The Duran Podcast - Off-ramp or wider war w/ Larry Johnson (Live)

Episode Date: April 16, 2024

Off-ramp or wider war w/ Larry Johnson (Live)

We are live with Alexander Mercurse in London. Hello, Alexander. And we have the man, the myth, the legend. Larry Johnson, how are you doing, Larry? Great to be with you guys. Fantastic to have you with us. And Larry, I have your link to Sonar 21, the description box down below. Is that the best place where people can find you?

That's the best place. That's the entry point. All right. So I have that in the description box down below. Highly recommended to follow Larry's work. And I will add that link to the comments section. I will pin that in the comment section when the live stream is over. Hello to everyone that is watching us on Rock Finn, on Odyssey. Rumble.

How's everyone doing in Rumbleland? And of course, the Duran. locales.com. Hello, everybody on locals and YouTube. Hello to everyone on YouTube. Hello to Vallies, to Zarael, Tish, M. How are you doing? How are our moderators doing today? Did I miss anybody?

I don't think so. I don't think I missed anybody. Alexander, Larry. We have so much to talk about off-ramp or a wider war, Alexander and Larry. Let's get to it. Well, absolutely. We're actually looking at that situation in two wars, two wars which have been massively mismanaged and completely not controlled. And there's no better person to discuss all of this with than Larry Johnson. Can I just say that Sonar 21 is an absolutely indispensable website?

I go to it every day, in fact, more than once a day. on so many topics, Larry is one of the most insightful commentators. The other thing that he has, which is an extraordinary skill, is that he says an awful lot in very simple, very clear, and relatively few words. As a person who speaks lots, and there's many words, I know the value and the quality of that. So, you know, just to also say people should certainly look at Sonar 21.

So, Larry, we have two walls. The wars are going exactly as you, and to a great extent, we on the Duran, have been saying, we're now looking at a situation in Ukraine where everybody is talking about defeat, disaster for the West. Today, the economist has got an article up there. They're saying, what will happen if Ukraine loses, question mark. Well, that's the economist.

They've actually come around facing that possibility. You then go on and read in that article that the US and Europe have inadvertently, as they like to say, put their credibility on the line so that it could go up in smoke. And remember that the Economist is a British magazine written for the British establishment. They are even mentioning the unmentionable, which is that for the collective West, this could be the equivalent of Suez. Now, Suez is a crisis that is burnt into the heart of the British establishment. It was the disaster, disastrous war against Egypt that Britain and France waged in 1956, and it is seen in Britain rightly as the moment when the British Empire finally died.

It was that kind of a disaster. So when the economist is starting to make comparisons with Suez, then you know that within the British elite, there is now the alarm bells are ringing very noisily. And I have to say that would not come as any kind of surprise to us, any of the three of us. We've been warning about this all along. So that's one more going very badly wrong.

Same, of course, with the situation in the Middle East. And again, I've been reading every day, as I said, your articles on Sona 21. I've been watching your interviews with all kinds of people, clearly some with us. But events have gone very much, as you predicted, as we predicted. War in Gaza hasn't turned out well. Israel is bogged down. Israel looks like it's looking to try to expand, extend the war. we've now had an attack on an embassy building in Damascus

an attack by Iran on Israel itself as we are speaking rumors that the Israelis are going to launch their own strikes against Iran and there's talk about off-ramps we're hearing off-ramps being discussed about the situation with Israel and Iran rather even the Biden administration or some of the people

there understand that this is a situation where there is no win for the United States. And of course, the same could equally well be said to apply about Ukraine. And I've now been reading articles in the Chinese media, which say that the United States is trapped in the wars in Ukraine at the Middle East. So what are we going to do? Are we going to go deeper into the traps? Let's start with Ukraine. Are we going to go deeper into the trap. We are losing badly in Ukraine, or are we going to look for a off-ram? Do you see any sign of anybody in Washington? Anybody that matters, not people like yourself. I don't think you are in Washington. But anyway, people in the United States,

people who are within the belt, were looking for an off-ramp, because I'd be frank, I don't. Yeah, no, nobody. It is, you can't imagine any politicians standing up. saying, hey, folks, look, we've had the wrong view of Russia. We need to sit down and talk to Russia. Russia is not an imperial power. And we may have had a role in provoking this conflict. So let's figure out how we can calm this down. Again, anybody who tries to suggest that immediately is a puppet of Putin under the thumb of Russian intelligence.

I have never seen, I guess it's been there all along, but I am stunned by the realization. that there are so many people who are educated, you know, college educated, advanced degrees, long years of experiencing government, and they hold this archaic stone age view of Russia as still the embodiment of the Soviet Union of 1972. It's crazy. And you would think that through dialogue and explanation, you could breach that ignorance. No, no way. So, you know, we're going to have to have to have a car crash before people wake up and go, God, what happened? I think that's our only way out, unfortunately. Just two comments about that. Firstly, 1972. I was there. I remember 1972. At that time, amazing, as it sounds, the U.S. was on pretty civil terms with the Soviet Union.

I mean, that was the Soviet Union at that time. But we were actually talking to them. That was the heyday of Dayton. It's a it's a very simple terms. It's a, it's a very civil terms. It's a, it's, It's an astonishing thing. I mean, a much more, you know, menacing country in some ways. We were much more ideologically opposed to them then. But we were able to talk to them then. They just invaded and squelched Czechoslovakia. I was in Greece.

I remember when that happened. People were very upset and angry about that. We still talk to them. We don't talk to the Russians today. Boris Bostorius, the German defense minister, even compared Putin with Hitler. This is the German defense minister talking about Putin being the new Hitler, who's going to conquer the whole of Europe.

And that's one thing I wanted to say. The other thing is I mentioned China. Shortly before we went on to this program, I was reading the readout that the Chinese have published of Xi Jinping's meeting with Olaf Schultz, who's now in Beijing, it is excoriating. I mean, Schott, see, basically sets out, you know, what you should do to get yourself out of this situation in Ukraine. And, you know, even the readout, very moderately worded, you can see that the Chinese just threw the book at Olaf Schultz. They said, you know, you're inflaming the situation, you're making it far worse.

You've got to get off. You've got to find yourself an off-round. I don't know what Schultz made of it all. But, you know, everyone could see it outside. You know, this bubble that we're in in the West. Everyone can see it. Why is it so difficult for the U.S., for the Europeans to change course? Well, let's look back at 72 and then come to today to see what a contrast, what a difference.

At least, you know, Richard Nixon with all of his faults and Henry Kissinger with all of his faults and, you know, deserving criticism as a war criminal. nonetheless, they at least held some sort of strategic vision and worked to accomplish that. So on the one hand, they were working with China to open relations with China as a one China policy with the purpose of using China to pit against Russia. They wanted to make sure they kept those two apart. And at the same time, could continue to deal cordially with the then-Soviet Union even though the Soviets were actively supplying the North Vietnamese. It wasn't the Chinese supplying the North Vietnamese.

It was the Soviet Union who was directly involved in helping strengthen and sustain the North Vietnam. So with those, you know, those were realities that if they were handled in today's terms, we wouldn't talk to anybody. You know, we'd be upset and we'd be using all sorts of bellicose, bombastic language. which directed at him. There was a pragmatism then. There is no pragmatism now. It is, in fact, I think much of it is, in Washington, it's held hostage, one, to the political process. We're in an election year in which the very prospect of having to face re-election is shaping what people are saying and doing, and they're not about to do anything that's

going to be viewed as, you know, the surrender of them. They're being conciliatory. And so bombast is the word of the day on both fronts, both in Israel and in Ukraine. Absolutely. Now, the other question is this. I mean, we talk about an off-ram. I don't see anybody talking about an off-ram. But I am getting the sense that there are some fears, at least in Washington, about the danger of escalation. the US helped shoot down

drone, Iranian drones and missiles going towards Israel. So they've been asked by the journalists and this is an incredible question coming from journalists. Why don't you do the same with Russian missiles heading towards Ukraine? And they have been in a great deal of hurry to say, no, we're not going to do that.

That isn't something that we are are going to do. And I have to say, out of this horrible mess that we're in, both in the Middle East and in Ukraine, that was actually one of the few bright spots, as far as I can see, to clutch onto that there is an understanding that sending aircraft to try and shoot down Russian missiles and drones in Ukraine is not a good idea. So does that rule out escalation, or is there a real danger of that? I mean, some people in Europe, Macron, are talking about it all But with Macaron and Cameron, both agitating for more, you know, putting actual troops in there, it's one of those things that sounds good in theory.

But when you get to the practicalities, okay, how are you going to get them there? Once they're there, what is their mission going to be? And how are you going to sustain them in the field beyond two weeks? because whenever you put that size of a, you know, let's say you put 2,000, 3,000 men out there, well, they need food, they need ammunition, but there's a whole logistics chain that has to support them. And if you don't have that, you know, they're not capable of fighting. But then that gets to the other question, what's their purpose? I mean, France could send 30,000.

It's not going to make a difference because France will, they still won't have air cover. They still will not have air defense because those systems don't exist and whatever exists if they're brought into theater, they're going to be destroyed. That's been the message of this war. So I think despite all the tough talk, Ukraine is going to sink. you know, it's much the same condition as the Titanic. You know, it's taken this. It's got so much water in it.

It's going under. People are running around. They can rearrange all the deck chairs on the Titanic that they want, but it's not going to change the final outcome. Ukraine is going to go down. It's not going to stand in place where, you remember, three, four months ago, people were talking about, oh, we're in a stalemate. The stalemate, they're talking about 20, 25.

