Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 7/24/26 Larry Johnson on Why He’s Worried About Escalation in Iran

Episode Date: July 30, 2026

Scott brings Larry Johnson back on the show to discuss where things stand between the US and Iran. Johnson explains why he’s convinced things are ultimately headed towards escalation. Discussed on the show: “Yemen Heats Up… A New Threat to the Global Oil Supply” (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 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

All right, guys, let me take a second to tell you about expat money at expatmoney.com slash Scott. It's a guy named Mikkel Thorup. He's a great guy. I've met him. And he's been an expat for many years and knows the rules and regulations all around the world about buying property and or other investments, how to protect your neck, even get citizenship and passports from other countries and everything you need to know

to be an expat, whether you're afraid of the coming collapse or just fighting. modern day price inflation, find out what you need to know about how to protect your neck at expatmoney.com slash Scott. 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 only...

We're going to take out seven countries. They don't know what the fuck. Stand doing. Negotiate now. End this war. And now here's your host, Scott Horton. All right, you guys, it's our buddy, Larry Johnson, former CIA analyst, officer operative. I'm not exactly sure.

Maybe I'll ask you that. I was just an analyst. Just an analyst, okay. But been around. And as you said, you know, a lot of experience joint planning military operations with the top tier special ops. guys and stuff like that. So that's not just an analyst. Anyway, a great analyst and writes at Sonar 21.

That's the website. Sonar 21, sign up for the morning email. That way you make sure to read the morning article every morning. Sonar21.com. And there's so much great stuff on there and there's so much terrible stuff to it. That's good. But, well, I guess let's start with a broad and general type of question. about the war itself in Iran and, you know, where you judge it to be after the last week

and more of raids and now the introduction of the Houthis when there war with the Saudis, after the Saudis bombed their airport and the Israelis staying out and where the hell everything does actually stand in your mind's eyes, sir. We're headed for catastrophe. No, no. That's what you said about six hours before the war started on this show. We're in a similar situation. I mean, ironic, that was a Friday, and the war started Saturday.

Here you and are again on Friday. It looks like the United States is going to start a massive campaign, another attempt at killing all the leadership in Iran, another decapitation strike, that will probably start today after the market's close. I think all the assets are moving into position to do such a thing. And what's the journal says today that he's pissed and getting ready to do something emotional? Yeah. He's, and I think that's right.

that we've got all the warning signs. French, German, British embassies, they're all closing shop, getting the hell out of Tehran. We're telling me, get out now. Airspace is starting to be closed. United States asked the European satellite. I forget what the, I've got it here, but the overhead satellite imagery.

Turn off your cameras. Don't do anything for the next 24 hours. So I take that all as a warning indicator. The B-1 bombers reportedly took off about an hour or so ago from the U.K. I think it takes them about three hours, four hours, to get over target in Iran, which would bring in right to, you know, the close of the stock market. I think there's definitely going to be strikes on nuclear sites in Iran. I cannot rule out the use of a tactical nuclear weapon.

I think Trump and the country and those around him are that crazy. I'm hoping that you're not. But even if they use a tactical nuke, it's not going to destroy the Iranian nuclear program. All it's going to do is further reinforce for the Iranians that they've got to build a nuke and they will. And they've got the ability to build it and unveil it in pretty short or. So this is, all of this is taking place against a backdrop of the United States being driven out of the Persian Gulf, physically driven out of the Persian Gulf. You know, I was, I was interviewed recently on a podcast by a guy who'd been in the Navy back in 1987. And he was, he was on the USS Carl Vincent, an aircraft carrier, and he recalled.

sailing into through the Strait of Hormuz, up to Bahrain, docking at the 5th Fleet headquarters, you know, sailors got liberty. Not that Bahrain is a great liberty port, but, you know, they got to get off the ship and do whatever. Today, you couldn't put a U.S. ship through the Strait of Hormuz without the likelihood that it would be sunk. And so back then, we had our base at Al-Odeed and Qatar. I went through there in 2006. You had what was called the Combined Air Operations Center. There was a big transit point for all U.S. military forces going into Iraq and into Afghanistan. You know, big logistics hub.

