Shaun Newman Podcast - #1032 - Rebekah Koffler

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

Rebekah is a Russian-born U.S. intelligence expert who served as a Russian Doctrine & Strategy specialist in the Defense Intelligence Agency. Working with the DIA and the CIA's National Clandestine Service, she has led "red" teams during war games and advised senior Pentagon officials. She has delivered classified briefings to top U.S. military commanders, NATO ministers, the directors of the CIA and DIA, the White House National Security Council, and senior congressional staff. She also wrote Putin’s Playbook: Russia’s Secret Plan to Defeat America. Watch the Cornerstone Forum 26’https://shaunnewmanpodcast.substack.com/Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Get your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500🎙️ New to streaming or looking to level up? Check out StreamYard and get $10 discount! 😍

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well to have people chime in with their thoughts on what the show is doing. All right. That all said, happy Monday to you all, wherever you're at. Let's get on to that tale of the tape. Today's guests a Russian-born U.S. Strategic Military Intelligence Analyst and best-selling author. I'm talking about Rebecca Koffler. So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Shaw-Numa podcast today. I'm joined by Rebecca Koffler. Rebecca, how are you doing today? Awesome. Better than some people around the world. Certainly better than some Iranians. Yes, it has been an interesting 2026 to date. And I guess I just wanted to, you know, you've been on the podcast multiple times. I wanted to start with Russia, Ukraine. I was sitting having a discussion. And, you know, we haven't really, I haven't talked about Russia and Ukraine for some time.

They're in the middle of peace for the weekend, you know, as we record this. Your thoughts on Russia, Ukraine. I have some questions, but I'll just start in general. Wait a second. What is Russia, Ukraine? What are you talking about? Right. Right, exactly.

So no more little Ukrainian flags worn by various congressmen. No more Ukrainian flags on the pages of Washington Post, New York Post. New York Times and all of those. Everybody forgot about them. So close to 2 million Slavic men between Russians and Ukrainians are either dead or gravely wounded, courtesy of multiple key players in this conflict. And everyone has forgotten about them. But anyway, on a more serious note, the war is continuing. It's been, it's getting close to actually five years at this point.

And it's kind of, the main thing is that the media and all sorts of experts have been portraying this war as, you know, loss for Russia, win for Ukraine or stalemate at best. But that's because no one really understands the way of war, how the Russians fight, how they think, and what the key objectives are. And that is the real crux of the matter. There's no end in sight. The fighting and continues. The Russian forces are pummeling Ukraine with missile strikes, drone strikes. Ukrainians also have given the Russians some taste of their own medicine. So, but like I said, it's not going to end anytime soon. Even with all the peace talk, you know, like lots of signals, you know, from a lot of different people talking about maybe even with this weekend peace ongoing, you know, over,

well, just with peace going on for a few days, that it might signal something. something bigger. You don't see that coming anytime soon? No. My, my analytic line remains that peace is unachievable between Russia and Ukraine. And that is simply because the positions of the three primary stakeholders, and that is Moscow, Kiev and Washington are irreconcilable. And the key players in terms of the key personalities, Zelensky, Putin, and Trump. Again, there's a misinterpretation of leverage and who has leverage and who doesn't. As far as the various pundits, you see, Putin does not have to settle this war.

He just simply doesn't. And that is because he holds most, if not all of the cards at this point. Russia has more men, Russia has more military hardware. From the defense economics standpoint, it is capable of conducting a multi-year protracted, war of attrition and therefore there's just going to be no end and all this posturing yes both sides posture right the russians want you know especially Putin he wants to portray himself as a peacemaker right he loves peace he wants to portray Russia as the responsible party in this conflict constantly pointing the finger at Zelensky, that Zelensky is not accepting the terms of the peace agreement.

President Trump has been posturing, you know, since day one. That peace is just, peace deal is just right around the corner. Steve Whitkov has probably racked up, you know, hundreds of thousands of miles at this point, has changed probably multiple shoes. shuffling around the Kremlin, but that is just all, you know, for the show. It's just, it's just the circus. And again, Zelensky is not serious about peace either. And that is because he has no incentive, you know, right now he is Churchill in a t-shirt. He's been revered, albeit forgotten somewhat, but still, you know, he is a key figure in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in,

politics if the war is over, right? And for it to be over, Ukraine needs to hold elections, right? So that is Russia's precondition. There's no chance for him being reelected. His approval rating is way, way down the toilet. And even somehow miraculously, if he does agree to hold elections and miraculously he wins, he's going to be a nobody wants the peace deal if, which I don't assess it's going to be achieved, but let's just for argument's sake, you know, it's achieved. He's going to be a no one. And that is not acceptable to him. So none of the three parties really are incentivized to reach a compromise. none of them.

