Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 8/14/26 Joe Kent on the Risk That US and Israeli Aggression Will Lead to Stateside Terrorism

Episode Date: August 16, 2026

Joe Kent joins the show again to discuss the risk of a major terrorist attack against Americans. He and Scott go through all the major Islamist groups around right now and weigh who poses the biggest risks of carrying out blowback terrorism. Discussed on the show: “The Islamic State in ‘Khorasan’: How it began and where it stands now in Nangarhar” (Afghanistan Analysts Network) The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda by Ali Soufan Joe Kent is a retired Army Special Forces soldier who served as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center in Trump’s second term until he resigned in 2026 over the war with Iran. Follow him on Twitter @joekent16jan19  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; 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/ 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

Ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest. Reporting to the American people, what's going on in this country? Because the babies are making this. We're dealing with Hitler Revisited. This is the Scott Horton Show. Libertarian foreign policy, mostly. When the president visit, that means that it is not illegal. We're going to take out seven countries in five years.

They don't know what the fuck they're doing. Negotiate now. End this war. And now, here's your host, Scott Porton. All right, you guys, introducing Joe Kent again. He famously was in the Special Operations Forces. Green Beret or just Ranger, I forgot.

Green Beret, right? We started on a Ranger Regiment than Green Bray. Right. And in Special Activities Division for the CIA. And then most recently and famously, Director of Counterterrorism in the Trump II administration and resigned in principle over the... the Iran war. So I'm happy to have you back here. The reason I have you on the show is,

and like I'm perfectly fine with being wrong about this. If I am, I don't mind. But just personally, I am completely paranoid about bin Ladenite-style terrorism against the United States. And it's a big country, and I live in the suburbs, and I don't think they're coming for me, but I do think they're coming for us. And the main thrust of the first part of this is that there was a strategy behind the bin Ladenites war against us in the first place, which was we back all their dictators, and so they can't have their way until we're out of the way. And we won't be out of the way until our empire is broken.

So therefore, let's hit them and lure them into Afghanistan, where we can break them on the rocks of Afghanistan, and then they'll fuck off for good like the Soviet Union did, and then we can build our local thing of the jig, right? So that was always the strategy, and it only kind of half-ass worked because America ain't the Kami USSR, and our economy can afford to lose a 20-year, not just a 10-year, we're in Afghanistan, and still throw a weight around in the Middle East and not be all the way broken yet. And, of course, other than occupying the Holy Arabian Peninsula, which we still do or do again now more,

number two on the list of the bin Ladenites claims against us was support for Israel and their domination over the Palestinians and the Lebanese. And, you know, I'm a broken record on this until everybody else starts saying it so I don't have to because it's so true and it's such a crucial fact that Naftali Bennett's artillery strike on a UN shelter in 1996 that killed 106 women and children. That was what motivated Muhammad Atta to join al-Qaeda and hit our towers, the lead hijacker of September 11th. It's a direct blowback.

He wasn't as upset or whatever. In his case, I'm sure he cared about the occupation of Saudi to bomb Iraq and blockade Iraq during that time. But the precipitating event for him was the Kana massacre of 96. And so America suffered the very worst sort of blowback because of that. And then I swear I'm going somewhere with this, Joe. I got this from, this is Europol, has this new report out. Oh, I'm sorry, I was supposed to hit share screen here, when I? Europol has this thing out.

I can't see. Here. Okay, sorry. And so here's what says, the conflict in Gaza was a recurrent theme in Alcatus propaganda. The topic has always been a core issue for bin Laden and them, et cetera. And then they say throughout here that it's, back on the front burner. For example, in June 25, AQAP published a guide, that's Al-Qaeda in Yemen, published a guide based on the May 21, 2025 terrorist attack in Washington, urging readers to follow

the example of the Latino Christian attacker who acted to, quote, defend Palestine, end quote. AQAP also published two other guides based on terrorist attacks against Jewish targets in Colorado and Manchester. And then it goes on. And then I also have assessing the European terrorist threat landscape from Ali Sufhan. And he was formerly the right-hand man of John O'Neill, the head of counterterrorism for the FBI. And then now he has his own advisory group and they send out a quality email every morning. And he focuses on far right stuff and also jihadi transnational terrorist stuff. And they have jihadi threats and attacks, usually kind of low scale that don't get the biggest headlines, but all across Europe. Some of them so-called lone wolves,

Some of them recruited by who knows who on Facebook or whatever. I don't know, but there's a lot of them. The Sunday Times, the rise of Islamist terror in Germany, another extremely in-depth report about what's going on there with numerous attacks, at least like dozens of them. And then here's the Global Terrorism Index, which was, I'm sorry, forgive me, this was published by the Institute for Economics and Peace. That came out and has all of these examples in here and many references to

al-Qaeda and ISIS, whatever's left of them, whatever form of those organizations actually exist behind those names, Joe, you explain, but that Israel's slaughter in Gaza is the major radicalizing factor for a whole new generation of bin Ladenite terrorists and that threaten the United States. And then here's this, I'm sorry, I forgot which one, which source this came from,

the jihadization of the, oh, this is older. This is, this is older, sorry. But anyway, so you're the former head of counterterrorism. And so without, you know, never mind the Shiites. That's a whole different subject here. It's the bin Ladenites who've been attacked in America since at least 1990. And who, with their big one on September 11th, kicked off the whole last generation of war. And as we've already discussed on this show,