One billion-dollar plus radar, a couple of other two, three-hundred-million-dollar radar systems that gave the United States eyes and ears over air. every movement throughout over to India, west to the Rock of Gibraltar, north to the Black Sea coast of Russia, and south to Diego Garcia, just the whole area, all this coverage. We've been driven out of there. The Kayok, the Combined Air Operations Center, it's been relocated to Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina, which, as I say, is a fur piece from Qatar. So the U.S. Air Force had set up major operations in Jordan at two air bases,

Mawafik Al-Salti and the Prince-Azalti, another one called King Faisal. U.S. has been driven out of there. We've had to pull our personnel out because they get hit. We had the MQ4C Triton drone, which is a $250 million drone. based at Mawafak-Al-Salthy. That's now been withdrawn, brought back to Sigonella Air Force Base in Italy because we're afraid it would get destroyed. Iran has already shot one of those down. And that's a whole other topic of the insanity of the United States

in building $250 million drones, as if there's somehow impervious to air defense systems. So then on top of, of this to go to retire in Yemen, the Saudis launched, you know, were alleged to have launched an attack on Sunai airport as the Yemeni, the Ansar Ansula delegation was returning from the funeral of Ali Khomeini in Tehran. And so in response to that, the Ansar Allah launched attacks inside Saudi Arabia. Saudis didn't respond. But then the other day, the Houthis declared a blockade on all vessels coming out of Saudi Arabia carrying oil.

And they fired on two and set them on fire. So right now it puts the Saudis in a bit of a dilemma. If they try to respond militarily to the Houthis and attack the Houthis, the Houthi's got the ability to shut down Yanbu, which is it's the only oil terminal for Saudi Arabia on the West Coast that is on the Red Sea. You take that out, you have now literally cut off 25% of the world's supply of oil. So against all this background, and with the United States, the globe experiencing now a shortage of diesel and aviation fuel, because that's what? that's what comes out of the sour crude that comes out of the Persian Gulf. We have a global shortage of that now, and the U.S. combat operations, their increase, simply adds to the demand

for that aviation fuel, which is going to create further shortages. And, in a mess right now, and the United States is getting ready to double down on stupid, most likely today, if not today, tomorrow. Okay, here it is. I finally posted the second half of my course on the new Cold War with Russia. Sorry for the delay. I had to move and all kinds of things, but it is done now. So you have my Terror War course and both halves of my Cold War with Russia course. And then also announcing Grant F. Smith's new course for the Scott Horton Academy, A PAC, the tip of Israel's lobbying spear. It's the entire sorted history of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in this country. Just go to scotthorntonacademy.com. Use promo code summertime to save 20% Scott

Hortonacademy.com. All right, you guys, me here for tax attorney Matt Sersley at agoristax advice.com. And he is just a real hawk. He serves small businesses and high income professionals who are on the run from the revenues. And his job is making sure that you don't have to pay those Sons of bitches, one penny more than you absolutely have to. That's Matt Sersley, your new tax lawyer. He's at agoristtaxadvice.com. All right. I'm going to work that story back around the other way, starting back again with the

Houthis. You know how I am with the historical sort of background thing always. Not to go all the way back, but let's just go back to 2015 when Obama had been you know, Sencom was supplying intelligence to the Houthis to use to target and kill al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. And then two months later, Obama turned around, stabbed them in the back and took al-Qaeda side against them and Saudi and UAE side. And they launched this massive war, which Akla Dada and I think the UN agreed killed something

like 300,000 people in excess deaths between 2015 and 2022. And the reason that the war ended was because the Houthis kept reaching out and touching Saudi oil refineries and blowing them up one after another after another. And finally, somebody in a white dress came to Muhammad bin Salman and said enough. And so they quit. And he sued for peace and said, okay, I guess that didn't work. Although it did help him become crown prince, you know. But besides all the public choice theory part in the Saudi royal family, the war was a total

bust. And the hootis were not dislodged from power in Sanat, not anything. close to it. And then the same thing, help refresh our memory. What happened last year when Trump started bombing the hoodies? Didn't he just give up because airplanes kept falling off our aircraft carriers and he was just being humiliated. They can hit our boats in the Red Sea and we can't shoot down their incoming, not well enough to risk it. Right. Yeah. It is, you know, we have a flat learning curve because you know, you look back at what happened in the Red Sea. Well, okay, so let's start with Operation Prosperity Guardian December 2023.

