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- [00:05]
Daryl Cooper
All humans break. The difference between humans and gods is that gods can break humans negotiate.
- [00:12]
Kyle Anone
Now end this war.
- [00:15]
Daryl Cooper
You're watching Provoked with Daryl Cooper and Scott Horton debunking the propaganda lies of the past, present and future. This is Provoked Foreign.
- [00:37]
Kyle Anone
Welcome to Provoke on tonight's show. That of course is your co host, the great Daryl Cooper. Martyr made. And I am of course not Scott Horton. Kyle Anone. I'm filling in for Scott tonight. I am, you know, he is the boss over at the Libertarian Institute, so I hope I don't mess anything up too bad and screwed up for him. But Daryl, a lot to talk about tonight. I mean, so much has unfolded in the past week. Last Friday night, the last thing I watched before heading off to bed and waking up to war in the morning was you and Scott discussing the situation. So I mean, can we start off with like just your general thoughts on where we are?
- [01:20]
Daryl Cooper
We're not in a good place and it is great to be here with you, Kyle. I was going to say at first Scott got a lot better looking, but
- [01:28]
Kyle Anone
more hair at least.
- [01:30]
Daryl Cooper
This is a live show. I can't edit that anymore now, but look, man, this is a. I'm trying to, like, I've spent a lot of time today working on my notes and trying to put things together because I need to be careful about what exactly I say because I've been talking to a lot of people who are very much deeply embedded in the system. At the Pentagon mostly, but at various other, various other places that, well, primarily have to do with the air defense side of things. But what I can tell you is that this war is not going well. Okay. Do not believe the hype that you're seeing on tv. The, the viewers kind of, if, if they've been watching the show, they know that I have an air defense background. That's what I did for 20 years with DoD and that's where most of my like, really good contacts are, in the system. And since this is a war of, you know, shooting missiles into each other's cities and trying to intercept those missiles, I gu, that's, you know, a good specialty to have for this. But it's, you know, I, I'm kind of like, I, I'm really torn on this thing on one hand because like, on one hand I've done a million ballistic missile tests. I've, I've worked on development for new systems for the new Aegis system. I was very much involved with, very much in the, in the thing where you're, you know, I was involved when we shut down that satellite about what was a decade ago now or so, and when you, when you're doing exercises like that, man, you're holding your breath and you just come on like, we've done all this, like, hit, you know, get the hit, hit the satellite. Don't, don't, you know, do this to us. And like, you're so happy when it happens, but it, like, so you do that. But over time, as anybody who was being honest about specifically ballistic missile defense could have told you, it's. We knew it wasn't that great. Especially when you're dealing with saturation attacks that have different kinds of targets and, and, and decoy, you know, decoys like the Iranians are putting up using all different kinds of tactics, trying to look for, trying to move their launchers around and take different trajectories toward their various targets. I mean, they're, they're adapting their tactics on the fly. And I can tell you that, like, when we would, when we would do testing, you know, if we want to do a ballistic missile test, we would put one of our Aegis ships, say, in the missile task range. And we knew literally on the ship, they're over the loudspeaker, counting down to us, okay, launch in five, you know, counting it down. We know when it launches, we know exactly the trajectory that it's going to be flying over. And it's done on a trajectory that is like our maximum radar cross section just to make every condition perfect, you know, and, and even then, you know, we are, you know, I won't talk about exact percentages, but you don't have to get lucky to hit them. But it is not easy. It's. It's not easy.
- [04:23]
Kyle Anone
And so on. On that point, Darrell, the sense of launch point is so important. We've seen these reports that some of the radar systems in the Gulf, I think, particularly in Kuwait and Bahrain, have been hit. And so would that really make a difference on being able to intercept a missile? Because I think those are the ones that kind of detect the launch point. I'm sure satellites are involved in that, too. But that early trajectory has to be important to hitting that later on.
- [04:53]
Daryl Cooper
Yes. So so far, what we have copped to, because there's satellite photos that have proved it, or they may not have cop to that. They've taken out three of our thaad radar. The, the radar we use for our thaad missile defense systems that we had in the region. I'm pretty sure we only have one left in the theater. And it's In Turkey, we might have another one in Saudi Arabia. But what that does is it puts huge holes in our layered defense network, you know, and what we've been finding so far is that. And then also as you said, the FPS132 early early detection system that we have, which is very, you know, very important for like the, you know, for the, for the detecting launch point, you know, and allowing the rest of the network to sort of prepare itself for intercept. And I was talking to one of my buddies at the Pentagon the other day and, or no today, earlier today, and I asked him, I said, you know, at the beginning of this war I was watching all these videos and you know, there'd be missiles coming in and for every missile that was coming in, I'd see like two, three, maybe four interceptors go up. And now the last couple days, I'm seeing like 15 to 20 of them go up. I mean I'm seeing like 5 to 10 interceptors for every missile that's going up. And it's because we're not, we're not hitting, we're hitting you know, 10, 15% hit rate in some of the zones where we don't have like the multi system layered defense set up anymore because of the holes that have been poked by the destruction of some of the radars. You know, the, we've, like, we've got Aegis ships out there. The Aegis are not, ships are not really able to participate much. I mean the ones over in the east med, off coast of Israel, like between Cyprus and Israel, they can defend Israel a little bit, but that's all. I mean, you know, the, the, the, the radars on those Aegis ships, I, I don't think I'm supposed to say the exact range, but like it's not 10,000 miles, you know, it's not as might think. And so, you know, sometimes we have systems set up where like the whole point of like this integrated network system is that, yeah, you know, we have an early launch detection radar, it picks up the track, that information is passed on to the next stage, that picks it up in mid course. And by the time we get to the part where we want to fire at that missile, like one of our systems, we can draw fire control data from any number of the radars that are tracking it and sharing that information with each other. A lot of them are interoperable now. And when you start poking holes in that, you're relying on a single platform to do the whole job. I mean, it's just, it's Just not working. I mean, it's just not working. We're, we're hitting, you know, one or two out of every ten incoming missiles now. And people have pointed out that, you know, the, the rate of incoming has slowed down over the course of the war. And part of that is because we've degraded their launcher capability, you know, the number of launchers they have available. But a huge part of that is also just that. And this was again, I got told this from somebody who sits in the meetings, who knows there's not much left to shoot at at a lot of these bases that really is worth shooting at. I mean, especially our base in Kuwait and Bahrain. Those places are absolutely trash. Trash. Like I would be surprised if we even go back there, to be honest. The one in Qatar is a little bit different, you know, because, well, the, the, the, the Iranians seem to be taking it easy on the Qataris and the Saudis for political reasons, you know, but Bahrain and Kuwait, I mean those bases are trashed and the Iranians are shooting at them still sometimes, but not as much because there's just not as many valuable targets to waste missiles on and to expose yourself for over in Israel, I mean, which is where all the videos coming out with intercept. You notice this too is like at the beginning of the war you were seeing videos in, you know, in Dubai and Abu Dhabi and Qatar, all these other places where you'd see missiles coming in, drones coming in, interceptors going up, interceptors. You don't see any of those videos anymore. There's no more interceptors in those places for the most part. Like they have some where they can defend, like things that they think are going to hit like very, very valuable places. They have them very concentrated and put, you know, and put in specific places, but they are not even, they're letting just the slow flying shaheds come in and like hit buildings because it's just not worth spending a missile on it because they don't have that many left. It's only over in Israel that you really see a lot of that. Partly because, you know, we, we moved so much of our defense capability out of those Arab countries over to Israel. Something that, you know, you've been reading about our allies are not happy about. And you know, we're really in a place, I mean, we're in day six of the four, three or four day war against Iran. And it is very clear at this point that, you know, somebody convinced Trump that, you know, we'll knock out the leadership, the place will fall apart. Somebody else Will step like, whatever. That'll be that. And he apparently bought into it, I guess, but that they had absolutely no plan B and that they're just flipping through the Rolodex looking for something, throwing it against the wall, hoping it'll work. And I mean, if you think about, like, you know, like, there's a lot of, like, you have to learn how to like, read some of the stories in the media, like, read through between the lines to like, get it. Like, when they're talking about how, like us, you know, officials and CIA officers are meeting with the Kurds to discuss them, possibly like moving in, it's like, okay, so what you're actually admitting here is you didn't have that in place like, before the war started. Like, this is something that, like, you're scrambling to get into place now because things did not go the way you thought. You have no plan, you know, and of course the Kurds want nothing to do with it. The Baloches, the Balochis in the east, which I think a lot of people were kind of, you know, were. Were banking on. They want nothing to do with it. In fact, they're cutting videos, like, in support, support of the regime. The Azeris, you know, they're talking a lot of crap. The Azeris aren't going to do anything. Like, if they do, it's because they're being threatened in some profound way. Because, I mean, the Azeris, or I shouldn't say Azeris, there's a series in Iran and stuff. Azerbaijan, like, Azerbaijan the country, right? They get 80% of their export income and 60% of their government budget from one refinery complex that could be vaporized in no time at all by the Iranians.
