Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 6/26/26 Brandon Weichert on the Likely Legacy of Trump’s War with Iran

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

Scott interviews geopolitical analyst and author Brandon Weichert about the Iran war. They begin by reviewing the various reasons they’re pessimistic about Trump’s ongoing attempt to reach a lasting ceasefire. They then zoom out and reflect on how Trump and Netanyahu’s decision to launch this war is likely to change the geopolitical dynamic in the Middle East going forward. Discussed on the show: “How a $45 Million Donation Brought Larry Ellison Deeper Into Trump’s Circle” (Wall Street Journal) Brandon J. Weichert is a geopolitical analyst and author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, The Shadow War: Iran's Quest for Supremacy, Biohacked: China's Race to Control Life and A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine. Follow him on X @WeTheBrandon Sign up for the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom at scotthortonacademy.com 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/43D82oY (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/4eMQblu Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://amzn.to/4a5fKvx 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: Tax Attorney Matt Sercely https://agoristtaxadvice.com; 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; Expat Money https://expatmoney.com/scott; and Crowdhealth https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/ (use promocode Horton) 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 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! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, y'all, me here for expatmoney.com, the great Mikkel Thorup. And of course, they do their big conference every year in October. But all year round, they've got great advice for you, such as this Plan B, Residencies and instant citizenship. And Americans are fleeing. Price inflation and the police state and all kinds of things, blowback terrorism. And they're getting the hell out of the country. And if you decide that's what's right for you, then we can learn from Mikhail Thorup

about what other countries are available to you and where you might go to protect your assets, to buy property, to even get citizenship in other countries. Learn everything that you need to know at expatimony.com. Ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest, reporting to the American people what's going on in this country. We're dealing with Hitler Revisited. This is the Scott Horton Show, Libertarian Foreign Policy. Mostly.

When the president doesn't, that means that it is not a leader. 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 Horton. All right, y'all. Introducing Brandon Weikert, and he is a foreign policy analyst from the Twitter.

But I actually don't have a very sufficient bio. All about you, Brandon. So first, welcome to the show. And second, why don't you please introduce yourself and tell us who all you are. Well, that's failing on my part. I should have sent your, I should have sent Rachel a bio. I forgot. Yeah, I go to Google.

No, I'm basically, I'm a geopolitical analyst. And previously, I worked on the Hill for a little bit. But really, I spent a lot of time consulting with the United States Department of the Air Force. I talked to them. And it's all open source. What I taught is I don't have any special. clearance or anything. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to do any of this public speaking. But I talk to them usually about trends that I'm seeing and reporting on with geotechnology, which is sort of this

new term to describe the study of how emerging tech is impacting national security. I talked about geo-economics and classic geopolitics. And then I am a senior national security editor at 1945.com and its sister publication National Security Journal. I was previously for years with the national interest. I had the same title there. And I also write my geopolitical thoughts at the Weikert brief on substack, Wycert.substack.com. And I've got four books out. Yeah, there it is. Yeah. I've got four books out on national security, winning space, the shadow war. biohacked and a disaster of our own making, how the West lost Ukraine.

And I tell everybody, by the way, Scott, that your book on Ukraine is infinitely better than mine. I haven't had it right over there in my rowing. I turned in a 1,000-page manuscript, and the publisher ended up cutting it down to like 250 pages. So, you know, that's what I should have done. Got someone else to cut it. for me because I couldn't do it.

I stopped writing at 1,400. I know I'm not done yet, but I'm done yet. All right. And I'm going to read your book. I can't wait to read your book, actually. Well, thank you. Also very interested in the fact, I heard you mention this on Tucker's show the other day that you actually wrote a book, scaremongering about Iran, but now you're like,

nah, maybe not so much. Well, I wouldn't say scaremongering, but I definitely was definitely on the hawk side on Iran, definitely. And I don't think, I think I was, I think I was a little too influenced by certain people in D.C. when I was writing it. That happens to people in D.C. I think. Which is, it's a good thing that my wife made us move from D.C. to Florida. So a little bit of wool pull from your eyes there. It's sunny here.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, well, I just want to ask you mostly all about your takes on the war with Iran. Yeah. Well, that too is a disaster of our own making. I've never seen anything like it. You know, I know you're older than, I know you're older than me. You probably have been following this a lot longer than I have, and I can't imagine you've seen anything similar. I mean, I guess your rock comes close, but, you know, this is at the strategic level, which is what I care about.

That's what I study is grand strategy. This is a failure of Klaus Wittsey in proportions. We have just on every level. And really, you know, Scott, the interesting thing is I, even on when I worked on the Hill, I was always very skeptical of blindly funding the military. But this war really should highlight the need to audit the Pentagon, to do a proper auditing of it. And to find out why are we spending, what, the $1.5 trillion, supposedly next year we'll go to the Pentagon. Why are we spending that money if this is what they deliver us?

