Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 4/30/26 Larry Johnson on Trump’s Tenuous Ceasefire with Iran

Episode Date: May 3, 2026

Scott interviews Larry Johnson about where things stand with Trump’s war on Iran. The two dig into the cards each side holds as this ceasefire limps along, reflect on the troubling lack of rationality in US policy towards Iran and debunk some common lies and misunderstandings circulating about the conflict. Discussed on the show: “When It Comes to Using Proxies, The US Far Surpasses Iran as a Sponsor of Terrorism” (Sonar21) Larry C. Johnson is a former CIA officer and intelligence analyst, and a former planner and advisor at the US State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism. Follow his analysis at Sonar21. Audio cleaned up with the Podsworth app: https://podsworth.com Use code HORTON50 for 50% off your first order at Podsworth.com to clean up your voice recordings, sound like a pro, and also support the Scott Horton Show! For more on Scott's work: Check out The Libertarian Institute: https://www.libertarianinstitute.org Check out Scott's other show, Provoked, with Darryl Cooper https://youtube.com/@Provoked_Show Read Scott's books: Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine https://amzn.to/47jMtg7 (The audiobook of Provoked is being published in sections at https://scotthortonshow.com) Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism: https://amzn.to/3tgMCdw Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://amzn.to/3HRufs0 Follow Scott on X @scotthortonshow And check out Scott’s full interview archives: https://scotthorton.org/all-interviews This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Incorporated https://rrbi.co Moon Does Artisan Coffee https://scotthorton.org/coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom https://www.libertyclassroom.com/dap/a/?a=1616 and Dissident Media https://dissidentmedia.com You can also support Scott’s work by making a one-time or recurring donation at https://scotthorton.org/donate/https://scotthortonshow.com or https://patreon.com/scotthortonshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest. Reporting to the American people what's going on in this country. It's the babies I make it. We're dealing with Hitler Revisited. This is the Scott Horton Show, Libertarian Foreign Policy, mostly. When the president visit, that means that it is not only. We're going to take out seven countries in five years. They don't know what the fuck they're doing.

Negotiate now. End this war. And now, here's your host. Scott Porton. All right, you guys, introducing Larry Johnson, former CIA officer turned no longer CIA officer. That's good. They say once a CIA officer, always a CIA officer. I'm not sure that really counts with a few of these guys, I know, like you and Ray and

John Curiakou and a couple others. But anyways, very happy to have you here. The guy who told me the night the war started that, oh, the war is definitely. going to start today. And then it did, you know, before sunup, anyway. And of course you've been writing on sonar21.com, your great website, your astute analysis that goes out in the email every morning and been doing endless interviews on all these shows informing people about all this stuff.

People keep asking me, but to a great degree, I'm just repeating the things that I've learned from the likes of you, Larry. So why don't you give us your good assessment here? on where we stand in this war. Trump's options for getting us out all the way somehow and putting an end of this thing in any other way other than some idiotic also failed escalation going forward here. Yeah, I think the only escape hatch we have now

is for Trump to go totally against his personality and or find a way to say, hey, we won and walk away. get out of it because we do not have a viable military option. We cannot, we do not have the military force to defeat Iran, period, because we can't do it maritime. Right now, our ships are restricted. They don't cross more than 200 miles into Iranian waters. They stay 200 miles off course. Why is Iran has cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, both short range, intermediate range, and drones. They can hit those ships. If they're inside that 200-mile limit, they're vulnerable,

they'll be hit, they'll be sunk. And so they stay outside that. That's why, you know, the Abraham Lincoln ventured in closer and it got, it got hammered pretty good. The administration's gone to great lengths to cover that up. So we don't have a viable military option. I mean, naval option maritime. And on the air option side, basically we've hit about every target we could hit. And in the process, we have seriously depleted a number of precision-guided missiles, both offensive and defensive. The defensive side, the PAC three interceptors, the THAAD, and offensive side, the Jasm's,

the Tomahawks. Where the real vulnerability there is is the rare earth mineral mineral mineralism. that are required to produce guidance systems in all of those munitions. And those rare earth minerals are now controlled by China. And so even if we wanted to, we don't have the supplies to ramp up production and replace what we have extinguished. CNN ran an article recently claiming that the PAC-3s, the Patriot Missiles, interceptors were down 50 percent.