- [11:17]
Kyle Anone
Okay?
- [11:17]
Daryl Cooper
And they're not going to do it. The Iranians ability to escalate against them, I mean, is, you know, to say they have escalation dominance is, is, is a huge understatement. I would be shocked if the, if Azerbaijan got involved. And so, you know, we're in this place now where, you know, our Arab allies are very upset with us because we did not, you know, we did not prepare them for this. We didn't let them know, like, exactly when this was coming and get themselves ready. And when it did come, we had moved a lot of our stuff. I mean, just imagine, like, how they're looking at things where we kick this thing off without giving them fair warning, like, ahead of time. And they look around and they realize we've evacuated a bunch of our bases. We're just going to let them get hit. And we've taken a lot of the air defense equipment with us and went and gone over to Israel with it. Just imagine, you know, you have to think, and I know that, like, the Gulf monarchies are venal, corrupt, you know, just apparently just lacking in all honor like regimes over there. But they have to be looking around and understanding, like these American bases that are here to defend us or whatever, those bases that we have in Arab countries exist to kill Muslims and defend Israel. That's what they're there for. And I don't know how they could possibly escape that conclusion anymore, you know, and so it's a disaster, dude. And we have no way to end this war that is going to be satisfactory to the people who started it. I mean, which is why I'm really worried about where this is going to go. Like, I think, I can't imagine Netanyahu and Trump just accepting the fact that, you know, they're not going to get their way in this and that they're going to have to leave with the Iranians still lobbing missiles and talking crap as they go. I can't imagine they're going to take that. So I don't know what they're going to do as they lash out, as reality starts to set in. But this is, this is, this is really bad. I mean, you saw the story today. NBC News was talking about, you know, the behind the scenes Trump is showing strong interest in putting ground troops in. It's like a good lord, like, just imagine how things are going if that's what we're talking about. But, but B, that, that's ridiculous. Like, and his generals have got to be telling him that there's absolutely no chance we're putting a ground force. I mean, you could do special operations here and there or something like that. But the idea of putting like a strong ground, we don't have the shipping capability to keep them supplied. We don't have any of the logistical infrastructure in place to do anything like that. I mean, like, we could not do Desert Storm right now if the fate of the nation depended on it. Like, we just don't have the capacity to do it. And, you know, what we're trying to do is the thing that, you know, air war theorists over the years have tried again and again to convince people and usually to great effect, unfortunate effect will work, which is just to terror bomb them into submission. And we've tried to, you know, in just so many wars since World War II, it never works. We're six days into this war. And you know, the Iranians just in their, just last night, their nighttime, they had another just mass, mass demonstration in like Tehran and several other cities. Hundreds of thousands of people in the street waving the flag, holding up pictures of the Ayatollah. I mean, these people, look, we, maybe we could break them if we went just World War II, scorched earth for the next five years. But that's what it would take. That's what it would take. Like, this is like. And so you start to ask yourself, well, if that's what it's going to take, if this regime is not going to buckle and the people are not going to turn on it. And in fact, we've solidified its legitimacy at least for the time being. You know, while this wars going on. Then, then what exactly is the plan here? You know, you, you really think, like, the Iranians are not going to come to the table and like, accept the deal that they were offering to us, you know, before this war started. They're not going to do that because they understand that, that, that they'll be back here again in six months. They'll be back here again in a year. There's just, they really clearly feel that they have to, they have to make it so that we don't ever want to do this again. And they seem very committed to that. And you know, we've got probably, it looks like a new supreme leader coming in whose family we just massacred in a surprise attack that in the middle of negotiations where, you know, to, to trick them into thinking we weren't going to attack. That morning, all the IDF guys, like, they went home for their like, normal Shabbat schedule and stuff, like faking a religious observance to like, fool the Iranians into thinking they weren't going to attack. And then we sneak attack them and massacre the whole family. Hit this girl's school. I mean, these people are not going to just break. They're not going to just break. And so then the question is, well, what are you going to do about it? How are you actually going to get them to stop flying drones at tankers going through the Strait of Hormuz? Because we don't have months, we don't have years, we probably don't have weeks before this starts to show major, major, major downstream effects. You know who else is like, this is not really hitting the news yet, but you're starting to see some statements. Our Asian allies are. They're so outraged, dude. Like, Japan gets like 95% of its energy resources from The Persian Gulf, like all of our Asian knows Singapore, you know, everybody over there and they're like, what is this? What the heck is going on here?
- [16:46]
Kyle Anone
You know, and so I don't know if you saw Daryl, but they're so short on interceptors, they're taking the Thaad system out of South Korea. And of course, we forced that on the South Koreans. We wanted it to be there for purposes of monitoring China and having advanced radars close to China. And that of course, you know, Beijing was upset at Seoul about that, and I think they took some trade repercussions out on them. But now, you know, it's supposed to be there to defend South Korea, but now as soon as we needed somewhere else, we just pick it up and move it. And the South Koreans are left saying, what the hell? So before we get too far away from everything else, I'm just wondering to the extent that you could say, do you have any idea if like the Pentagon even believes right now that Iran's missiles are going to run out before our interceptors do? I remember talking to you on my show, it was less than a year ago and we were discuss. It was before the war against Iran, June. We are discussing kind of interceptor math, right. The idea that you're firing between two and four interceptors at a single missile. So it just, it never seemed likely to me that the US Would be able to win a war against Iran in the way that we wanted to. Because the interceptor math didn't work.