it is unmitigated failure and depletion. And I mean, nobody briefed the president or if they did the, I mean, why didn't these people resign on Moss if they briefed the president and he wasn't listening? There was just no responsible behavior from an organization that receives so much lavish funding from we the people. So that's sort of a side issue. But that is something that jumps out at me when you ask that question is, where are the the hell were the adults in the room? What are we paying for? Yeah. Um, yeah. So on the, what are we paying for? It really does raise questions of where is that money going? Because maybe they're building a secret fleet somewhere. Yeah, I get it. They charge, you know,

way more than the weapons are worth. But I mean, that's not all just going in kickbacks and dividend checks. Like there's, there's, there's some major embezzlement going on there. There has to be. There has to be. Yeah. I mean, it's enough for a secret base in the hollow earth or whatever. Right? That's right. It's all the UAPs. That's what we're saying. It's all for tax dollars. It's already a city on Mars. You didn't be wasting this money. It's his own secret what they did with that. The Stargate program, right? Yeah, no, trust us, man. We would never waste your money.

doing. It's just not all DEI initiatives. We're actually doing stuff, right? All right. Now, here's my thing, though, okay? Because you brought up this strategic thing. So George W. Bush, boy, did he screw up. Nobody ever said this but me. So I say it all the time, and I get sick and tired of saying it. But it seems like if this is not the narrative that's commonly understood about our recent history, then it just isn't right. I mean, if you'll go, yeah, we did that war and maybe we shouldn't know or whatever. And sometimes you'll hear people say, Iran benefited, but no one never actually, like, really explains. Yeah.

America bought that war for Iran's best friends. Their most favored parties, Skiri and Dawah, right? That's right. And the war was meant to screw the Iranians, but it ended up benefiting them to such a great degree. But it's worth pointing out, of course, right, that the American people's enemies are the ruthless fringe of our government's own pet terrorists who come mostly from our allied states of the Sunni states of some.

Saudi Arabia and Egypt. And now Syria. Yeah, and this radical bin Ladenite, yeah, now Syria, especially, this bin Ladenite movement, that's the one that, you know, slaughtered American soldiers in Iraq and American civilians, you know, from 1990 through 2001 and since then too. And yet our government's strategic rival in the region is the Iranians because they don't control them and so they're mad because they declared independence from us and you're not allowed to do that and all that.

I think it's also because of the Israeli influence. I think that's the big one. That's a huge part of it. And now so, and I'm going somewhere with this. So now, sorry. Trump doubled what, what W. Bush did, right? He just kicked Iran up another couple of pegs in trying to knock them down. He just really called his own bluff about American conventional power in the region

and really turn the region back over to Iran more or less. We'll see how it all plays out. They are obviously just by their, the name. nature of the size and the location of the country. They are the dominant power in the region other than us. But so here's my point, though, is that yes, you're right that the whole thing is a complete strategic disaster from the point of view of the American Empire. But ironically, and paradoxically, it doesn't effing matter at all to the American people at all to just give away the Middle East to the people of the Middle East. And really, what skin is it off of my chin,

Brandon, honestly. I agree. In fact, in fact, Scott, that's, I keep telling people, it doesn't always come out in interviews because of the time, but, you know, I keep telling people when I have a chance, there is a silver lining in the strategic failure, which is that in the long run, just like the Afghan pullout. Look, the Afghan pullout was a disaster in terms of how we did it and the fact that we're still sending apparently all this money to the Taliban, which we should not be doing.

But at the end of the day, you know, Biden wasn't wrong to just. end it. Like, it just had to end. And he did it all sloppily. But, you know, we're not, we're not on the hook anymore for Afghanistan the way we were. And I think similarly, if this ends with U.S. actually military being drawn down permanently from the Middle East and redeployed to, you know, our part of the world, our country, I think that's a win then in the long run. But my fear is that that is actually not happening. What's happening is we've been humiliated, we've been bloodied. The Arabs, a lot of the Arab countries, want us out. They don't want us rebuilding those bases. But this morning, I saw an article, I think it was in the Times of Israel, one of the Israeli publications, where they are

again bringing up the fact that they want most of those U.S. military bases that would possibly be removed from the Arab states. They want them going into Israel. And to me, that's not good. That's not something that we really now need to just kind of leave. I hate that we're leaving with our tail tuck behind our legs, and it's not sort of of a more organized, you know, competent withdrawal. But if this ends with the U.S. military not being involved anymore in the day-to-day of the Middle East, I agree with you. That's a win.

But I yet don't see that shaping up. And in fact, I'm very concerned that this, you know, non-ceasefire ceasefire is going to somehow cascade into another round of inconclusive violence that's only going to harm more American, you know, our gear, our people, put our people at risk. So that's sort of where I am right now with that. Because I do agree with you in general. If that's where this ends and we come, we bring the legions home, then yeah, because I don't really give a hoot about who controls the straight of Hormuz. And I certainly don't give a damn about the Latani River Basin. I don't care as an American. It's not my concern.

Yeah, other than being in on its destruction, you know. Yeah. So talk to me about your pessimism about the talks. Well, right now it just looks like, well, look, if it were up to, I think, the Trump team and the Iranians, I think we probably would have a good shot of coming up to some kind of accommodation. But the fact of the matter is there's this, you know, little nuclear armed gorilla in the room, which is Israel. and they claim they're not party to the talks.

So therefore they claim they're not, they don't even have to respect any decisions that are made within those talks. And I see no indication seriously yet that the President of the United States is going to exercise his control over Israel in terms of the aid that wouldn't possibly make the Israelis really adhere to the tenets of what are being, what's being negotiated right now between the U.S. and Iran. And so with that being said, and the fact that, there are still a lot of points, it sounds like the Iran side and the U.S. side are not on the same page. You know, and you look at what's going on in the Strait of Hormuz right now. They've attacked the ship. They're clearly preparing to toll the Strait of Hormuz.