That's not true. It is down like 90%, 90 to 95%. I can happily take anybody through the math. It's not complicated. So right now, you've got Admiral Brad Cooper. He's the commander of CENTCOM. He's called the Joint Forces Commander. He has divided up.

He's put one guy in charge of aviation, one guy in charge of maritime operations. So the official title is Combined Forces Aviation Component Commander. You always got to have an acronym. If you can do military, you've got to have that acronym. So the CFACCC or the CFMCC, which is Combined Force Maritime Component Commander. So you've got an Admiral there, Air Force General on the aviation side. Notice what's missing.

You don't have a ground force component commander. I haven't named one yet. So that would be, if you want to find an Intel warning sign, if Setcom appoints a combined forces ground component commander, then you know we're going to go in on the ground. But until that happens, we're not going in on the ground. We might have some special operations raids, but nothing of any substance because the Army's not going to let an Admiral or an Air Force General command its ground. forces, no more than the Navy would allow an army general to command an aircraft carrier. It's just, you know, different skill sets, different experience required. So the United States doesn't have any good military operations.

The notion that our blockade is shut down Iran, nonsense. And a simple fact that we don't get 200 yards, 200 miles closer to the shore, that means all Iran has to do is its ships, these tankers, they stay within Iranian territorial waters, 12-mile limit, just sell in there. U.S. can't attack. If U.S. comes that close, they get sunk. So they just sell all along the coast until they get to Pakistan,

and they stay in Pakistani waters until they get to the Indian Ocean. If the United States to run an effective blockade, they would have to board every ship, and when you board a ship, you then have to attach a naval, a U.S. Navy ship to accompany the one you've seized. We don't have enough ships to do that, much less naval crews to do that. So this is like a whole political theater that's being run in front of the American people. That said, Trump is under enormous pressure from the likes of Miriam Edelson, General Jack Keene, General Kellogg to hit Iran again.

And Iran's ready. They vowed that they're going to come back with greater force and more targets than they hit in the first five weeks. So, and China, China, I've said that Xi Jinping, he's got one of those big bags of buttered popcorn, and he's sitting in the movie theater just watching, laughing, and eat. because Iran is depleting and attritting U.S. military capability to the point that if the war broke out with China, we wouldn't last three weeks. Well, so somebody asked me today, yeah, but what about conscription?

I mean, they're talking about vamping up, revamping selective service, getting it going. Maybe they will just do a World War II-style D-Day invasion and conquer all of Persia and do whatever it takes. Yeah, how do they do that too? Yeah, how do they do them? So, you know, the face of war has changed in the last 23 years. 23 years ago, on the eve of our invasion into Iraq, we assembled 165,000 troops in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

They were bases. The only thing Saddam had at the time were scuds, and they weren't very reliable, and they were easy to shoot down. Today, with the advent of drones and the advent of the sophisticated ballistic missiles and cruise missiles that Iran has developed, you couldn't assemble a group of 1,000 U.S. soldiers in one place without them facing the risk of being blown up. So to actually assemble a force that would be large enough to go into Iran, that when you realize Iran's got an army of rustling between the Revolutionary Guard, the Artesh, the regular army, and the Basij, sort of the militia that works with the IRGC.

We've got a million guys. So the rule of thumb is there'll be the defenders. The attacking force usually has to have a three to one advantage. So that means we've got to come over three million men. Right now we've got active duty, $452,000 in the army and $120,000. in the Marine Corps. We're shy a little bit, you know, about 2.5 million more we have to recruit, but then you no longer employ the armed forces in the same way we did 23 years ago and look at what's happening when Ukraine. Russia's entire method of operating has changed

as a result of drone threats and drone warfare. So we're in a whole new ballgame. The problem with the United States as we continue, we're trying to fight a 21st century war with 20th century concepts. All right, so, you know, Trump is able to climb down quite a ways on just forgetting, right, his previous war goals. Now it's just about the straight

and him saving a little bit of phase. So if he's really trying, if he, I don't know, sent a diplomat instead of his son-in-law or something, how difficult might it look sorry i should have prefaced it like this to me the answer is always just leave and in this case not just for my you know predisposition but it seems to me like that's actually the smart thing here is to just completely bug out of the entire area and leave the entire burden on iran to resolve with everybody else in eurasia but us and see how far