The Biden administration, we're going to have opened, you know, establish freedom of navigation. Those Houthis aren't going to stop us from letting ships go through. And the Houthis stopped the Biden administration. In comes Trump. So January 2025, and in March, Trump says we're not going to be a bunch of. whims and spineless jellyfish like the Biden administration. We're going to show those Houthis now. We're going to get tough.

So in the previous 14 months, the Houthis had been shooting down on average one MQ9 Reaper drone per month. The cost of those drones, just the airframe alone is like $35 million. And then you add to it the pods, the optics and the weapons pods. adds another 30 million. So about $60,5 million a pop. The Houthis has shot down 14 of those over a 14-month period. So here comes Trump.

In the next seven weeks, the Houthi's down seven of them. And the reason these MQ9 reapers, they will overfly the Yemeni territory in order to immediately spot a mobile launcher. and then that drone is capable of firing at that mobile launcher. Originally, if you're trying to, you know, you've got overhead imagery of some sort, whether it's from a fixed-wing aircraft or its satellite, once you locate a mobile launcher and the information gets passed up the chain of command and then comes back down to chain and command to target it, it's probably moved.

But the problem was the Houthis figured out they could shoot down those MQ9 reapers. They shot down seven in seven weeks. So that was over almost, you know, half a billion dollars worth of drones down in seven weeks. Added to that three F-18 combat aircraft off of the carrier that were lost in various ways. Some said one friendly fire. Another one got dumped over. You know, the ship made a sharp turn. Well, why was it making a sharp turn?

Oh, yeah, it was under missile attacked by the Uthans. And it was in early, the first week of May, that, Donald Trump declared victory, the Houthis have capitulated. We're leaving. And, you know, it was like a skit from Monty Python that, you know, we were the black night. And it was just a flesh wound, but we're leaving. So, you know, the Houthis basically, they're not afraid of us. And what they showed is they had the ability to withstand everything the United States military could toss at it.

And so I was a bit amused yesterday with the Pakistani threatening, oh, we're going to send our Navy into the Red Sea to protect against those Houthis. Good luck, guys. Look how that turned out for the United States. I'm sure the Pakistani Navy is far more power. You know, whatever problems there are with our Navy, it still dwarfs anything Pakistan can put in the water. And, you know, the West seems to have, and even some in the East, seem to have a tough time learning, the Pakistan's

are a bunch of badasses. So leave them alone. So Trump's ready to escalate. He's threatening the Houthis as well as the Iranians, their civilian infrastructure, et cetera. But he must already

know, I think, what we already know. That's not going to do any good. That the Iranians could put up with years of this. And we support Saddam Hussein attacking them for nine years, including with chemical weapons. And they didn't get in then. In fact, I forgot who it was I was reading that said, you know, they had pushed Hussein's

forces back to the line by early 83. And then they refused to even talk to him for another six years as they continue to fight because they wanted to. These people are not about to give in to big bad Donald Trump because he threatens them loudly. he's got to know. We already know. The reason he stopped fighting on April the 8th

was because it wasn't working. Their bluff had already been called. The war had already failed. The whole crux of the thing was that if you kill the Ayatollah, it's going to turn out perfect the next day. Without that, the war is a failure. They're keeping their missiles.

They're keeping their friendship with Hezbollah. They're keeping their IRGC core. They're keeping their missile and their nuclear capability, and we get nothing, right? We already know that. So the whole contest, and we've been talking about this for months now, the whole contest is between the reality of American defeat and, or at least failure to achieve a single one of their goals in the region.

And in fact, when you talk about all our bases getting hit, our outright defeat in the war, and Trump's ego and political fortunes in future and public choice theory about how it's not good for him to admit defeat. And that's the only contest here, right? Is how can Trump end a war that he lost and still try to spin it? And he was doing pretty good there for a minute saying, hey, everybody has missiles, everybody has a nuclear program, everything's fine.