- [18:05]
Daryl Cooper
Yeah, I mean, you know, they're banking on the hope that they can degrade their, this, not the missiles so much. They're not going to trip their missiles before we run out of interceptors, but that they can take out enough of their launchers to make it so that they can't, you know, they can't send many or, or any over. That does not. I mean, look, we've taken out a bunch of their launchers, but there are whole regions of the country where we know they have a bunch of them because they were using them in the last days of the 12 Day War that they hadn't even fired up yet. It, you know, out in the east, they have like, they have huge stores of missiles, launchers, everything out there that they haven't even used. They haven't even lit those things off. And so, you know, you're, you're talking about, look, it, it, it is not easy to. It would be, put it this way, it would be one thing if we had like complete and total air supremacy over the place you know, if we had, like Israel has in Gaza where you can just fly a biplane 100ft over and, you know, hopefully nobody shoots you with a rifle because that's the only threat that's there. But that is not the case and it's not going to be the case anytime soon just because, I mean, look, we, we're going to be able to fly our B2s in there. We're going to be able to fly in our F35s. Like, those things probably can defeat any of the radar systems that they have available in there right now. I don't think they have any S4 hundreds. If they do, it's just a couple. And, you know, they may have been destroyed for all I know. I don't know. But, but the idea of being able to just have aircraft that are going around scanning the area looking for mobile launchers and stuff, which is what you'd have to really be able to do, is just, it's just not feasible and it's not going to be for quite some time. I mean, the real issue that we're facing right now is, you know, we're on this ticking clock that apparently nobody planned for. I mean, there's like, we're finding out now that like several of our allies, their strategic petroleum reserves are only like a third of a third full because they just weren't planning for this to last. Like, it sounds insane because to me, and to most people that I talk to who like talk about this stuff in the way that I do, what's going on right now, seems like the obvious thing was going to happen, like, of course, like, what are you talking about? Like, for them to shut down. This is the other thing. Like for them to shut down the straight of Hormuz. They don't need, they don't need, you know, their intermediate range ballistic missiles for that. They don't even really need their drones for that. They can hide artillery units in the hills, like on the, around the coast there and disrupt shipping enough to make it so that, yeah, you could probably sneak through there a lot of the time, but your ships aren't going to get insured for trying to do it, you know, and it just, it's a trivial thing for them to lock down that strait. And Trump's talking about telling the navy to go up there and actually escort ships through, like through the strait if, if the chief of naval operations, he better refuse to do it and make him fire him because that is just taking a bunch of American sailors and sending them on a suicide mission. I mean, that would be insane. But, yeah, it's. I mean, my. The real question here is how does this. How does this end? Because you can tell people in the administration are now figuring out that we're not going to just topple this regime. It's not going to happen. Like, they're going to outlast our munition stockpiles like we just, we don't have. And even then, you know, I mean, it's like, you got to think about. I was talking about this with somebody earlier who's not a military guy, and he's like, well, couldn't we just, like, keep escalating until, you know, we just get them down to the point where, you know, the people that are left, like, they're so beaten down, they want to. They just want this to end. And I was like, look, man, it took Israel two, two and a half years to do what it did to Gaza. And they were able to fly over that place at will from airports that were 15 miles away, 20 miles away, and they could roll in and just destroy buildings with artillery units with, like, no resistance. And it took them two, two and a half years to do that to that place. Tehran itself is what's four or five times the size of Gaza City. It's way bigger, and they have way more places and all their capabilities are way more distributed. And so it's like, even if you were going to try to just terror bomb them into submission, we just don't have the munitions for that. We don't have the capability to do it. And so, you know, I'm at a real loss as far as, like, what people who are, like, people who are the actual planners of this, you know, not the political decision makers, the people who have to, like, who've spent, you know, 35 years in the army and Air Force and have to sit there and keep a straight face when Pete Hegseth gives a freaking press conference. Like, I, I just wonder what those guys are thinking right now, because we need a way out of this, you know, and obviously, like, you know, the only way that that's going to happen, I think, is if we can find a way to save some face. But, you know, the one thing, like, I'm really placing my hope on is the fact that Trump. One thing about him is he'll just say things, you know, just completely disconnected from reality. Doesn't matter, you know, and he may just decide at a certain point to say, yeah, we won and we had total victory, and the Iranians totally capitulated. In fact, they're going to give us all their oil and we're leaving and we leave and the Iranians are still shooting missiles and they're not giving us any oil and they're like, telling us to get lost, but whatever. Like, Trump doesn't care. Maybe that's like our best hope, you know, because it's. It. Yeah. I mean, at this point, I can tell you that this war will end when Iran says it ends. And that's not a place I don't think that the people who put us into this war expected or planned to be, you know, although I do know for an absolute fact that they were warned. You know, General Kane, he warned them that we, we cannot accomplish what they're wanting us to account what Trump was wanting us to accomplish with the forces we had in being and even, even just, you know, support. We, we couldn't with the rest of the, of, of the equipment and resources we had around the world without compromising so many other missions that we have. He was absolutely warned about that. And Cain was just ignored. He was just straight up ignored.
- [24:22]
Kyle Anone
So, and so while we're kind of there, Darrell, you know, like, it's, you're. We're in the White House a week ago, right? And it, it seems obvious that this was the scenario we see now, that nightmare we say the scenario we see now is going to play out. So why do it? Do you. You know, I'm sure you saw Marco Rubio saying the Israelis were going to attack Iran, Iran was going to respond by attacking Americans. And so essentially saying the Israelis force their hand. I guess, you know, if you're on ED's, the second most popular narrative is this is Operation Epstein's Fury, right? Donald Trump needs to get Epstein out of the headlines, or, you know, Netanyahu is using Epstein files to blackmail Donald Trump to get us into war. Why Iraq? You know, Trump, in the lead up to this was kept saying over and over again, right, that Iran just has to say they don't want a nuclear weapon. And then the next day, the Iranian foreign minister is out there saying five different times to five different outlets in English, we don't want a nuclear weapon. We're willing to deal on the nuclear issue. So what is it that actually convinced Donald Trump to sign off on this?
- [25:31]
Daryl Cooper
So part of it is what you said. The, the first thing you said with a nuclear twist. And I mentioned this, I think, last week, but I was talking to, you know, when Tucker Carlson went to meet with Trump, meet with Trump, the. What was like a Week and a half ago now, it seems like it was 10 years ago, but he met with him in the White House, had a one on one with him for a while. And I was talking to him like throughout the rest of that day just about what's going on. And I mean, yeah, so a huge part of it is that the Israelis were telling us we're going whether you go or not. And part of it maybe was that, I mean, you know, Rubio's excuse that all they would have started attacking all of our stuff if, you know, if that happened. So we had to get ahead of it. I mean, that seems like kind of a canard to me. Just because we could have told the Israelis, don't do it. And if you don't, if you do it, then you're on your own. And we could have called Iran and said, hey, this isn't us, you know, if we wanted to. But really, I think what it was, and this is what I heard before any of this kicked off, is that the Israelis, it, I don't know if they were saying this, but that the fear was, and the belief was that if they went this, they did this alone and we didn't go in with them, that we'd have already seen nuclear weapons used by now. And I mean, because look at it, I mean, is there any doubt at this point that Israel, I mean, they can't even, they, they have no hope whatsoever of taking Iran on one on one. Are you kidding? Like, take all of our forces, all the resources we have in the Arab allies, have like out of the picture and Israel be flattened by now. I mean, there's just no possibility they can handle Iran one on one. And so, you know, they may have been just sort of subtly, or not so subtly sending the message because I know for a fact this was the belief, like, you know, among a lot of the planners here that we're going to do this and hopefully you come and we won't have to get too crazy. You know, we can keep this conventional if you're there with us, but if not, you know, who knows what's going to happen? And so that's a, that's a big part of it, which, you know, on one hand, like I almost, I mean, you would, you would hope that you'd have a leadership structure, leadership cast in this country who could get Israel under control if that's the way they're behaving and that's what they're threatening. But A, Trump is not that guy and B, with Netanyahu, man, I don't know if it would work. I mean, he's getting old and he has a very messianic view of his mission in the world and his role in like, Jewish history and stuff. And so I don't know if it would work with him. I think he, they might have been thinking, like, we could tell him, no, have fun, go fight the Iranians yourself, and he might do it, you know, and so if that's the case, and you really think he's gonna, he's gonna light Iran up with nuclear weapons and get that whole ball rolling in that region and everything, it's kind of a rock and a hard place. But at the same time, if that's really what happened, and if that was the driving force, then one way or another, when this is all over with, I mean, you gotta just recognize that Israel is not only not an ally, like they're something close to an enemy if they're threatening that kind of thing to pull us into a war like this. And, you know, it's, it's, something's going to, something's going to change with respect to our relationship to Israel after this is all over. It's not going to change as long as Trump is in the White House. I mean, Trump is clearly just block stock owned, just completely owned by Tel Aviv. So. But in the future, I mean, this is something that's going to really break that relationship. And, you know, I guess that's a good thing.