And like I said, the terms are irreconcilable. So I don't see the piece. Yes, Putin just announced the ceasefire, you know, in honor of the Russian Orthodox Easter, Pascha. Again, he always portrays himself as this deeply religious man. You know, of course, there's no such thing as for my KGB officer and a deeply religious man. but, you know, he's playing the part. No, unfortunately, I wish I could tell you something different. Yeah, you know, I really, my heart is bleeding shown because I'm a Slav, you know, I was born and I'm Russian.

You know, and until, you know, the collapse of the Soviet Union, no one killed. We didn't care who's Russian, Ukrainian was all the same. Like a lot of people, a lot of, you know, families are intermarried. There's, you know, a lot of like, you know, there's probably some Ukrainian blood in me even because of my grandma. So it pays me to say that. But unfortunately, once this thing started, you can't finish it if you don't hold the cards. And we simply don't. The United States does not hold the cards at this point.

On Putin for a second. You say he portrays a deeply religious man, but when you put KGB, those two things don't go together. Can you walk me through that? Sure. So, well, first, KGB was, you know, everybody knows. So that's the municipality, which is basically a rough equivalent of both the FBI, the CIA and the DIA, military, foreign, and domestic intelligence. That was one agency, which was also an equivalent of a secret police.

So its mission was not only to protect Russia from foreign threats, but also from domestic, from internal, you know, subversion. Only very specific people were elected or invited and chosen to work for the KGB. And you had to be a member of the Communist Party. To become a member of the Communist Party, you absolutely could not be a religious person. And it's not just the part of the Communist Party. It's all the way, you know, I was growing up agnostic and atheists.

The atheism was basically the state religion under USSR. It is only later in life that I learned that apparently my sister and I were secretly baptized by my grandma, who snuck us, you know, as babies and took us to the church to be baptized. But I didn't know that. I grew up with no God, I didn't know anything about God, nothing. So you had to swear, even as a regular person, you had to swear your allegiance to the state and to the Communist Party. Since very young age, there was like a progression.

We were members we were required to attend the school, elementary school, secondary, you know, high school. you had to go through the indoctrination system, beginning with something that's called Octabriata. These are the little October, you know, pupils. We wore the little red star with the portrait of Vladimir Lenin, the revolutionary who created this whole mess, right, in 1917. And then we progressed to the Komsomel, which is basically,

they prerequisite for becoming the member of the Communist Party. So by that point, you could not have possibly be a religious person because you wouldn't be able to attend even school if you were. So what Putin claims is that his similarly, and I allow for the possibility that maybe similarly

somehow he was, you know, baptized, but he claims that he had this amazing cross that got passed on to him from his mother. And, you know, he claims several occurrences that made him think that, you know, God was real. But this was all after the collapse of the Soviet Union. All of this came up after, which tells me that it was his conscience. decision to make Russia a religious country because the roots of Russian Orthodox Church are very deep in the Russian history. And until the Bolshevik Revolution and the elimination of religion,

the Lenin basically abolished religion, but until then, the Russian people were very religious and the Russian church was very close to both the Tsarist regime, and once the Bolsheviks won, they also kind of corrupted the Russian church existed in some sort of shape or form, but mostly to spy on the Russian people and turn in those who were not loyal to the Communist Party. So I absolutely rule out the possibility that Putin grew up as a religion person. Maybe he had an awakening, you know, later in life. But I see a lot of, you know, acting. I see a lot of sort of deliberate portrayal of him being holier than thou.

But we know that Putin, just like Zelensky, by the way, authorized. assassinations of people who present the threat to the state. So you cannot be a Christian person an authorized assassination of another human being. That is just not part of Christianity. So, yeah, I'm sure it's not that simple. I'm sure he's a deeply, you know, highly intellectual man. He's a thinker. He probably thinks about, you know, theology and Christianity, but I don't consider him a Christian man. I want to ask you about another Russian that has come up in discussions. Alexander Dugan. Yes, of course. Putin's brain, right?