The Omanis are now doing it, which Trump is saying that's a non-starter. To me, this doesn't sound like a real negotiations. This sounds like everybody's just re-arming. Hey, y'all, Scott here for Moondos artisan coffees. You know, they told me if I kept drinking so much coffee, I would turn into some. And then I finally did. And there it is. It's Scott Horton's show morning breakfast blend there from Moondos,

artisan coffees get it. They hate Starbucks because Starbucks supports the war party. So they're Moondos, artisan coffees. And they got Scott Horton flavored coffee there. It's Ethiopian and Samatra mix, and it's so good. And it's free to me, as long as you keep buying it, just go to Scott Horton.org slash coffee. Hey, me here for Tom Woods Liberty Classroom. Of course, the Scott Horton Academy is just a cheap knockoff of the original,

the Great Liberty Classroom from Tom Woods. So when you're done with your Scott Horton Academy courses, mosey on over to the right-hand margin at Scotthorton.org. Click through there, and I'll get a kickback. All right, now, but on the other hand, Happy to be wrong, though. I'm very happy to be wrong. No, but, and I know you're really the expert at rattling off these stats.

How quickly can they replenish these interceptor missiles? And haven't they already learned the lesson that no matter how many they have, they can only fire so many at one time. And the Iranians have the capacity to overwhelm us with their missiles and drones. And so it already didn't work. And so this is my whole thing. And I have no idea. And you may have much better sourcing.

And you're reading things that I don't know. know about it. I have no idea, but I'm totally in the realm of speculation here, but I'm just like playing out the hypotheticals right is that it seems like the military must have told Trump back in April that, hey, like, this sucks, but it didn't work. And we, it already didn't work. So we should stop now. And then he said, okay. And then the IDF then must have also explained that to Netanyahu that, well, the Pentagon explained to Trump that it didn't work and we have to stop. And so these are just the facts of life, right? You can be a complete nut. But if the professional military men are telling you that, look, we're out of interceptors, or we just don't have enough,

we can't replenish them fast enough to keep going, then, then that's why they stopped then. And it seems like that would argue strenuously against the possibility of going back to war anytime soon, because they can't replenish them anytime soon? Really, can they? No, they can't replenish them any time soon. Yeah. Well, what they were talking about in the same situation anyway. Yeah. Well, what they were talking about. What they were talking about. talking about doing at one point before the April kind of ceasefire, quote unquote, went into effect, was transitioning to other weapons that we had in abundance, but that would have put U.S.

forces at greater risk because you'd have to get closer to the targets. You'd have to use weapons that maybe are not as effective, don't have the right yields. And this is, this was the cogitations that the Trump team went through with the military. And I think that is why they slowed down. And I think, and to be fair, look, the Israelis, there is a wing of the IDF that's actually very rational. And they're not the majority right now. They don't have the kind of pull. But I think that wing did win out that particular debate when the Americans started slowing down.

I think they went to Netanyahu and said, look, we just can't do this without Uncle Sam. at the same time, though, Trump has a very weird, he has a very like 1980s, like macho view of the military. And that's a byproduct, I'm sure, of, you know, his age. He came of, you know, he was really in the media in the 80s, and that was sort of the image of America under Reagan. But I don't think he has a firm understanding of what true limitations there are imposed on the U.S. by reality. And certainly Netanyahu, I think more so than Trump, Netanyahu is living in delusion right now. And Netanyahu's desperate. And so my fear is that because Netanyahu is probably the senior partner of the two, Netanyahu is looking always for ways to start things up again,

even if the military is telling them, yo, we can't do this. So that's my fear, is that they're basically, there's ideological political leaders who are pushing things to an insane point, even when they're military guys, and even when the military facts are like, we can't accomplish this, the idea is, hey, let's just blow some stuff up and see what happens. And that's my fear, because I don't think we're dealing really with, and it's ironic, Scott, because 10 years ago, five years ago, if you had asked me of the two, Israel and Iran, who's the more rational actor, like everybody in DCO would have said, It's definitely Israel.

But it's very obvious now that the irrational ones are actually not the Islamic Republic. It's actually the Netanyahu Zionist government because they keep provoking and pushing even when all of our industry and the sort of defense industrial base is cracking under the weight of this war. In Iran, their defense industrial base and our own intelligence services said this to the financial times last month. The Iranian underground industries are humming. They are producing the drones and the missiles in abundance that they need to continue the war if the war begins again. We do not have that same luxury. So, yeah, in a rational world, it makes sense that this is the end, this is the natural end. I just, I don't know.

I don't know if either Netanyahu or Trump are rational actors here anymore. Yeah. This is where we get into sort of speculation because I don't, you know, You know, because I agree with you in a rational setting. Yeah, this is it. We've exhausted ourselves conventionally. Game over. Well, and look, it also, you know,

raises all these kind of questions to speculate about their relationship. Obviously, Netanyahu is by far the more experienced politician. Oh, yeah. And knows a lot more about a lot of things. So he can put himself as like Trump's instructor telling him these are the facts and this is what we have to do about it kind of thing in a way that he gets to kind of push Trump around. And then people can speculate from here to there. I have no idea what to say.

