2/27/26 Larry Johnson Predicts Trump’s War on Iran and Exposes the Lies It’s Built On

Summary

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Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews

Episode: 2/27/26 Larry Johnson Predicts Trump’s War on Iran and Exposes the Lies It’s Built On

Guest: Larry Johnson (Former CIA Analyst, Sonar21.com)

Date Recorded: February 27, 2026
Host: Scott Horton
Summary Timestamped and Themed

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Episode Overview

This episode features Scott Horton interviewing former CIA analyst Larry Johnson about the escalating U.S.-Iran tensions under Donald Trump. Johnson predicts an imminent war with Iran, systematically debunks prevailing pro-war narratives, and explores the geopolitical, historical, and internal politics shaping current events. The conversation draws heavy parallels between the manufacturing of the Iraq War and the present drive to conflict with Iran, with extensive discussion of regime change narratives, propaganda, and the shifting international order.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Setting the Stage: War Drums & Media Narratives

[00:24] – [01:46]

• Scott Horton opens by highlighting the mixed signals and impending threat of bombing Iran.
• Johnson sees a repeat ("deja vu all over again") of previous Middle East interventions, predicting that diplomatic talk is merely pretext for military action.

“Trump can’t take yes for an answer.”
— Larry Johnson [02:10]

The Nuclear Pretext & Regime Change Agenda

[01:46] – [03:35]

• Johnson argues the public justification (Iranian nuclear weapons) is a smokescreen; the U.S. government continually ignores Iran’s repeated commitments to not seek nuclear weapons.
• Johnson references official U.S. counterterrorism reports, which show over 80% of international terrorism since 1979 is committed by Saudi-backed Sunni groups—not Iran.

“Not a single [major attack] supported by Iran. Yeah. And America.”
— Larry Johnson [04:26]

Israel’s Central Role and Domestic Shifts

[04:52] – [06:47]

• Horton positions Israel, and specifically Netanyahu, as primary drivers of U.S. Iran policy, describing Trump as acting like Israel’s "Secretary of Defense."
• Johnson highlights new polling: U.S. public support now leans slightly more toward Palestinians than Israel—a significant shift.

“America is under the domination, the control of Jerusalem.”
— Larry Johnson [05:48]

Iranian Concessions & The Futility of Talks

[06:47] – [10:10]

• Horton describes the extreme, unprecedented Iranian concessions on enrichment, noting Trump and Netanyahu's past bombings destroyed Iran’s main nuclear facilities.
• Argues that since these concessions are still deemed insufficient, the nuclear issue is clearly just pretext for war.

“If that's not good enough... then there's just no question that they don't even give a damn about uranium. This has nothing to do with uranium.”
— Scott Horton [09:50]

Iran’s New Geopolitical Position: BRICS, Russia, China

[10:10] – [13:26]

• Johnson details a fundamental change: Iran joining the BRICS bloc and forming critical economic-security pacts with Russia and China, providing it with powerful allies and escape from U.S.-imposed isolation.
• Describes a thwarted U.S.-backed color revolution in Iran, foiled by Iranian, Russian, and Chinese countermeasures—most notably, shutting off infiltrating Starlink terminals.

“Iran now suddenly can see a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel... they’re not going to be pushed around and bullied like they have been in the past.”
— Larry Johnson [12:40]

Recurring U.S. Schemes for Proxy War

[13:26] – [16:39]

• Horton brings up historical strategies to have Israel drag the U.S. into war with Iran (the "Clean Break" strategy, David Wormser plans, etc.)
• This playbook is now explicit: the administration seems to want Israel to provoke an Iranian response, thus forcing Trump’s hand, much like FDR at Pearl Harbor.

“That is Franklin Roosevelt's treason at Pearl Harbor-level treason there.”
— Scott Horton [16:13]

U.S. Military Overconfidence & Intelligence Manipulation

[16:39] – [21:16]

• Johnson recalls actual U.S. military plans and internal doubts (Joint Chiefs' resistance, firing of dissident generals).
• Warns that planners ignore critical questions about aftermath and feasibility, assuming victory will work itself out—just like in Iraq.

“The military leadership is making a lot of assumptions... and hell, we couldn't defeat the Houthis last March.”
— Larry Johnson [17:45]

Iran: Not Another Iraq

[21:16] – [24:48]

• Discussion turns to how past attacks and sanctions have now galvanized Iranian unity—much like post-9/11 U.S.—with the population more nationalistic in response to foreign aggression.
• Iran is socioethnically diverse but unlikely to slide into civil war unless provoked by external actors—in contrast to the flawed "democratization" arguments used before Iraq.

“Other than here, the Americans are giving them guns and money again, more.”
— Scott Horton [24:48]

The Cooked Case: Propaganda Then and Now

[24:53] – [27:02]

• Johnson parallels the current push for war to Iraq (2003): manufactured intelligence urged by ideologues like Laurie Mylroie, broad public buy-in then—but not now.