America is nothing but lousy with soft targets everywhere, man. And in some of these lone wolf attacks, we can tell that if it had just been two or three men working together instead of one man, they would have been able to get away with so much worse damage before somebody could stop them. So I want to know your just total, like go off for half an hour straight if you want to assessment of which of these groups, like really, who really runs ISIS K? What does it amount to? Who are these guys? where are these guys? What is al-Qaeda now? Any of bin Laden's sons left running these things or whoever these guys are left from the old days? What threat did they pose to the United States

or not or what, sir? Yeah, I mean, so I would say first and foremost, the distinction between the South of jihadis like al-Qaeda and ISIS contrasted with what we're hearing a lot of right now about the Shiites, the 12ers, the Iranians, etc. The big difference, as you pointed out, is that the Southi jihadis, the al-Qaeda's, and the ISIS, they want to come here or inspire attacks here in the homeland to hit us here. Previously, the Iranians, the Shias, the 12ers, they had not wanted to do that. They would attack us when we go into their region,

but they would not come here and attack us. Those plots had been somewhat limited, and we've talked about this before. You know, there's stretch streams here and there about members of the IRGC, plotting assassinations here in America. Those are debatable. A lot of them have, you know, some dubious ties to the FBI here and there. I am concerned that there's going to be blowback terrorism from the strike on the girls' school

and just the overall way that we've conducted this war in Iran. It's going to flip that dynamic. It's going to change that dynamic. And we're going to start seeing a lot of blowback terrorism here in America against those soft targets just because of how this war is going in Iran. But historically, it has been al-Qaeda. It has been ISIS. Right now the most pro-Olythic and I think dedicated al-Qaeda element to attacking the homeland. And right now, I think that they're ahead of the ball of vices.

versus ISIS is al-Qaeda in Yemen or AQAP, as you'll commonly refer to, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. And AQAP is small, but they basically, their sole existence is to go off into the far corners or like central Yemen where even like the government and the Houthis really can't reach them and specifically to plot and inspire attacks against the West, both Europe and America. That's like their whole justification. They do some local insurgency here and there to kind of hold their own lines and to preserve their sanctuaries. But that's kind of what their entire, you know, task and purpose is.

And a lot of the senior Al-Qaeda leadership has been consolidated kind of in that central Yemen area in the Murrah province. And those guys, they're pretty good. I mean, they have been able to inspire attacks here in America. The underwear bomber back in the day, that was inspired by Amarala, Al-Waki, for a while there, an American citizen, Amar al-Waki, and Samir Khan, another American citizen, they were both putting out a lot of propaganda, the Inspire magazine, specifically targeting Western audiences because

Al-Awaki was fluent in English so he could speak directly to Americans. So they've done a decent job of trying to recruit more English speakers. They're getting decent at social media as well. And so they've focused a lot of efforts on trying to inspire attacks here. And they've done a very good job of playing off the conflict in Gaza. And you listed a bunch of the attacks that took place here in America in 2025. And basically all of them, they cited in some way, shape, or form the conflict in Gaza, even like the college kids who killed the Jewish individuals in Washington, D.C., who had no ties to Islam that we know of. I mean, they were secular kids, as far as we could tell, but they were inspired by what the social media they were consuming, what was coming out of Gaza.

So I'd say al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula, that makes me pretty nervous, especially considering the fact that right now, the Saudis, and us to a certain extent, but not us as much, but the Saudis, and maybe even the Emirates, even though technically the Emirates have left Yemen, they're running an offensive right now against the Houthis inside of Yemen. And al-Qaeda, they can kind of go one or two ways. They can go to ground and try and stay out of it completely, or they can say, hey, we have a lot of military capabilities, and they could probably use back channels to say, hey, we're with you against the Shiite Houthis to the Saudis. The Saudis not wanting to put a bunch of boots on the ground inside

of Yemen because it's so dangerous, I'm afraid that some tribes that are affiliated with and I'm given sanctuary to Al Qaeda would be taken up on that opportunity. I don't know if that's happening, but that's kind of the way Yemen works. The tribes can be bought off for different reasons here and there in order to jockey and to get power. So that's a, I think that's a huge gap that we have right now. Plus, we've just had to move so many other assets over to the fight inside of Iran that I am afraid that we're kind of giving the al-Qaeda elements a chance to breathe and to recoup, and to see how they can exploit the conflict in Iran. ISIS makes me pretty nervous as well.

Actually, before I move on to ISIS, Al-Qaeda, we have to mention, of course, Jalani, or as he's now referred to, Al-Shara, in Syria, who we basically said, hey, this is now our guy. He can have the keys to the kingdom inside Syria. I think Jalani personally, although I don't trust him, and he's got a very dubious past, he was hand-selected by Im and Al-Zawahiri to run al-Qaeda in Syria's operations before he rebranded. And before that, he was a member of ISIS.

And before that, he was al-Qaeda and Iraq, you know, fighting and killing American soldiers in the Mosul and Ambar areas during the war. But he's, you know, rebranded himself. Everyone kind of knows that story, I am concerned that because Shara Jalani has had to make so many different marriages of convenience, and he was brought into power by a very hardline Sunni element, that even if he tries to rebrand and wear a suit and say, now I'm Western and I'm going to switch from being an insurgent to being, you know, the guy who now is going to run Syria. I think he's going to be under so much domestic pressure that he's at least going to have to give a turn of blind eye and give a pass to some Al-Qaeda elements who are probably going to use the sanctuary and the safety of what's going on in Syria. Now that helps me transition to ISIS because, yes, we defeated the territorial caliphate in Syria and in Iraq. but in Syria, we had a lot of the people who were part of that actual ISIS caliphate.