But he just can't commit and see it through and close the deal because he lost too badly. And his ego just won't stand for it. And it sucks, but he's going to still be there for two and a half years. And you're telling me he's about to massive. escalate the war in a way that, from my point of view, I guess as best as I can understand, is simply because of his political fortunes, is simply because of, you know, the position, the corner he's painted himself into here, not because of any actual military necessity

or a strategic goal that he has in mind that can be accomplished with any of this. And I'm reading the damn post-times and journal every day. I don't see anyone saying, here's how it's supposed to work. or anything like that, you know? But he's being told people like Stephen Miller and Keith Kellogg and, you know, even Heggseth, and I think Rubio, that he just didn't, he didn't use enough force the first time. This is, this is the, you know, Saturday Night Live, more cowbell skit. You know, we need some more cowbell here.

Yeah, we didn't use enough bombs. to use more bombs. And this Wall Street Journal article, it quotes Trump. It says that Trump is having a fit and he's yelling and screaming and cursing, all that stuff he says about there's liars and cheats and bad guys that he's saying in press conferences. He's saying that in his private rants in the Oval Office too. And then, of course, I mean, I've heard this a million times in my lifetime. He only understands one thing force.

I guess they say they. And it's always the person who says that, who's really talking about themselves, that they don't know what to do. And they don't have any other ideas. And even here when it's already a proven failure. Yeah. Well, and this is a little bit off topic, but it's related. Think back, you know, now what we know, because I didn't know this back, you know, when I was at the state, CT, and Saddam launched his invasion of Kuwait, I did not at that point have the historical knowledge about what we had been doing with Saddam the previous eight years.

That there was a close working relationship between the United States, particularly the CIA and Saddam. And then it was shifted. Saddam got pissed at the CIA and they shifted it over to the Department of Defense. Pat Lang, who was a mentor, an old friend of mine now to say, he's, he was. is the one that get tasked with hand carrying the intelligence to a rock during the last two years. My point is, we had an eight, nine-year relationship with Saddam. And he had talked to April Glasby about the problem with Kuwait, stealing oil. And, hey, we're going to go in there and take care of it.

And she said, well, we don't have a position on that. And so when he does that, instead of us going, hey, Saddam, let's sit down, buddy, let's talk this out. Let's see if we can. No, we immediately went to, we got to go to war. Why? Because the Soviet Union was collapsing our Rassonde for building up a military industrial complex was going to disappear. And by God, we had a new enemy we could go after. It may sound cynical, but as I look back on it, that's exactly what happened.

And so here's Trump now thinking we can get away with this kind of escalation at the very time that our entire precision missile system from PAC-3s for the Patriots, from Thads for that air defense system, the tomahawks, the jasmus, the prism missiles that go there are fired from high mars, all across the board are being depleted, and to rebuild them, we need rare earth minerals that China controls, and China is telling us to go to hell, you're not getting anymore. This makes no sense. The United States is actually literally disarming itself, at the very time that it claims that, well, apart from the threat of Iran, the bigger threat is really China and Russia.

I mean, there's zero strategic thinking in this whatsoever. All right, you guys, just a word real quick for my own substack. That's Scott Horton's show.com. And as you can see here, I got a little thing about Grant Smith's new course at the Academy. me, but also here's where I'm publishing the audio book in pieces. And I've got H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, W. Bush, and Obama chapters up there ready for subscribers at my substack. And also, you get these interviews a day early and without commercials at Scott Horton Show.com. My mom always told me, you keep drinking that much coffee. You're going

to turn into some. Well, look, it's true. Now, I'm a coffee. Scott Horton Show flavored coffee. It tastes just like my show. It's great. Sort of. Well, no, it's Ethiopian and Sumatran coffees blended for your mornings. It's the first thing I do when I get up is for myself a pot of coffee and then I drink it. That's why this mug is almost empty. Oh.

And the deal is it's so good. You never go back to your grocery store coffee again. And it's Mundo's artisan coffees get it because they hate. Starbucks because Starbucks supports the war party, but Moondos artisan coffees, like, they support peace. And all you got to do to get some is go to Scotthorton.org slash coffee. That's Scotthorton.org slash coffee. I hate to say this, but people take me wrong and just hear whatever they want anyway, no matter what I say. So whatever, I guess I'll just say. There's a weird, horrible, cynical way in which the Afghan war was preventing us from going to war with Russia.