In 2026, what could be happening then? I was like, you know, what drugs are you people using? This will be lucky to last through the summer, candidly. Do you get the sense, actually? Because I'd rather do that we've gone past the point of the enthusiasm to send the troops to Ukraine, that this is the big story two weeks ago, but that people have looked at this. I'm sure you're right, logistically.

this is going to be very difficult. And it can only happen with the Americans. I mean, if it's only French troops, the French don't have the logistics to do it by themselves. They would need the Americans. Right. And I don't think the Americans would be there, frankly. I don't think they want the French going there.

I don't think they want the French getting into trouble. So do you get the sense that we've passed out, that that particularly very dangerous moment has come and gone? Because I rather think it has, actually. Just just saying. Yeah, no, no, I agree. I think the reality, the political reality, it doesn't have public support in France and the UK. And it doesn't have widespread support among the military in France and the UK.

So, you know, those are sort of the two key constituencies. That's what makes Ukraine in the situation in Israel. Because in the Israeli situation, at least in the United States, you've got a lot of enthusiasm on the part of people who go into fight on behalf of Israel, which I find extraordinarily dangerous. we'll come to Israel shortly. Let's just continue a bit with Ukraine because do people in Washington understand how bad the military situation in Ukraine

actually is? I mean, do people who brief Biden, who brief Jake Sullivan, who briefed Tony Blinken, understand how bad it is? Because, you know, we're following the events very closely, on the ground, the Ukrainians are getting smashed.

This isn't, you know, that they've been pushed out of one village here or another village there. It goes far beyond that now. I mean, it's no an absolute apocalypse. And we're hearing reports that Ukrainian military units are being disbanded because they're surrendering and all kinds of things like that. Do they understand in Washington how bad the situation has become? Most don't.

I think as both of you discussed yesterday on your programs about the letter by J.D. Vance, you know, the op-ed he put in. Vance is one of the ones who understands. I think Rand Paul understands, but again, their minority voices. Most everybody else is of this mode that we've got we've got to stop Russian expansion because it's trying to reestablish its the Soviet empire. And I always have to chuckle at that because they come back to the people. I go, You know, I was around when the so-called Soviet Empire existed. I don't recall them having any colonies in Africa, Latin America, or Asia. Could you sort of clear that up for me?

And yet they persist with that rhetoric. But just the fact that the New York Times would publish a J.D. Vance op-ed tells you that the political mood is shifting. So that there is now, at least among some, what the intelligence community is telling them, You know, I have, I've seen throughout my career and experience and exposure to this that a lot of times as an analyst, you can have, you know, you'll know what's going on. But there are obstacles to telling the people up the chain of command if they decide that if your management says, no, no, no, we're not going to rock the boat. We're not going to be a problem downtown. town because there really was that attitude out at least on the analytical side of the House of CIA that you wanted to be, you wanted to have access and to be heard at the White House.

And if you kept bringing them bad news, they didn't want to hear you anymore. So you kept figuring out how do we shade this? How do we shape it? So that they'll listen to us. And I'm afraid that I think that process is still going on right now. I get the sense it's actually got worse than our speakers and her complete outsider. I mean, I can't believe that people in the White House have been properly briefed and are willing to listen to bad news.

Because do you agree with me, Larry? This has been the biggest intelligence failure that I can ever remember. I mean, you know, they got Russia completely wrong. I mean, you write about this every day on Sonar 21. I mean, the scale of the Russian general cavalry has. now come forward and said their army's actually bigger, stronger, meaner, angrier than it was two years ago. Their military production numbers, which J.D. Vance touched on, are incredible. Their economy is holding together well. No one, as far as I know, in the top levels of government, understood that

back in 2022. And, you know, I'm sure there were people in CIA and elsewhere who did understand. I had some idea. But I can't believe that their message was getting through. Well, let's differentiate between types of intelligence failure. So first you have the category of you just didn't have the information. You didn't know. You get surprised. Then you get the category of you have the information,

but you, the analysts, misinterpret it, misunderstand it, and you brief your superiors, and so they are equally misinformed. Or you have the situation. where the analysts actually have the information, they've got it right, but the policymakers don't want to hear it. What you just noted about General Kavoli coming out and saying what he did, he wouldn't be able to say that unless he had intelligence coming to him that gave him the facts. So that tells me that at least at the analytical level, they've got the facts, and it's getting

through to those policymakers who want to hear it. But when you're faced with policymakers who are locked into a particular worldview and are not going to change it until the whole house is burnt down around them, then that's a different kind of intelligence fighter. Absolutely. Let's just finish on this. I think we both can see that Ukraine is going down. It's clear that the Zelensky government is never going to negotiate because his whole existence now depends on continuing the war. At least that's clear to me. If it is going down, if we are facing a Sue's moment,

why don't we find an off round? He just offered one. Again, I don't think people notice this, but he has actually done so in those discussions with Lucas Shanko. It's a very tough one. It's not going to be an easy one, but it's not quite a serious moment, sui's moment if we go for it.

Why don't we go for it? I mean, why is it only JD Vance and people like him who are talking? this way? I mean, would people prefer to have a suicide type crisis? Well, you know, I don't think we understand the full dimensions of, let's call it the political corruption in the United States that's invested in Ukraine. So you remember the New York Times article that described having 12 CIA bases? Now, I should have written on this and talked about it at the time. Having a base in a base in a

So the way the CIA is organized, it has the station. And the stations usually, it's in the capital city because that's, you know, you're working with the diplomats. You're trying to recruit members of the government. But when there are certain covert activities, you can set up a base or two bases. And I checked with a couple of, you know, three different former chiefs of station buddies of mine and asked them, can you remember which country had the most bases? Germany had six, okay?

Because Germany was sort of the hub for, this was during the Cold War, dealing with the Soviets, then dealing with Iran. They had a base called FranTech that was exclusively for Iranian affairs. That was large. Because when you have a base, you've got a chief of base, you'll have an assistant chief of base, you're going to have an admin person,

and you're going to have a communicator at a minimum. So what this is telling us, the fact that the CIA had 12 bases, if that report is true, and I'll just caveat with that, I don't have any confirmation that that's necessarily true, but that's what the New York Times is reporting. If that is true,

this shows you how massive the CIA presence and the investment of the government, from the president was in Ukraine. And then when we get back to, you know, when this thing about Burisma came out, that Burisma was connected to terrorist financing, nobody focused on Kofar Black. Everybody focused on it's Hunter Biden

in the direction of the president. But think about this. Here's Kofor Black who had been the chief of the counterterrorism center at CIA. Then he moved and when he retired from the CIA, he did a brief stent at State Department, in my old office as the coordinator for counterterrorism. Then he wound up his head of Blackwater.

And then out of the blue, he gets appointed to the board of the Baltic International Bank in Latvia. And like a year later, he's named to the board of Burisma. Well, guess what? And when they named him to the board of the Baltic Bank, he said he was there because of his expertise in terrorism finance. Now, I've been involved with investigating terrorism finance. Koffer's a joke on that. But that's what he said.

And then he gets on the Burisma board. Well, a year after he's on the Burisma board, two years after he joined the Baltic Bank, the Baltic Bank gets sanctioned by its banking authorities for money laundering and terrorist finance, okay? Because there were financial transactions going back and forth between Burisma, and that bank. My question, I don't, what the hell was going on?

Because having that much CIA presence and then do you think it's just a coin? You know, Koffer Black had no expertise with oil. He was as bad as hunter. The only difference was he didn't use cocaine. You know, but they had

he had no special expertise in that. And yet here he is now on the board of this bank and the board of this natural gas company. There was something else going on here that is not really clear to the public. And that may explain why the United States has been so tenacious about hanging on to Ukraine. Also remember, the Ukrainian oligarchs gave more money to the Clinton Foundation than any country in the world. I don't think those things are all coincidence. They're not just separate, isolated things that make no

no sense. So coming back to your original question, there should a logical, rational person says, oh, my God, yeah, it has to be an off ramp. But this is, this is Thelma and Louise. They're going to drive off the cliff. And then once you're off the cliff, no matter what decisions you make, gravity's going to take over and the car is going to crash. And that's where we're headed. Larry, I think that's been one of the most insightful and interesting comments I've heard about Ukraine for a very long time, providing absolutely critical background. I'm going to remember what you just said, because, and I think people who've just been listening to this program ought to note it very, very carefully, because I think that explains a great

deal. I mean, I'm not a person with intelligence background. I hadn't appreciated either myself, what a huge presence, 12 bases in a one country would have represented. It still begs the question of why. I mean, that's one question I will never understand, given that, you know, the Russians were not, what were they doing, and what they thought they were doing there with the Russians and whoever else? Well, let me just, some of the activities that take place at a base. So like, look at the base in Benghazi, you know, that CIA,

it was described as a consulate, it was a consulate, it was a CIA base. They had 25, 26 people who were processing weapons, primarily, surfaced air missiles, RPGs, that had been gathered from Gaddafi's old stocks were being prepped and then sent to Cyprus and then on into Turkey for delivery to Islamic radicals to fight against the government of Bashar al-Assad. Sometimes those bases will be used to actual manage groups of, let's call them insurgents or military forces that will carry out actions. Or they could be used. So there's a whole variety of activity these. bases can be tasked to carry up. But we don't have a good understanding of what they were doing,

but I'll tell you this much, having that many there means something no good was going on. Let's turn to this other crisis, which is the one in the Middle East. Now, again, I get to say it, you were one of the people who called the Gaza crisis right from the start. I mean, that the military operation that the Israeli government was determined to launch in Gaza would not turn out the way any any way that was good. And I think that we can see that. Even in Israel itself, they're saying that now. They're admitting that this operation has gone horribly wrong. But instead of again, trying to find some way out, Israel seems to be, as far as I can see, intent on expanding. So they attack an embassy and you know you can speak to that. They're now

that provoked a counter reaction from Iran. I am it's clear to me that the Iranians were looking to do this in a way that didn't escalate the situation. Right. But again, instead of Israel, seeing an offer out there, which I think there is, they seem to be intent and escalating as well. And the Biden administration is telling them, well, on the one hand, we don't want you to escalate. But if you do, if you do, we're there, we're right behind you. I mean, it seems to me most bizarre.