Correct. So this is a very, very prominent figure. another very highly intellectual person. He's a philosopher. But interestingly, he comes from the military intelligence background. He influenced Putin's thinking quite a bit. And Dugin does believe that Christianity is deeply ingrained in the Russian history, the Russian tradition, and even in the Russian soul. And he wants to, and he even advised Putin to revive the whole, you know, sense of, uh, sense of religion. The Russian forces, the Russian commanders even have, like in certain cases, the tradition

to bless, you know, certain new missiles before they be, before they used in common. combat. Dugin is a very, very complex personality. His teachings were actually taught in the Russian general staff. This is how deeply his philosophy is ingrained in the Russian military doctrine and warfighting strategy, I would even say, because every commander, high-ranking, you know, commander of the Russian military has gone through the General Staff Academy. This is, we don't even have an equivalent in the United States of a general staff academy. So when you, when you talk about them, Rebecca, just your background and coming from Soviet Russia, when I sit here in Alberta, right, and you bring up, if someone to bring up Jordan Peterson, right?

and and his thoughts and his, you know, his book and his works and everything, I think a lot of Albertans would speak very highly of what he's done for young men specifically. When you hear Dugan, where does your mind go? Are you like, oh yeah, he's, he's a high, I don't even know, like a high praised Russian or is it something different? So, well, it depends on who you ask. And I would like to give like an unbiased, straightforward analysis to you and presentation of this man. And first of all, I have high respect for Jordan Peterson. I agree with him. I think he has done tremendous work to help and assistance, not only for men, but also for women, and is also for couples for marriages the way that he explains you know the relationship between men and women and how to

preserve one a thriving relationship this this is a deep thinker the difference so it's interesting that you compared and as soon as i give you my answer i'm actually very curious to hear you know from you i will ask you a question it's a very interesting juxtaposition to me that uh this that you just made, Jordan Peterson and Alexander Dugan. So the difference, so Dugan, yes, it's a deeply, he's a deeply religious man, but he's a, in my assessment, and yes, there are people who revere Dugan, obviously, but Dugan is, but he's a little bit of a fanatic from the following standpoint. He just basically believes that everything is just justified, you know, in war. And he has portrayed, and a lot of people, you know, before and since him

have done the same, but he portrayed this deep antagonistic relationship and even like a war, an ongoing conflict between the Eurasianist School of the Eurasianist School of Thought and the Atlantis School of Thought, but also between the two, how would you even, like the two major people, I would say, who, and major land masses that are occupied by those people. And so, and he thrives on that antagonistic portrayal. And he believes that the Eurasianists must defeat Atlantis. In Atlantis, obviously, it's the Western, the North America, and Europe and Eurasianists, you know, primarily like Russia. and the Russians that occupy, you know, the eastern part of that continent.

So I wouldn't compare the two at the same time. Like, I don't dislike Dugan. I appreciate the philosophical underpinnings of his, you know, of his school of thought. I regret that his daughter was actually assassinated by Ukrainians. And this is one of the reasons that I equate Zelenskyy to Putin. She had no, he, the Ukrainians had no business assassinating Darya Dugina. She was a civilian. For the same reason, they had no business trying to assassinate Duggen, because he is a civilian. It's like if somebody, if the Russians, let's say, tried to assassinate Duggen, because he is a civilian. It's like if somebody, if the Russians, let's say,

tried to assassinate Steve Bannon, who was, or Paula White, you know, who's a spiritual leader of President Trump or Steve Bannon for the longest time. He had, you know, significant influence over the formation of President Trump's, you know, worldview and his presidency and the, and the Make America First Agenda and all of these states. Can you imagine if the Russians or anyone else, you know, we're trying to assassinate or actually assassinated Steve Bannon or Maureen his daughter or Paula White. Like that is not acceptable. So I would like for you, and I think probably for your listeners, it would also be interesting to hear. How come you juxtapose those two? This is a very, very interesting juxtaposition to me.

I guess in my head I went philosopher, somebody who's talking about the underpinnings of society, right? That's where my mind went. And I went, well, who's the most influential guy on my life to date? And it's been Jordan Peterson. His 12 rules to life really, I think, influenced a lot of people in my community and not my community, just all of North America. We started wrestling with bigger issues than what maybe we did. we'd done prior to him talking. And so when you talk about Dugan's influence on Putin, I just went, oh, like, is it like, I was curious as I brought up Alexander Dugan. I could see you trying to

wrestle with how to give a non-bias description of them. I'm like, that's interesting. Because if you'd ask me about Jordan Peterson, I'd be like, well, Jordan Peterson on everything you just said, men, women, relationships, has been a knockout punch to what is going on in our society. He has still miss some things, right? COVID and a couple other things where I kind of got over his skis and I'm like, he didn't need to talk about everything. When he stuck to what he knew best, he was amazing. And I wish him, I hope he gets healthy, right, so that he can continue to do that work because I've watched him in person several times. And his relationship with his wife is interesting. His talks about how they came back from, in my opinion, the abyss. I've interviewed Tammy

a couple of times and realize how close they came to just not knowing each other anymore, because because of everything that went on in their life has been really healthy for society, right? So I guess the reason I brought up Peterson is because I went, who's the one person in my society who's really influenced it? And I look immediately, I go Jordan Peterson. He's originally from the same province. He grew up in Alberta and then went on to bigger and greater things, you know, starting in Ontario and then all across, honestly, the world.