they get, you know, pushing their luck and being a jerk to everybody and lording their newfound dominance over the Gulf to, you know, extraordinary degrees and all of that. Let them have to worry about the fallout, all that, instead of it being all our fault, at least going forward. That may just make sense, but then if we were having this discussion in Washington, D.C. instead, then what would it take for him to actually be able to do that? Is that really possible? Or there's some damn concession that Jack Keane has to say we've achieved before that can be done or what? Yeah, I think just personality-wise and watching the changes that have taken place in his mental status over the last 12 months. You know, people started, according to Robert Barnes, and I trust Robert on this, people started noticing some serious changes in his,

mental faculty starting last September. Confabulation. You know, we start saying things that you think are true. You genuinely believe they're true, but they're absolutely false. Such as, oh, you know, I've stopped nine wars. I've resolved nine wars. And it's like, well, no, you haven't, but we can't argue with you on that. Going into this war, he was advised, if the New York Times is to be believed.

everyone on his staff, you know, from, well, J.D. Vance is vice president, Marco Rubio, John Ratcliffe, and then Susie Wiles, and even Scott Bessett, all recommended not, not to attack Iran. The only one who did say, yeah, we should do it, was Pete Hanksuff. And Trump overruled the military, all the other military advisors and did it. And part because he'd been convinced that this would be a short war done in four days. You know, that's been a common theme throughout American history. You know, go back to the opening battle at Bull Run and Civil War.

Everybody thought this would be over in a week or two and not anticipating what the Civil War would become. So, you know, Trump's now captured on that front. He's not going to admit he's wrong. So you've got to figure out a way to convince him that he's won. Hey, you've now defeated, the Iranian armies defeated, the Iranian Navy is defeated, Iranian Air Force is defeated, you've obliterated their missile program. Even though none of that's true, but let's just tell him that.

Get him convinced that that's true and said, therefore, you can say, you know what, as a result, we've defanged Iran, we no longer have to keep our troops in the region. because de facto, they're not there right now because they can't, the bases that they once occupied have been destroyed largely. And then, you know, pull out, retreat. That's the only option. The United States does not have a military option for opening the Strait of Hormuz.

Because to open it, you're going to have to put a ground force that will penetrate up to 100 miles or more into Iran to take out the, ballistic missile and cruise missile locations and drone sites that can be launched from the interior. Yay, guess what, everybody? I'm a total twin. Well, actually, no, I'm me. I'm Skater Scott.

But I meet the Doltle Twins down at the local skate park where, as you can see, I'm doing a giant slob bear. And I hang out with the kids and I teach them all about the foreign and domestic blowback consequences from American intervention in Iran. and all the trouble that the U.S. government has caused there since the 1950s. And of course, you know the Great Tuttle Twins series by Elijah Stanfield, the great artist and Connor Boyack, the primary author of all the stuff. And it's these great booklets and major books on history

and on all different libertarian subject matter so that your kids don't have to be raised, Kami by all of the usual child age publications out there. So the Tuttle Twins, they just do a really great job. And if you have school age kids, then you will absolutely love their stuff. And especially now, because now I'm in it too. So all you got to do is go to Tuttletwins.com slash free magazine. Get it?

Totaltwins.com slash free magazine. And they'll send it right to you. isn't that great? Now, let me take you on a tangent there for a minute before we let you get back to your main point. Famously, this General Van Riper playing the red team, Iran, with the U.S. Navy over and over again in the W. Bush years.

I'm going to guess like 2005, something like that. And they did this test. 2005. And they made him reset it over and over again. And finally, they kicked his ass out of there because he kept winning by using messengers on motorcycles with notepads. instead of, you know, easy to intercept, you know, FM communications or whatever. And using small fast boats, sank our Navy and all this stuff.