We had them contained into a bunch of different prisons, the hardliners, the hard of the worst, the worst ISIS prisoners. We had them in different locations. There was a course of action where we were going to hand them over to the Al-Shara government. When I was still the National Counterterrorism Center director, I was able to say, hey, that's a bad idea. And myself and others, we came up with a plan where we got the Iraqi government again, and the Iraqis ran by the Shiites to take. take 5,000 of the worst ISIS fighters and leaders, move them to Baghdad, where they'll be tried by the Iraqi government. The Iraqis are trying to have some of the foreigners extradited, but at least Iraq has a process

for them. That was the good news. The bad news is there was two IDP internally displaced personnel camps, Al Hul and Al-Rouge. Now, because Shar was under such domestic pressure, and then also because he just simply didn't have the capacity to continue to keep these. probably about 20,000 people total. And these are families, too. So a lot of these kids have known nothing

but growing up in the Caliphate. They were born at the early phases of the Caliphate, and then they grew up in these camps that were essentially ran and governed by ISIS, disarmed ISIS, contained ISIS, but still ran by ISIS. And so Jalani, Shara, his new government didn't have the capability to keep them under lock and key.

And so he basically just let them do a general amnesty and kind of let them flee. And so a lot of the foreigners have kind of absorbed back into Syria, into enclaves that are controlled in some way, shape, or form by some of the other foreign fighter elements that are also part of Shara's government, that are now part of the former Syrian MOD. So I am very concerned, too, that Shara is just not going to have the capacity or the capability or even really the will if ISIS or Al-Qaeda kind of reinvents itself, gets sanctuary

because the alternative, if he cracks down too hard on them, he knows that he's up against a numbers game, where he could get what he dished out before to Assad done to him. So that makes me very nervous. We also had basically the SDF, the Syrian Defense Force, the Kurds that we used as our ground forces against ISIS. We had them formally joined the Syrian military. Now, I think as long as that integration goes the way that we had planned where a lot of those units stay in an organic formation,

we would be able to get some early indication that things are not going well in Syria. But if those units are broken up and dispersed, we're going to lose some of our capability and probably a lot of our on-the-ground feelers inside of Syria if things do start to kind of go awry. ISIS K, ISIS in the Korsons or Afghanistan, Pakistan border, for lack of a better term, they are a pretty big threat. And for a while there, they did have a pretty capable English language cadre that was

attempting to do a lot of outreach on the Internet and trying to follow the AQAP model. But because of some of the operations by the Pakistani government, And then also the Taliban, I mean, Taliban, bad guys for sure. But definitely more locally focused. The Taliban viewed ISIS K as a threat to them. And so there was definitely cooperation there. The Hakanis find themselves kind of in, you know, being the connecting thread between several of these organizations all the time.

But the overall Taliban did feel threatened by ISIS K. So they have been decent at targeting them. I wouldn't say that we would like partner with the Taliban by any means. However, just that internal friction. there, I think, has kept ISIS-K kind of on the run. Huge issues right now in the Maghreb in northern Africa. You have a very active al-Qaeda element there that is taking over a ton of ground up in Western Africa in Mali in those areas.

That is a concern, and we need to monitor that. However, we really haven't seen a lot of aspirations for doing the external operations, so targeting the homeland or targeting the West, but that could create a crisis, a Libya situation, and it forces a ton of money. migrants into Europe and then you've got a whole other problem there as well. So that's kind of the once around the world to the best of my knowledge off top of my head. Who did that attack on the theater in Moscow back in hell? I'm sorry.

I forgot the date, but the big one back. Yeah. I mean, it was attributed to ISIS K, but I wasn't in the government. That was under the previous administration. Yeah. So I'm not sure. I mean, there's a lot of potentials of what that could be. But I don't know.

I believe IsisK took credit for it. Hey, Scott Horton here for Expanddesigns.com. It's Harley Abbott and his crew over there at Expanddesigns.com. They run all my websites. Do you need a webmaster who knows what he's doing and does what he says he's going to do when he says he's going to do it and does it right the first time? Strange, right? Well, you can find that at Expanddesigns.com. Health insurance.

Who can afford it even with the subsidy? and who wants a subsidy, there's a better way. Crowd Health. It's not health insurance. It's a crowdsourcing community. Basically, the way it works is you pay cash, first 500 bucks up front for whatever doctor visits you have, and you crowdsource the rest.

And the more you help others, the more they help you. There's a nominal monthly fee. And in fact, you'll save and get a big discount, only $99 for the first three months. If you go to join crowdhealth.com slash Horton. That's join crowdhealth.com slash Horton. You know, the New York Times actually boasted that they knew more than they told the Russians. They told them, hey, there's a threat.

You better look out. But they didn't tell them everything that they could have, which is just never mind the morality of the thing. But even just from the cold calculations of the empire, that's a really nasty thing to do to Russia. When you could have done them a real solid, apparently, and prevented a horrific slaughter of innocent civilians. billions out on a weekend night. You know what I mean? And the Russians, too, in terms of like going after the al-Qaeda types and the ISIS types, they've done that.

They've gone after them. I mean, because obviously, because of Chechnya, that's a huge threat to the Russians, but they've shared information with us before. And in Syria, I mean, we butted heads with the Russians for sure when the Russians tried to brush up against us in an aggressive way. However, we were fighting essentially the same enemy at the time. We were fighting ISIS at the same time as they were trying to. the proper Assad, we were trying to support, you know, the Kurds and the air quotes, moderate Syrian rebels to overthrow Assad.