It's an interesting factoid. You probably know this, but, Ty, do you know? know that Jordan Peterson went to Russia to get cured from his addiction to, I forgot what those particular medication, anxiety medications that he got hooked on was when Tammy had her health issues and he was very upset about it. And apparently the Russians cured him is not interesting. So, but I were, you know, I have exactly the same opinion of Jordan Peterson. Like I said, I hold them in high regards. But I wouldn't say that, well, you said that he has profound influence on the Canadian society,

but I only see it on the portion of the Canadian society. I mean, Jordan Peterson fled Canada, right? because his freedom of speech was violated by the Canadian authorities. That's why he fled. So it's not possible that. And I'm sorry, I don't mean to like, I'm just kind of kind of trying to nail down like to nuance like what you said. It's like to me, if he were, you know, the, the centerpiece of the Canadian society and its worldview, formation of the worldview, then he wouldn't have been expected. right? Well, certainly there's two things going on though in Canada, right? So the reason Peterson

has been demonstrably effective of what and his influence on the society is, you know, take this podcast. It doesn't start without Jordan Peterson. And then this podcast goes to the Freedom Convoy. And if I go talk to 100 Freedom Convoy people, I'm not saying 100% read Jordan Peterson and were influenced by him, but a high proportion of people that went there and stood up against the COVID mandates here in Canada came from the school of thought of Jordan Peterson. Just by reading his works, that gave something for people to kind of stand on or to backstop them with. And that's the influence he had.

Even though he's left, his influence on Canada has left a mark. And it continues to leave a mark. There's a ton of people that are standing up for what they believe in. and that's a portion of Canadian society. There's definitely the ruling class right now does not agree with Jordan Peterson. But there's more and more Canadians every day, I would argue,

that are pushing back against all the woke that we are seeing in our country. Now, has that led to a great transformation? Currently no, but the underpinnings, one of the biggest events in the world, the Freedom Convoy, I would argue a lot of those people read Jordan Peterson and agreed with what he had to say.

And there was a moral obligation to stand up for what they believed in. And that led to the Freedom Convoy. I'm not saying he led the Freedom Convoy, just that he had his little peace in doing that. And by standing up against the insanity of what's going on in Canada, he's left a mark on Canadians all over again. And so when Dugan comes in, I just look at it.

I'm like, well, Tucker interviewed Dugan. And it's portrayed as he's this great mind out of Russia. And so I'm just curious, you know, like with your background, I'm like, oh, you know, I just kind of go, as you ask me about Jordan Peterson as a Canadian and Albertan, I go, I can directly correlate my thoughts on Jordan Peterson. I don't know him intimately. I've never interviewed him. I've interviewed him. I've interviewed his wife twice. And I've watched him in person several times. I was just curious, the Dugan thing, because he's portrayed out West as a great mind of Russia. Well, he was also portrayed as a fascist by some Western, a lot of Western elites and commentators. And I salute Tucker Carlson for interviewing Dugan because that's how you understand another society. Now, so here's another difference between Dugan and George. Jordan Peterson. Jordan Peterson has influenced and what you just demonstrated to me and

proved the a big portion of the common Canadian people, you know, the average Joe, if you will. And but not the elites. But with Dugin, it's like the other way. around, right? I don't like he left the mock on the thinking of elites, military, you know, business, maybe business not as much, but elites in the military and some deeply religious people that are regular folks, right? But the masses, I don't see the masses like, quote Dugan or, you know, kind of try to propagate his teachings. Mostly, I would say his influence was on the military, but because you have to understand, like, the military is in Russia. The national security is such a big part of the Russian psyche,

because throughout its history, Russia has four, you know, hundreds and hundreds of wars. And so it isn't grained in the Russian psyche that it's just a matter of time before another war is going to break out and guess where the Russians expect the war to come from. It's always from the West. It's from, you know, the United States or Europe, NATO, because, out of all the wars throughout the Russian history, it is only, you know, the Mongol-Tatar invasion and a hundred-year yoke came from the east. The majority of wars were from the West. And that is why that thinking, you know, God, religion, national security, military is all intertwined.

in Dugan's philosophy. So he's a Eurasianist. Eurasianist is the name of that philosophy that he's propagating. And I think Steve Bannon also, I want to say, has interviewed Dugan. He's certainly, certainly an interesting character. and it's too bad that the legacy media, Western media, are demonizing him without trying to understand him, because it's only if you understand, you know,

what really, what are the key drivers of the psyche of your adversary, that you can understand that adversary, and you can, you know, understand that thinking and understand how they fight. If, and if President Trump's advisors were to understand that, then he wouldn't have promised on his campaign trail to solve this conflict in 24 hours, and he wouldn't be like wasting all this time and, and continue to spend all this money, you know, billions of billions of dollars to Ukraine to basically for what? for simply prolonging the killing.