- [29:04]
Kyle Anone
Yeah. You know, another thing on that point, Darrell, like the second or third day of this war, Donald Trump came out and said something along the lines of the people we hope to put in charge are dead. The second wave of people we hope to put in charge are dead. I'm pretty sure the third wave of people we hope to put in charge are dead. And pretty soon we're not going to know anybody in Iran. And from the reporting that I read, it seems like while the Americans targeted the IRGC military bases during the initial attack, it was the Israelis that killed the Ayatollah, killed the senior leadership, were actually targeting Iranian individuals. So I do wonder if Donald Trump had this notion that we are going to kill the Ayatollah, he had somebody he liked to put in charge and that this was going to turn out like Venezuela, like, you know, not quite as clean, a two to four day operation, but essentially a simple leadership change where he could declare victory. They'll sign a JCPOA style agreement and be done with it. And Netanyahu knew that was the route that Donald Trump Wanted to take and decided to kill anybody who could potentially quickly secede the ayatollah. And that now extends the war beyond the short window period. And so now the objective can no longer be what was initially supposed to be. And that's why we, unlike day four and five of the war, we have officials coming out and saying, oh, the goal is to destroy the Iranian navy. Nobody ever talked about the Iranian navy before. It seems like you know, a goal that they feel like they could easily accomplish. And it's now like a war without a real objective. And so I don't know if you have like kind of a take on that whole scenario.
- [30:48]
Daryl Cooper
Well, yeah, I mean that's, that's exactly what happened in, you know, in terms of we had the U. S and Israel going in with really two different missions and two different visions of what they were trying to accomplish here. I mean Israelis, make no mistake about it and it's been perfectly obvious for a long time, their goal is to turn Iran into Libya into Syria. That's what they want to see. They want to see civil war. They want to see devastation, atrocity, cannibalism. They just want Iran to be taken off the board, period, as any kind of a power whatsoever. Because they understand something like they understand these people better than we do. You know, the Israelis, for all their, you know, their, their leadership castes problems, I mean they do understand something about the people that live around them and they know perfectly well that whatever comes out of this war is not going to look kindly upon them. You know, go ahead, airdrop the shah back into Iran so he can get Benazir budoed on like day one when he arrives. I mean like they know that whatever comes out of, if there's an intact state, it doesn't matter if it's democratically elected, it doesn't matter what it is, is going to be hostile to Israel, period. They understand that. And so their, their goal is to destroy the state and make it a non viable society. A balkanized waring, you know, just collection of, of you know, principalities. We went in there very much with this stupid idea high on our own supply after Venezuela that we could pull something like that off. Which by itself is so stupid. Even if the Israelis didn't kill all the other leadership that might have gone in to replace anybody who thought that. Just think of like, is there any country in the world that would respond that way? I mean Venezuela is basically a failed state with like a cartel running it. So like, yeah, they're like, all right, get rid of this guy and like, we'll move on. This is not a failed state. This is a real state, you know, and is there any real state out there that if you roll in there and kill the leader and his Entire family, his 14 month old granddaughter, you know, and do. And bomb a girl's school for good measure while you're at it, on a day that is a, happens to be a holiday where you celebrate killing a bunch of their people. Like is there any group of people, is there any state on the planet that would be like, all right, fine, we bow down and you're the best. And like, you know, we're gonna, of course not. Anybody should understand that. And like it just baffles my mind that people have no concept of honor apparently, like in the west where that wouldn't be perfectly obvious to them. And so I mean, look, they can kill this next ayatollah. They can, they can keep doing it. I'm telling you right now, they cannot kill enough people to break them through terror and just through assassination. It's not going to happen. Like this is eventually going to have some kind of a negotiated ending or a negotiated ending like a real one where Iran has, you know, something to bring to the table and threaten with or it's going to leave with us being militarily defeated. I mean that's, that sounds crazy because they can't invade America or anything like that. And if we don't, you know, they can only hurt us to the extent that we get close to them. But I'm telling you right now, like over the last two days we have moved from we might not achieve our objectives to we might be looking at a military defeat. Okay? I mean like our Aegis ships, like they can't even, they can't even really get close enough on the Arabian seaside to participate, to participate in the fight, you know, and each one of them anyway has like 12 depending on the mission. Maybe for this mission they loaded them up a little more. Maybe they have 24 or so ballistic missile interceptors, SM3s on board, I mean, because you know, they carry Tomahawks and we've been firing those like crazy. They carry SM2s because you got to be able to shoot down cruise missiles and stuff too, you know, in drones. And then you got your SM3s, which are for long range ballistic missile shoot downs. They don't have that many of them, I mean, and then you fire off 12 or 24, whatever you got, which at the rate that we've been firing off interceptors is like after they fire three missiles at us, we've burned through our Interceptor magazine. And then guess what? You gotta haul your ass all the way back to like Diego Garcia to reload. And it takes a couple days. There's cranes and hard hats and like, people who like, it's a big industrial operation, you know, and, and so we just don't have, yeah, we, we don't have the resources in theater to accomplish what we wanted to accomplish unless it happened the way that we hoped on. Not when I say, I say the royal we here because, you know, as a veteran with knowing that there's, you know, that there's Americans out there, like American servicemen out there. Like, I don't want to say I'm rooting for Iran or something, but, man, like we're, you know, I mean, you just have to be honest about things sometimes. And like, look at this and say that we're just very obviously the bad guy here, you know, where you can say whatever you want about Iran. Oh, they, they've been at war with us for 47 years. What about the Marine barracks? What about, you know, the roadside bombs they're supposedly helping with in Iraq? Okay, let's add all of that together and tell me if all of it together is 1% of us giving chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein that he used to launch into the residential areas of their cities. I mean, what have they ever done that's even remotely close to them? Like, that's an insane war. Saddam Hussein, like this butcher, you're going to give him chemical weapons when you know that this is already. When we started giving them to him, it was already a war where they were just launching missiles into each other's, you know, cities, we knew what he was going to do with them. And so the idea that, like, we have more reason to be upset with them than they do with us is just completely insane and absurd. But, you know, our politics now has just gotten to a point where I can't remember who said, who put the tweet out. It's like this viral tweet that gets shared all over the place. Now he says like something about, like the way to understand the left, the right wing guy putting this out is to just understand. Their whole, their whole discourse is basically pretending not to understand things that they do understand until you get exasperated and quit the enraged, quit conversation. And so when you see, like today, you know, there was a representative or a, or, or a senator, I can't remember who it was exactly. But when we found out that the Russians are apparently providing intelligence and targeting information to the Iranians. He's like, how dare they? How could they do this? And I'm like, are you serious right now? Like, how can you say something like that? It's so infuriating because, like, you just want somebody, anybody, to get out in front of a podium and actually just talk like a person, like a human. Get out there and be like, look, here's the situation. Here's what we're trying to do, whatever. But to get out there after we've been, like, helping the Ukrainians kill Russians assassinate Russian civilians, you know, for years, and then to be like, I just can't believe they would do this. There must be consequences for this unacceptable, just unprecedented crime. You know, it's just totally insane. It's like Mark Levin posting a picture of one of those cluster munitions coming in from one of the ballistic missiles coming in over Tel Aviv and being like, war crime. You can't be serious right now. But I don't know. I don't. I honestly don't know if they are serious because my brain is like, they can't possibly be serious. Like, they have to be cynical, right? They have to be, because how could you just. I mean, these aren't people with, like, 32 IQs, presumably, like, Mark Levin's a moron and an emotionally incontinent person, but if you gave him an IQ test, he'd probably score average or better. I mean, he's. You know, and this is like, there's nobody that can't understand these things. And yet at the same time, when you see the fanaticism, I just really do wonder if that's true, if we're really using the same operating system to work through all this.
- [38:46]
Kyle Anone
Yeah. Quickly, I'll respond to the comments. I am not Scott Horton, and Scott Horton is alive. He is just traveling to New Hampshire to give a talk. You can buy his coffee. That's Scott Horton.org coffee. He really endorses the stuff. And he's up, like 18, 19 hours a day fighting the worst a. So I'm sure it's absolutely great. I'm Kyle Anslo. I'm filling in for Scott today. Daryl, is there anything else you. I did want to ask you because I thought you might have an interesting take on this. The destruction of the Iranian ship near Sri Lankan waters and apparently went to India, I believe, on, like, a military exercise. It was unarmed. It was, I think, more a ceremonial thing. And the US just blew it up. And, you know, some people will kind of say, you know, it's war, it was a warship. And now other people point out that even if it was war, it was a warship, it was unarmed. And so, you know, from just a moral standard, you, it would be better to intercept it and capture it. But then also if you intercept it and capture it, you now have leverage or I POWs that you could trade. If there's ever an American pilot captured in Iran, you have an Iranian warship. When you install a new government that you could get back to that country. So they have some kind of military vessel. So I'm just wondering what you think about that.