But the tactical, yeah, how kind of the guys we ended up installing. Yeah. But at least that tactically there, we were still going after the same targets that the Russians were. So if there is, I don't know, if there was some trickery there where the Ukrainian intelligence service was somehow using ISIS K, which sounds far-fetched, but it's really not. I mean, if you just do a basic unconventional warfare assessment of like who has the capability. to do sabotage and terrorist attacks behind my enemy's lines that's going to make them dedicate resources towards something else other than fighting me, it kind of makes sense. If I'm in the Ukrainian intelligence service, I could see the cold-blooded pragmatism of saying, hey, can we hire some of these ISIS-K guys

or enable them in some way, shape, or form to conduct terrorist attacks inside Russia? And the way that we're seeing the Ukrainians fight right now behind the lines inside Russia, that wouldn't surprise me at all. Well, and for anyone, who to your ears that sounds outlandish, we know that, I mean, obviously the Chechens are the connection that after the big loss in Syria, that many ISIS fighters went to Ukraine to join up

with the radical right to fight what was then the so-called civil war that was going on between 2014 and 2022. And we have solid reporting a multiple part piece by a guy named Marsen Mammon in The Intercept and plus the New York Times. covered it as well at least once, I think twice. The New York Times has like in-death stories of jihadists in Ukraine, fighting with the Azov Battalion, et cetera, et cetera. So that's not solid evidence that they were used by the SBU behind Russian lines in that context. We know they use Nazis in that context.

We don't know, I don't think, that they ever use jihadists in that context. But certainly, as you say, it's within the realm of possibility because they're definitely there and fighting on Kiev's side. They have been there and fighting on Kiev's side in the war. So, um, now, um, and by the way,

well, hell, as long as we're at it, we should talk about the origin of ISIS K. I have a bit about this in Ful's Aaron. There's a great piece by a guy named, um, Osman in,

uh, it's Osmond bornan or bornan Osmond. I'm sorry, I forget bornan or Osmond. Anyway, and it's in Afghan analysts. Dot org. And it's all about the rise of ISIS K.

And what it is is, is they are refugees. from the Pakistani Taliban, the Tariqi Taliban, that when Obama hired the Pakistani government to do the drone war against al-Qaeda, which was just according to John Kirooku, only 29 Arab friends of Osama left in Pakistan in 2009, but anyway,

they launched a giant CIA drone war against them. And then the bribe to the Pakistani government to allow us to do that was, then we'll support them in their civil war in the Swat Valley and the federally administered tribal territories against the Tariqi Taliban. Well, so a bunch of, which Obama did and helped them 80,000 people were killed or something. Then that led to a bunch of refugees from the Tariqi Taliban fleeing for safe haven on the Afghan side of the border in a mirror image of the Afghan Taliban hiding on the Pakistani side of the border, right?

And then obviously the CIA, Joe, because it was the Afghan intelligence service, which was nothing but a sock puppet of the CIA at the time. you know, fostered these guys and, and what, suckered them or whatever, gave them support and recruited them and used them for tit-for-tat attacks against the Pakistanis as revenge for them supporting the Afghan Taliban. Well, here's some of your own medicine there and also to hopefully use them to fight against the Afghan Taliban for us. But then after, so that would have been in late 2010, I guess. And then in 2013, they hoisted the black flag and did.

declared their loyalty to Baghdadi in the Islamic State. And so that was the origin of ISIS K in the first place was, I mean, man, you know, it's almost funny, except for all of the people dying in such horrible pain. You know what I mean? But God dang, it's just the absurdity is, you know, and who knows their reach? I don't know. And like you said, like we don't really know who is behind it. It could be any number of national governments behind these guys.

and maybe the guys like who shot up that theater in Moscow, for example, like who knows if they had any idea who they were working for. Right? They work for a guy who works for a guy who works for a guy. That's how covert action works. They don't know what's going on. Yeah, and there's enough, you know, Chechians and Russian Muslims that have an axe to grind. So, you know, like you said, that's the way these things work.

You've got some guys who have a motivation, then someone gives them a target, gives them capability, and there's several cutouts removed. and we never truly know, you know, who was kind of behind it all. But, I mean, to your point, the whole creation and generation of ISIS, you know, it hasn't been necessarily a scheme that we concocted that we were going to come up with ISIS, but all of the actions that we took from the Iraq War on, the way that the debathification worked, the way the suities were treated,

all of the, and then the war against Assad. I mean, all of that basically went to create ISIS, and it kind of became just a monster that we made ourselves. So I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned. there about the number of fires we're starting. And then the counter brush fires, we have to start to counter the fire that we lit in the first place and just how futile it all is and how it all works against our national security. It is completely crazy.

All right. So now, back when she was running and I got some sympathy for Tulsi Gabbard, I assume that you guys are, you know, close and whatever, she's not the worst of these people. But when she was running for president, she had this YouTube ad about how there are hundreds of bin Laden night groups around the world that need to be just. destroyed in our war on terrorism. And I'm saying that ain't right. There's a clear distinction between local Sunni insurgents with rifles, wherever they may be, and bin Ladenites who are determined to attack the United States, or at least are radical enough in their politics

that even if they're, say, focused on the Bathis now, they could very easily turn against us tomorrow, like the guys in Syria. Whereas Al-Shabaab, they're not really coming here. And local Kooks fighting in Chad and in Sierra Leone. That's not the same thing as real Aspin Ladenites. You already discriminated between the two when you talked about al-Qaeda and the Arabian Peninsula. These guys tried to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. Imagine that actually working, you know, not hard to. And we know, by the way, that the State Department or the CIA intervened to get him on the plane.