Now, that's famous, and I've seen people bringing that up again recently. But what I haven't seen anyone bring up recently is stuff that I read back then that said, well, not that far back, but like, say, I don't know, 07 or 010 or 011 or something. That, like, yeah, but that was then. and we learn those lessons from those red teams. And it wasn't just a man, right, but we red team the hell out of this thing. And of course, if we fight Iran,

they're going to try to close a straight of Hormuz. Well, they can try because we know what to do about that now. And I know because you've told me this before, how you've been involved in, you know, as a CIA guy, but sort of like on loan on, I don't know, special activities guy, or what the hell, how exactly it works. But you've talked about helping plan missions for top-tier special operations. forces and stuff. So I know that, I don't know exactly like the breadth of your expertise on that

stuff, but obviously you've had the very highest type clearance about that. And obviously, man, if Van Riper showed them how raw open their belly was in 2005, they must have damn done something about it since then, Larry. But so then it sounds like you just skipped all that and said, no, they have no way to open that straight. Yeah. So in 19, I first started scripting exercises, you're helping participate exercises for the Joint Special Operations Command in the summer of 1993. I left State Department and this consulting group, it was set up by a guy named Cal Sassai. Cal had been the deputy commander of a group called ISA.

It's a top secret. You can find it now as ISA. It's, that's sort of declassified. But at the time, ISA was this dark secret organization. and he had developed a contract where he would script the exercises or his team would script the exercises for J-Soc. They needed somebody that could write messages for, let me turn the phone off, sorry about that,

that could write messages for State Department and communications from Secretary of State to embassies, embassies back to Secretary of State. So I got that gauge. So I started doing that in 1994. I did that for the next 20, 23 years. And in scripting these exercises, you develop scenarios that require the tier one units,

and we're talking Delta Force or Siltim 6, with support from like the, what's called the 24th Special Tactics Squadron, STS, Task Force 160. And one of the exercises we scripted was going into Iran attacking what they called a hardened, deeply buried target, one of these mountain fortresses to try to recover nuclear material. And we have, at the end, you have lessons learned. And the lesson learned out of that was, don't do it. It's too costly in terms of human life. So this notion, I saw it over the course of 23 years. We'd always do these exercises.

They call it a hot wash, and they're supposed to, what did we learn today? And what I discovered, when I started, I had this assumption, Man, you're going to build a knowledge or knowledge. This is going to be like climbing a stair step. People will know more in five years than they did now. No. Nobody learned.

In fact, they forgot a lot. They wouldn't go back and look at it. So the joke was, lessons learned. Yeah, right. There is no learning. Yeah. The military. It's a government program.

It's not supposed to solve problems, silly. That's not what's going on. All right. Well, and I'm sorry because I interrupted your. train and thought there about. And you were agreeing with me about how brilliant I am that Donald Trump ought to just say, no, forget it, we're done. Hey, we won.

We'd give him a big medal, ticker tape parade, and he's a big hero. Now, this is the 25th war he's ended through his supreme peacemaking powers. Fine, but is that really like the best we can do politically? Because I'm not sure that like just cutting it. Because, see, I guess the way I conceive of it is, short of just completely withdrawing from the region, like Jordan too, and just forget it. Yeah. That it doesn't really work as well.

You know what I mean? Of what we really need to do. If we just completely leave, then the burden is entirely on them. And people would say that's giving the total advantage to them, but I would say it's the war that's done that. But it seems actually like the more responsibilities they have as far as everybody around them and as far as East Asia

and everybody else, the more they're likely to behave. in a rational manner in order to have to, you know, get along with so many different customers and all of that without our interference. So, but is that realistic at all that even Donald Trump, even in his most delirious moment, might just do it my way? Yeah. Unfortunately, no, I wish that was the case.

You know, Scott, the real problem here is economics. The economic impact of this war has not yet begun to be actually felt. You know, I've described it. It's like the tsunami. If you were sitting there on the beach in Fouquet back in was that, 2012, you're sitting there watching the waves, and all of a sudden the water starts going out to sea. Hey, man, it's great. Look at all the open beach space.

Well, if you recognize that for what it was, you would have picked your beach chair up and started running like hell for high ground because what was coming next was devastating. And what's coming next now is we've had a complete disrupt. of the international oil market. You know, 20% of it's gone away. And we had about a six-week period from February 28th until about a week ago that oil was still in those tankers

that were being, you know, slowly going to their destinations. Now they're being all floated. But they're being all floated, even though you get a paper price, like you look at the price of Brent crude or West Texas intermediate crude. that it'll say, oh, it's $105. But at the offload point, you're paying $145. In fact, at Singapore, two weeks ago, one offload, they paid $221.