So, and that is what, but it's not the first time that the U.S. has acted out of ignorance with regard to, you know, these foreign wars and things like that. But, yeah, very interesting. One more question. I know you're supposed to interview me, but now you got me fascinated here. Do you think there will be at any point in Canada that you guys will. will get to the point where it will be like Canada, let's make Canada great again, movement that would change the country to the point where Jordan Peterson would want to return to his motherland.

Oh, man. So right now in Alberta, you have the independence petition just crossed over the threshold. So as long as that goes through, there will be a referendum later this fall, October 19th, to be specific, on whether Alberta wants to stay in Canada. Now, have no idea where, you know, you can play off a lot of hypotheticals on how, you know, if we get there, one, but two, if it were to be a majority say they want out, or the flip side of that. If majority say they want out and Alberta could actually remove themselves from Canada, Rebecca, I think that would cause cataclysmic problems for Canada as a whole where they'd have to decide which way they want to go, right? Because Alberta is such a juggernaut when it comes to the economics of what Canada is, right? With all the energy and oil and gas and, I mean, it's just, it's more than that. But that is a huge chunk of what Alberta provides. This is the oil and gas sector, right?

So that is one big thing coming directly for Canada in the next year, less than a year. Would if Alberta separated, would Jordan come back to Alberta? I mean, at this stage in his life, I don't know, right? Now, as for all of Canada, I have a hard time seeing it. Like, I really do. You know, we, I shouldn't say we, like, the elbows up crew that got Kearney elected, they ran off a platform if Donald Trump is bad, right?

Our own media portrays Donald Trump in a way. I mean, with everything going on currently, that's a whole different probably discussion. But back when the election was happening, they focused on tariffs, they focused on how he was bullying Canada and how we had to stand up to him. And a lot of Eastern Canada thought that was a great idea.

And out West, you know, our premier was, you know, Daniel Smith was saying, we need to talk to this man. Like we need to go and like, you know, they're our biggest ally. They're our biggest land border. We need to, it's where all of our goods go. Majority of our exports go to the United States. We need to work with this instead of creating an enemy out of this. So, I mean, like today or this week, I should say, there was a poll, right? I don't love polls, but, you know, whether we should be aligning more with the EU. And like, you know, they're trying in our mainstream media to suggest that's a good idea that we should be aligning more with the UK and France and the rest of the EU, which is a crazy idea where I stand, right? So will Jordan Peterson in his lifetime move back to the United States? If I were to give a final answer, I would say no. Okay. Do you think, do you think Alberta would, if the people decided that they want Alberta to become separate, you know, from Canada, would you guys want to be absorbed by us?

I don't think. I think the majority of Albertans would say no, that they're tired of having a ruling class over them, tell them how they're going to dictate all the things. I think if we had our choice, we'd go our separate way and we'd work very closely with the United States, right? But we'd want to dictate life ourselves. That'd be my guess. I don't speak. But once again, it's kind of like when you're doing the do you get a thing. How do I, it's like, I don't speak for all of Albertsons. I know there's some Albertsons.

It would gladly become 51st state tomorrow. Just for nothing else to get out from under Carney and to have the American dollar and a couple other things. I'm sure they would. But if I take a step back and think rationally about it, I think most Albertans are tired of being ruled by the East. And for us, that's Ottawa and the federal government, and they're insane policies. We want nothing to do with it.

Yeah. Well, there's plenty of insanity going on over here as well. Yes, there is. Now, back to Russia, Ukraine. Yes, sir. One of the questions I wanted to ask about was drones. I've been in a couple different conversations. I'm like, I wonder what Becca thinks is.

I've been told that Ukraine's drone warfare has improved immensely, and they're now destroying a ton of Russian key infrastructure, killing lots of men, women, children, etc. Your thoughts on that? Has their drone warfare improved that much over the course of the last, as you said earlier in closing in on five years? I wouldn't have said. I don't assess that they are uniquely, you know, competent in this particular area.

I would say the Russia-Ukraine war has, drone warfare has been the key feature of that war. I think it's the first time that actually this particular piece of military hardware has been used in a way that hasn't been used before and really changed the way, the battlefield, right? Because you can't, you know, hide from those things. And the Russians and both Ukrainians adapted, you know, they put certain concealment over certain pieces of military hardware to protect them from drone strikes. But both sides, both Russia, and Ukraine have used drone warfare very effectively.