When he was changing planes in the Netherlands, I interviewed the lawyer, Haskell. Kurt Haskell was the eyewitness. who saw them intervene to help him get on the plane when they were trying to stop him. They didn't know, obviously, I mean, apparently, they didn't know he had a bomb in his underpants, but his father had tipped him off, that the boy's coming and he's under the control of these guys and whatever.

But they said, and it was Patrick Kennedy, the State Department employee, admitted this under oath in front of Congress, that they led him on the plane because they were trying to track who he was going to meet with when he got here. But he had a bomb in his pants. He almost blew up the plane over Detroit.

So these guys, they're not very good at their job a lot of the times. But anyway, so that's my thing is, well, there's one, there's the lone wolf thing. But then there's two, there's, you know, bin Ladenite types. And I guess I wondered, too, I don't have nearly a good enough sketch of what even is Al-Qaeda actually now. You got the AQAP guys there, you know, mostly protected by and working with the UAE ever since the war. You know, at first they were sort of freelance, but then the UAE sort of mopped them up. and recruited them to be in their ground militia in about 2016 or 17 at the latest. So they're certainly not gone there.

But I guess I wonder if you think, like, is that really the main threat? Or there's others like, all the bin Laden sons and all those guys are dead? I know you confirmed last time on the show that they did Zap Zawahri. He's gone, right? As far as I know, I know there's some dispute if Hamza bin Laden is dead or not. I think the ICSS is that he is dead. There's some of the old school guys like Saif Idol. People think that he is in around potentially,

if the Iranians were holding him or not. I don't know what the status of him is now or if he's back in Afghanistan. He's probably one of the last guys that's still in the game who was directly tied to a much lower level, but he did work directly for bin Laden back in the Afghan heydays. I say that AQAP is probably the biggest threat because their sole existence has always been.

We conduct, we solely exist to inspire or conduct spectacular attacks against the West in America. And they specifically recruit now for that English language capability. The guy who helped rig up the underwear bomber, we in the Saudis eventually killed him. It was a guy named Al-Sahiri. He also rigged up the printer cartridge bombs that almost made it into the U.S. just like, I think, a year or two later. He almost killed the head of the Saudi Intel Service. So he was a very capable bomb maker.

So we took him off the battlefield, and I think EQAP assessed, and this was kind of an Al-Alocki thing, assessed that getting these really high-end attacks to generate from Yemen and then get them into America, they had a high probability of getting screwed up or getting caught. And so they shifted a lot of their resources to reaching out to people that were already in the West and just telling them, hey, you know, it doesn't have to be fancy. This was, you know, this was Al-Walki's whole thing. He was basically like, take your car and just run people over. Like they were kind of going with the, before ISIS was even a thing, they were going, with the more Gonzo style attacks where you just commit a mass amount of violence,

didn't have to be complicated. But AQAP is still there. They still exist just for that reason. And I'm concerned that we're so hyper-focused right now on the Houthis, that AQAP is going to kind of get a second win or a third win, whatever we're on now, and be able to exploit that conflict and kind of escape our scrutiny, but maybe even get some support from the Saudis just wanting to be able to strike a blow

against the Houthis. Man, you guys need one of these bug assault shotguns for shooting salt at flies and killing them when they're in your house. Threatening to defecate and vomit on your food, you can't have that. So what you do is you get one of these and you kill them. And the best way to get one of these is you stop by Scott Horton.org and you click the Amazon link in the right-hand margin there at the top of the right-hand margin will take you right to the bug assault. And then actually while you're at it, you should always stop at that Amazon link on your way to go buy things from Amazon.com.

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More coffee. Moondos artisan coffees. Get it, they hate Starbucks because Starbucks supports the war party. while Moondos supports peace. Just go to Scott Horton.org slash coffee. Scott Horton.org slash coffee. Yeah, I mean, I'm worried that Washington basically thinks of this like Jake Sullivan. AQ's on our side in Yemen.

America, Barack Obama stabbed the Houthis in the back. He was, I forgot if we discussed this before, but crucially, when the Houthi sees power, in partnership with America's 30-year-backed sock puppet president, Abdulazala, trying to return to power. They're returning to power in the end of 2014. we know from the Wall Street Journal and from Barbara Slavin in Almonitor, Michael Vickers from, who was the Deputy Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, came and gave a briefing to the Atlantic Council and explained all this

and Barbara Slavin was there and asked follow-up questions and everything. And so we know that Central Command was passing intelligence to the Houthis to use to kill Al Qaeda in January of 2015 and presumably in February 2015. But then in March, Obama turned around and stabbed them in the back and committed high treason and it took al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula side and Saudi and UAE's side against the Houthis because they're Shiites and the Saudis hate that and the Israelis and whoever.

And so that was when they launched that giant war. So you might think that like in Syria, they're going, of course, we hate America, but they are backing us to the Hilt right now. So everybody be cool. We'll fight them later. That would make sense if that was their doctrine. Now, same thing in Yemen.

