihad

Egyptian Islamic jihad and Azam group project thing into an anti-American thing. Right. I mean, one of the hijackers, 9-11 hijackers, didn't have family that was killed by Israel and Lebanon, if I remember correctly. Well, I don't know that particular one, but I know that the main hijacker,

Mohamed Atta and his buddy, Ramsey bin al-Shib, who helped coordinate the thing, but who couldn't get into the country, that they both were inspired by Shimon Peres' Operation Grapes-A-Rath when he invaded Lebanon in, I think it was August of 96, which was July 96, and then including the con. a massacre where 106 women and children

were killed in a U.N. shelter. But they're doing that every day. Killing 106 women and children in a U.N. shelter. Man, that's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday during this whole thing. So, oh, by the way, it was Noftali Bennett. Just trivia.

It was Noftali Bennett that called in the strike on that shelter that made it into Bin Laden's Declaration of War against the Americans. And that was what inspired Muhammad Atta. I want to go join this Saudi. Here's Egyptians. I love saying this. It's so ironical and important to me. You've got Egyptian engineering students studying in Hamburg, Germany,

answer a call to arms by a renegade Saudi sheikh hiding in Afghanistan in order to avenge the Lebanese killed by Israel with American money. And so the call to arms is to knock down our towers and kill our people for being involved in these atrocities that most Americans don't even know where Lebanon is at all. If you switch Lebanon and Israel on the map, they'd be like, whatever. You know, they don't know nothing about it. And yet they're held accountable because, of course, Bill Clinton was helping Israel do it. Whether Americans knew that or not.

And that's probably what I was thinking of. I probably have my thought that I said this before about the hijackers. And people can find that in the looming tower by Lawrence Wright and in perfect soldiers by Terry McDermott. Yeah. But your point, though, Scott, about what comes from this? You know, and maybe one of the reasons why we may be seeing this delay, besides practical reasons, you know, of like we've got to get the planes and everybody in position to bomb Iran, is maybe there are, and sit in the White House hoping that the ceasefire deal comes through, right? And so we've heard today about the possibility of this, this deal's because it was presented Hamas and it'd be 40-day ceasefire. There'd be three phases, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

or, but, you know, maybe that's the hope is that we need to decouple this because you're absolutely right. What you said earlier about this is a called arms. And we've seen this. And this could, could this be, if you want it, we start getting our imaginations, could this be the call that the arms could, you know, I think could this, not just for the Shia or a Sunni, but could, and I think Erdogan is a great example of this, you know, you hear him talk, you see how he posture themselves. You're telling me he doesn't want to be the next. Saladin, right? I mean, like, I mean, is that the, is that the competition that's going to occur among Erdogan, you know, the Ayatollah, MBS? Who's going to be the next Saladin? You know,

I mean, so like we can, we can go down all kinds of pathways here that may seem very fanciful, but you know what? You know, it's not that much of a stretch. It's not that much of a leap to see how many years to go back to we saw united arab armies fighting against israel right i mean like the precedent is there and in u.s policy for my entire life the last time was 73s right so i was born 73 the u.s policy for my entire life has been to prevent that from happening again right to to prevent that type of unity among the Muslims against the Israelis and so yeah the dangers of all this But the more acute thing you're saying about what comes from this genocide, what's going to be the consequences, whether it's stuff that we can very easily predict and say, okay, yeah, who wouldn't want revenge? Why is there not going to be revenge for this? You know, any of one of us who was attacked and brutalized, murdered, humiliated in this manner, wouldn't we have some type of desire for revenge? Isn't this the basis of so many. We've got a whole people aren't familiar with the whole notion of the myth of redemptive violence.

Hey, just look at how we acted over September 11th. One really damned bad attack on one day. We killed our government got four million people killed, probably directly kill half a million or more in that and got four million killed. So you have the world upside down. Yeah. Hey, you got to go. You got to go if you grew up in the pop culture, we grew up on Scott. You got to go out and avenge Alderon, right?

You know, I mean, like, you got to go blow up the Death Star. I mean, you're never going to end this problem unless you stamp it out unless you destroy it, you know, let alone all the, you know, you're really going to. Which is exactly what the Americans say. They only understand one thing for us. And that's exactly what they say about us, too. And that's a danger. That's a danger, let alone the emotional aspect of it, like, who am I if I don't avenge, if I don't do something about what happened? Who am I?

I'm going to live my life this way, the rest of my life. life, you know, not having stood up for my entire family was slaughtered or, and it's just not just the Palestinians. You're seeing this sentiment, of course, everything the Yemenis, the Ansar al-La, what these are doing right now. And look how popular they are. You know, I don't know how, they, they are in control of, what, 70% of the population of Yemen before all this.

And, you know, they weren't the most popular political group there in Yemen. They are now. Exactly. Not just in Yemen throughout the region. There are people down in Chile and people in Thailand and people in Angola who are cheering on Zaralaah, the Houthis on, right? I mean, like, because they're standing up for this. They're standing up against the empire and it's genocide. Yeah, the Muslim Brotherhood Party, which is a right-wing Sunni party in the country who they've been fighting this whole time.

Al-Isla has been backed by Saudi. It's like the one Muslim Brotherhood group that the Saudis like for whatever reason. And the UAE doesn't like them, but the Saudis do. and the Houthis have been fighting them for this whole nine-year war. And then now Al-Isla is like three cheers for the Houthis and rallying around them.

So war is the health of the state for the Houthis over there, getting involved, which is another problem. They have their own domestic political reasons for ratcheting up tensions for everyone in the region, for their own benefit. That's exactly right.

You know, I mean, the... And I'm sorry, dude, I have to stop because I'm looking at the time and I'm in a... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got to get interviewed in one minute here. I can talk to you for the right. the afternoon. You're the best, dude. I love talking to you. Thank you so much for coming on.

All right, Scott. Hey, man. Thanks for what you're doing. And, uh, yeah, thanks everyone for listening. Hell yeah. See, man. The Scott Horton show, anti-war radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in LA. APSRadio.com, antiwar.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.