- [40:13]
Daryl Cooper
You know, the navy is, was traditionally, it was always the, the branch of the military that really clung the most to tradition because it was always the most aristocratic branch. You know, like traditionally, like up until really not that long ago, like, you know, the British Navy was based on the people who were in the navy were for the M.O. they were all aristocratic officers and like the crew, the people who did all the jobs on the ships and stuff, they were people you recruited like right before you went out. Basically a lot of them were experienced and you'd see them again and again, but they weren't like permanent members of the Navy or something. This is like very aristocratic, tradition bound institution. And so things, you know, when, when we have, when we have things that are, you know, not, not even centuries, millennia old laws of naval warfare, it's something that until very recently we took seriously and I mean, we charged a German admiral at Nuremberg for instructing his, his captains, his ship captains not to pick up survivors after sinking a ship. And you know, it's, it's infuriating to me as a former navy guy, I can tell you that because like it was unarmed and people say, well, how do we, how are we supposed to know that? All we knew because we were supposed to be in that exercise in India with them until like just a few days before. And we knew that the rules like to go to that thing, your ship had to be complete, all its magazines had to be completely empty. So we knew, we knew it was unarmed. We could have interned it. We could have just, you know, told it. Any number of things we could have done. They did this. This is what kills me the most, man. Like, is like just the way, the cavalier way that all this is being handled. They did this so they'd have a cool video to post on Twitter of a submarine shooting a thing. Like that's why they did that. And there's no, there was no other reason to do it. I mean, that thing was never going to make its way back to Iran. You know, in, in, during. During this war. It could have easily been interned. It could have easily been turned around. And like, there's just there. There is no, absolutely no excuse for it. And one of the things. This is like, the thing that absolutely kills me. And I know I'm living in the past here, you know, ever Since World War I, really, that's when it started. It really hadn't, like, gotten too out of hand, but like, with the advent of heavy artillery as like, the main battlefield weapon, you know, any kind of like these standoff weapons where it's like, you know, you're killing people at a distance where they're not really able. The people aren't able to do anything back to you, you know, and then especially, of course, when air warfare, now drone warfare became, you know, predominant on the battlefield, it just stripped any semblance of honor out of warfare. I mean, it just doesn't exist anymore. You know, we. You start a war in the middle of negotiations for the second time in less than a year, and you start it by just assassinating, like, everybody in the government, like, if they're a bunch of Al Qaeda leaders or something like that. I mean, this is just something that didn't. And people think, oh, that's war. That's just war as hell. That's how it's always been. No, it's not. Okay, that is. No, that is not true. Like, that is not what the Western way of war has. Has been. You know, you have your, like, certain wars that go off the rails, like the thirty Years War. And everybody looks at that and says, wow, that got really bad. That was terrible. We shouldn't do that again. And guess what? For 250 years, it didn't happen again. You know, wars were fought with a semblance of. Of honor, of concern for the. For the enemy, treatment of prisoners. All of these things came. They were. They were considered, you know, close to. Close to sacred. And in the 20th century, obviously that, you know, was. Was degrading rapidly on all sides with the advent of air power. But now to do it in a way where, you know, this is not a. I mean, this isn't even a war of choice for us. This is a war of, like, whim. You know, like, he's like, ah, we could do it or we couldn't like it. Nothing would be different if we did or didn't do it. But we're just going to decide to do it and we're going to do it in this most Craven way imaginable to a people, by the way, who that stuff still matters to. You know, like, you go over there and you talk to people in the Middle east and like, don't get me wrong, like, you know, the countries and culture over there have their problems like anybody else, I guess, but like, but they understand, like, and are, and are deeply offended by those kinds of breaches of honor, you know, and. And it's the kind of thing that steals them for a long fight. And you're really seeing that. I mean, you're seeing Iranians, like, from all cross sections of society, including people who were literally out at the protest just a month ago, who are out there. They're not saying, I love the regime, I missed the ayatollah, or whatever, but they're 100% behind the state and they're 100% against us and against the Israelis and, and they should be because, you know, we're the villain in this story, dude. Like, and I hate to say that, but because my buddies who were out on those ships, because I do have a few of them, the guys who are, you know, who are out there, like, taking fire. You know, I see people every once in a while, especially like in the sort of. In the anti war libertarian circles, like, oh, they're just as complicit. They could resign, quit at any time, blah, blah, blah. It's like, yeah, okay, fine, but like, you know, you're asking a lot for a person to, you know, sort of just at the spur of the moment, go against a lifetime, a lifetime of indoctrination regarding, like, what's honorable and what's good and what's expected of him as a good citizen and, and what's expected of him as, you know, as a comrade to the guy who's next to him, you know, like, he's not going to abandon those guys. You can, you can say that all you want. It's not easy to do. I feel bad for those guys and I feel really bad that they're being put out there and made to do things and put their lives on the line for something that is just inherently dishonorable. I mean, it's just absolutely dishonorable, and it really just disgusts me. And that submarine shoot of that frigate, I mean, that's just icing on the cake, you know, it's just. Yeah, it's horrible, man. It's. It's freaking horrible.
- [46:18]
Kyle Anone
Yeah, Darrell, I mean, anything else that you really wanted to hit on? If not, I think there's some questions in the super Chats that I could. I don't know how to pull them up exactly, but I certainly could ask, you know, get your thoughts on some things.
- [46:31]
Daryl Cooper
Yeah, let's. Let's see here. I think we can just click on them here. All right, we got Emily Mower saying. Really glad to hear Daryl rant about honor and warfare. I am sick of hearing people say that international law is only for losers. Yeah, look, this is like. It's really. It really reflects, like, the. The degradation of our culture that has taken place especially, like, really accelerated during the war on terror, you know, like, I think, honestly, like it. I really think today that if we had, like, an Abu or a Me Lai massacre or some like thing, that in the past, when the truth really did come out, we felt contrition for, I don't. I think a good number. You'd have two groups of people. You'd have people like me who are just outraged by it. You want to overthrow the government for it, you know, but then you'd have the other half the country or whatever. However many people who would just be saying, like, yeah, fafo, you know, that's war. War is hell. Suck a. And that really, like, you know, that is not a shift that takes place in a society without consequence for all of us, you know, including those of us who don't necessarily think that way, but still have to live in that culture. You know, when it degrades like that, it really does damage to our souls in our minds, you know, and it's sad, you know, but it really does seem like it's not something that's going to change until. Until someone forces us to change it, you know, I mean, some of these videos that you see coming out of them, like, you know, like an NFL player, like, running at another guy, and as he crashes into him, boom. Like a building explodes. It shows one of the. It's just so disgusting, you know, and you would just wish. And it was not that long ago, by the way, including, like, Obama and Bush administrations who they did a million, like, horrible things, but they weren't out there, like, just openly gloating and treating like a football game. The fact that they're out there sending people to their deaths and. And making and giving orders that, you know, are resulting in the deaths of 160 little girls or whatever, that's something that, like, at least mattered a little bit, you know, or at least they. Or at least they felt like they had to put on a show that it mattered to them because it mattered a little bit to us. You know, and they don't have to anymore, because at least the base that is behind this administration now, that's still behind them. Now they're really proving Trump correct when he said I could shoot somebody on camera on Fifth Avenue and my people would still support me. This is just a version of that. I mean, it really is. I mean, he's proving that to be true. And it was not a compliment on the loyalty of his followers when he said that. It was contempt for his followers, and it was deserved contempt.
- [49:16]
Kyle Anone
Daryl, the next one. Quill Mara, rap our wap. Daryl, during your time in the military, how much evangelical religious fervor was present amongst the higher ups then verse current reporting? I'm guessing you've seen the idea that, you know, Trump is setting up the Armageddon rapture happening. And I, I mean, I, this is something I've been curious about all week. To ask you, actually, is just how much do you think this is? You know, we hear from. It's the Iranians who are religious extremists and relate waging a religious war. It sure seems more to me the religious war is being waged Washington and Tel Aviv by both, you know, Christian Zionists and Jewish Zionists.