How is this happening again? How is it in Israel's interest to start a big war with Iran? I mean, I cannot, maybe I'm too rational again. People tell me this all the time, by the way. But I just don't see the. logic of this, but then I didn't see the logic of the Gaza attack when it was first launch. So can you take us through all of this? Well, the Iran-Israel relationship is just, to me, it's fascinating.

I liken it to a divorced couple that just, I mean, they hate each other. You know, they're going to try to kill each other. But they were once in a relationship. And people forget that even after the Ayatollah Khomeini had, you know, risen to power in January of 79, and then the Iranian Revolution was on. It was early in 1980 and then into 81, once Reagan was in office, that Israel was supplying weapons to Iran, to these very Mullahs, these religious extremists. Why? Because they were more fearful of Iraq, and what Iraq was doing with possible nuclear

weapons or development of a nuclear capability. And they literally went to Reagan and got Reagan to sign off on permission for the CIA to supply Israel with weapons that would then make their way into the hands of the Iranians. Now, think about that. And so then we got the other evidence that Israel was directly involved in helping fund and encourage the development of Hamas because I wanted to use Hamas as a lot of, a tool to destroy the Palestinian Authority. So throughout this, there's been no ideological purity on the part of Israel by any stretch.

But now they're in the midst of the grasp of religious fanatics. There's no other way to describe it. These people like Smotrich and Ben-Givir, they are convinced that they are part of some eschatological movement that's going to bring back the third temple and the return of the Messiah. And if they have to kill a bunch of Palestinians to get there, by God, they're going to do it. And there's no thinking about, you know, war, like Klausowitz said, war is just another extension of politics. You've got to be viewed as such, and you have to take in all the other political considerations. Israel now longer doesn't care whether it is being ostracized in the world.

And it's acting with impunity without any regard for what others say. Just think of the term chutzpah, a Yiddish term. Here are the Israelis complaining about the violation of their territory by Iran, when on a daily basis they are bombing in Lebanon and Syria. And it's okay. You know, they can do that, but by God, nobody can do that to them.

That blindness, that is a combination of arrogance and humorous. Anybody that's ever dealt with the Israelis, and I have, Scott Ritters had far more dealings with them than I have. But one of the common themes is they've got this arrogance about them that you can't teach them anything. that attitude that we know it all, we know it better than you do, and there's nothing you can tell us that's going to change our view. But then you watch them operate.

And what we've seen with respect to the Israeli military, they are a sorry lot. They've had this reputation of being the best in the region. They're not. They are poor. The biggest problem is they've got a terrible core of officers. the officers who are just shameful. They're an embarrassment because leadership starts at the top

and junior soldiers who are shooting unarmed civilians are doing that because their leadership says it's okay. You know, Lieutenant William Cali wasn't the one who came up with Mili. He had officers above him that encouraged that kind of thing. He was the only one that got punished. But now what we're seeing in Israel is this military that, yeah, they're decked out in the greatest gear. They've got all sorts of fancy equipment. But they don't have the discipline and leadership necessary to be able to carry out their objectives.

And now they have awakened the sleeping giant of Iran. In the past, Iran was treated as this just wild group. of terrorists. And yet over the years, Iran, I've been impressed over the last 15 years, Iran has had ample opportunity where they could have struck back and caused civilian casualties with terrorist attacks in retaliation for what's been done to them. The assassination of their nuclear scientists is an example. But they didn't do that. And so now we've seen the transition of the world from the time where the Iranians took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran. in 79, and the United States was outraged at that violation of our diplomatic facility. And then we jump ahead 45 years later at the UN Security Council, where Iran is protesting the violation of its diplomatic facility. And it's the United States that said, oh, it's no big deal. So complete role reversal.

But I don't think it was just an act on the part of Iran. what we've seen as Iran's transition to where it recognizes, okay, we'll play by these international rules-based order. But we're going, and that's why I said after their facility was hit Damascus, I said, I don't think they're going to retaliate and hit an embassy or a consulate or even assassinate a diplomat. They're not going to go that route. They'll hit a military target, which they did. And the real danger right, now that is, I think, started to awaken people in Washington to realize that, yes, the public interpretation is that Israel suffered a massive victory. They defeated Iran. I mean, you're

hearing General Jack Keene and others. Oh, boy, this was great. Shot down 90% of them of the drones and missiles. This was a great victory. Iran is humiliated. Okay, God, they believe that. But let the reality of it is, in my opinion, in an opinion shared by others like Scott Ritter and Ray McGovern, Doug McGregor, is what Iran did was, let's call it a symbolic retribution. It was an act that was to deliver a message and to cause enough damage that the West would know they're serious, but not enough in order to inflict a wound so grievous that somebody that Israel filled, they would absolutely have to respond militarily. But they also did it in a very sophisticated fashion. They launched waves, a coordinated wave of attacks with these slow flying drones going

in. And then the cruise missiles launched, the travel, you know, to, you know, to, three times faster than the drones. So do the math, figure out how, you know, if one car is traveling 60 miles an hour and the other car is traveling 200 miles an hour, when does one need to leave and the other need to leave so they arrive at the same time. And then the ballistic missiles. But on top of it, and you guys covered this on your shows the last couple of days and did it very well, that article in the Financial Times, that was written on April 12th.

Okay, 36 hours before the attack starts, you're already getting the word that Iran's out talking to people and explaining, here's what we're going to do, and this is why we're doing it, and there are going to be limitations to it. That's very clear in the Financial Times. Then Reuters reports, the same thing, the Turks, the Jordanians, the Omani's, you know, everybody knew about it. And Pepe Ascobar had another, he had a good tip, which I think is exactly what happened, that Bill Burns, the CIA director, was in Omaha and sat down with an Iranian delegation. And the Iranians told him exactly what the deal was. You guys stay out of it. We're not going to hit you.

But we're going to retaliate, but we're going to do it in a responsible manner. And Burns signed off on it, according to Pepe. Now, you look at the reactions in Washington have been, we were never warned, we never said that. That's a lie. I'm sorry. The ability to believe anything that comes out of anyone's mouth in Washington, D.C. anymore. You can't believe it.

The track record of lying is so extensive, so pervasive, so consistent, that, sorry, we have to proceed with the assumption. you're not telling the truth. And imagine if they came out and admitted, yeah, okay, yeah, we coordinated with the Iranians in advance. Oh, my God, there would be a political firestorm. So what Iran demonstrated was, for the first time in Israel's 75-year history,

an outside country can hit it with a missile, and they can't stop it. I don't know if you've seen the video of that one, there is one inbound warhead that's coming down and the interceptor's coming up and this thing does this. I mean, it's like, holy smokes. So Iran was demonstrating some capabilities it has. And if Israel is foolish enough to launch any kind of significant retaliatory strike on Iran,

I think Iran will deliver on its promise. And we could be, we're going to be in some very new dangerous territory. I look just a couple of things to say. Firstly, Larry, just to say that what you said about the relationship between Israel and Iran in the past, that they were very close. That is a historical fact. They were extremely close during the time of the Shah, as I very well remember. And they were indeed exactly, as you say, working together against Saddam Hussein for some time after the revolution in Iran. These are historical academic, well-established, incontrovertible facts, just as it is an incontrovertible fact that Israel was quietly supporting Hamas for a long time and was even funding it. Again, this isn't something that should be controversial. It is factually true. Now, the second point that I wanted to make, and again it goes directly to the point that you make, again, is that compared, if you compared the Iran of 1979, immediate post-revolutionary run, with the Iran of today,

there has been a tremendous increase in political sophistication and maturity over that period and in diplomatic skill. And I think that Americans who are still trapped into thinking about that period of time around 1979, 1980, underestimate the extent of that change. Now, the third point is a point that I think Alex and I can make with some authority in the sense that Iran is not that far from our region from the Eastern Mediterranean and it has very much been part of our own history. And Iran is a very sophisticated society indeed. It's a huge country. It has an enormously rich caste. It's had a huge tradition of diplomatic activity. And I've never been there, but I've known many people who have,

including British former British officials. They all tell me one of the same thing, that it is actually very developed. It is not the, you know, the poor, impoverished, unedged, place that I think many Westerners actually think it is. And it's got quite a lot of industry, quite a lot of technology, and it's combined with a tradition of statecraft. Many people don't know this, but chess, the game of chess, to a great extent developed in Iran. I mean, people attribute to Indian roots to it. Maybe that's true. But all the original history of chess actually comes Iran and they are very skilled chess players and they're very skilled at playing diplomatic chess also and I get the sense that this is an area where the US and Israel are not so skilled to put it mildly,

especially not now. Yeah, we have trouble playing checkers, okay? You know, just jumping one piece over another. What Iran unveiled in this attack on Israel the other day, which was fully justified under Article 51, because the attack on the Iranian consulate or embassy annex, whatever you want to describe it in Damascus, that was a violation of international convention, the Vienna Convention, 61. So this Iran was fully justified in that attack,

but the sophistication that it was showing what it could do, not what it's capable of doing fully. Because running out those drones first, that's like if you're in combat, one of the instructions you're always given for frontline troops is hold your fire until you've actually got an enemy that you can't engage because if you fire your weapon or you smoking a cigarette or you're making noise, you're giving away your position.