“Trump and his team stupidly ... he's now, he's going to be on his own.”
— Larry Johnson [26:44]

“Mission Impossible”: U.S. Military Limits

[32:19] – [36:15]

• Johnson lays out why invading or attacking Iran is orders of magnitude more difficult than Iraq or Yemen: Iran’s geography, population, advanced air defense (thanks to Russia and China), and deep underground facilities.
• Past failures (ex: inability to defeat Houthis) show military overreach; U.S. aircraft carriers now reduced to defensive roles.

“Now we think we're going to do that to Iran which is nine times the physical size of Yemen... It's mission impossible.”
— Larry Johnson [35:19]

The New Iran-Russia-China Security Pact

[36:15] – [39:07]

• Johnson describes the new tripartite agreement—not a NATO-style article 5, but a robust system of arms supply, intelligence-sharing, and joint exercises.
• China’s provision of advanced radar and Russian S-400 systems significantly enhance Iran’s deterrence and detection capabilities.

“That tripartite deal was basically to solidify said, okay, we're in this together.”
— Larry Johnson [38:32]

“Color Revolution” in January: CIA, Mossad, & Western Ops

[39:07] – [43:27]

• Johnson walks through the anatomy of the latest failed attempt at regime change in Iran: manipulated polling, covert arms, Starlink internet, and false-flag violence (paralleling Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan).
• The uprising collapsed once Iranian counterintelligence (helped by Russia and China) cut U.S. communications infrastructure.

“...These outside forces also started shooting some of the very demonstrators in order to make it look like the government was killing them.”
— Larry Johnson [42:22]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On U.S. War Pretexts
  “If that's not good enough... then there's just no question that they don't even give a damn about uranium.”
  — Scott Horton [09:50]

• On American-Israeli Relationship
  “America is under the domination, the control of Jerusalem.”
  — Larry Johnson [05:48]

• On Propaganda and Intelligence
  “This is like, honestly, this is no less worse... if they really let that happen. That is Franklin Roosevelt’s treason at Pearl Harbor-level treason...”
  — Scott Horton [16:13]

• On U.S. Military Limits
  “Now if we couldn't take... the Houthis from firing missiles. And now we think we're going to do that to Iran... It's mission impossible.”
  — Larry Johnson [35:19]

• On the Odds of War
  “I’d say 90 chance.”
  — Larry Johnson [43:55]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:34] Johnson: “Deja vu all over again” — warning of repeated war patterns
• [04:52] Horton: Lays out U.S.-Israel cooperation (“Secretary of Defense in the Netanyahu administration”)
• [09:40] Horton: Iranian nuclear program essentially "obliterated"—nuclear pretext exposed
• [12:40] Johnson: Iran now buoyed by new BRICS-aligned economic ties
• [13:26] Horton: U.S. historical plans to trigger war, “Clean Break” strategy and present parallels
• [16:13] Horton: Drawing comparison to Pearl Harbor, provocation for war
• [21:16] Johnson: Foreign attacks have unified, not divided, Iran
• [35:19] Johnson: “Mission impossible” for U.S. to defeat Iran militarily
• [38:32] Johnson: China, Russia, and Iran—new security cooperation pact solidified
• [42:22] Johnson: Color revolution as state-managed narrative and foreign interference
• [43:55] Johnson’s prediction: 90% chance of U.S. going to war with Iran

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Tone & Style

• Conversational, analytical, and unflinchingly critical of both U.S. foreign policy establishment and media narratives.
• Johnson and Horton both mix personal anecdote, official documentation, and sharp historical analogy.
• Warnings of impending disaster are delivered with urgency but also wry humor (Yogi Berra quotes, sarcasm about “victory laps”).

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Takeaways for Listeners

• The war drive against Iran is an orchestrated repeat of past U.S. interventions, featuring false pretexts and manipulation.
• Iran’s situation is fundamentally different now due to BRICS realignment and deeper Russia/China ties.
• Recent attempts at regime change reflect old CIA playbooks but have had the opposite effect: unifying rather than destabilizing the Iranian public.
• Military escalation would be disastrous—a factor underappreciated by U.S. planners.
• Johnson forecasts with high confidence (90%) that war is coming unless unforeseen events intervene.

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For a thorough and critical understanding of the forces pushing the U.S. toward war with Iran—and the web of official lies supporting it—this episode is essential listening, breaking down both the rhetoric and the hard realities behind the headlines.

Transcript

[Scott Horton]

You ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest according to the American people.

[Larry Johnson]

What's going on in this country? We're dealing with Hitler revisited.

[Scott Horton]

This is the Scott Horton Show. Libertarian foreign policy mostly.

[Larry Johnson]

When the president does it, that means that it is not a liberty.

[Scott Horton]

We're gonna take out seven countries. They don't know what the they're doing. Negotiate now. End this war. And now here's your host, Scott Horton. Okay, you guys. Introducing Larry Johnson again. He's a former CIA guy, but now he's all right. And he's always trying to explain why we shouldn't get in another bad intervention here, there and the other place and why we should cease the ones we're already in a lot of the times. And he [e-mail] Is this great website and always long in depth articles. Good insight and good sourcing and lots of great stuff. I really appreciate you and everybody knows you from all the different podcasts. So we are recording this, what, midday? Well, kind of actually toward later afternoon on Friday. And as of now, we're not bombing Iran yet. And they're all different kind of mixed signals, but I guess they are saying, correct me if I'm wrong, that they have talks scheduled for next week. Maybe they're taking a break for the weekend.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah, this is deja vu all over again, to quote Yogi Berra.