- [49:59]
Daryl Cooper
I can say, like, as far as the first part of the question, that I never, I never saw anything like that when I was, when I was in. I mean, it's not like you wouldn't necessarily, like, meet a person that if you started talking to them about religion or whatever, they'd maybe that you find out that that's what they are. But it was not anything that was, like, in the air, like, at all. And so that's very interesting. I wonder if it has something to do with, you know, the, just the fact that, you know, over the last, over the last year since Trump took over, you know, we've had this big push to purge all these institutions, you know, to cut back the administrative state and get rid of all the DEI stuff that, you know, that everybody hates so much. And I really kind of wonder if under the COVID of that, if they've been elevating people who are just real fanatics that can be counted on, like, in a, you know, in a time of when, when, when they have to do things that are wildly unpopular, you know, like, Mike Huckabee does not care if he's the only person in America who thinks that, like, you know, we have to serve Israel. He does not care. That's his religion and he means it, you know, and so there might be a lot more of Those people now, um, as far as, like, I mean, look, I'll put it this way. Like, I would, I would have been the type of person who thought, no, come on. But then, like, I was thinking about it and I actually said this to Tucker when we were talking the other day. I was like, you know, in retrospect, it's really not that far, like far fetched to think that a guy whose entire life is built around putting his name on big real estate developments would want his name, could be convinced by his chabad son in law, you know, and close family friend of Benjamin Netanyahu, that the thing that he should really do that'll keep his name, you know, in lights for not a century, but for thousands of years, is attach his name to the greatest real estate project of all. You know, I could see Trump being convinced of that, honestly, like, so who knows? I mean, if that's the case, dude, if they like, if they go that direction, like, you know, if something happens to that mosque in Jerusalem, it's going to be, I mean, uncontained. What happens after that will be uncontained. And the worst part about it is that we're going to be on the side of Satan if it does. And that just absolutely kills me.
- [52:19]
Kyle Anone
The next one. Can you ask Scotty for me, where what were Putin's other options? I guess they're asking about, you know, Scott in his book Provote argues that Putin had other options in early 2022 rather than invading Ukraine. You know, look, I think Scott is probably best to answer for himself here. He has a whole section on his book on it. If you go to the Sky Horton show archives, there's an interview probably from two years ago with Aaron Mate, where the two of them go over this. But in short, you know, kind to bullet pointed. Scott says there's international agreements that Putin could have either withdrawn from or threatened to withdraw from. There were international bodies from the Soviet era or after the fall that he could have really tried to use to get his point across. I think the bigger and stronger point that Scott makes is that Putin could have turned off the flow of gas and oil to Europe and really tried to make his point by playing with the economic markets. But if you ask the question again when Scott's on the show, I'm sure he would give a much more thorough answer than I did there. Daryl, anything to add on that?
- [53:31]
Daryl Cooper
Just, you know, I, I, I mean, Scott's got good points, of course, he always does. I'm, but I've always been skeptical of that. Particular, like, what do you want to say? Caveat. We know when you say we provoke the war, but Putin, blah, blah, blah, it's kind of. It's almost like a. It's almost like a, like a necessary caveat for somebody who's very, like, anti war to say because war. He did invade the country and we're against war. So. But honestly, man, I mean, look, you're seeing, like, you've seen for the last several years that that Ukrainian military that we built up since 2014 is no freaking joke. I mean, it's broken down and, you know, and in rough shape now. That was a. That was a powerful, powerful military that they were facing. And he's looking at this thing building up on the other side of his border. And I mean, it was obvious. And it became obvious to them that, excuse me, that, you know, what we were doing was saying, oh, no, we're not putting them in NATO right now. Just relax, relax. But we are. But we're not gonna put them in NATO or you don't have to worry. But we are. You know, and then at a certain point, they were going to have built that place up so much, you know, that it would have been too costly for the Russians to ever do anything about it. And then we'd have been like, oh, I guess they're in NATO, sorry. And he saw that. And every. Everybody who was even a reason, halfway reasonable person saw that that's what. What was going on. And when you, when, when you add to that the fact that, you know, the Ukrainian, I should say the Kiev government, you know, they had been killing people in the East, I mean, you have to think about the, you know what? We're 57 minutes into this. I'll tell you what, I'll get into this with Scott again next week because I do want to talk about this, actually, but that's a good question.
- [55:15]
Kyle Anone
I could. Can't pass up on this one. Condoleezza Rice at the White House. Thoughts.
- [55:22]
Daryl Cooper
That's my thought.
- [55:24]
Kyle Anone
And then the, the other one, Daryl, that I definitely want to get your take on thoughts on Iran's claims of 800 deceased. A lot of other people in the chat. And, you know, I'm guessing that the US isn't covering up the death of 800 soldiers in the Middle east right now. But, you know, if it's. Who doesn't. That certainly seems potentially believable to me.
- [55:47]
Daryl Cooper
Yeah, I, I would say this. The Iranians, they don't know those numbers. You know, they're making those up in terms like, you Know, maybe they estimated or whatever, but they don't, they don't know. I mean, they're, you know, a lot of them, they're putting out the numbers like just shortly after the strike that, you know, supposedly killed them. And so they don't have that information. I will say that I saw today news that our big military hospital that we have in Germany, biggest, the US military hospital outside the continental United States has suspended all labor natal delivery, just anything having to do with like little babies services for indefinitely so that they can focus on their quote unquote primary mission of processing casualties from the Iran war. So doesn't seem like something that you're going to be doing if you've got six dead and, you know, a dozen or two wounded. It, it does seem like the, I mean, look, I've seen, I've seen some of the satellite photos of these bases and these are bases that I've spent a lot of time at, especially the one in Bahrain. I've been there. I've probably spent collectively like, you know, probably four or five months on that base. I know that base. I know where everything is. And the, the places that I, I look at these photos on and see destroyed. I mean, it's possible we just evacuated those places completely, I guess, but anything short of that, I mean there's just, just don't be surprised if you start seeing more roll in because you're right, they can't hide 800 casualties. I mean, they wouldn't even, they wouldn't even bother trying to do that. They might slow roll them though, you know, a little bit for, you know, just a little bit to see. Especially when they're in a war where like, they keep, they keep telling themselves, like, I don't think that when they come out and they say, you know, this is going to be four days long, we'll be done, be wrapped up, we'll be home partying with the champagne. Maybe two weeks. Yeah, maybe four weeks. Like, I don't think that. I think that's them like changing their own opinions in real time. Like, I don't think they're like, all right, so first we're gonna tell them four days and then we're, I don't think they're doing that. I think that they're changing their own opinion real time as things don't work out the way that they want them to. And when they're in that mode where they keep telling themselves, like, we just need one more night of heavy bombing, we just got to take out this guy, this Guy and this guy, because they're the glue that's holding it together right now. And so, you know, just slow roll the casualty numbers and the damage assessments for a few more days, you know, A few more days. I could see that totally being the case. That's. That kind of thing has happened before.
- [58:17]
Kyle Anone
So just real quick, do, you know, like, soldiers in the Middle east right now, do they, like, have their cell phones? I know, like, you know, during a normal deployment, they would. And so I guess one of the things that I had considered is if. If there were more than maybe a few dozen US Casualties, of course it would just be hard to hide because people would be. Be talking, right?
- [58:40]
Daryl Cooper
Yeah. Yeah, it would be hard. Speaking of cell phones, though, by the way, one of the things that, you know, this was going around on X maybe three, four days ago, and I can tell you for a fact that it was true that CENTCOM sent out a notice to all of our personnel in the theater to turn off the location services on their cell phones and to delete, like, several apps. Uber was one of them, a couple other apps, and it was because the Iranians were. Were using those. They were using that to target our personnel. It's a pretty sophisticated capability. You know, I don't know if they were getting help from the Russians or anybody else with that, but I wouldn't surprise me. Persians are smart people. But yeah, to your question, though. Yeah. I mean, you can't. It's not something that you could hide very long, for sure.