Ukraine. And there's a horrible, terrible sense in which we're better off bogged down in this idiot war with Iran than getting into a war with China over Taiwan or getting into a war with Russia over Eastern Europe. And I'm not saying, oh, I therefore support intervention in the Middle East instead. But the overall collateral damage in Afghanistan was a hell of a lot less than in Ukraine. If you want to measure it that way, I'm for a total non-intervention. Anyway, I know everybody's going to misunderstand me anyway,

but it's one of those things where it's like, yeah, careful what you ask for, man. We ask them to butt out of this idiot conflict that they should have never started. They got to pivot to somewhere, and they're running out of somewhere. So who are going to fight next? India?

We got, you know, so they got H-bombs too, and missiles that can deliver them, maybe, you know, certainly that can hit us in the region. Well, we'll look at it strategically from China's point of view. And, you know, Trump today was saying, oh, he's got assurances from Xi Jinping that China is not supporting Iran, not selling them anything. Nonsense. Right. China is actually, you know, apart from the fact that Iran is now using the Beido global positioning satellite system that the Chinese created in order to circumvent U.S. controlled GPS.

and with that Beidou system, the Iranian missiles have become extraordinarily accurate and hitting targets that the United States never thought possible. China is actually sending in advanced weapons to test them in a combat environment. You know, it's one thing to develop a hypersonic missile and fire it at an imaginary ship on the sea in a test range. it's a whole other thing to actually take it into a combat theater, firing it at an adversary and see, does it work or doesn't it work? Why would China do that? Because they don't want to wait until they're in a conflict with you.

They're already planning. They decided, the United States is going to attack us at some point, so we've got to be ready. And so they're already testing those weapon systems. And despite Donald Trump's denials, China's not doing that. Hell, China's doing it, Russia's doing it, because we're doing it. We've been doing it for Ukraine to the Russians for four plus years.

So, you know, the Chinese must be estimating now that America's a paper tiger, that they're not worried about us at all, right? If we can't bring our star destroyers within 800 miles of Iran, well, what the hell do they have to worry about us intervening in the Taiwan straight? Well, but again, like any, you know, the Chinese are pretty careful and cautious in their planning. So from their standpoint, every day that the United States launches a tomahawk missile or jasmine missile or any other munition on Iran, that's one less available to fire at China. Right. So they say, hey, guys, go ahead and knock yourselves out.

I mean, I was reading more games years ago where, you know, from the Naval War College and all that, where they already knew our ships can't get anywhere near Taiwan. Our planes can't get anywhere near Taiwan. if we launch a full-scale conventional, you know, naval aviators slash Air Force war against China, we would lose thousands of pilots and aviators to the bottom of the sea or, you know, exploded to pieces in mid-air, and they wouldn't get anywhere near Taiwan. And nor could our aircraft.

And even, you know, our aircraft carriers are prohibited by the range of Chinese standoff missiles, which I don't know if these are the same sea skimming supersonic missiles that they have, that they got the blueprints from Israel that got them from the United States, and they turned around and betrayed us and sold them to the Chinese. I'm not sure if it's the same ones or not. But anyway, those, whatever missiles they have, have a longer range than F-18. Yeah. And so, and they got anti-aircraft enough to shoot down any mid-air refueling, you know, dinosaur,

you know, giant Boeing tanker in the sky. And so our fighters can't get anywhere near Taiwan anymore than our, Ships can, and our submarines can only fire a few shots before they got to turn all the way around and go back to Guam or even whatever, San Diego, to be rearmed or Honolulu or whatever to be rearmed. So just forget it, dude. We can't fight China. Yeah, they were touting yesterday. The United States is now deployed. It's, you know, we finally created a hypersonic missile. I mean, China and Russia have had them for years. Right. So we finally got out one out called the Dark Shield.

And we've deployed the dark shield to Guam, and it can reach China from there. We've deployed a grand total of eight. Eight. Okay. Well, if they're delivering H-bombs, that'll do you. Otherwise, no, right? That's a pinprick. That's nothing.