I'm not against it. I just don't know if anyone can vouch for like the idea that he's blackmailed somehow. Jeffrey Epstein's stuff or just they tapped his phone when he was making some corrupt business deal with a shake or whatever, man, I don't know. Right. Don't forget also though, as a quick note here. Trump family. I was just going to finish. I'm sorry.

Yeah. But overall, like he's the president of United States and he's just the prime minister of Israel. So it ultimately should be that this guy. gets to call the shot and that guy had all in line ultimately. But we just don't know exactly what all mitigates against that. Yeah, I think, you know, even if, just as a quick note, I've been told by, I've been told by two sources independent of each other, one in Russia and one in Qatar, that there is something related to the Epstein files. I have no proof. That's why I hesitate saying too much on that in public. But I will say, I know,

that the Trump team and the Trump family since 2024 with Miriam Addelson are in bed financially with Zionists in the United States. That's an open secret. And that alone is really, as we've seen throughout the recent history of American politics, that financial exposure alone is all one really needs to kind of be influenced by that ideology, that foreign ideology, you know, irrespective of blackmail compromise from, you know, Epstein or whatever. Right. You know, if you're making, look, if I'm making hundreds of millions of dollars or whatever from doing business with the Adelson family, I'm probably not going to be too sympathetic, you know,

to, you know, what's going on in the Arab or the, the, the Shiite Persian world because they just aren't paying me as much. Yeah. Hey, this one came out in the Wall Street Journal just the other day. How a $45 million donation bought Larry Ellison deeper and brought, slow down, brought Larry Ellison deeper into Trump's circle. Yeah. And so there go, just a little bit of money. Larry Ellison hated Trump, too, by the way.

That issues Israel. Yeah. Well, and Larry Ellison, like so many of the billionaire class, the so-called Epstein class, as some people say, but the billionaire class almost universally hated Donald Trump, hated him on like a personal level. hated him. And it's been fascinating to watch, particularly after 2024, how a lot of the tech bros, who really hated Donald Trump, suddenly got on board. And if you listen to Mark Andresen, you know, he let the cat out of the bag when he was talking to, what was it, Barry Weiss, when he told her that, you know, he had to sit down in, I think, March of 23 or 24 with the Biden czar for AI. And they told him, uh, he told him, uh,

you might want to not invest anymore in AI because we're getting ready to classify that research as a state secret and only our approved vendors will be allowed to further research. You're going to lose all your money that you put into it. And at that moment, Andreessen and the PayPal Mafia left the White House from that meeting and basically beeline to Trump campaign and said, okay, we're fully on board now. Because they knew that if the Biden administration or the Kamala administration, whatever, won the election, they were going to basically kill. kill these guys' investments into AI R&D, which is basically their entire business models now, and they're going to lose their ass. Oh, sorry, they lose their butt on that investment. And I think that's the cynical reason why suddenly all the PayPal mafia and the tech bros, who were lifelong Democrats, suddenly got on board with Mr. Trump. Yeah. And all the poor working people who love Trump, because he is going to help them out, they just have one big problem. They don't pay enough.

Yeah, the same reason that they love him is he was going to do something about the fact that they don't have any money. They can't give any to him. That's right. And by the way, also. And he won't. And, you know, I was young and dumb enough in 2016 to have believed a lot of his bullshit. And, you know, I don't. And luckily, I think COVID shook me of that.

but I will say that there is an attraction that Trump has. But, you know, real quick, even the fact that he just recently, Trump said, you know, the oil prices are still too high. You know, I'm going to go. I'm going to use the DOJ to go after these oil executives. It's like, well, first of all, there's an actual economic reason that explains this. Second of all, all of those oil tycoons are your buddies. they're all part of your real coalition.

You know, the broligarchs, the oil guys, the finance bros, the Zionists, that's who you really care about. Whatever you're saying publicly, you're not going to do Jack to go after the oil executives. This is all just, you know, for show, because those are all your buddies and you want all your buddies to get rich and you want them to cut you in on whatever deals you're doing. So, you know, even when he starts this populist shit, I'm sorry, I should not curse, when he starts this populist crap, I'm sorry about that. that.

He, you know, he's, he's not, he's not serious. Oh, yeah. Politicians always blame the shopkeeper for raisin prices. I'm never going to tell you what's the problem. That's right. That's right. Okay. Now, so, well, here's some good news.

I'm sure you laugh when you saw. I just thought it was so much fun. The clip of Trump, I think it was from the G7. Correct me from wrong. I think he said the G7, where he said, He says, hey, look, of course, everybody's got to have missiles and enrich uranium. I'm like, what are you going to do? You're going to ask them to give up their nuclear program?

That would be fair. And everybody else has missiles. I don't know why they can't have missiles. And like this is really the very best thing about Trump, is that he can just flip-flop on anything and not care at all. He can sign a 10-point memorandum where they do one thing and we do nine. And he doesn't care. He doesn't call it fine.

I meant to do that. Everybody knows I meant to do that. Yep. So they give them a great advantage, and I'm willing to give him a... I'm willing to give him whatever leeway. Yeah. What amends is 37th war, if that's what he... So much winning.