So you want to remain hidden. So running these drones is a way to force the Israelis to identify their position. Where were their air defense systems located? Where were the radars located? Because Iran could track and gather that kind of intelligence. I'm sure there were some drones in there with that capability transmitted back. Then with the arrival of the cruise missiles, again, you're gathering additional information. The problem is that when the Israeli air defense systems and the American Patriot systems,

they're firing out these missiles. It's not like a video game where you can type in a cheat code and get an unlimited supply of missiles. They have a finite supply of missiles. And you have to stop the reload. It's like shooting a revolver, you know, where you've got the each piece of ammunition is in one of the cylinders, the chambers in the cylinder and it rotates. You fire six shots off. You got to open that cylinder and then, you know, take it. take the old bullets out and put the new bullets in.

Well, diddo, same thing with these missile defense systems. So what Iran was demonstrating that it could, let's say, it said, okay, we'll fire a thousand drones. And those thousand drones, every one of the iron drones is going to fire two missiles per drone to take them out.

So just do the math on that. So all of a sudden you're up to 2,000. They can literally bleed, Israel out in terms of its capability to have a missile functioning missile defense systems. Then come the cruise missiles and then the ballistic missiles. As Scott Ritter noted in a tweet yesterday that the United States had a very sophisticated radar set up near that base, Nevitum in the south and then the Negev Desert. It failed. They had at least reported nine ballistic missile strikes on that base.

this really is sort of we're getting a preview of coming attractions because this will apply as well to the war if if the United States decides to go to war with China China just got a blueprint on flood the zone with drones

follow up with cruise missiles then hit them with ballistic missiles that's a way that you overwhelm the existing defensive systems existing defensive systems cannot defend against that that's the lesson out of this.

Do people in the United States realize what a massive thing it would be to fight a war against Iran? What a big country it is, I'm talking about physically big, how mountainous it is, how

the fact that it's now established, it's achieved, it's broken out of isolation, it's locked into a system of partnerships and alignings, the Russians would certainly not want Iran to go down. China would certainly not want the Iran to go down.

I mean, does anybody in the United States really understand that? And the other thing is, do Americans realize, at least this is my own view, that this idea that I think some people in America have, that if you kick the door, and Israel as well, if you kick the door in Iran, the whole thing will come tumbling down, that's going to be a massive uprising. I mean, again, that is profoundly wrong. Yes.

No, listen, I'm part of a regular discussion group that takes place on Zoom every Tuesday afternoon. And there are several individuals in that group that say exactly what you just said about. All we've got to do is just launch those strikes against Iran, and man, that's going to come tumbling down. Well, I had to tell one of them politely to shut up. up because I was actually involved 16 years ago in scripting a military exercise that involved

an attack on Iran against nuclear facilities. They're called hardened, deeply buried targets, HDBT's. And when you go through that process of scripting out the exercise and then the U.S. military response and then the effect, you realize sort of a hopeless task. This is not Top Gun 2. Or you get to fly, you know, and evade and launch missiles and woohoo success. Most people don't realize in the United States that Iran is four times the size of Iraq. So it is a massive country, number one.

Number two, it has for years. Again, this was 16 years ago that they were putting this stuff underground. There's nothing that's happened in the ensuing 16 years that's assured the Iran's, and said, oh, you can come out now, everything's good. The United States says, nobody's going to bother you anymore. Just the opposite. You know, they've redoubled those efforts. And they have air defense systems that can actually defeat us.

And but the biggest lesson are the Houthis. Look at what the United States has failed to do in the last five months with all of its aircraft carrier task force out there. and repeated bombings and missile strikes inside Yemen, we haven't been able to stop the Houthis from shutting down the Red Sea. In fact, was it on Saturday or Friday last week? The French, like, oh, we're pulling out of this. This is, when we're not used to having this much shooting at us, this is terrible.

What do you think is going to happen in the Persian Gulf at Hormuz? where Iran's capabilities dwarf the Houthis. If the United States can't open up the Red Sea against the Houthis, how in the name of God are they going to do so against Iran? I mean, this is like, okay, folks, enough with your childish fantasies. Let's deal with reality. You can't conquer the Houthis.

You're not about the militarily conquer the Iranians. And we haven't even brought in the fact that Iran has been conducting joint military training exercises with Russia and China for at least the last four years. And they are preparing for this very potential situation. So the United States is not in a position militarily to confront or deal with any of that. We struggled to get control in Iraq, for God's sake, and we had all the advantages where we were able to forward-deploy troops in months in advance in Saudi Arabia and in Qatar and in Kuwait. And just, you know, we could do a lot.

We go through Jordan. That's not the case with Iran. So it's like America just needs to stop with this delusional phantom. to see and come to grips with reality. Isn't the same true of Israel, too? That whatever they make their feelings about Iran may be. I mean, they should not really want a war with Iran. Just one quick question.

Perhaps the last one. Can Israel attack Iran by itself? I mean, what would Israel achieve if you try to attack Iran? Again, you're talking about a huge country. The distances that Israeli aircraft would have to travel would be big. Iran does have air defenses, as you've also said. The country is enormous. It is also, by the way, extremely mountainous.

You only have to look at a map to understand that. That probably, I'm guessing, it would complicate operations even further against it. I mean, what would the Israelis be doing? I mean, they would launch attacks on Tehran. Tehran, by the way, has been bombed within recent memory. It happened during the Iran-Iraq war. It didn't achieve for Saddam Hussein multi-bom.

Even with nuclear weapons, there's no magic bomb. There's no one place that you can drop a bomb, and it's like flicking a light switch on and off. It's going to turn all the lights off. The country's going to go dead, and all the turmoil and fighting will cease. Just look at what's happened in Ukraine. Look at all the missile strikes, all the drone strikes,

all the different actions that Russia has taken in Ukraine, and it hasn't forced Ukraine to crumble overnight. I mean, it's a process. So the best Israel could do would be launched, submarine launched ballistic missiles against some Iranian targets. And all that's going to do is, you know, they'll do some damage in Iran if that takes place. But Iran is valid.

If you do that, we're going to retaliate in a way that, will dwarf what we did on April 14th. And the Israelis would be wise to heed that warning. As far as without U.S. support, the ability to do an F-35 strike on Iran, I think, is impossible. Because Israel doesn't have the air refueling capabilities, and they're not going to get it, you know, maybe they can. decide they're going to try to fly across Iraq without permission and, you know, without securing the rights to overfly their territories or same as Saudis and just take their chances,

they might be able to try to do that. But again, Israel does not have the cloud and the power to hit Iran in any kind of way that's going to decimate, weaken, or debilitate Iran. That's, and this use of military force, you know, I'm, I teach people concealed carry firearms, how to protect themselves. And the very, you know, the very fundamental point is you never pull a gun out and point it at anybody unless you intend to kill them. And if, you know, so number one, don't point it out and just to, you know, scare them. Or I'm just going to shoot you in the leg or the arm.

So, no, the only way you point a gun somebody, you. you want to kill them, but there is no, Israel doesn't have a gun that it can kill Iran. It has a gun that it can irritate the hell out of Iran. And then at that point, you know, the restraint that Iran has shown up to this point will go away. So I really, I think the next 24, 48 hours are going to be pretty consequential. We'll get a good handle on whether Israel's just, you know, talking tough, but is finally coming to its senses, doesn't make sense. sense or if they're going to go the way of emotion. I never rule out the power of emotion and people being able to act foolishly. Larry Johnson, thank you very much. Brilliant, brilliant,

exceptionally insightful comments if I'm in a say today, and thank you very much for helping us. Now, if you can just stay there a moment while I hand over to Alex. Alex has probably got some questions to us. Yep. You've got 15, 20 minutes, Larry, so we can answer some questions for you. Yeah. That's easy. Thank you. Thank you. From John, I don't understand why the U.S. has no weapons, ammo, air defense for Ukraine while they send cargo planes and ships full every day to Israel. Is it just the difference between an ally and proxy?

No, it's the difference between American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee. The Israelis pay for it. They bought more members of Congress. Follow the money, baby. Hisham says, Larry, you've mentioned the car crash. To what extent do you see that? Oh, it's underway. We're in a slow-motion car crash right now in Ukraine.

Because when you look at, yeah, the Ukrainian has still fielded an army out there, but they're getting pushed all along the front. And, you know, I sort of looking forward to Alexander's, commentary. I always follow him every day as I do follow you Alex. In fact, look, just the fact, you guys are saving me

about two and a half hours today by being on this program, okay? Because normally, you know, watching you and, you know, I watch all three elements. But this car crash that's underway in Ukraine, the Russians unveiled a new military unit

up around Kharkiv. So they are positioned to make this push all the way to the NEPA. The one thing I don't understand, and I would love to be able to get someone from the Russian general staff and just ask them, why haven't you taken out all the bridges over the Neeper? Because it would seem to me take out all those bridges that all of a sudden you have cut off the resupply lines for every Ukrainian force that's east of NEPA. I'm sure the Russian general staff has a good reason for it.

I just don't know what that reason is, but that would be one way to really bring a quick end to this. But did you see Michael Johnson, no relation, his proposed budget for Ukraine? Really insightful when you go through it because most of the money is going to U.S. defense contractors, okay? It's not going to Ukraine. That's why I say it's political graffiti. It is designed to say, oh, we're supporting Ukraine when in the reality, you're giving money to those corporations, who in turn are giving you the politician, the money back, is contribution.