So this paper price is a future prediction. The reality is what's going on when they deliver. And there are no more deliveries out there lining up waiting to go. So now that impact is going to hit, and you're going to start getting a very dramatic surge in oil prices around the world. There are prices for fuel, for diesel. Airline industry is particularly getting battered. And so that airline industry starts collapsing. There's an American citizen lives in China named Alex. He writes and broadcast at a place called Reporters. And he's a derivative trader. Been doing that for 20 years.

And, you know, because the derivatives market encompasses something like $600 trillion worth of assets, tremendously over-leveraged. And according to Alex, he says, the financial crisis that's coming as a result of all of this will make the 2008 collapse look small by comparison. So we haven't yet seen the full cascading effects of the loss of 20% of the oil, loss of 25% of the liquid natural gas, lost 35% of the fertilizer. They're already predicting now that rice production is falling off. So you're going to have falloffs in rice, falloffs in corn, falloffs in wheat,

because of the lack of fertilizer. And so what we're looking at down the road a year from now, and two years from now are significant disruptions in the food supply. So then that translates into political chaos. So we're, you know, if this whole war stops tomorrow, man, we're not out of the woods. I mean, that tsunami wave is going to hit us. The question is, the longer this goes on, the bigger that tsunami wave gets. Yeah.

Wow. Boy, I guess my question is, where's Marco Rubio on any of this? Not that he is an extremely capable guy. I would have told you he's the dumbest damn senator we have a couple of years ago, but like he has seemed to have tried to stay out of this somehow, even though he's the Secretary of State and National Security Advisor. And I've heard other people say he's no dummy, which I guess means he can read or something. I don't know exactly what I mean.

I guess what I'm saying in my be-swetted desperation here is, like, is anyone intelligent advising the president that like, man, we got some real headwinds? You know, I was reading a thing where he said, they're quoting Trump people, and I guess they're quoting him, that they believe that if they can just keep the blockade going for three months, that then the Iranians, they won't be able to. to put their oil anywhere, so they'll have to turn off all their refineries, and then that's going to cause all this economic damage.

They're really going to lose money then. And then they'll give in. You know, they didn't give in when we kill the Ayatoll and bomb the crap out of Tehran and all the other stuff they were doing a few weeks ago there. But they're going to give in now if we just hold off for three months. And I'm thinking, like, one, that's wishful thinking and sounds pretty thin and is a three-month punt at least

for this supposedly to take effect. but then like any idiot president in the same position, George W. Bush or Barack Obama or whoever would at this point think, geez, I don't know. That's really going to work, right? Like there's got to be some kind of voice of reason up there. And I'm sorry, I guess I should have prefaced this whole interview with, man, I've been moving and traveling.

And so I don't really know anything. I'm sure there must be so much that I'm missing that's going on here as far as the reporting about what's happening. Washington here. But is there any voice of reason on the National Security Council at all, do you think? Apparently, J.D. Vance, and I know there's some critics of Vance, but he has been trying to do, you know, he's trying to walk that fine line that he doesn't want to challenge Trump. He knows that if he takes on Trump directly, Trump's going to get defensive. So he's trying to be, you know, be viewed as a loyal subordinate. But he's also been pushing on

hard as, you know, we shouldn't get into this war. We should be getting out. That said, you know, the other day I did an interview with Al-Maya Dean television, and they had one of their correspondents who had written a piece comparing, trying to show that how much Donald Trump is like Ronald Reagan and in some of their, you know, dealings with Iran. And, you know, I had to correct him. I said, well, I disagree because I look back at Reagan with all of his flaws. And, you know, and bad policies. Still, Reagan, unlike Trump, had good bipartisan relationships

with the Democrats. He was great friends with Tip O'Neill. He didn't go out of his way to insult Democrats. He'd make jokes about him. Jokes that would actually the Democrats would laugh at. He was, and he was accompanied, though,

he had a Secretary of State named George Schultz. Schultz was incredible. He had Secretary of Defense, Cap Weinberger. Cap was outstanding. In fact, it was actually George Schultz who had talked Reagan into sending the Marines into Beirut in 1982 to try to help get in the middle of the Lebanese Civil War.

And that decision was made without consulting Cap. And when Cap found out about it, he went to Reagan, he says, hey, this is crazy, don't do it. And then Reagan said, well, I've already done it. And then when the Marines got blown up, then Reagan said, you're a right, Cap. And, you know, pulled him out. But at least at that time around Reagan, he was in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, that nonetheless, he was surrounded by some top-notch security advisors. They were, now that said, Robert McFarland, who was his national security advisor, got him into a lot of trouble with Iran-Contra.