Ever ended as many wars as him. That's right. That's right. And no, and I heard that, and I just sort of... I did start laughing because I'm sure, you know, if you're sitting in Tel Aviv, if you're in the Netanyahu government, You're like, what? What do you mean? What? You know, so this is, it's very funny. No, this is, that is the side of Trump that I like. But what worries me is the flip side of that is he could just as easily wake up on the wrong side of the bed and be like, we're going back in.

You know, and, you know, we're witnessing right now, you know, the ceasefire is definitely being tested by, by, it looks like by everybody. Yeah. You know, I think Chas Freeman, the former ambassador, he calls this a ceasefire with Israeli characteristics. And I thought that was a very brilliant and diplomatic way of calling it a non-seasfire ceasefire. But no, that is the transactional side of Trump. I've always said it's infuriating on one hand. But on the other hand, it could really allow us to get out of some really bad self-inflicted disaster. I mean, just imagine if Biden had some sense of that.

And, you know, six months into the Ukraine war was like, you know what? I think we're good. I think I think we're done. That's great. You know, I mean, and that way, Trump is more preferable to the alternative. Yeah. At least he's a hypocrite. That's right.

And he doesn't care. A lot of people would care. He doesn't care. Hey, all, Scott here for crowdhealth at join crowdhealth. And it's just like it sounds. It's crowdsourcing for your health care costs. It's not health insurance. You can afford health insurance.

What a rig game that is. But now, who needs it? The deal is simple. You help chip in and pay for other people's bills. They help chip in and pay for yours. And the more people join, the lower the costs for everyone. And it works very well. I was skeptical at first, but I had a good talk about it with my good friend Tom Woods

and then some of the leadership there at joining crowd health as well. And they explained it all to me. And it does work just like a charm. And I encourage you to check it out. at join crowdhealth.com. Use promo code Horton and your monthly fee will only be $99 for the first three months. Join crowdhealth.com, promo code Horton. Hey, y'all, me here for expatmoney.com, the great McKell Thorough.

And of course, they do their big conference every year in October. But all year round, they've got great advice for you, such as this Plan B, residences and instant citizenship. And Americans are fleeing. and price inflation and the police state and all kinds of things, blowback terrorism. And they're getting the hell out of the country. And if you decide that's what's right for you, then you can learn from Mikhail Thorup about what other countries are available to you and where you might go to protect your assets,

to buy property, to even get citizenship in other countries. Learn everything that you need to know at expatimony.com. All right. Now, so what about all the economic consequences that are still come and do that nobody can do anything about because the past is already past and those effects are still on their way? What do you anticipate there? Yeah, well, I think we're going to be in some kind of a recessionary environment. The question is how deep and how severe. If they reopen, like immediately, like in the next five days, if they can get everything flowing back to normal, which they can't.

But if in that perfect situation, then yes, the hardest, nastiest, longest term pain will be mitigated. But the longer the Stradohermost remains even partially closed, which it is partially closed right now, the longer that that persists and the longer it takes. I was told by experts in the last two weeks, I've talked to a lot of experts in the oil industry about this. it's going to take closer to many months, they tell me, for the Arab production of oil and natural gas to be fully restored to what it was pre-war. And what that means is while we're all waiting around for production to restore and for the flow of goods

to truly restore to pre-war levels in the strait, that is just basically more economic pain that we will feel throughout the year in the form of shortages of basic goods in the form of increases in price. Everybody keeps bringing up, well, Brandon, what you're saying, because I get a lot of hate, I get a lot of hate mail. You know, you're so dumb.

You said prices were going to go through the roof, and they're lower than they were, or they're just as low as they were before the war began. And I say, yeah, that's great for you and I go into the pump right now. That's wonderful. But the reason is because there's a mini-glut, because there were hundreds and hundreds of ships full of oil and natural gas that were waiting to leave the Strait of Hormuz

when the strait was originally shut down at the start of the war, those ships are now being allowed to leave. And you see this massive outflow of ships with their cargo going to their intended destinations, you know, a due haste. But you don't see the commiserate number of ships coming in, empty ships, to collect new supply. And that's because the refiners are still down or operational. operating at partial capacity, and that's because the producers are not producing what they once were.

And what that means is that eventually, once this mini glut gets, we clear it over the next few weeks, we will again be in a position where there's not enough oil available or natural gas on the global market, which will spike prices. Also, China did something that I think many people were not fully aware of. Now, I said they were going to do this. I didn't think they're going to do it to this level. The Chinese two months ago voluntarily took themselves off the entire global market for oil and for oil. And they basically had built up, I think, 1.4 billion barrels worth of oil in a strategic petroleum reserve. It's the largest in the world. And they've basically for two months been living off that.

And that is one of the reasons because they're like the largest consumer of global energy or importer of it. And that basically, with that demand removed, the limited supply didn't experience the kind of nightmare that we thought we were going to experience. But China has gone through. The number I heard was roughly about a third of that petroleum reserve. They don't want to keep writing on it. So in the coming weeks and months, China will return in full to the global market. And if we haven't restored both production and stable flow, stable flow being about a hundred. 120 to 140 ships per day in and out of the Strait of Hermose.