- [59:27]
Kyle Anone
All right, Daryl, should we get out here? We're at an hour now.
- [59:31]
Daryl Cooper
Yeah. Is there any. Let's see. Let me. Let's do a couple more of these super chats real quick. I don't want to keep you all day, Kyle, but.
- [59:37]
Kyle Anone
No, I'm good to go. As long as you want to, Daryl.
- [59:40]
Daryl Cooper
Yeah. Tucker Fleming. Question for Daryl. If the situation continues to degrade across the board in the U.S. yeah. There you go. Would you consider moving out? No. Never. I would never move out of the US Ever.
- [59:52]
Kyle Anone
You're in a good spot if. If, you know, things in the US Get a little less than desired.
- [59:57]
Daryl Cooper
First of all, I have to contend with the fact that I'm probably not welcome in a lot of European countries or Canada. So there is that little issue. But no, I. This country could fall apart and be ruled by the Antichrist, and I would stay here and. And do my best under it. Under no circumstances would I.
- [60:13]
Kyle Anone
Would I leave the US what about this one? Worried about Israel rebuilding the temple? I. I somewhat at Least.
- [60:22]
Daryl Cooper
I mean, the thing about it is, like, you don't need it to be, like, official state policy that this is what we're doing. You just need some crazy group of dudes who, like, go blow up that mosque, you know, with, like, enough, like, you know, enough extremists in the security services to fall asleep on watch, like the Epstein Guards did while it happens. And, you know, they go do something like that. And then once the fire is lit, I mean, the fire's lit. And so I'm worried about that for sure. I mean, that would be absolute chaos, dude. I mean, for real chaos,
- [61:00]
Kyle Anone
we got one here, brand new one. Daryl, what's your P prediction? Length, more countries, boots on the ground, newts used. We've covered a lot of that through here. But I am. You know, one thing we haven't touched on, Daryl, is we've seen a lot of fighting in Lebanon. Now Israel is demanding all Lebanese north of the Latani River. They're bombing the southern suburbs of Beirut that are mostly Shia. I saw the PMF in Iraq. That's the Shia militias of Iraq that were, of course, formed under the Iranian Quds Force, saying that they're willing to start striking US positions around the Middle east in support of the Lebanon. And also, I mean, again, my read isn't necessarily that the Iraqi Kurds are signing up to fight in Iran, but if they would, I could see a situation where the Iraqi Shia militias are then fighting against the Iraqi Kurds. And so, I mean, do you see, like, wars breaking out kind of across the Middle east that are related to the war in Iran, but. Or even uprising in Bahrain? You know, in all the videos of Bahrain, I see a lot of people cheering and happy that the US bases or even the hotels are burning.
- [62:16]
Daryl Cooper
Yeah, I was in Bahrain during the Arab Spring and, you know, I had to go from Manama to the Jafar base a few times, and one of the times my taxicab ended up having, you know, took a wrong turn and ended up down a street where there's riot police and people going crazy and banging on the windows and stuff and, you know, tear gas coming through the vents into the car. That. That's as far as it went. I don't have any more exciting story than that, but, like, you know, yeah, that's a majority Shia island with a ruling clique that's Sunni. That is not popular. You know, back. This is, like, back during the Arab Spring, you know, every time Assad killed a, you know, a rioter or a militant, you heard about it. On front page the next day on the New York Times. Dude, the Saudis sent in forces and massacred people on Bahrain. And you heard nothing about that unless you were like on antiwar.com or something. I mean, so. So, yeah, they're not popular. That's very possible. And not only that, one of the reasons Saudi Arabia is very reticent about getting too involved with this is, you know, they have not a Shia majority by any means, but in the region where the, basically all of their oil is, that is a Shia majority area. And so they got those problems to deal with. I mean, one of the things, too, that this is a, a little bit different topic, I guess, but they talk about other groups getting involved. I mean, one of the things that tells me that the Iranians do not feel desperate by any means right now is the Houthis are still keeping their pistol in the holster. You know, the Houthis could be causing serious problems right now. And they're not. They're there, they're ready. They're, you know, letting everybody know that they're. That they're ready, but they're not involved.
- [63:54]
Kyle Anone
Well, did you see that the. I think it was the Ford left the Eastern Mediterranean and his head went through the Suez Canal, presumably south through the Red Sea and off to maybe escort vessels through the Strait of Hormuz is on the speculation. But doesn't that mean that aircraft carrier then has to go off the coast of Yemen? That. That certainly seems like a potential for Ansar Allah to find themselves involved in this conflict.
- [64:21]
Daryl Cooper
Yeah, we're gonna have to see what happens with that because, I mean, I think at this point, probably they're starting to make their way through the Red Sea. Takes a while to get through the canal. But, I mean, look, they could have, they could have hit that thing in the canal if they wanted to. They're perfectly capable of targeting a stationary target with all its radars turned off in the canal. They'd piss off the Egyptians and, like, cause a lot of problems. And so I understand why they didn't do it, but they could have. And, yeah, it's gonna have to go right, right by their area. And, man, like, I swear, if something like that happens, you know, if they hit one of our carriers, I mean, there's just no question that Trump is going to try to use that to escalate to like, 11. You know, there's no chance we're going to walk, you know, just crawl away with our tail between our legs if that happens. And so I really hope that doesn't
- [65:05]
Kyle Anone
happen at the same time. If that did happen, I mean, that would really start to limit America's options in the region. Right. To lose the. The largest aircraft carrier we haven't. And why I say lose, I. I think, you know, the more likely scenario would be, like, one of their drones causes enough damage to the flight deck or some other, you know, lift system launch system where it needs to return to port to get repaired, and it's out of commission for a couple months. And now you have one aircraft carrier strike group in the region. And I. I mean, obviously that's not enough for the fight at hand. And now you're dealing with Yemen on top of Iran.
- [65:47]
Daryl Cooper
Yeah, I mean, and, you know, we have 11 carrier strike groups, but, you know, that's not as awesome as it seems. I mean, those are. You know, I think. I think currently, like, right now, we have three that we can put to sea. We've got a couple others that are in dry dock right now that we could rush out and we could just forego all of their standard. It's usually like six months of sea trials after you get out of dry dock, like, going out and doing. We could skip all of that and just hope for the best, you know, try to do some of the more important ones as it makes its way across the Atlantic or something. But. But yeah, I mean, it's. We, we just. People think that we have infinite resources and we don't. You know, and it's not even a money problem. People say, oh, you know, who cares? Okay, they're just going to request another 50 billion, another 100 billion. Like, money doesn't matter apparently, anymore. And, yeah, that's true enough. But like, I was explaining this to my wife. We were talking about this earlier when they were talking about how the defense contractors have agreed to quadruple their production lines, like, to build, like, various missiles that were running low on. It's like, you could say that all they want. Like, it's not something you can just snap your fingers and do. Like, you can't just build another factory. And if you could. It's not as if we have a bunch of, like, heads of engineering departments who happen to be intimately familiar with these very specific, detailed systems just sitting around unemployed. You know, we don't have the skilled workers. We don't have the engineers. We don't have. All of that takes a lot of time to set up. And so, you know, this is like back During World War II, we could tell General Motors and Ford, hey, you're making tanks now. Because if you can make a car, you can make a World War II tank. That's not the case today. That's not how it works. This stuff is super highly specialized. We cannot just tell like, you know, like other companies, like start doing X, Y or Z. We can't just ramp up the industrial process like as much and as quickly as we want to because we just don't have the educational pipeline in place. We just don't have the personnel. And so, you know, that's, that's a, yeah, that's a pipe dream. We just, we don't have infinite resources. You know, these things are expensive. They take a lot of time to build. This is, this is really, I mean this is something that a lot of people in the military logistics side or procurement side, which I spent a couple years and I stood up the procurement office at the installation where, where I worked several years ago. And so I didn't know anything about procurement, but I learned a lot about it then because I had to set up and leave the office for a little while. And one of the things that people complain about, people who are in the know, is that the incentive structure of our procurement process, meaning like dealing with the defense contractors, what systems are we going to develop, which ones are we going to keep and expand and which ones are we going to sideline? It's, there's, there's a couple different reasons for it, but like, you know, it's very, very much biased toward. We want like super expensive, super complicated, like big systems that require decades long commitments. Like a good example of one that is good, the Aegis weapon system. That's a great platform. Like the destroyers that have that, those are great platforms for a lot of different missions and fine, but then you end up with things like the F35, you know, and getting rid of the A10, which is a beautiful aircraft. Everybody loves the A10 except for like Air Force pilots who, you know, they want all their planes to look like Ferraris. And so it's, you know, not cool. But like there's a, there's a huge problem with that because it makes it so that our supply chain is extremely fragile. It relies on so many different inputs. I mean, you need microchips, you need fiber opt. You need just so much stuff. And then you need a ton of super high, not only highly skilled, but people who are very specifically trained. Like in these very specific systems, you can't just go take some random electrical engineer and plug them into a new weapons production plant and be like, you know, just get, get Going, it just doesn't work like that, you know, and so, yeah, I mean, it's. Yeah, we just don't have the resources to. To do a lot of the things that people are fantasizing about.