I wouldn't say that somehow Ukraine holds advantage. And simply because, you know, the Russians' weapons arsenal is so much larger than Ukrainians. In fact, the Russians produce in three months more military. hardware, drones including, then entire Europe produces in one year. Okay, so just looking at the numbers, the number of strikes. Let's say, you know, the Russians, if you look at throughout these four years, they have been days when the Russians could have seven, 800, you know, missiles and drones.

strikes a day. Ukrainians simply don't have those numbers. I think people are very, I think there's a perception that Ukraine has improved its drone warfare capabilities and tactics simply because the expectation is low, simply because the Ukrainians have dared to strike, you know, inside Russia with those drones. That's why they're getting, you know, this credit. You know, it's a, it's a pretty daring action, if you will. And Zelensky, you know, is credited with having the political will to actually go ahead and give the Russians the taste of their own medicine. He did get approval, including from President Trump himself, to use U.S. supplied, you know, high Mars and other long-range weapon system to strike deep inside Russia.

He was on top of Trump to get that authorization. So that's why, and it did, you know, shatter the Russians' sense of security. I mean, the Russians have not had their land be attacked, especially Moscow since World War II. And so from that standpoint, it's a big deal. So it's kind of the crossing of the Rubicon, if you will. And that's why I think there's a perception that, oh, Ukrainians are so good at this. And Zelensky is also, you know, running around marketing. Ukrainians know how, you know, trying to teach, you know, the Europeans and even the U.S. forces.

like, you know, he offered to Trump to teach U.S. forces how to conduct drone warfare and run and this sort of thing. But I think it's mostly the perception. Objectively, both sides have gotten a lot of lessons learned when it comes to drone warfare, when it comes to concealments, when it comes to the swarming tactics, when it comes to jamming, you know, those drones that even U.S. forces do not have that kind of expertise and that kind of know-how at this point because we have not used it in active combat. With just a couple minutes remaining, you mentioned that you don't see this conflict, Russia, Ukraine, ending anytime soon. When you look at Iran, do you see, because what did Trump say?

four weeks, before weeks and we'll be done. When you look at this, do you see the ending anytime soon? Absolutely not. And this is, I can spend a few more minutes with you. I have very, very strong opinion and assessment on this topic. It's not going to end anytime soon again. If you look at the two sides, their peace plans points are irreconcilable. So Iranians are not going to accept our requirements, right? And we are simply not going to accept theirs. Iranians believe that they hold all the cards. And if you look at objectively, not from the military standpoint,

but if you look holistically, right? What Trump is doing, he is touting how we have destroyed Iranian military and it's just US has won hands down, but no one has ever doubted U.S. military's prowess. Tactically, it's the best war fighting force in military history. And yet we haven't won a single war since World War II. I mean, we were tactically brilliant in Afghanistan and Iraq and all of those places. And yet, you know, we were defeated, you know, from the standpoint of geopolitics. And so the Iranians have prepared for this war for a couple of decades at this point.

The Iranians are not arrogant as us. and they have been studying the way that we fight, the way that we conduct war, and the Russians have been helping them, you know, study us and applying lessons learned. And so they figured out the whole strategy, I'm sure your listeners, you know, have heard before about the mosaic defense, the decentralized approach where the command of control basically splits, up into 31 different parts, different regiments, and they no longer report to the ultimate authority under the total war concept, which is what's going on right now. And it doesn't matter how any time President Trump can say that we have defeated Iranian Navy, Iranian Air Force,

around this and that. The Iranians are still conducting strikes, right? The Iranians still control the Strait of Hormuz. And no one dares, including U.S. Navy, to escort the various vessels. So only the Chinese vessels now, and some of the Greek vessels can pass through the Strait of Hormuz. So, again, they've prepared for it. They worked out a specific doctrine, the Mosaic Decentralized Defense, and they have capitalized on what's called the economic asymmetry trap situation. I'm sure your listeners probably heard about that as well,

is that we, the United States, are using multimillion dollar assets to strike $1,000 targets. We're going to run out of military hardware, those patriot missiles and the rest of it way before the Iranians are going to run out of their drones. We're spending $2 billion a day on those things and on, you know, conducting this war. And Iranians, they have a very high threshold of pain, just like the Russians. And they have their ability to bring war to the adversary, in this case to the United States. And if I could just make a quick plug, I've written a piece a few days ago for the telegraph that describes five types of attacks that the Iran can conduct in U.S. homeland. Again, as part of that doctrine of bringing war