And that whole mess. In fact, I was going to suggest to you, that might be another book for you to consider, provoke, too. Because when you go back and look at the history of the United States, what we did to Iran and what we did with Iraq, providing the chemical weapons, providing biological weapons, providing the intelligence that. It was used by Iraq to attack Iran. You then begin to understand why the Iranians actually were really upset with us and were pushing back. A part of the story we never heard. I wrote that book first. It's called Enough Already.

Oh, okay. I haven't read that yet. I'm sorry. No problem, man. But, you know, our betrayal of Saddam Hussein, you know, Saddam had been basically our boy for nine years. And then all of a sudden we turned on him viciously. And the reality was, I was good friends with Pat Lying. I don't know if you know who he is.

Yeah, sure. I read his blog for many years. Okay. So Pat was the one who was hand-carrying the intelligence to Iraq for the last two years of that, Iran-Iraq war. And the reason Pat was doing it is Saddam Hussein got pissed off at the CIA because of Iran-Contra. But Saddam found out that all of his intel was coming to him via CIA. When he found out that CIA was betraying him and selling weapons to the Iranians that were being used to attack Iraq,

he tossed out the CIA, Tom Twettin, in that crowd. So it's a very complicated pass, but I would argue the United States, the one consistent bad actor throughout this process has been us. Not them, us. And we never take account for what we've done. I wish I had known that anecdote or maybe if I had ever learned that I had forgotten it, Saddam's reaction. to the outbreak of Iran-Contra. And then that would then coincide with what I do know about CIA encouraging the Kuwaitis to be intransigent towards him.

Yeah. Not because they were trying to bait him into a trap, but just because they were trying to screw him by having the Kuwaitis demand their payments and all their overproduction of the oil and all of that stuff was... That's why... That's why... ...I.A. urging.

I mean, that's why Pat Lang ended up hand-carrying the intelligence for the last two years of the one. war because the Iraqi said to the CIA, you know, basically go, fuck yourself. We're not going to deal with you anymore. And so to keep the policy in place, Pat got tabbed. And so he did it for the last two years. But understand when we're sharing that intelligence, we weren't sharing what does the Ayatollah like to eat for breakfast?

Well, what are his preferred movies? No, no, no. We were giving targeting data so that they could attack and kill Iranian troops. That's what we were doing. And, you know, it's just Americans failed to risk during that entire 80s as all that's going on. Then we wonder, well, why is Iran sponsoring and backing people like Hezbollah? Well, because we're doing all this stuff to, you know, it's a much more nuanced story instead of this black and white work. We're the good guys. They're the bad guys.

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the thing is about Harley Abbott and his team is they do what they say they're going to do when they say they're going to do it. and are just extremely reliable and extremely knowledgeable and 100% vouch for the great Harley Abbott over there. You got a website. You need it fixed up. You need a new one. Setting up a business.

Working on any kind of online project like that, check out expanddesigns.com. Yeah. And, you know, it's funny, well, I don't know. There's so much to it. But I guess basically the entire narrative that the policy is basically. based around if you hear it. And I'm sure that this is what Trump believes, too. Like, you know, there were,

George W. Bush probably believes some lies, but he told plenty of his own where he knew he was lying here. Yeah. Seems like Donald Trump probably doesn't know the first thing about Iran's role in the region. You know, I actually have a quote in enough already where he talks about in his first term. He goes, oh, the generals brought me into this room. And there are these big boards. Wow, they were big and boredy.

And the generals, they were. so handsome. Like Tom Cruz only even more handsomer than that. He actually says that. And he says, and then all over the board

was Iran. Now Iran is taking over the region. And it's like, yeah, and of course, like all they have is they support Hezbollah. They support the regime

that America installed in power in Baghdad. They support the Houthis, but no one can ever really quantify that very well. It's all just mostly accusations based up there. We know that even Obama admitted

and there are other sources for this too. it was a concession on his part that the Iranians warned the Houthis not to take over Sana. They didn't want them to take over Sanaa because they knew that the Saudis would launch a war over it. And they did it anyway. So they're not like just, you know, they're friends and allies, but they're not just, you know, sock puppets of the Iranians or anything like that. But I don't know if you read the article I did looking at the actual body count of Americans

that have been killed by Hamas and Hezbollah, you know, since from, Hezbollah since 1982 and Hamas since 1987. Since 1987, the number for Hamas is 50, and the number for Hezbollah is less than 1,100. And then you compare that to the United States that's support of the M.E.K. M.K's body count for Iran is 17,000. And then if you include the U.S. support for Iraq and the war, you know, giving them the chemical weapons the precursors for both chemical and biological weapons, that resulted in the deaths of over 200,000 Iranians.