Right, which is exactly what it is. And, you know, it is like what we've seen with the H-Mars. So, High Mars is a launching platform. I think a lot of times the press when they talk about it imply that it's a missile. It's not. It's a launching platform. Previously, the missile had launched as the Atacom. The Atacom has a range of 180 miles. Well, those Haimars are put into Bahrain and put into Kuwait.

Now, from Kuwait, yeah, they can get, they can probably get 90 miles into the interior of Iran from up on that northern part of the border. But from Bahrain, the attackam really can't reach the shore where in Bodd-like Bandar Abbas. So that brings the prism missile. But the prism, it goes about 300 miles, like almost double the distance of the attack him. And so when you look at how many did Lockheed Martin produce? 56.

You know, so after you fire 56 missiles, you're done. And we're, in fact, that's what it's. We've now exhausted our supply of prisms. And those are, those are the symbols for the different rare earth minerals that are used in these U.S. precision missiles. And China controls 91% of the processing. The actual, the physical rare earth mineral, hell, we've got, we've got piles of it just north of me here where I live in Bradenton, Florida. It's called the Mosaic Mine. But the problem is you've got to take it and process it

in order to get those like gallium and neobidium out of it. We don't have that. The Chinese have almost a monopoly control of it. So we're using up weapons that are dependent upon these rare earth minerals that we don't control. And even if we get them, these highly sophisticated precision missiles that we've developed take sometimes a year to produce. A total time.

I mean, it's just a crazy person could not have designed a more insane system. Yeah. You know, I was, it kept coming up, and I kept not known the exact figure. So I double-checked. So the PAC three, that's, I guess, the third iteration. Right. The more moderate iteration of the Patriot missile, Interceptor Missile. They cost five.

$.5 million each. Yeah, between four and six, depending on your source, but I go with six. Okay. Yeah, me too. So we know how this system works. That's right.

A round up when it comes to this kind of thing. So, I'm not going to make the joke. It's too obvious. Leave me alone, everyone. The thing is this, Larry, Never even mind the Ukraine war and the Iran war. Let's go to a timeline where these idiots never did any of that.

These exquisite weapons systems, the tomahawks, attack them's, and the Himarses and whatever, this and that, your sparrows is and your pack threes. It doesn't look to me like, again, excluding the Iran and Ukraine wars. It doesn't look to me like America has had what it would take to fight a conventional war against Russia. or China anyway, much less with the recent absolute depletion of all our munitions, especially in Ukraine, but I guess now, especially in Iran too. Well, we could get going to let you know the depletion rate. Do they even work? Now, as Ted Postal has pointed out in several recent presentations, the PAC three,

which is the... By the way, Ted Postal, everyone is an MIT missile scientist world round. Yeah, he's actually a rocket scientist. Yeah. And the PAC 3, which- Minnialone. The PAC 3, which is sort of the backbone of our now air defense system,

it worked less than 10% in intercepting the ballistic missiles from Iran. And so, in other words, it doesn't work. You know, 10%, less than 10%, not good. And on top of it, the way it's designed, So let's say it's going to shoot down a Garan. So the Russians have fired a drone. Now, the Pax 3 can do that, but it's got to fire two of them. The Garon drone costs $50,000.

Two-pack-three missiles combined cost $12 million. So you're spending $12 million to take down a $50,000 target. Yeah, that works out over the long run. You'll be bankrupt in a heartbeat. Yeah. I read a thing that said that the Shahed drones, because people were always estimating the Shahed drones, main this shaheds is costing $30,000.

And this one expert says, no, I estimate about eight. It must have to cost down to about $8,000 per drone. We're shooting them down with $6 million missiles. Yeah. Two of them each. Yeah. So it just, it doesn't add up.

And in fact, that is why what we're seeing, what we're witnessing now is the evacuation of U.S. military personnel from these forward bases, evacuating Kuwait, evacuating Bahrain, evacuating Qatar, evacuating Prince South Air Base in Saudi Arabia.