Whoever's leading AQAP in Yemen, And they'd be a fool to try to attack us now when we've been on their side, literally for 11 years and counting, and maybe getting worse. Like, we could even worst case scenario, see Marines invade Sena to try to dislodge the Houthis in the next few years at some point or some crazy thing, right? Like, we are clearly not fighting AQAP. We are fighting their worst enemies. The Shiites in that country right now. But the problem is, though, you can't take these guys for granted because they're a bunch of head chopping super. suicide bombing maniacs. So like, and this is Ali Sufant's book, The Black Banners. He says,

the Chechens said to Bin Laden, why you want to attack America? They've been so good to us. They backed us in Afghanistan, in Bosnia and Kosovo, now in Chechnya. Why do you want to attack them? And bin Laden said, you don't understand, dude. I got a larger vision. There's more at work here than you just go and fight your insurgency in the mountains. And I'm going to take care of the bigger picture stuff because he had this whole other scheme and helping him. him in Bosnia somehow did not buy off his loyalty joke. No, I mean, not at all. I mean, that's the thing.

These guys are committed, the hardcore al-Qaeda guys that are still out there, the leadership of AQAP, I think that they're savvy and they realize that there's a lot of times that we will be aligned with them because of our hatred for the Shias and just the Israelis view the Shias is a bigger threat and then just the amount of control the Israelis have over our government. But they keep their eye on the ball and they definitely play the long game. That's also what concerns me about Shara Jalani. is that the big split he had with Baghdaddy,

basically was he thought that Baghdaddy was too hyper-focused, kind of like Zarqawi was, on the near fight and on punishing the local religions of the region that they viewed as apostates, the Shias, the Azidis, etc., where he said, hey, there's a longer game that we can play here. We can follow the Muslim Brotherhood model, and we can actually take over government, and we can start running government,

and then we're going to have much more of a possibility of being able to strike the actual Great Satan to strike America, and that's going to take away support for Israel. And that's how we bring the whole thing down. So it was two different theories, two different schools of thought. And I do fear that we have taken our eye off of that ball and that we're kind of falling prey to not what the Israelis want,

which is going after the Shiites first or foremost. But then, you know, kind of doing what, I can't remember if it was Zohar here who's Ben Laden that had the quote about all they have to do is hoist the black flag in one area of the world. Then we'll kind of run and waste a bunch of resources chasing that like one random, And, you know, jihadi sell, well, they kind of plot in the background. So sometimes I fear that we do take that bait way too easily. And we're not looking and being finite at which these groups have intent and capability to attack us here on the homeland.

Yeah. Well, so I interviewed Lindsay Snell the other day. And she is this heroically brave investigative journalist who went over there and covered the rise of the caliphate back in the Obama years. And it was kidnapped by Al Qaeda and, you know, put herself in grave danger to do all this great reporting. And I floated the possibility and she just outright ratified that if Al-Jalani really is going to be this much of a suckup to America and to Israel, then one of his own guys that's going to cut his head off and replace him before very long. Right. So he can either betray us or be betrayed.

Yeah. But he can't keep a lid on his own guys because his own guys are these guys. Right. And like obviously they took some public relations advice from Robert Ford and from the Turks and whoever. that like, hey, man, Ixene on the throne, gay people off the roof. It's too much of a meme,

okay? You can still kill whoever you want. Just take them out back and shoot them. You know, this kind of thing. And so, like, he went with that. Apparently, that's the policy, but it hasn't changed who they are at all.

No, not at all. And, yeah, that's accurate. And that was what we were thinking, too. Because initially when Shara, Jalani, whatever, took over, we thought, okay, he's either going to have to go full, harden the pain,

you know, black flag, this is the new caliphate, or he's going to try and thread the needle. But then eventually, if he does any of the things that we want him to do, like, if he were to go after all the foreign fighters within his own ranks, he'd be done for. And so I think the Turks have done a good job from their own national interest perspective of saying, like, hey, just give this guy, you know, give him a lot of grace. He doesn't really, he can't do all these things to fully get rid of all the radical elements, because if he does, they're just going to kill him.

and the next guy you get is going to be even worse. So we'll deal with this for right now. But yeah, the second that he tries to actually crack down on the radicals that brought him to power, he's going to get eaten alive. And then at that point, actually, as much as I don't like Sharra Jalani, then Syria is screwed because then you're going to have a massive competition

between all of these different hardline extreme groups. And I think that's the scenario in which you could see the caliphate basically spring back up almost overnight because of all the jihadis that came out of the, the IDP camps and that were already absorbed into the military. Massive power struggle, again, I think it'd be like a Libya-like scenario just even closer to Europe this time. We'll have to lie with the Iraqi and Iranian Shiites and Hezbollah again

to stop them, right? In the next Syria. Yeah. Well, the interesting thing is we're trying to pressure right now the Iraqi government to take away weapons from the PMF, but the PMF, the popular mobilization forces, the Shiite forces, they've already, most of them have been absorbed into the Iraqi government. There's only a few armed groups that are true Iranian proxies that I think are going to be contested. But if we're not careful and we're not real specific and we tell them to disarm

large chunks of the popular mobilization forces, I do fear that we're actually not going to have like a capable fighting force there because we disarm the SDF too. I am concerned that if that the caliphate scenario were to pop back up again, because Shara got, got whacked, that we would be short of a ground force to actually go in and counter them. And so that's the situation we find ourselves in just because of all the blunders we made in the region where right now we have to say, do we really want to disarm all of the PMF? Yeah, Katabal Hasbla, Harakut, Nujab, these guys that are launching the drones and attacking our bases, unbeknownst to the Iraqi government for sure. Like those guys should be disarmed. But the PMF is, what the PMF is. The whole reason the PMF was

stood up because the Iraqi army that we created after 2003, the first 10th is, the first 10th is, what the PMF is, the whole they got against the caliphate, all of them, with the exception of the Iraqi special operations, they threw their guns on the ground and they ran. And so we had to have a Fakwa from Al-Sistani to get the PMF to come to actually have a sufficient infantry force to fight against ISIS. So again, this whole thing is just one big series of us lighting a brushfire to counter the last brush fire that we lit. Yeah. I just read a thing the other day where it said Iraq was preparing to respond to the strikes from Saudi Arabia that was. in response to whatever at the whole chain of dam, I forgot.