Right now they're celebrating the fact that yesterday we got up to 70 outbound. Okay, that's not enough. So unless we can restore that fully, you know, China's coming back on, and then everybody's prices are going to go up precipitously until we can restore production fully and the flow fully. So we can expect probably some variation of recession going into the final quarter and beginning quarter of next year, the final quarter of this year,

the beginning quarter of next year, because a lot of these shortages and a lot of these supply chain disruptions like during COVID are going to be delayed because a lot of us are riding on reserves. And when it comes to the food production, and that's the part actually, I think the only other person talking about this

is Michael Jan, my buddy, the investigative, or the independent war correspondent. He's the only one I've heard consistently talking about this. We're writing on this year the reserves of the planting seed from last year, which is why we haven't really seen the shortages yet. But right now is planting season, there's not enough urea, there's not enough fertilizer that's coming out of the Middle East to allow us to do our normal load, which means that come next

here, Scott, regardless of whether we reopen the straight or not, because remember, planting seasons a certain window of every year, there will be definitely here. there will be shortages of key goods in the grocery store. And globally, you could see a serious, serious famine erupt throughout the developing world, notably places like Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America, possibly, and all of that will lead to what's known as human osmotic pressure, which means that you could see a massive global migration crisis, human waves coming up to countries that they think have food.

And that's the worst case, but that I'm more. worried is more toward what we're going to see because, A, we're not restoring production fully yet, and B, I'm very worried this memorandum of understanding or memorandum of misunderstanding is going to end in some kind of renewed round of fighting. Well, I got one more for your list there, Larry Johnson, the former CIA officer. Yeah, I know Larry. He's a neighbor of mine, basically here. Yeah. Yeah. And then, so one thing actually that he mentioned, I think, in his article today, maybe yesterday. On sonor21.com.

He mentioned the hydrogen and how they get, I don't know where they're getting the hydrogen out of there, where it comes from originally, but they get it out of there. Then they use that to help clean the sulfur out of the oil. And God knows what other processes. I've heard also about helium coming out of there that they need for fabricating microchips

and all these different things. So tell us about those and any more. Yeah, basically. Radar. Yeah. I'm sorry to cut you off. People don't realize I have about seven cups of coffee by one o'clock, and I'm very wired, so I apologize if I'm a little jumpy.

Let me, I'll hook you up with some Scott Horton show blend. I would love to. I almost got some the other day because I listen to your show and I hear the ad, and I'm like, I'm always open to try new. Oh, it's so good, man. You'll love it. Yeah, if you don't mind, I would love to try it. But, you know, there's a lot of industrial.

inputs basically that come either out of the Middle East or through the straight-up removes. Hydrogen is one of them. Otash, I think, is another one, which is pretty important. But also, you mentioned the helium. Fun fact about the helium, I did a report on this a couple months ago. The Biden administration in 2021 sold America's strategic hydrogen or helium reserve to a German company that was partnered with the Chinese government. And so indirectly, the Chinese now have some kind of access and control over what was once a U.S. strategic stockpile going back to the

20s, 1920s, of our helium. And this has really hurt us now because we, whereas before that, it was one of the largest helium reserves in the world, it's no longer, it's been drained, and it no longer under U.S. government control. It's now under this weird German company, and they're selling it to or sending it to China and have been since we sold it. But the helium is very important for semiconductor production.

And of course, right now, one of the reasons the stock market is going gangbusters is really because of one sector, right? The tech sector, but one part of the tech sector, which is the AI development, R&D, and the creation of data centers. all of that relies on semiconductors, which therefore rely on abundant supplies of helium.

And that is now heavily constrained. In fact, they put out force majeure measures at the beginning of the war. Mike Adams told me this yesterday when I was on his show. He said he was one of the last guys that bought a year's worth of helium in early February, and he got lucky because he got a letter two weeks later saying that the entire world's supply

was now under force major, and they were not going to be able to send years worth of supplies because of the war, well, that could potentially lead to the popping of this AI bubble. And now you want to talk about economic depression, I argue if they can't get sufficient number amounts of helium to continue producing semiconductors that will in part feed this AI beast, the entire stock market collapses and probably, takes the economy down with it, which, again, not a big fan of AI, have a lot of concerns, but just looking at sort of that economic side of things. People don't realize how important helium is. Also, by the way, for MRIs. I mean, you know, a lot of rural hospitals now,

I have heard in the United States even, are spacing out some MRI scans for patients because there's low helium supplies and you need helium to make the imaging of the magnetic present-imaging work. So that's another thing. But it's a lot of industrial scale inputs that we don't even think of as being, you know, important. And they're actually the lifeblood of our modern civilization. We don't have access to a lot of it right now because it's stopped up in the Strait of Hormuzes because of this war. Now, look, you guys know I'm an anti-war guy. You know who it's okay to murder? Flies. I hate them. You know what I do? I shoot them to death with my salt shotgun, the bug assault. And what you do, if you want one of those,

is you go to my website, scothorton.org here, and you click that Amazon link at the top of the page there. And that'll take you right to the bug assault. And yeah, it'll leave a mess everywhere. But don't worry, your wife will clean it up. It's fine. Oh, also, whenever you go shopping and Amazon.com, make sure and click through that link first.