So, you know, if you're going to compare body counts, it's not even close, not even close. And then we wonder why. And I'm sorry, Larry, when you say, has Bala killed 1100, that was 1100 who? Both American civilians and military. 6663 military died in Iraq from roadside bombs that we attributed, and as you've made the case.

And that's obvious. I mean, I'm agreeing. I agree with you totally, but I'm just saying that's how they count the statistics. They blame that on Iran. But then the 241 Americans killed in the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon. Let me ask you about that, by the way, because I don't know nearly enough about that. I know the Israelis knew it was coming and turned a blind eye. That's in by way of deception by Victor Ostrovsky.

but can you tell me exactly what group did that and what all exact control Tehran had over them and or the specific act? Do you know those kind of details about that, Bobby? Only indirectly through Alistair Crook. Alistair says it was Amal. Amal was actually controlled by Hafez al-Assad. So that was what Buchanan said, too,

that it was the Amal militia that did it. Although I said that as though I knew it with Pat as the source, because I knew Pat worked for Reagan at the time, and Pat's a brilliant genius. He's not just some commentator where he's an absolute badass. And then someone got really mad at me and said I was totally wrong about that. And then it wasn't them at all. But then, so Amal is separate from Hisbalah, right, if that was them, correct?

Yeah. Yeah. So Amal. And we say that they worked for the dictator of Syria, the Bothis dictator of Syria rather than for the Iranians. Right. Correct. You know, remember of all started.

started in 1972, and it wasn't until 10 years later that Hezbollah shows up. Okay. So, and even Amal predated Iran, you know, the Iranian Revolution took place in 1979. Have you ever heard any, like, specific credible accusations for Tehran ordering that attack? No, no, none at all. Only general vague ones, right? Yeah, well, we needed to blame Iran. The anger of the United States, the CIA, particularly at Iran, was the Iranian revolution of 1979, was one of the few organic revolutions in history where there were no outside force was maneuvering, manipulating, or controlling events.

This was entirely internal. They rose up, tossed out the shawl, who we, along with the Brits, had put in power. And that's the issue. How dare they? You know, we had control of this whole thing. It fit into a broader plan of going after Russia, going after China, and now those damn Iranians blew that up. And again, the other thing is instructive about that period,

even though we were providing the chemical weapon precursors to Iraq, during that, and Iraq carried out 20 chemical weapons attacks from August of 83 through August of 88, never did Iran turn around and say, you know what, we're going to go tiff for tap, we're going to develop nuclear weapons or chemical weapons. They didn't do it. And the same principle for why they haven't developed nukes

applied at that time as well. Yeah. All right, so now I'm sorry, back to Washington. Like, what hope do you have for current diplomacy here, you know, whether without Vance or, you know, the Kushner thing, we saw the latest offer from Iran was, let's just talk about Hormuz and put off the nuclear issue until later. Trump responded with a tweet about how no more Mr. Nice Guy again,

he would rather go back to war and force him to give up all uranium enrichment. I mean, that's a hell of a standoff. He really is insisting still on absolutely no enrichment. And they absolutely have to give that up. I mean, I have to admit, they have been willing to climb way, way, way down on that issue. but I don't know about all the way off the very last rung that they'd be willing to give up all enrichment. It seems like their claim on the right to enrich

has been a extremely high priority there for more than a generation. And I don't know. They're looking, from their standpoint, they say, look, we're following international law. Of course. In the NPT, they have the right, right there. Yeah, yeah.

We signed the NPT. We've allowed IAEA inspections. So we're not going to give up our sovereign right. I will say tongue and cheek. I hope Alice Cooper sues Trump for copyright infringement. You know, no more Mr. Nice Guy. No more Mr. Clean. But actually, look, I think the way this is going to go,

and boy, I hope I'm wrong, but I think Trump's going to take another shot. They're going to allow the thing you talked into it. All we've got to do is hit them one more time hard, and that compounded with this blockade, that's going to force him to crumble. And it's going to have the exact opposite effect. Iran is going to strike back with more force.