But what happened was the leader of the Bada Brigade announced that, no, everyone, hold your fire. So he's still the boss, Amiri, who is, you know, the right-hand man of Abdullah Aziz al-Hakim of the Supreme Islamic Council, Ayatollah Katspah from back 23 years ago now. That's who it is. Still the Bada Brigade in charge there. But then, yeah, and so just I understand what you mean, but just to make sure the audience is clear.

When you say the Caliphate scenario, what you mean is that jihadistan in Syria would again invade Western Iraq, which is the predominantly Sunni area of Iraq and where the predominantly Shiite government has less of a sway, just the same as it was in 2013 and 14. Yeah, I mean, this could spread like wildfire. I mean, like to, if Sharah does do something that pisses off his base and he gets whacked or he has to flee the country because he's about to get whacked, I mean, it's him and a small Cadre that are holding that country together right now. And then it would be a power struggle and that the Caliphate could immediately be reconstituted. Also, the Shiite government inside of Iraq,

like they're doing better in terms of how they've been treating the Sunnis. But out in Ambar, you know, in some of the places the south of Baghdad that are in that contested zone, those Sunni populations have not been treated very, very well. And so they would find a lot of sympathy if the Caliphate scenario or some kind of a strong Sunni government were to pop back up. So, yeah, it could happen really, really quickly. Yeah. I mean, you talk about those ISIS prisoners being shipped to Iraq where there's some kind of process. Yeah, the process is a tree and a rope. I mean, they have, man, I think, oh, I'm sorry, I can't remember my footnote now. I interviewed the guy about it. It may have been in the New Yorker magazine. I'm sorry, I can't remember exactly. But I did interview a guy in about 2000 and say like 17 or 18 or something about sort of the after, I guess 18 or 19, me about the aftermath of the ISIS war or Iraq. or three and how everyone accused of being part of ISIS were just all just found guilty and

thrown out the window basically just like every single one of them. What's your name? Muhammad, did you do it? No, guilty. And then they just take them out and just shoot them or hang them or whatever. Just one after another, after another after another. And like, I mean, what are they going to do? They don't have any proof. You know what I mean? It's like they don't have a grand jury system to make sure. They're just, man, you're, you wouldn't be in the camp if you didn't do something. you wouldn't be in jail if you weren't guilty of something. And so later's for you. And so, you know, I admit I have not kept up with all the best journalism out of Western Iraq lately.

But I'd be surprised if relations were that much better now, you know? No, I don't think so. And look, the Iraqi government, like, they cut their teeth in the fight against ISIS. So they do not have a lot of sympathy for anybody who they found, you know, behind ISIS lines past a certain date. And like, yeah, they are making sure they never see the light of day again, either killing them or putting them in a dungeon somewhere. So, you know, that, like, there's a lot that could be said about how, you know, the Iraqi government works heavily with Iran, et cetera, that we're hearing a lot of in the news right now. But that's something else that I've cautioned against both in and out of

government is like, hey, we can't crack down these guys too hard because we actually needed them to fight ISIS, which was a direct threat to us. All this stuff with Iran, like their neighbors with Iran, they're always going to have some degree of relations. They're doing the vast majority of what we want against ISIS. Again, who is the threat to us? We should probably give them some grace when it comes to, you know, trade and commerce and, you know, all the other stuff they do with the Iranians that we like to wag our fingers about. Yeah. Hey, you guys, go check out my substack, Scott Horton Show.com.

If you subscribe there, you can listen to the audio book of Provoked, at least the first few chapters of it, Scott Horton Show.com. Okay, guys, me here for Matt Sersely, your new tax lawyer, and he's not just an accountant, he's a lawyer, and he knows exactly how to protect your neck. He serves small businesses and high salaries. professionals to help you structure your money so that you pay as absolutely little in income tax to the revenues as possible. No gimmicks here. You have to follow the law, but he knows it backwards and forwards and we'll do a great job for you. Your new tax lawyer, Matt Sersely,

at agoristtaxadvice.com. Hey, Trump used to blurt out the basic truth of this and hell, inspired by Mike Flynn for what it's worth. They're like, eh, why don't we just let Iran, and Hezbollah and Russia kill these guys for us and then we could just like knock it off. He said something very close to that in his first term.

And he was like, you know, I remember David Stockman saying something like that. If anything, we should be alive with Iran. And I'm like, no, no,

no, no, look, we don't need to go that far. But just the point is the Shiites are killing the enemies of the American people. Yeah. So how do we just butt out? You know what I mean?

I'm not saying back both sides against each other. I'm just saying, you know, and the Shiites guys have the advantage. So let's just let them, and especially with Russia's backing, let's just let them do what they're doing. But that's not good enough for Tel Aviv and so therefore not good enough for Washington, D.C. Exactly. That creates the Shia Crescent and that directly threatens Tel Aviv and then they feel the pressure here in Washington, D.C., and that's how you end

up in the war that we're in right now. Man, something. All right. Now, New Orleans, everybody paid attention to the guy that killed himself in Las Vegas because he was driving an Elon Musk truck and he blew himself up at a Trump hotel and he wrote some crazy email to Sean Ryan with all this weird stuff in it. That was silly stuff anyway. But then that just sucked up all the attention from this is New Year's. I forget, was it 23 or 24? And then, but this guy took a truck and he drove it down Bourbon Street in New Orleans. And I'm sorry, I always get this wrong. I want to say it was 12 killed, but I think it was more than that. There's many, many wounded. And it's a terrible thing. And then we only got extremely lucky because at the end of the thing,

he crashed into a bulldozer, a back hose. I'm got an earth mover thing at the end of the block. And so he couldn't go any further. And then when he got out of the truck with a gun in his hand, there were six cops, I think it was, standing right there. So they just blew his sorry ass away on the spot. At the end of his rampage, you know, it could have been much worse, of course, but like at the end of the truck thing.