And I'll get a little bit of kickback from Amazon's end of the sale. Pretty good deal. Hey, you guys, I know you love my interview show, but don't forget, every Thursday night, I'm live on the YouTube's and elsewhere X and whatever with the great martyr maid, Darrell Cooper and our show Provoked. Check us out. We're 8 o'clock Eastern time every Thursday now. And check out the archives. Sign up for the feeds and all those things on Spotify at YouTube and Provoked. Show. Hey, you guys. Scott here for Matt Cerville. Sersely at agaristtaxadvice.com.

And he's a great tax lawyer. And he hates the government as much as you do. And he wants to help you keep your money. And his service is for small businesses and for high salary professional types who are looking for ways to protect their earnings from the national government and its depredations. So check them out. Matt Sersely at agoristaxadvice.com.

So earlier you brought, this up. And so this is sort of the crucial point, but I'm asking you to prognosticate. What does the failure this war mean for the future of America's conventional military posture in the Middle East? Is this the end of the Carter Doctrine? God willing, again, that's one of those silver linings here. Yes. You said they want us gone. So can you give us specifics there? Did they Yeah. So he said that. Yeah.

So it's not universal this, I should, I should have specified. There are countries like Bahrain, some of these smaller countries, I think Qatar, they are reassessing, allowing the Americans back in to rebuild their presence to what it was before the war. I have heard unofficially, and I have a lot of sources with the Saudis, and I have heard. that the Saudis are pretty much, it's not going to happen overnight, but there is sort of a medium to long-term plan developing where they're not going to welcome large numbers of U.S. forces back into the country again, that over time this thing will be disassociated. And also the Saudis and some of these other Arab states,

these Gulf Arab states, are even talking about eventually diversifying their military purchases, their military gear. So right now, like Saudi Arabia is pretty much exclusively on the U.S. defense industrial base, you know, they're talking in Riyadh as a response to the war shifting and basically not relying solely on the U.S. purchasing Russian weapons, purchasing potentially now Chinese weapons. People don't seem to understand. Up until a decade ago, the Chinese were kind of a laughing stock on the global arms industry. but they've really come up with quite a handful of interesting technologies that they're trying to export, notably things like the JF17, their warplane, the J10CE, which is another warplane, the PL-15 air-to-air missile. The Chinese are really getting competitive with arms production and selling it abroad, and they want badly to start selling it in the Middle East. And the Saudis and some of these Arab states are saying we can't be so dependent on America anymore and we can't be as exposed to Israel the way that we

were before because of how this war has played out. So at the end of the day, the sort of universal military presence that we enjoyed throughout the region, I contend, you will start seeing it diminish naturally. They will not let us in these Arab states come back and fully rebuild the naval facility in Bahrain, notably Bahrain. They're not going to do that. They might let us come back a little bit, but you're going to see, I think, a phased gradual reduction of the U.S. being allowed to operate the way we have been for the last 30 years. It's basically the end of the post-Cold War kind of Middle East order, if you want to call it an order, the American hegemony of the region, and it's the birth of a post-American Middle East now.

And it's one that, you know, the roles of Israel and Iran, I believe, are going to be flipped now, whereas Iran was a pariah and contained and isolated and constrained state in the post-Cold War American hegemony of the Middle East, in a post-American system in the Middle East, it's going to be Israel that's contained and constrained, while Iran is now one of the major centers of power. And this gets us into the work of my colleague, Dr. Artamawaini. He has been very, very firm on this, and I agree with him, and I've written about this as well now. But it sounds to me, like Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, even Egypt, they're now rising to be sort of the new concert of powers. I think Moaney calls it the ME5. And I think he's right. And I think that's

that's where where this is really headed is a post-American Middle East. It's one that we probably will have some degree still of input, but I think it's going to be more in the trade domain, which honestly is preferable to me. I was on a personal level. I'd much rather focus on doing business with all the countries in the world rather than being this military, you know, dictatorous. I mean, from what I understand, Saudi and Pakistan already have a good relationship. Now Saudi's relationship with Iran is getting better. Obviously, Iran's- Out of necessity.

I mean, obviously, these guys have their differences, but I have always said ever since then, and it is true that it was really George W. Bush who kicked off the sectarian civil war of our era. It's not that it's always, you know, Sunnis and Shiites. It's always Riyadh versus Tehran no matter what. It was just Bush decided to launch a civil war on behalf of the Shiites of Iraq and destabilized the region in that way. But there's no real reason why Saudi and Iran can't get along together. Well, if you remember, that was a byproduct too of one specific guy,

the current crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Remember, he was the defense minister for Saudi Arabia. And basically him and his one-time friend, Jamal Khashon, You know, they were running around PBS and Washington, D.C., calling Iran the new Hitler, the new Nazi Germany of the Middle East. It was 1939. And if they didn't stop Iran and Yemen, you know, it was going to be just like what happened when we didn't stop Hitler in 1939. This is what the narrative was. And of course, bin Salman ended up rising to become the full-blown leader of Saudi Arabia. And I think that translated for many years to his foreign policy. But now that's obviously that's done.