to adversaries' homeland. And so, no. And Trump, now that he has, climbed up the tree so high, you know, he can't climb down. He can't give up because it, and even though like most people already know who know what's going on, that he's trapped. He's like he, that's the reason why he keeps saying, threatening, like sending these erratic, you know, texts, you know, threatening them and they just basically show this and they say, okay, okay, he claims that there negotiations, there's going to be a ceasefire, and then he's going to give another, you know, two weeks. It's because he has no cards. There's nothing else to do. Yes, he can deploy forces into the theater and the forces are already prepositioned, but it's going to be a bloodbath. Yes, he can start,

he can authorize the U.S. Navy to try to forcefully open the strait of Firmuz, but then our our personnel are going to be within the firing range of Iranian missiles, drones, fast attack boats that carry explosives, you know, mines. So it's going to be a bloodbath. And yes, Iranians can sustain that because they have 90 million people and they don't care. The IRGC and the Iranian regime don't care, you know, if they lose a couple million people. They're used to those kinds of sacrifice. There's a reason why Middle East is called the graveyard of the empires. You know, after we start losing, let's say he does give authorization to take the Hog Island or something, which is going to be an insane idea. And then we actually start receiving more and more

body bags, the American people are going to have enough is enough because even the MAGA people are now upset with Trump because he, you know, violated everything that he ran on in terms of the foreign policy. He said no more foreign wars, no more, you know, money to all these, you know, shithole countries, pardon me. And now they even talking about the draft. They put the mandatory, you know, registration. for the mails to register in the databases with the governments in the event of the draft of the draft i mean whoever has heard whoever wants that so so yes but now there's a conundrum because trump likes to win right he thinks that he has figured it out they are out of the deal well unfortunately he's a good

businessman but when it comes to understanding foreign culture He's mirror imaging. He's mirror imaging a foreign culture, a foreign psyche. They don't think in business terms. They think in terms of their security. They think in terms of their pride and all of these things. And Iran is not going to surrender anytime soon. And Trump, you know what my concern is shown?

My concern is that after Trump tries all of these things, and because he simply cannot lose, he's going to have to de-escalate with nukes. Just mark my word. I hope it does not happen, but there's nothing we can do to force these people to surrender and accept those things that, God forbid, he decides to use. And if you watch American TV and if you listen to Mark Levine

and some of those people, they're already laying the markers. They're already sending trial balloons, you know, making comparisons with when the situation when the U.S. had to use nooks first time around. So that's a long answer to saying, no, that's going to be another endless war that unfortunately is going to destroy his presidency. It's going to fracture margar. It's going to cost us. the midterm elections and God forbid it's going to bring some terrorist attacks to U.S. homeland. Sorry, that's my... Do I have time for one more question?

Please do, yes. I have probably another like... I can go for another 10 minutes. Okay. You mentioned five things that they could do on your home soil. You wrote written an article. I think you said you wrote an article for the telegraph. What were the five things? Okay.

So first and foremost, it is the classic terrorist attack, but inspired by the Iranians and by Iranian sleep assault. So it has been the official assessment. of U.S. intelligence community, probably for the past, I would say, 10 years, that Iran has active sleeper cells in the United States. They have the ability to activate these sleeper cells, but the approach is different right now. Instead of having these sleeper cells themselves conduct attacks. There's work that they are doing to agitate the disaffected population, especially males, in the United States, and inspire them to conduct what's called like lone wolf attacks. And we have seen this already since the beginning

of the war. We've had attacks in Austin, Texas, in New York City, in Norfolk, Virginia, and in West Bloomfield, Michigan, right? So that's one kind. Cyber attacks. Again, it's the official assessment of U.S. intelligence community that Iran is a top cyber threat. It has one of the four most formidable cyber arsenals of all foreign adversaries of the US,

along with Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. So these are four. Iranians, they're not as, you know, as stealthy as the Russians. They're not as capable as the Russians, but it doesn't really take a lot because our networks are unprotected. And they have already conducted attacks on the U.S. homeland through cyber that almost resulted in chemical spells in water contaminations with chemicals. This is documented. Yes, we're trying to hunt down, you know, those people where now the U.S. State Department is offering a reward of up to 10 million, up to 10 million U.S. dollars for the information on the activities of the following Iranian cyber actors, we call them cyber actors because they don't directly work for the IRGC,

but these are kind of like third party characters to maintain plausible deniability. There's Mansour Ahmadi, Ahmadine, Hatib, Ahti, and Amir Hussein, Nikain Ravari. Okay, they were involved in a coordinated campaign, which compromised hundreds of computer networks. across the United States, right? So we are now offering rewards. In mid-March, since the beginning of the operation, it's funny how President Trump is calling this operation, military operation in Iran, just like Putin is called the special military operation in Ukraine. But, yeah, so Iranian regime and their cyber actors.