And now, so this is an American Army veteran. convert to Islam. And they say that he drove from Houston to New Orleans, ranting to the video camera to his family the whole way there about why he was doing this and stuff. And this is like in the middle of the heat of the Gaza slaughter. And none of the reporting that I know of connects his motive to that at all. But I wonder if you have information about that as a head of counterterrorism.

Was there anything in there about him saying that his motive really was what was happening in the Gaza Strip? As far as I know, yeah, he was, he was, he was, it was ranting. so a lot of it wasn't really coherent, and he obviously had a lot of family problems. But yeah, convert to Islam, and then he talked about Gaza. I mean, just the slaughter of Gaza.

What's that? You've seen those videos. It's been a while, but yeah, I haven't seen all of them because it's like he, I think he ranted, like, for most the drive. So I've no means have seen all them, but he definitely cited Gaza as, you know, one of his big grievances with the West

and why he was going to conduct a terrorist attack was because of our support for Israel and what Israel was doing in Gaza. Yeah, I knew that. I knew that. They never published that before. You're the first person who's ever said that publicly, you know, as a concrete assertion from a government official,

as far as I can tell. And I've looked. So that's crucial. And, yeah, I don't know what. So we talked about Africa. All right, that's it. I'm going to let you off the hook. Thank you so much for your time.

And for keeping attention on this issue. You know, I'm afraid. And I don't want to make an enemy out of all the truthers and whatever. I open my big mouth in some interview the other day. I don't want to make everybody mad. But it's just I think it's really a disservice man. All the trutherism detracts from the danger of all of this blowback terrorism. If the CIA is behind every last thing in the world,

then you don't have to worry about anything that the CIA doesn't do to you. Right? But then if that's not true, then we have to worry about people taking revenge on us for things that the CIA did to them. And so it really not. matters, you know? The hell. No, it does. And like I said, my big concern right now is just the Iran war, whether or not that's going to cause blowback terrorism from Shiites in general or if it's all just to get

lumped into one big category. I mean, I fear that al-Qaeda is pretty smart, so I'm not giving them any new ideas here. But they're going to say, hey, these are our fellow Muslims, regardless of what sect, and look at these atrocities because they saw how effective it was of Gaza. So I fear that the blowback terrorism we're going to see from this conflict. We've already seen some. There was that bar down in Texas in the early days of the war. So I think we're going to see a lot more of that. I hope I'm wrong. I hope that doesn't happen. But if we're looking at history, the way that we conduct these wars and then our support for Israel, it has generated a ton of terrorist threats and a ton of terrorist attacks against the U.S. Yep. And back,

flashbacks to conversations with Michael Schoyer, the former chief of the bin Laden unit back 20 years ago saying, if we attack Iran, see, the whole narrative is going to be. See, they're at war with all of Islam. They don't even care if you did it or not. They don't care if you're Sunni or Shia or if you're Arab or what, Persian or anything. They're trying to destroy us as a religious people. And if they can push that, if they can sell that narrative, then yes, you will have, supposed from their point of view, defensive war, including with massive collateral damage and even intended targeting of American civilians in response. We've already seen it. This is the war we've been having for. Again, they started attacking us in 1990. Well, Rabbi Kahane doesn't count as

us, but he was in New York City. But they first hit the World Trade Center in 93. They killed Americans at a hotel in Yemen in 92. So that was like the start of the bin Ladenite war was way back then. Anyway, I'm sorry. You're right. I mean, and this is, I have a great quote, a video of Norman Podhoritz from 07 saying the great neo-conservative godfather. If we bomb Iran, which I I hope and pray we do. Well, then yes, it would start a wave of anti-American terrorism across the Muslim world that would make our current situation look like a love fest.

And then he goes, oh, I mean, that's worst-case scenario, though. But like, you know, it's hard, we're not, it's hard to use our imaginations and just picture the future and make these guesses and whatever, but like, just raise the question. What is the future of America and Islam, broadly speaking? America and the Sunni world, America and the Shiite world, after this. You know?

Especially when, I mean, we didn't just bomb it around. We killed the Supreme Leader. We killed members of his family. Supreme Leader, Duel had it as the leader, but also an I-a-spiritual leader. And the girl school, I mean, the fact that we killed nearly 200 schoolchildren, and we really haven't said anything about it other than like, yeah, well, shit happens. I mean, there's going to be real blowback from that as well. And so, you know, this is, unfortunately, when we were discussing the war and the lead-up

to both phases of this war, for the second third order consequences, whether it was closing on the Straits of Foreign Moos or the rally around the flag effect that killing the Supreme Leader would have or the blowback terrorism, just none of that was, I think, appropriately considered. And we're just seeing that it wasn't appropriately considered

in the way that this whole conflict has played out. Yeah. All right, more on a run next time. Thank you so much, Joe. Absolutely. The Scott Horton show is brought to by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Roberts & Roberts, Brokridge, Inc.,

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