I don't think we had anyone, may have had a few at Addafra in UAE. And they pulled them back to Jordan. And now they were evacuating Jordan because it's not safe there either. And one of the reasons it's not safe is our air defense systems don't work. And so now it enters us into a whole new era

where we lost, what the Iranians did in the first five weeks of that war, and I guarantee you they had help from the Russians and Chinese, and me in saying that, I'm not trying to stir up a justification for attacking Russia or China. I'm just pointing out this is what happened. They identified all the critical radar and satellite communication systems. The Iranians destroyed 19 of those,

and at an estimate of the cost of them all combined, probably in excess of $5, $6 billion. And now the United States is effectively blind. The only way we can get some, have some sort of early warning that there may be an attack coming is if we have an AWACS airborne that's sweeping the area. So we're having to come off with ad hoc procedures. Yeah, they already blew up one of those on the tarmac in Saudi. Yes.

And again, not quickly or easily replaceable because of rare earth minerals. Right. This should be the hugest scandal It's just washed away with every other horrible thing going on here. But the Iranian shot down an F-35, which was supposed to be impossible. And that was the whole excuse for them being able to steal all those trillions of dollars from us

in the name of that damned weapons program was, don't worry, this thing will never have to fight because it'll have such dominance over everything. in the world, it doesn't have to be able to turn or it doesn't have, you know, and here it's not skilled, right? They hit it with long wave World War II era radar with probably a modern era microchip, and they knocked that thing right out of the sky. Yeah.

Yeah. So flying U.S. aircraft over Iran is not a good idea. The B1 can do it. It is, there's a question of whether the S-400 can take it out or not. but because of its speed or combination of altitude that it flies at

countermeasures electronic countermeasures that it carries now this is what's being said in open source yeah I might buy a B2

I'd be worried well you know what I know a B1 pilot I should ask him yeah the show he was a veteran of the Afghan war

yeah it is but But again, the B1 is not the game changer. And actually the fact that we're now having to try to turn to the B1 shows how ineffective all the others have been. Larry, is anybody in Washington really crazy enough? Is Donald Trump really crazy enough if he's feeling that upset

to use an atom bomb here? You know, you're asking me to make a conclusion based upon saying Donald Trump is not crazy enough to do X, Y, and Z. Sorry, man. It's a bad position. Yeah. No, I think, I believe that there is enough people around him encouraging him to do that. And, you know, what we've seen, particularly the last two weeks, it's been, it's, it's, the schizophrenia on the spline.

I mean, one minute it is, we're trying to open the Strait of Hormuz, we're degrading Iranian capabilities to take out ships. That's our goal. That's what we're doing day after day. And then yesterday, Donald Trump said, no, no, no, we don't care about the Strait of Hormuz. We've got to keep the Iranians from getting a nuke. So what does bombing around the Strait of Hormuz have to do with keeping Iran from getting a nuke? Makes absolutely no sense. And so, you know, we keep flipping back and forth between the...

too because remember in the first sort of four weeks it was the nuke and then it was straight of hermos and then it's the new the real the real factor driving all of this right now is the critical oil oil shortage particular to the high sulfur oil that comes out of the Persian Gulf all right you guys let's talk about crowd health at join crowdhealth.com slash Horton and or use the promo code Horton there to join crowdhealth, join crowdhealth.com. Essentially, the gangsters have priced us all out of health insurance. What are you going to do? Well, there's a solution.

It's not insurance. It's crowdfunding. And what you do is you pay cash and then your friends and fellow members at join crowd health help defer those costs and you help them when it's their turn. And it works really well. It's really a great program to report. place health insurance, look at join crowdhealth.com slash Horton. All right, guys, let me take a second to tell you about expat money at expatmoney.com

slash Scott. It's a guy named Mikhail Thorup. He's a great guy. I've met him. And he's been an expat for many years and knows the rules and regulations all around the world about buying property and or other investments, how to protect your neck, even get citizenship and passports from other countries. and everything you need to know to be an expat,

whether you're afraid of the coming collapse or just fighting modern day price inflation, find out what you need to know about how to protect your neck at expatmoney.com slash Scott. So let's go back to the start of the war. So when the war started on the 28th of February, there were oil tankers that had oil in them

that had just left the straight of our moose. So the reality was, there wasn't an immediate cut off of global supply of oil. It's like if you cut it off at the tap, there was still stuff flowing through the hose. All that flow stopped on April 5th. Huh. What happened around April 5th?