So it's a grift. Yeah. Yep, Elza says, are still some good guys like Larry in the agency? Are there still good guys in the agency? Yeah, no, there's still, there are, that's one of the curious things about it, even though the agency as an institution can be pretty, pretty terrible and has done a lot of terrible things. Again, it comes back to leadership, but there are, there are some, you know, very solid men and women in all of the intelligence organizations who are, you know, they're genuine patriots and they're trying to do the best. but there's also that economic part intrudes where I need the job or I don't have a good alternative or I like what I'm doing so that you know you learn how to put up with some things that if you had

what I call Sam Adams money you'd walk away Sam Adams was one of the analysts that was during the Vietnam War that was opposed Westmoreland's call about how many you know most morning kept insisting there weren't that many via com. Well, Sam Adams came from a very wealthy family. So he had the amount of money that if he lost the job, all right, it's not going to affect him economically. So there were some freedom in that. From insomnia, question for Larry, what happens if Israel uses low-yield tactical nuclear

weapons against Hezbollah or to others? I don't think they can use them against Hezbollah, simply for the potential of contamination. Nobody's got perfect control of the weather. And any nuclear blast, even the so-called tactical, is still going to create a nuclear cloud, which way is it going to flow? As long as they can be guaranteed it was going to flow north or east, well, that's one thing. But you don't have that guarantee.

And if it comes south and all of a sudden you've contaminated the land that you claim was so precious to you that you didn't want to get rid of. I think the Israel's temptation if they to use nukes in Iran proper is going to be constrained by the fact that Iran's got the full backing of China and Russia who both have very capable nuclear forces and even even countries like Pakistan are going to you know have a say in this potentially that they're not going to stand by and let. Israel used nuclear weapons against a Muslim country. Angry Warhawk, why are so many Egyptians anti-Iranian? Well, they're primarily Sunni Muslims, and they're Arab, whereas the Iranians are Persian and largely Shia. So, you know, those are actually, they can be important differences. Plus, the Egyptians, you know, among all the Arab populations,

the Egyptians have the reputation for being the first among equals. You know, they do have that attitude about themselves that, hey, we're the Egyptians. Remember, you know, pyramids, pharaohs, you know, they still take pride in that. So there's not a natural affinity between the Egyptian Arabs and the Iranian Persians. In fact, historically, they tended to be at Kru, you know, opposing each other. All right. From John Roberts, as an American, I have the feeling that our government will give up on Ukraine eventually. But emotionally, we're much more invested in Israel.

Jewish Americans know, I forgive every Israeli sin. Well, just, well, you want to know about American commitment? Ask the Vietnamese or just, or Cambodia or just, you know, go down the, the list of countries, the Afghans, the Iraqi, you know, the commitment of the United States, we're in it to win it, we're here until the bitter end. Then they show them say, oh, the bitter end's here. We'll see you later. And we're out the door. Come on. You can get full. You should be, if you get fooled one time by somebody, okay, you got fooled. But when you let that same person fool you over and over and over, you got to sit back and say, okay, what, what's,

your problem. You know, we have established what the basic nature of the United States is, unfortunately going back to 1948 and forward. Regime change of other countries, interference in the political affairs of other countries, willing to start wars in other countries that we describe as essential to our own democracy or freedom, even if it has nothing to do with that. I mean, really, I look at the United States right now. I love my country. I'm a patriot. But by God, we're like a degenerate junkie, and somebody needs to get the needle out of our

hand because we can't help ourselves. Sparky has, I think this is a two-part question. The first part says, after his meeting with Ambassador Stevens, my brother told me Stevens was with Gadda on African unity and current. see. Is it why Hillary allowed him to die if not directly had him killed? Then Sparky says, my brother's concern was higher education for Africans. He found it unusual that a U.S. ambassador was serious about actually making a positive impact instead of just being a figurehead or stooge. No, the short answer is Hillary Clinton was trying to cover up the covert action that was

underway in Benghazi. So on September 4th, David Petraeus, who was then CIA director, had gone to Turkey. Basically, to brief the Turks, the Sahegi, okay, this armed supply that we're doing for these Islamists in Syria, we've got to put a hold on that now because Obama was concerned that the additional revelations could come up that would embarrass him that could create problems for his reelection campaign. So they wanted to get that off the board. So Chris Stevens, a week later, that's why he was in Benghazi because he had meetings on September 10th with the Turkish, their equivalent of their deputy chief of mission.

Because he was coordinating with the Turks because the Turks and the United States were working together with this chain, arm supply chain that started in Libya, made its way through Turkey and to Syria. And that's why he was there shutting it down. So when this attack started on the so-called consulate, it wasn't a consulate, it was a CIA base, the last thing Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration wanted to do was have any kind of attention drawn to that because it would have exposed this weapons supply project that was underway. that we were supplying weapons to destabilize the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. That's what was going on. Right.

What was the second part of that? This is the second part. My brother's concern was higher education for Africans. He is more of a comment. He found it unusual that a U.S. ambassador was serious about actually making a positive impact instead of just being a figurehead or stooge. A comment about ambassador. Well, I think that's a legitimate fair comment about.

Ambassador Stevens from what I've heard, that he really was probably one of the good guys in terms of trying to do something on behalf of local populations where he worked. Yeah. I've heard that as well. Rafiq Adams says, what is the likely Israeli response to the Iran strike and what is Iran's likely reaction? So you mean, who is saying if Israel hits Iran? If, if what, yeah, if Israel, uh, if Israel, uh,

It hits Iran. What do you think it's going to be? And what would you think Iran's reply would be? So we could, we might see a repeat of what happened on the April 14th Iran strike. What I mean by that is Israel saying, look, we've got these political pressures at home. We can't be seen as doing nothing. So we're going to hit a token target in Iran. And that could be communicated to the Iranians through a variety of channels, to the Turks, through the Omanis, through the Swiss. And then maybe even the Russians and Chinese had way in and tell Iran, look, if this is going to calm things down, let it happen. Do it. Be the big man here.

Be above board. And we'll have your back. You know, that's one possibility. But if that doesn't happen and Iran, Israel does hit Iran, then Iran will make good on its promise that, you know, we hit you, we hit you with level one next time we're going to come in with level 10. And you'll know the difference. And then at that point, you will see further destruction of these Israeli facilities.

Just one note. Have any of you seen any photographs, actual photographs, from Israeli news crews that went to Navatam or the other air base or to the Intelligence Center up in the Golan Heights that are showing no damage.

Has anybody seen any photos like that? Yeah. That tells you everything you need to know because by God if they were untouched they'd have the Israeli news crews out there filming for sure. The fact that they're not tells you that there was significant damage.

N.V. Stormen says Hawaii-themed Duran shirts make it happen. These are not Hawaiian-themed shirts. These are Tommy Bahama. And hey, I'm in Florida. In Florida, this shirt with a pair of shorts and flip-flops, we call that business casual. This is from locals from Bad Wolf F.TX says,

who does Larry think is really the head of the snake? Who is really in charge and calling the shots behind the scenes? Somebody has to be in charge. It seems unlikely that it's actually Biden. Blinking, Sullivan, who do you think is really? I think it's Obama, ultimately.

I think it's Obama and a crew of people connected with him. And I also think there's a Clinton element in there because if you look, you know, Jake Sullivan was basically Hillary Clinton's gopher over the State Department. So there is, you know,

we use the term deep state. And all the, the term deep state is simply referring to an entrenched bureaucracy that's headed up by people who know each other. It's a very incestuous relationship and who have this strong political ties to each other that are very partisan. And that's unfortunately what we've seen. I lived in a period and worked in my early days at CIA where that was not as strong back then. There was less of this partisan influence and control.

But that's changed over the years. From SGD, could you talk more about the Iranian air defense system? Yeah, well, they've got a Soviet S-300, and I'm pretty sure the Russians now are sharing the S-400 system with them. Plus, Iran has developed its own systems. Let's remember the Shahid drone, for example. That came as a result of Iran downed a CIA drone, then took it and reversed engineered it to create their Shahid drone. So it's pretty funny that we can blame Iran's drone program on the CIA.

But Iran has very capable scientists. that have worked on developing a variety of defense system. So I don't have a ready list of everything they have, but they're certainly not in the situation like Iraq was in 2003, where they were virtually unprotected. If there is any kind of significant attempt to attack Iran with fixed-wing aircraft with pilots, a significant number of them are going to be shot down.

they're not going to get away, Scott-free. And then once you start shooting down actual pilots, and if they survive, taking them captive, then you've got a whole new dynamic going on. Yeah, absolutely. Ralph says, anybody, I don't understand why there are trains still running in Ukraine. You commented on that a while ago with the bridges.

Yeah, and again, what the Russian general staff's view is, that it may be part of a large, long-term plan that we want to keep those intact because we're going to need to use them. I mean, where they, where they're attending, we feel confident, confident that with our existing strategy and the existing approach that we're going to be able to accomplish our military objectives of reaching the Nepe River, and then we're going to, they'll cross over and take Kiev, I'm pretty sure of that. And then we want to be in a position where we will have these road road lines open and available for us to be able to move.

our troops, our equipment, and to sustain from the logistics effort of having that large of a force forward. That may be one explanation. Can I just add something to that? Because one of the things that the Russian General Staff repeatedly says, one of the very strange words that it uses to describe what it does, is it refers to its actions as rhythmical, that it is doing things rhythmically. And it's actually, there was even one day some months ago when there was just a simple statement to that effect on their website. Now, you know, it's difficult to understand quite what that means, but I'm sure it has some kind of a meaning. But I suspect what it means is that everything happens in its time, in its right time and in its right place.