- [69:47]
Kyle Anone
Yeah. And things in this country are not built quickly right now. You know, it's not Pre World War II where, like, factories go up and things start coming out. You know, there are years of permitting processes and bureaucracy. And look, that's a part of the whole system where everybody along the line is getting their cut. You know, they're looking the other way on the zoning stuff and all this. So it adds time. So, yeah, they were trying to open up new factories. It's. It's not going to go quick. And talking about weapon systems, I'm always reminded of the Zoomwalk class destroyer. They built an entire just class of destroyer that lapped a main gun and they couldn't even use it as a rescue operation ship because it did not fare well in rough water.
- [70:30]
Daryl Cooper
So, yeah, it didn't do justice to admirals and wall. That was unfortunate. I mean, and I saw somebody say that F35 is not a great example because it's pretty good airplane. The F35 is a great airplane now, but for what we paid for it, I mean, that was not money well spent. Like, we had a lot of other platforms already in existence that we could have developed more and expanded on. And you know, the fact that we built that thing and like, cut the F22 from the program is just. That's just madness. You know, it's just. It was not money well spent, but it is a good aircraft now.
- [71:03]
Kyle Anone
Yeah, I think there just one more super chat here, Darren know if you know who they're talking about here, but have you seen the Chinese professor on breaking points? He said that Iran will target desalinization plants in the Gulf states. And that certainly seems like it would be a major escalation and I mean, really make a point. Although that might do some, like, irreparable damage with, with the Gulf monarchies, because these are countries that don't have a lot of water. Right. I. I mean, do you think Iran would take that step?
- [71:37]
Daryl Cooper
Not against the Gulf countries. Unless the Gulf countries buckle under our pressure and, like, get really heavily directly involved. And even then, like. But I mean, look, Israel relies on desalination for most water, and Iran could have taken those plants out on day one if they wanted to. Clearly, they're keeping that in their pocket as a potential escalation, you know, that, that they could resort to under, you know, extreme circumstances. But it's been, it's, it's, it's not that they've been firing missiles at their plant, the desalination plants in Israel and missing, they just haven't been doing it. It's like they haven't fired at Demona yet, the nuclear plant. So, you know, they seem to be keeping that in their back pocket and I'm glad they are. That's, you know, I mean one, one with the, with regard to the Gulf states, like, it does seem like the Iranians are trying to sort of like, sort of like Putin has been doing with Europe in a way. Like keeping in mind the fact that this is going to end one day and you got to live next to these people and like leave some semblance of a bridge still there that you can like, you know, communicate across. And, and so they've been trying to do that. I think that's very obvious. They've been very diplomatic in like their statements regarding the Gulf states. I read today that the Saudis and the Iranians are apparently having one on one like talks directly. And so, but yeah, even with Israel, I mean, you know, Israel's got critical infrastructure that the Iranians have not been targeting. And you have to only assume, I mean, just we've seen like if you see some of the sat photos of some of our installations in Jordan, in Bahrain, some of these other places, you know, you'll see like there's this, there's this one satellite photo where there's a bunch, there's, there's a couple radomes. Like these are the, those are the white domes. You see, they're like protective covers over certain radar systems that we have and we have a couple of them. Like they're sort of here, here, here, here and there's a before and after picture in the satellite photo. And those missiles hit here, here, here and here. They didn't carpet bomb the whole area, they didn't saturate it. They hit those specific things. It's not a targeting issue, it's a matter of choice that they haven't targeted those things. And you know, you hope it doesn't come to that. I mean, because again, the real danger here, like the real real danger is that Israel feels back into a corner and they resort to nuclear weapons. That's like this, that's this, that's the worst case scenario here. Not only because, you know, God knows how many people would get killed, but just the down. I mean, what you'd see is the next day or that night, Turkey would test a nuclear weapon. You would start to see like everybody like starting to realize that, that they need that for their own survival. And so hopefully that doesn't happen for a million different reasons. And I think that Iran is maybe cognizant of the fact that they're dealing with a bunch of psychopaths in Tel Aviv who if they do start hitting their nuclear plants and their water desalination plants, they might do something like that.
- [74:38]
Kyle Anone
Absolutely. All right, Darrell, I think that's the super chats. Just before we get out of here, I'll mention that I host the Kyle Lanslone Show. Daryl Cooper was one of my very early guests on the show. It's been about a year since he's been on, but maybe I'll try to wrangle him back on the show again soon. It'd be great to, you know, get your thoughts on this as it all involves evolves and of course, Daryl, the chat is on fire. They want to know when they're going to get another episode of the, your, your new series. Of course, I'm waiting on it too. I tend to do home renovation projects while listening to it. I think the Israel Palestine series I listened to twice while I did my kitchen. So my wife will also be happy when the show drops. So when is it, Darrell?
- [75:23]
Daryl Cooper
So I'll just tell you where I'm at. I will admit that over the last six days or so I have been, you know, a little more distracted by all the doom scrolling with this, with this war. But I have been working on it this week though as well. So I'm, I'm writing it right now. I'm at the final stage of it, right. And I've been, I've worked my way through. So this episode, for all you insiders now you're going to know is going to deal with period from right after the First World War up through all the revolutions that take place in eastern Central Europe. And just, you know, a lot about the German Fry Corps and a lot of the people who are going to play major roles like later on in the chaos that they were experiencing after the war, many of them as like a very formative experience, you know, because they were, a lot of these guys were, a lot of these like Fry Corps guys were 17 years old when the war ended in 1918. And then they went and spent a couple years fighting a bunch of revolutionaries in the Fry Corps in the Baltics or in Russia in Berlin. And so this is very formative for them. I've gotten through the first three sections of that. I'm writing the section about the Russian Revolution right now to kind of, you know, it's. It's not going to be like, obviously like a full history of the Russian Revolution. It's going to be more like just describing the chaos that was taking place there at the time. Because that was the real fear that everybody in the. In Germany and the other countries were really concerned with, is that's we're going to be like that if we don't get things together, you know. And so that's what I'm working on now. I would say I. I think I can have this thing done in, like, two weeks. That's my goal. That's what I told my wife earlier. So I think I can pull that off. Of course, I say that it's going to be three weeks, but, like, but that's not bad. That's what I'm going to shoot for. I'm. I'm pushing really hard to get this done.
- [77:07]
Kyle Anone
All right, well, as long as it's not like the Trump administration here and you're talking about September or something like that, we'll be all right. Darryl. All right, I'm play the outro and get us off.
- [77:19]
Daryl Cooper
This has been Provoked with Daryl Cooper and Scott Horton. Be sure to like and subscribe to help us beat the propaganda algorithm. Go follow at ProvokedShow on X and YouTube and tune in next time for more Provoked. It.