That's when Trump says, hey, let's have this ceasefire. It was because of the oil. They knew at that point, okay, we are now facing an actual oil shortage. We're not going to admit it. We're going to manipulate the oil market behind the scenes. They had already actually taken some preemptive steps 30 days before that on March 11th when Chris Wright started drawing down from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Now, I know at that time, what I didn't understand, I just sort of said, oil's oil.

You know, they got different names for it, but, you know, what difference does it make? Well, I've since learned sour crude, high sulfur content. It's a cheaper oil. And so what did our good capitalists in the United States do? They built the majority of refineries, around 65 to 70 percent of our refineries, are set up the deal only with sour crude. And before we were getting that from Russia, from the Persian Gulf, from Canada, from Mexico, and Venezuela.

So with the special military operation and sanctions against Russia, the Russia source got cut off. Now here was the close down of the Strait of Hormuz. The Persian source is cut off. The United States is a net importer of sour crude. We produce all the sweet crude you want, man. We export the hell out of that. But the problem is you can't just take that sweet crude into an oil refinery,

that's been built specifically to deal with sour crude. It doesn't work. It's like trying to put kerosene in your car engine. Yeah, it's an oil-based fuel, but it's not going to run your car. The car will not run. So here we got this dilemma that we need to import all this sour crude, and no matter how much Venezuela, Mexico, and Canada, increase their production, it doesn't increase it enough to make up for the deficit.

So now you're running into a deficit, which was why then on June, a little bit like June 14th, two or three days before Trump signed that MOU, and he's at the G7 and he goes, we're going to run out of oil in four weeks. Now, he wasn't talking about the sweet crude that we export. He's talking about the sour crude. And the reality is right now, the globe, the world is, is facing a deficit that cannot be corrected any time soon. It probably won't be corrected for at least six months. And that means there's a shortage of diesel and a shortage of aviation fuel. And what happens when you get those shortages, the prices go up.

And no matter how much manipulation has been done in the oil market, this price of diesel and aviation fuel from now going forward, we're going to be facing a massive, massive increase. And here's how that whole Persian Gulf thing comes and affects the American consumer. Because in addition to cutting off the oil, we cut off the sulfur and the urea, which make fertilizer.

Mexico is a major supplier of U.S. vegetables and fruits consumed by the United States citizens come out of Mexico. The Mexico growers use what's called fertilizer. Now they're having to pay double the price for fertilizer. That price gets passed along, and then the trucks that haul those fruits and vegetables are carrying it with an increased price of diesel.

So all of a sudden, we're going to see an inflationary spike in just basic fruits and vegetables. I had one of my readers send me a note, he's got a friend that is a shrieper, you know, like Forrest Gump, down on the Gulf of America, ago from Mexico. And he used to get the shrimp from this guy at 425 a pound. And he said, that was a week ago. Today, this week, he had to pay $6.25 a pound. Went up $2. The guy said, I got to raise the

price because my diesel fuel has gone up. So $2 a pound increase on the shrimp. And I just, you know, once every six months, no big deal. But all of a sudden, when you spread these increased costs out across the economy, you're looking at some real economic damage to the U.S. economy as the whole political season going into the midterms is heating up. And it's not just the price of oil, price of gas, price of diesel that's going to go up. This is going to be the price of everything. America first? No, Israel instead.

Yeah. Yeah. Americans last, unfortunately. All right, we better leave it there. Thank you very much, Larry, for doing the show again. Really appreciate it. Hey, Scott. I'm always honored and privileged by the invite and appreciate all your good work.

and remind everybody, go to Scott Horton's school. You want to learn about the world. And, you know, you've got great courses there that folks can sign up for. Well, thank you very much for saying that. You're right about that. I'm right about that. I'm right about everything. Scotthornacademy.com and sonar.21.com.

Thanks, getting, Larry. All right, brother. Thanks. Bye-bye. The Scott Horton show is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Roberts and Robbers, 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 Aaron, enough already,

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