So you attack the bridges, you take up the railway system when it is most effective to a, achieve your plans. You should knock up the bridges prematurely. Maybe it's easier for the Ukrainians to find ways around. Maybe you do the same thing with the railway system. You have to build up your own forces first. You have to be ready. You have to do everything in a way that everything balances out and works together. It's a very strange use of language. And several people have commented on it. And the fact that they harp on it in the way that they repeatedly do strongly suggests to me that this isn't just a word that's, you know, being used because it sounds nice. It is intended to convey some kind of a strategy or some kind of an approach to the war,

which isn't really very obvious to us outsiders, us non-Russians. Yeah, I fully agree. It's a very orthodox. way of looking at things, isn't it? Well, it's, let's call it organized and scientific. I like Andrei Martianov's description of the process, because the West really doesn't have anything comparable. And, you know, Western military officers have spent so much time criticizing and disrespecting the Russian approach, but forgetting that,

what the Soviet general staff did during World War II was phenomenal and that kind of planning an organization and defeating the Nazis because it really was the Soviets who defeated the Nazis. It wasn't the United States and the Brits. But it was a process that they developed, refined, and used. And it fell into some disrepair in the 1990s, early 2000s, but they got it back on track. And it is, you know, the proofs in the pudding in terms of they're not just fighting Ukraine.

They are fighting NATO and beating NATO. That's the lesson out of this. Alexei Adolfo, did you want to say something? No, I also want to say. I think, by the way, everything Larry has said is absolutely right. But he does have a kind of orthodox quality. It's like the chance and rituals that, you know, everything is in terms. Telling everything.

Yes. Yeah, exactly right. On World War II, Larry Alexander, just because you mentioned it, there is news about an hour ago that came out, which says that Russia has been officially invited to the 80th anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy on June 6. That's a good sign. Yeah, they didn't. They shunned them a year or two years ago. I think that says a lot. Yeah.

There's like, okay, maybe this is a good sign that the offer, they're finally saying, oh, my God, we got an off ramp. Let's see if we can make up, kiss and make up. Yep, exactly what I was thinking. Let's do a couple of more for Larry. And then we will let Larry go. Thank you for staying with us, Larry, for the show. From the alchemist, Larry, do you believe the 2018 major explosion in Lebanon was deliberate by Mossad?

I think you're talking about the big explosion at the port? Yeah, was that, yeah. No, I don't think it was deliberate by Mossad, but, you know, could have been. But it just, you know, there are, you know, bad things happen. And it did, it did not, you've always got to say if you're going to carry out an action, what's the expected outcome from an intelligence operation? What's it going to accomplish? What is it going to enable you to do?

Just as an example, was the West behind the Krokus theater, attacks, I believe they were. What was the objective? I think the objective from the United States was they were aware that this attack was going to go on. They didn't necessarily facilitate it, but they didn't stop it, but they were definitely going to use it as a device to attack Putin and the intelligence structure of Russia for being incompetent. That was their mission. So they were going to use this thing that they knew it was going to happen as a way to say, oh, We warned the Russians and they ignored us as nonsense. But they were trying to make political, take a political advantage of that tragedy.

From Elena to Lowry, why are they letting in all immigrants in the USA? What is the end game? Who earns money? Follow the money. So this is what's fascinating. The U.S. government is funding a lot of these non-governmental. organizations, NGOs that are bringing people up through Panama into Mexico, into the country. Some have speculated that all this is some covert army being assembled in the United States

to carry out terrorist attacks. I don't buy that. Yeah, there are a lot of young guys, but with my experience, with firearms, shooting is a perishable skill. Unless you were out training and doing it, it's nothing. a natural activity. And so if you've brought all these people in over the last eight months and they're sitting around not doing anything, you know, I don't see how they're, quote, militarily competent

to carry something out. I think the real plan is to flood certain congressional districts so that you can register a lot of these people to vote and to have them vote in order to permanently shift control of the Congress and the White House into the hands of the Democrats. That's what's afoot. Maybe rhythmically, like Chalkovsky 1812 overture. Interesting comment from Sir Mugge. And one more comment, Larry, before you go from Sparky.

The $61 billion to Ukraine is also for Ukraine, a government payrolls, pensions, and health care, not just for the MIC and Congressional Kickbacks. It helps keep Ukraine in public from rebelling against the West. Very true. Well, yeah, in fact, let me just find, I've got the list here. Where is it? the Mike Johnson list.

Okay, here's the list for Mike Johnson's proposal. $20 billion for restocking U.S. arsenal of weapons sent to Ukraine. That goes to the military industrial complex. 15 billion for the UCOMAOR. Okay, that goes to the Pentagon. It goes to the Stuttgart. 14 billion to Kiev to purchase new weapons. Okay.

It's not going to go to Kiev and then Kiev's going to write a check. that money is going back to the U.S. defense contract, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics. $8 billion for DOD anti-corruption oversight. Again, going to DOD. Then $8 billion for the national budget of Ukraine. Okay, there's, you know, Zelensky's tip, his grift. So out of $61 billion, he'll get $8 billion.

The rest of the monies, at least under the House of Republican, proposal is going to stay in the United States. And 10% for the big guy. 10% for the big guy. We will end it there. Absolutely, man. On that note, we will end. Well, we will say goodbye to Larry.

We appreciate Larry for staying on with us for so long and for answering the questions. Sonar 21 is the website. The link is in the description box down below. and I will add it as a pin comment. Larry Johnson, thank you for joining us. Hey, guys. It's always a pleasure.

Thank you hugely. Thank you hugely, Larry. A fantastic program. Very, very, very interesting things we've heard from you today. We always do, but especially interesting today. Have mouth, we'll travel. All right. Thank you very much, Larry.

Bye. Take care. All right. That was great. Oh, fantastic. Yeah. Fantastic. All right, Alexander, let's answer the remaining questions. Let me scroll back.

To the beginning here, James Howell, thank you for that super sticker. On any Sunday mule, thank you for that super sticker. Let's see, we answered the air defense question. Verde Bill, thank you for that super sticker. Tish M, we answered question. Command of Crossfire. Instructors landed in Niger. Stability incoming.

Russia is struck. I hope so. I mean, I hope so. I mean, I hope so. I mean, I hope so. I mean, Nijer deserves stability. It deserves a good price, a proper market price for his exports. It deserves some degree of economic growth and, you know, intelligent policies. And obviously, it does have problems with all kinds of violent people in the north of the country and in other places. So I hope eventually, you know, we do get stability there. But to reiterate a point which the Russians have been going out, their way saying it wasn't the russians who kicked the french out of nijin it was the nigerians who kicked the french out of nijer and one of the reasons they did that is because they're tired

of being exploited by the french as they have been for many years and they're also um exasperated with the fact that the french have not brought stability to their country so if the russians are able to help the nigerians achieve it absolutely let's hope so and let's hope and Good luck to them. Stana, thank you for that. Super sticker. Lover of the Russian team says, love Larry Johnson, he's honest, compassionate,

cares about world peace. Absolutely, completely true. Absolutely. Thank you for that comment. Commander Crossfire says, Boycott Olympic support friendship games. Agreed. That's what the IOC,

the International Olympic Committee, is terrified. People are going to do, by the way. They've been uttering all kinds of threats about the friendship games for months now. Very, very, very bizarre, very unpleasant. A little competition is good. Well, absolutely. High time.

High time. Yep. Frolon, welcome to the Duran community, Rolon. And Abse says thanks from Spain. Carrie, welcome to the Duran community. Sir Mug's game says, Alexander, is there anyone in Britain? to step in and play the role of lifeguard at number 10 downing street. Sunak's drowning, not waiting.

Sure enough. I don't think there's anyone who can save Sunak. In fact, the latest rumors, and they're not particularly late, but they've been around for a few weeks, is that when the conservatives go down to a catastrophic, cataclysmic defeat in the local elections, which are coming in May, then they will move to push it.

him out and he'll be replaced by someone else called Penny Dockmorden, who is another, in the endless stream of Conservative cabinet ministers who get their turn becoming prime minister. And she, of course, will also go down to catastrophic defeat when the election comes. But no, there's no saving Rishi Suna. The question, I would have particularly worried about Rishi Sunak. He's married to the daughter of a billionaire. They're worth together. people say $600 billion or whatever it is.

But shouldn't be too worried about Rishi Suna. About Britain, worry a lot. We're not in a good way here. Not at all. Commander Crossfire says Russia successfully tested new heavy space rocket, manned moon Mars missions closer to realization. Planned nuclear power plant for the moon with China is next. Absolutely.

All true. You're referring to the Angara. heavy launch vehicle that's just been launched from the Vastochne Cosmodrome in eastern Russia and in Siberia. I would say the Angada Five has already been tested, successfully test launched from the Plissetsk Cosmodrome, which is in the far north of Russia. It's in the Arctic Circle. It's the most northerly of all Russian cosmodrome. It's about the most northerly spaceport in the world. But it's now being used in Vostod. And it's going to be very, very important. I'm going to say it's not only a very, very sophisticated and modern vehicle indeed,

but it finally brings the Russian space program, its rockets, it puts behind them the old Soviet legacy. Most people don't know it, but the Russians and the Soviets before them used rockets that were designed, that were designed in the era of Koroliov and Chalomei in the 1950s and 1960s. So Soviet manned missions used the R7 rocket, which was the one that Gagarin actually used all the way back in 1961. And other space launches, the heavier space launchers, used the proton rocket, which was designed in the early to mid-1960s.