That, you know, not only did Saudi perform very poorly in Yemen, obviously, but also now they're at a point where they can't rely on the Americans. And by the way, there's another input here, Scott, real quick. The strike on Qatar, the last year when the Israelis tricked Hamas, go meet in Doha, we'll send our people and we'll try to get a ceasefire for the Gaza war, you know, and ultimately the Israelis sent a cruise missile instead and ended up being the first time that the Israelis have attacked a GCC country. That set off alarm bells, notably in Riyadh, and suddenly Mohammed bin Salman's looking around and he's saying, actually, I don't think the Iranians are Hitler. I don't think

they're as crazy as what the Israelis are doing. And the Egyptians had a similar reaction. The Turks believe the same thing. So it's really Israeli backed by American overreaction to everything in the Middle East that's actually ended the American border, as such as it was. And it's a Hindu-Dakrown, right, which was Iran to scare all these Sunni kings into an alliance with him. That's right. That's breaking down. It's totally breaking down. And again, it's not because the Saudis woke up and said, we don't like Israel. I know that's what many in Israel would like to believe. But if you look at the evidence, even the Saudis until about last year when those strikes on Qatar happened, the Saudis were quietly going along with the Abraham Accords.

In fact, my understanding is parts of the Saudi ruling elite were very fine with the U.S. starting the war with Iran. They're just upset that the U.S. didn't commit fully in their mind and finish the job. And now they're being stuck holding the bag. So there's sort of this this underlying narrative here that actually the Saudis were not anti-Israel. They weren't even anti-Net and Yahoo. They're just mad that they're being left holding the bag within Israel that's clearly not a stable player, at least not anymore. Maybe they were at one time, but that's probably up for debate as well.

Yeah. And it's amazing that, you know, in context, the realism of Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense during W. Bush and Obama, who did the surge in Iraq but refused to go to Iran. and he said that then King Abdullah told him, go cut the head off the snake, go and do, or that was in the WikiLeaks, but you guys should go and fight Iran for us. Yeah.

And he, I think he claims that he said this to the king, that look, we're not your mercenaries. Yeah. And we're not here to fight. It does sound like something he would say, to be honest. I've interacted with him a little bit.

And we're just kind of funny because like, come on, who are you, kid, heard him once after he left his the government i heard him at the standard club in chicago which is no longer in existence but he he gave a speech in which he used this phrase and the next american president who wants to put boots on the ground anywhere in eurasia should have his head examined um i just thought that was ironic given you know where he worked and what he was

into and um but i think you know maybe he did have a come to jesus moment where he realized that you know, first of all, look at everything that we've been doing since 1979. And again, I think you know that I'm no fan of the Islamic Republic. I don't think they're, I don't even think they can really trust them. But fundamentally, you know, do we need to start World War III to settle old scores, which is what this really is on our part? Do we need to start World War III for that? No. And do we need to start World War III to help Israel achieve its vision of greater Israel? Well, clearly, that's insane. No.

But there's clearly a sect of people both in D.C. and elsewhere that are more than fine going along with this kind of a policy. And we're seeing where that leads. It leads to the destruction of American power in the Middle East. Now, again, if that ends up with us coming home, bringing the Legion's home and actually making America great again, then I'm all for it. But right now, it just looks like this was a cluster, you know what. And it was started by them. And we lost. We've lost every war the neocons have pushed us into. Right. I mean, Taliban, we've lost. Al-Qaeda is stronger and more numerous now that it was before 9-11. We're closer to seeing bin Laden's dream, the one that my

buddy Dr. Michael Schroyer talked about in one of his books, which is basically the, the, the recreation of a pan-Islamic caliphate. We're closer to seeing that today than we were before 9-11. We're, you know, we handed Syria to an al-Qaeda battlefield commander. I mean, for God's sake, like, you know, WTF. And this is all U.S. policy. Now, you know, we went to war in Iraq, like you noted, we ended up empowering Iran when I was told that we were supposed to be going into Iraq to weaken Iran. You know, the whole thing is just, it is mind-boggling that

anybody listens to David Frum and people like him, but they still do. And in fact, many of those types of neo-conservative thinkers, if you want to call them that, currently populate the highest levels of the White House. Yep. When they're coming out of the woodwork, too,

to try to denounce the deal and keep the work on. I'm sure you saw Douglas Feith and the Washington Post stuck his head up for the first time in a long time to say, oh, yeah, you know what? Here's another where let me lie you into. Yeah. One reputation, and it's running the policy shop where they came up with all the lies.

Yeah, and he employed that guy Makovsky that our friend Gary Vogler talks about in his phenomenal book. You know, Doug Fythe is a very special breed, though, of Deioncon. I mean, he's really smar me. When I worked on the Hill, he, I would see. him when I would get lunch, it was always odd. He was always kind of wandering, because this was after his time in government, he was kind of this broken, looked like a lost puppy. He was always kind of wandering the halls, uh, alone, uh, looking sad. And I would see him periodically. And I always thought

to myself like, wow, my, have the, how the mighty have fallen, uh, you know. He got everything he always wanted. What's the problem, man? Yeah, but you know, I think, I think the fact is everybody hates him and I think that must get to him on some level because he thought he would be a hero. thought he was, you know, Winston Churchill or whatever. Yeah, I mean a bunch of them. All right, well, look, I should let you go. But thanks for coming on the show, man. Let's do this again.

Absolutely. Thanks for you guys. Check out Brandon Weikert. I'm going to click on this thing. Here's his Twitter. We the Brandon. Like, we the people, but just him. And then here is his great substack.

The myth of Israeli self-sufficiency is the latest there. And that is Wykert. dot substack.com. Thanks again, man. Thanks. Thanks. This Scott Horton show is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Roberts and 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,

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