attacked a Michigan-based medical device company called Stryker, disrupting their operations, okay? And there are other things that they could attack, you know, our critical infrastructure. And if you coordinate all of that, right? If you time it, if you synchronize it, you can plunge this country into chaos. And note how they don't necessarily have to go after our, like, command. and control system and a highly protected systems, you know, government, federal government system,

they can go to individual states. And, you know, imagine waking up, you know, one day and you don't have your internet. And if you don't have, you know, if you don't have the connection, whether it's access to satellites or access to your information networks, networks, the hospitals are going to, you know, systems are going to go down, you know, the babies

are going to, uh, I don't know. No, no, no. I get, I get what I'm saying. You know what I'm, uh, well, our society runs on technology. And so, you're talking about how there's, there's, there's, uh, open spots everywhere to attack that. And it can make life difficult, which would then, um, well, spur, the population into, you know, discontent. And that discontent can boil over into a lot of different

ways. So you got, you got lone wolves, which, which I, terrorists, yes, you have cyber. Yes, I'm going to mention real quick, the three others. It's drone warfare. It is chemical and biological attacks, and it's kidnappings and assassinations. Kidnapsing and assassinations, they have already attempted. to conduct at this point, they succeeded in targeting their own, you know, former Iranian citizens who lived in the United States. But we know that they have standing orders to target Mike Pompeo, President Trump himself. You know, the United States is paying right now millions of dollars every year for special protection for both President Trump and some of the officials from his cabinet during the first administration during his first term, especially those involved in the killing

of Qasam Soleimani, right? So, our undercover operatives. They were posing as hitmen. They identified this specific person who was an IRJC operative, Asif Mershan. He was convicted in March 2025 on terrorism and murder for higher charges. This is how they operate. They basically, the Iranian regime hires a specific person to hunt down a specific target. and assassinate, poison, or whatever. Drone warfare. So earlier this month, if you remember, there was a memo that was circulating in the federal agency

that Iran was planning to attack certain targets in California with drones. Drones are extremely difficult to protect against and to take down. And you can outfit a drone with 80 kind of payload, kinetic or non-kinetic, you can either put a sensor or a camera to do reconnaissance, or you can put an explosive device, a bomb, or even a chemical and biological and radiological type of payload. And then finally, the chemical and the biological. This is based on the recently declassified, you know, threat assessment.

The intelligence community assesses that as the next type of warfare on the U.S. homeland, deliberate biological threats and chemical warfare, the probability of those things is going to increase in the future. Their particular report did not call out Iran specifically, but it called out four of them. Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. Our assessment is that these four are maintaining the capability to produce and use pathogens and toxin. What I've done, I put the two and two together. Our assessment is we have those clandestine networks, right? The sleeper cells. And we're assessing that they have the capability to insert those into the country or to produce them here, these pathogens are toxin. And then the third bit of information that I pieced together.

Last June, a Chinese couple was charged with smuggling biological pathogen called Fusarium Graminera. They used, it was in L.A., I believe, right? In, in, in, in, in, in 23, a Chinese citizen was arrested in Reedley, California. because Russia and China cooperate with Iran, especially right now during the war, I don't rule out the possibility that they can share those capabilities that exist inside this country and, you know, they can hire certain people to use them. And so, and that couple, when they, you know, or rated that lab, they uncovered hundreds of genetically modified mice, thousands of

vials of unlabeled and labeled potential pathogens, including HIV, including malaria, tuberculosis, hepatitis, and freezer labeled Ebola. Okay. So if China links operatives have access to these dangerous pathogens inside the U.S., it is not inconceivable to me that Iranian elements do as well. And so if anybody wants more information, you just Google Rebecca Coughla-Telegraph and the article is called Iran will be preparing to bring the war to the homeland. And I will text you on this piece as well. Appreciate it, Rebecca. Appreciate you coming on and sharing your thoughts. I think we're ending

on a heavy note, but appreciate you coming. sharing your thoughts on not only Russia, Ukraine, but the rest of what's happening with Iran and the U.S. Thank you. And thank you also for sharing your thoughts on Jordan Peterson. And I'll just turn it onto a positive note. Let's just hope that there are more people like that, like Jordan Peterson in Russia, China and Iran. I'm not hopeful about Iran, but let's just pray to God. and hopefully cooler heads will prevail,

and we will avoid the global disaster over here. Thank you for having me today, Sean. Thank you.