It was first used in 1966. So now we have finally got really advanced, very advanced new rockets, which are appearing in Russia, which are a whole technological leap upwards. How do you know this stuff? Incredible, that. Well done. Well done. Sophisticated KVET says, could we see referathingy?

in Minsk and northern Belarus, like we saw in NovoRosia to join Russia. I'm sure Putin is worried about Belarus after Lukashenko and might want to secure Sualki Gap. Good question. It's a very good question. I don't think we're going to see anything like that whilst Lukashenko is around. But maybe in time, we might see referendums. But I think the purpose will in that case be for reunification of Belarus and Russia. the two countries coming together.

Remember, they are already in what is called a union state with each other. So that could become tighter anyway. Their economies are becoming very closely intertwined and integrated. Their militarism, of course, their political systems already are. But, you know, perhaps at some point we'll have a referendum, and that will complete the process. Probably a referendum in Belarus, conceivably, we're going to move towards outright union one in russia too just saying

screaming monks says first man in space was russian first woman in space was russian first dog in space was russian at the us in space race first dog that's that's true it's true it's true it's true like uh you know this is before my time just before but people are we're still talking about her um afterwards in the 60s Jay Larson, thank you for that super chat. Matt Ward says, when Iran captured the top secret US RQ 170 drone, now we are witnessing some of what tech they received from Russia and China,

missile hypersonic tech. Greetings from Poland. We love Iranians. I have a huge, I have a huge, there's a big discussion about all of this in my forthcoming video on my channel, which should be up for. soon you'll be hearing all about it today's you'll be hearing all about that okay matt so alexander's channel uh i guess he'll be answering that question cactus ray thank you cactus ray thank you for that super sticker sir sir mugs game says i reckon 20 years ago

put down the pushkin read voltaire's letter and copied the only prayer voltaire ever made oh Lord make my enemies ridiculous. And boy, did Christos Pantokrater answer young Mr. Putin's prayer. That's an amazing comment. That's an amazing one. Amazing comment.

I have nothing to add to it. Oh, boy. The alchivist says, Israel is like the mirror, obsessed neighbor whose pride has been bruised. The truly upsetting part, they'll go to any lengths to mend their wounded ego. I'm afraid there's an awful lot of truth in that. I do hope that they find

finally some humility. I would, by the way, endorse what Larry said about their terrifying hubris, which, I mean, they've become drunk on. And wasn't going to add something else. Larry was talking about the decline in their army. I remember the Israeli army of the 1973 war. and it's very different from the one you see today. And if you see film, there's a lot of it around of the Israeli army of the 1960s during the six-day war. You see what a tough, disciplined,

well-led army it was in those days. Very different from this, frankly, chaotic army that we're seeing now. From Boa Omega-22, squared. How long will we have to wait for the term Tehransectomy to be used? A term involved from a surgical strike referring to the taking out of Tehran. Interesting comment.

Interesting comment in Daniel. Let's go to Rakfin. From, is Israel going to start a major war in the Middle East? Why can't they put the brakes on? They act like, you know, this is this, I mean, you know, I think we've done whole programs about this. Why can't they? I mean, it's in their interests, too. But I think their own, you know, arrogance, their own history, you know, the fact that they have all their huge insecurities, which we must have some understanding and sympathy for. I mean, we know where they come from.

Their insecurities. You know, they drive them forward. and they drive them forward in an absolutely disastrous way. As Greeks, by the way, you know, both familiar with Greek tragedy. We understand that very well. As Ariel says, let us pray for peace and that this never escalates. Well, indeed, absolutely. Well, we do.

We do. Let's see here. We answered that one. Hisham says, you can find the truth of what's happening in the Middle East and now. in the study, the 2009 U.S. policy paper that laid out future Israel-Iran war. The rest is theater. You know, Brian Belletic has done a program about this, which I haven't yet had time to watch, but which I will do.

I'm going to say this. I don't think it has been as carefully choreographed and planned as that. I think that everything about this whole affair since the 7th of October suggests to me an extraordinary combination of arrogance and incompetence and weakness, weak leadership in Washington has led us to this crisis. And, you know, there's lots of plans, but it doesn't look to me as if they're planning this very well, just saying. Sir Mug's game says, Alex, the joke was number 10, drowning street, not Downing Street.

Alexander, I met someone to save Britain. don't give a couple of its let alone or sad sacked well I know I mean you know when I say no one I mean we're

Britain is a big country it's a strong country is a big history something will eventually you know it will turn the corner in the end but that doesn't alter the fact

that we're in a very very bad way and if you look at the media here in Britain even this very controlled media that we now have They acknowledge that bad as this government is, and it is, by the way, there's no reason to think that the opposition, the Labour opposition when it takes over is going to be any different or many better. So, or that its policies are going to be very different.

So, you know, we are in a really bad trap. Now, sooner or later, there will be some, you know, alternatives and people will come forward and we will chart away. I mean, historically, that is inevitable. How long that will be? How much damage is going to be done? I can't even begin to say. We were having a conversation, Alex and I, about the situation in Britain yesterday.

I won't discuss the details of it. But I was providing it with some more, you know, information of things and how, illustrating how bad things here now are. Maggie Cole, thank you for that super sticker. where am I no we answered that Rafi we answered the strike against

Iran and the reverse sparky says go Yemen fight the power Rocha says thank you Duran Mariana thank you for that super sticker here we go Rafiq here we go who is controlling who the Israeli lobby

or the US Anglo-American establishment tail wagging or just theater I think both you see I think the thing to understand understand is that the Israeli lobby is a part of the Anglo-American establishment, an influential part, not the entirety of it, by any means. But this is a joint enterprise and has been so for a very, very long time. And of course, it's not just the Anglo-American establishment. There are neocons in Europe. You find lots of them in Germany. You find them in France.

There's, you know, the WEF crowd who all sort of link up with all of this. This is all that it's It's a really horrible elite that's, you know, congealed and come together, and which has no answers to the problems that we have, but it does have a plan which is turning out horribly, horribly wrong, but which it doesn't seem able to change. A big elite globalist tent. Yeah. And they're all under that tent.

Order out of peace says, excellent assessments, Duran and co. Thank you. Harry C. Smith says the word checkmate comes from the Persian Shachmat and King Shah is dead Matt C.F. Morte. Iran also the only country where man and women must pass a test on all contraceptives to receive marriage license. Oh, I didn't know the last but anyway. But you're about chess, you're absolutely right.

What's the Russian word for chess? Shamati, shamati. Shamati, you're saying. I used to play chess lots. I used to play chess and it was never very good at it, by the way. I just don't know that kind of a mind. I think you need to be a mathematically mind person. I was very, very interested in chess at one time. And one of the things you discover when you explore the history of chess is that nearly all the earliest literature about chess is Persian, is Iranian. It's written in Persian. So it is, in fact, from the Iranians that we actually know that it was first invented in

India. There's much more early, and when I say earlier, you know, I mean from before the Arab conquest of Iran, there's much more literature from Iran about, early literature from Iran about chess, than there is in India itself. Raphic Adams says, is the US headed for a direct war with Iran? Is it inevitable? No, it is not inevitable, but it is very possible. And it would, it will require some, very careful diplomacy and strong action from the US government, if that is to be avoided. And you look at the Biden administration and you say, God, help me, because you're not going to get much careful diplomacy and strong action from this government

to avoid an eventuality like that. And that's what's really frightening about this. From the alchemist, it's quite ironic how the select few of the sacred land opted to escape at the mere sight of missiles soaring overhead. Should they be the ones protecting their cherished homeland? Well, you know, I think that one of the great changes that has happened in Israel since the 7th of October is that the illusion that Israel was impregnable

and that its people were safe has been shattered. And the conflict in Gaza has not resolved that problem. And I'm afraid a conflict, well, I predict that a conflict will Iran is only going to make that worse. And as I said earlier in the program, that place the insecurities. And it creates enormous dangers. It means that people might want to leave. But it also might mean that others are prepared to countenance, steps and actions, which could make the situation even more dangerous than it already is. because frightened people are angry people and angry people are unpredictable people

and they are capable of doing very dangerous things as well. Gypsy Cruiser, thank you for that super chat. The Alchemist says Ukraine is regaining lost lands and achieving victories in a bold rear ward march. Absolutely. It's advancing backwards. the black cat, thank you that super sticker. Sparky says, despite

co-opting and popularizing the term fake news, Trump still seems to rely on TV news. Will Colonel McGregor or someone please direct him to the Duran, the gray zone, Garland Nixon, etc. Well, I can hope.

Carlos Gasper, thank you for that super sticker. Celilla, thank you for that super sticker. Elza says, what if trains still run in Ukraine because the Russians want to see the Olensky government hanging on their roof when they'll flee Kiev? Quite interesting. Quite interesting comment.

You may very well be right. I am absolutely sure that the Russians have a reason why they haven't stopped the trains and destroyed the bridges. I mean, they clearly, I mean, everything about the way in which the Russians have conducted their military operation in Ukraine, suggests it's been carefully thought through and system and that whatever planet is that they have, they're implementing it very methodically and very systematically. And I can't believe it doesn't involve the trains and the bridges. One day, probably quite soon, we will find the answer to all these riddles.

Satiago, Maya, thank you for that super chat. Wade says Congress puts some chump change in for Inspector General Oversight, but not an independent one. It's true enough. Why would they want anyone? Why would they want someone independent? Well, I mean, all right, there's people like Rand Paul who wants independent. But why would people in Congress, the actual people in Congress who benefit from the system as it is now, why would they want somebody actually carrying out proper audits and taking where money is going?

that completely contrary to the way the system works now. Yep, exactly. Tony Hilton says great show guys. Greetings from Finland. Thank you, Tony, for that. J.M. says, Alex, who has more homes? Alensky or Netanyahu? I'm not sure it is Alensky, actually.