They've already got, they've already dramatically improved their air defenses over the course of the last three weeks. A week ago, we thought the war had started up again because there was reports of explosions over Tehran. Turns out they were conducting a live fire military drill, military exercise. So Iran, Iran, they harbor no illusions. And this disinformation that's put out suggesting that Iran is split, the leadership's divided. Apparently people haven't read the history. The oldest one, Pazeshkin, 71, the youngest, the Ayatollah Meshava, 56. Everybody in between that, Arakshi, the foreign minister, Galibov, the head of the parliament,

and then the head of the IRGC, I don't recall his name. All of those guys fought in the Iraq-I-R-R-G-War. All of them fought with the IRGC. So, in other words, they see the world from the same, standpoint. What's interesting about Poschkian, he was actually drafted into the Army. He was a medic, but his medical services

were entirely with the IRGC. So that's why I said, these guys, you know, they come out of a generation. They shared, they shared a combat experience, not necessarily in the same unit, but it was the same sort of generational thing that like our greatest generation from World War II experienced.

And that has bonded them together in a way that Iran has never had a leadership as strong and unified as what they have now. And that the fact that Israel's feeding this bogus intelligence suggesting just the opposite is going to lead Trump to make some assumptions that I think he'll live to regret. Man, yeah, and it goes back to the senility thing. Does he remember what they promised before and how disappointed he was when it didn't work out, like they said? I mean, he can't be that out of it, right? I don't know. But then again,

you know, as I told you the day that you predicted the war on the show, I said, yeah, but counterpoint, there's no need to do this at all. How can we do something? And believe me, I knew how hard they were pushing and all that, especially, you know, Tel Aviv. But it just seems like it's already a proven idiot proposal at this point. And I get it that, you know, oh, we got to say face, I guess I understand how someone was, you know, the Jack Keens of the world would still be promising that a little bit more violence would do the trick. But you see, you shouldn't have to be Ron Paul to say, I don't know, you know, at this point. But you keep thinking about this at a logical, rational, or fashion.

Oh, I'm sorry, man. You got to realize that, you know, a lot of the logic and rationality goes out the wind. and it gets down to things as simple as emotion and things that people want to believe that may not be true, but they've convinced themselves that is true. Yeah. Credibility. Yeah. You got to save it.

You know, when he ran out of every other thing, you know what? I'm sorry, I probably asked you this before, but in just a few minutes, I did a show today that I think I've been on there a couple times. Nice guy. But he was just sure that this whole Israel angle is a red herring and that ultimately this is all about America's Cold War with China and depriving China of Iranian hydrocarbons. What role do you think that that plays in this? Not much because the dependence of China on Iranian oil has been declining over time.

I think now, you know, about 15% of Chinese economy is, you know, really affected by oil. because they've been shifting with one of their five years' plant going to electric, electricity, which is why they're building, they're not running oil-fueled plants. They're running nuclear-fueled plants. They've got massive solar fields. So, you know, China's future is on the electric side. But they see Iran as a critical crossroads, economic crossroads, as it has been through history, with, you know, the old Silk Road that ran right through Persia, as well as the North.

South Corridor for Moscow. So this, if anything, it's playing out the exact opposite. China is weakening the United States to the point that the United States, if a war broke out between China and the United States, the U.S. wouldn't be able to sustain it past three weeks. We would be defeated. So in other words, Chairman Xi is Joe Biden in this situation, inflicting a strategic defeat on us, only it's working in this case.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. exactly right. All right. Thank you, Larry. Appreciate your time. Everybody check out. Larry Johnson, sign him for his email list so you don't miss a single one. It's sonar21.com. Thank you, man. Hey, Scott. I appreciate it, brother. This Scott Horton show is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Roberts & Roberts, Brokerage, Inc., Moondos, Artisan Coffee, Tom Woods Liberty Classroom, and APS Radio News. Subscribe in all the usual places, and check out my books, fools errand, enough already, and my latest, Provoked, how Washington started the new Cold War with Russia and the catastrophe in Ukraine. Find all of the above at Scott Horton.org,

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