I don't even think it's close, yeah. Honeybell, thank you for that super sticker. Jonathan says Elijah Manier is of the opinion that Israel won't. strike Iranian territory as that requires U.S. support. Do you both concur with that assessment? I would love to. And Elijah Manier is, of course, one of the great journalists in the Middle East. He's incredibly well familiar with the situation there. But, you know, it's his opinion. I can't myself, you know, I want to second guess it. But, you know, I'm not as confident about this as he is. Sparky says build a better world with bricks

Santiago Maya says Is it significant Both of the top leaders in Ukraine are Jewish Is there a connection to the Israeli lobby In the US or just coincidence No I don't think it's I don't is any real I think this is overplayed about Ukraine I think when it comes to Zelensky

I mean one mustn't see this These connections because I don't think that The oligarchs the far right groups, all of these people who are major actors and stakeholders in the system, ultimately they're Ukrainian. And I think Zelensky is that too. He fits completely squarely within this terrible Ukrainian culture and by the political culture. And by the way, the one Ukrainian political figure who was a who knows it well but who was stood in a kind of way outside it, Victor Medvedevich who is now in Russia has written an excoriating analysis of it.

And he's, you know, looking at it from the inside, pointing out the utterly corrupt, utterly, you know, outward looking, you know, plundering, kleptocratic quality of this. political class. And it's clear it is Ukrainian. It's actually homegrown Ukrainian, that Zelensky fits perfectly into it. And Medvedchuk says it's coming apart. It's now in its last days. And interestingly enough, because Medvedevichuk until recently was somebody who was strong supporter for an independent Ukraine, he now seems to think that the country itself is going to go down and that it's the Ukrainian state has no future. Very interesting analysis from a very clever man.

Since 1991, Ukraine has been extremely corrupt. And Russia in the 90s was not doing any better until one man came along and fixed everything. Absolutely. At the end of the decade, yeah. I think that's the difference. Is Putin coming to? power that that changed everything and and ukraine never had that leader they never got that leader no

summer of 1970 says remember count your your age by friends not your years count your life by smiles not tears john lennon that's brilliant sparky says will the king of jordan be able to remain in power after blatantly selling out his subjects concerns well can i just say kings of jordan have been doing this for ever since the 1940s king of who was the King of Jordan at the time of the declaration of Israel's, you know, when Israel first appeared in 1948, he basically came to a complete understanding with the Israelis. He occupied the West Bank and Jerusalem. And he went, collaborated with the Israelis quite openly. He was, of course, assassinated eventually. He's son, King Hussein in the 1970s, turned against the Palestinians.

during the events known as Black September. He survived and died in his bed. The present king of Jordan, he's also acting to cover his back with the Israelis and with the Americans. And that's why he took the action that he did. And I'm sure he will survive as well. The Jordanian monarchy does these things because the Jordan is a small country. It can't afford to be committed totally to one side or another. They have to make sure that they don't make enemies in their region far more powerful than themselves.

Their whole business is survival and they've done it with great skin. Polly says, have you heard anything of Russell Bentley who's been missing for a while? Thank you. No, I haven't. I haven't. I really haven't. And it's, of course, very concerning. Sophisticated caveman says, could Odessa become a free city like Danzig?

You know, that's possibilities floated from time to time. I'm going to be honest, I don't think this is how that's going to end. I'm quite sure that one way or the other, thumb means or another, either because the Russians capture it or because there's eventually referendums there or as part of a negotiation, or whatever it is, Odessa will return to Russia. I'm absolutely sure that's true. Even Putin has recently been talking about the Russian city of Odessa, and I know that's how most of the people there feel.

SGD says, how is the city of London doing as opposed to the UK? Not well at all. I mean, this is one of the major differences, because there were other periods of modern British history when Britain was economic recession or even in severe, recession, but the city of London remained one of the three great financial centres. It's now in

deep decline. And that adds to the sense of Malays. I think we've now something like being the 20th financial center instead of the third, and that tells you something. Chamila Aspu says, I love Russia because my religion has protection.

Yeah. Thank you for that. Ackerman, thank you for that super sticker. Carry my says what is the painting behind you Alex? Do you guys like it? I've had it there for a while now actually. Absolutely amazing amazing painting actually. Ahri-man, a very interesting, as we've been talking a lot about Iran, very interesting. Yeah, Akhrimam, a very interesting name actually. Just just saying for those who don't know, he is a dark god set against Akura Mazda, who is the god of light. just say

um sparky says Zelensky never claimed to be Jewish he said he said to be Jewish by others to inoculate Ukrainian

NAZIs his mother is in Jewish and he never converted well that's absolutely correct I gather that he's never he's always identified himself as a Ukrainian and I think that's important to say go on that

I would say even more Russian didn't he well actually that he that he learned He learned Ukrainian when he actually was running for president or when he became president. He didn't really speak Ukrainian that well. I think that's entirely right. I think that's entirely right.

I mean, he comes from Krivojrog, which is a city in the south, which is a Russian-speaking city. Yeah. Jamila says, thank you so much, guys, for the great report. And I'm obsessed by your news. Without you, we don't have any information about Ukraine. Thank you for that, Jamila. William says, Things are so bad in the UK

because there's no opposition when there's no opposition for the mainstream media any alternative view is heresy. You're quite right. I'm not going to add you anything to that comment. It's completely wrong. Dana says deep respect.

Greetings from Czech Republic. Hello, Dana. Jonathan says Spain is resuming flights to Tel Aviv tomorrow, promising sign that the conflict is being averted for the time being. That is a very important sign. Yes, thank you.

Thank you, Jonathan, for that very interesting sparky says u.s is israel and israel is the u.s kickback mechanism is a big concern with many relationships the u.s congress has with lobbyists whether israel or other countries big tech big pharma or the m ic this is completely true absolutely but none none none as corrupt as visibly corrupt as the relationship with ukraine agreed the alchemist says since the SMO, I've been captivated by your videos. I watch the Duran and then dive into Alex's channel for more insight than thanks for both of you. I feel like I have a PhD in politics. Thanks. Thank you. I miss Dayzad 50. Thank you that super chat. Sir Mug's game says for years there's been

talk about the reestablishment of the Assyrian nation in the Middle East, Assyrian Bishop stabbed in Sydney upon return from Gaza, something afoot. Well, it's very tragic and very sad. in fact the Assyrian nation, which is the same nation as the Assyrians that you read about in the Bible and whose monuments you see in the great museums of the world, especially by the way the British music, the people of Nineveh. They still exist. There are living actual people. And they are Christians. Overwhelmingly, it's a Christian community. And their language is not Arabic, it's Aramaic, which is the language of Jesus, the language that Jesus spoke. It's not widely known.

And most of their community was based in Iraq, around the city of Mosul, which many of us will remember, ISIS captured. They've had a terrible time since the 2003 conflict. Many, many of them have had to flee. And this ancient community is in deep crisis, so I understand. ago decades ago I met an Assyrian an Assyrian man in London and he recited to me the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic which as I said is a living language amongst the Assyrian people and intensely moving it was so it's very sad and of course this latest horror in Australia with this Assyrian priest just adds to the

torment of that community. And finally, Miss Texas G, please speak to what Ritter has been saying about a Ukrainian government in exile in Russia. Is that the Medvedtchuk article? Well, I don't think that there's never been a

formal Ukrainian government in exile in Russia that I'm aware of. What is true is that there are a lot of people in Russia who were people who were formally part of various Ukrainian governments. There's

Nikolai Azarov, who was Yanukov, he's very capable, Prime Minister. There's Medvedchuk as well. If the Russians want to form an government in exile, there are lots of people who they could find who could staff it. It might come,

but there's been no announcement about that yet. All right, Alexander, that is everything. Let me do a final check as you give us your final thoughts. Well, it's a brilliant program. I have to say, for me, the real eye-opener was what Larry was saying about the 12 bases in CIA bases in Ukraine. I mean, I hadn't understood myself what an enormous operation that was. It does make one wonder what they were all doing.

And it also, by the way, the role of Burisma is very, very interesting. And it suggests to me that Burisma itself has to be looked at in a new way. I mean, it's all getting very, very interesting. And very, very interesting. And, you know, I think it explains an awful lot about a lot of the sensitivities and worries and fears that you see in Washington, which have had such a huge impact on American politics over the last, you know, 10 plus years. Yeah.

Private Bank and Burisma. Cyprus entities, Cypriot entities. There's a lot there. There's a lot there. And one more question, Alexander, what do you think will happen to property rights in Ukraine after the war? Many Western corporations own land and other assets in Ukraine. I think the Russians will confiscate a lot. That's my own personal view. After all, why wouldn't they, given that so many Russian assets have been seized in the West, I think that in Ukraine, probably they weren't do it directly. They'll to Ukrainian government to do it for them and then they'll just move in.

All right, that is the show. That is the stream. Thank you once again to Larry Johnson. Sonar 21, his website will be linked as a pinned comment. Thank you to everyone that joined us on Rockfin, on Odyssey, Rumble. Thank you to everyone on Rumble. And thank you to everyone on Rumble.

the durand.locals.com. I hope everyone is doing well in the locals community. And thank you to everyone that joined us on YouTube. Two-hour moderators, Gab, formerly GEC812, Valley S, Zarael, Tish M. And who else was in this stream? Helping us moderate. I think I saw Peter somewhere in the stream. And I'm not sure if Reckless Abandon was with us today.

either but thank you very much to all our moderators either way thank you to all our moderators thank you Tatiana for that for that generous amazing super sticker thank you very much for that Alexander that's the stream it's the stream fantastic program today thank you all there's amazing program wonderful questions wonderful comments as well thank you take care