[Scott Horton]

Well, I wonder about that. I mean, so last June that was just cover for, they went ahead and started bombing them anyway. So is that what you think is going to happen now?

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah, I think so. It certainly looks that way. This, you know, number one, the lie that's being pushed is that this is all about whether Iran's going to have access to nuclear weapons or not. And Trump said Tuesday night they've got to say that they don't want them permanently ever. Okay, they came out within 24 hours and said that, yeah, yeah, we agree, we don't want them.

[Scott Horton]

And they've said that all along anyway.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah, so, but Trump can't take yes for an answer. And even though the Iranians came out of the negotiations in Geneva yesterday saying, hey, you know, generally we're were on the path to a, to, to an agreement. And the, the Omani mediator who is, you know, ferrying the messages back and forth, he was equally upbeat and optimistic. But not so Donald Trump. And Trump made it clear today that he was not happy at all with, with Iran's position. So I listen to what he says. You know, my good friend Ray, Ray McGovern, and I have have a difference of opinion over this. But, you know, I'm listening to what Trump is saying today. He could have come out and been very straightforward and saying, you know what? I am happy with what the Iranians said. They showed some progress. So we got a lot to talk about on Monday. But that's not what he said, and I'm quoting him now. He said, I'm not happy with the fact that they're not willing to give up what we have to have. We will have to have some additional talks today. Well, that's additional talks amongst ourselves. So, you know, I think. I think we're being set up for just another replay of what happened last April. Yeah. Or it happened in June. Yeah, June 13th. So June 13th was a Friday 23 years ago, too. Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

It's like a Rock War II.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah. So, you know, if, again, if this was just about the nuclear weapon, this would be easy and done. Trump would have a victory lap. This is about regime change, and it's all predicated on a lie about the nature of Iran. We're told repeatedly that Iran is the number one sponsor of terrorism. But all you have to do is go, as I have done, back through every single US Government report put out through my old office, the Office of the. It was called the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism. Now it's the Bureau of counterterrorism. Every April 30, they're supposed to issue a report on international terrorism. Used to be called Patterns of Global terrorism. Starting in 2004, they changed the name to Country Reports on Terrorism. What that shows is that over 80% of all international terrorist attacks since 1979 have been carried out by radical Sunni groups that are funded and supported by the Saudis, the Qataris, the Emiratis. Not a single one. Supported by Iran. Yeah. And America. Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

Don't leave us out of the sunny axis of Bin Lado there. Yeah, no, that's true. And look, and this is what I meant about the Iraq War two thing, where it really is exactly like this, where on one hand, I gotta explain to you everything I know about Iraq's nuclear program and. Or lack thereof, and what. And how you can know that our side's lying when they say that they got this threat and blah, blah. On the other hand, I could also stop, like you just did, and debunk the idea that this has anything to do with aluminum tube spinning uranium at all. It's a pretext for war. It's as simple as that. And the war, the whole Plan doesn't begin in Washington or across the river at the Pentagon. It's in Tel Aviv is where this whole thing comes from. Supreme Commander Netanyahu comes to town and orders another aircraft carrier to the Gulf. I mean, at that point, what is Trump, other than the Secretary of Defense in the Netanyahu administration here?

[Larry Johnson]

Larry? Yeah, yeah, no, it is. America is under the domination, the control of Jerusalem. Now, the, the good news is the recent opinion polls are showing that now 41 of Americans support the Palestinians and only 36% support Israel. So that's, it's now moving in the, in the right direction. It's moving away from this complete subservience to, to Israel. But this war is all about trying to get rid of the mullahs and you know, even, even Iran, it has provided support to Palestinians seeking to be free, seeking to protect their land. But, but we have to cast it as there's somehow some emissary of Satan bent on destroying the, the innocence of Israel. I mean, it's just this whole narrative business has just gotten out of control.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah. Now. And so on the, on the talks, I was actually surprised I'm so far behind. I've had a very busy week here. But I, I read in your piece from, maybe it was yesterday's piece, I don't know if you have a new one, but where the Iranian proposal going into the talks was a three to five year moratorium on any enrichment. And even then, when they start enriching again, only to 1.5%, which I didn't even know you could run your light water reactor on that. I thought it had to be at least 3.6%. That was the standard thing. Or 3.6 or. Yeah, 3.675 or whatever it was. So that is a huge climb down, Larry, from the ayatollah, from where he has stood on this position since 2006 for 20 years straight, he said, no, screw you, I'm never going below that. And now, and look, and this does reflect the fact, right, that Donald Trump did call his bluff and Netanyahu did call his bluff last June and bomb the crap out of Isfahan, Natanz and, and the comm facility they used to call it. And by the way, I don't know if you ever pay attention to this kook. And I mean, maybe I don't know what you think of them, but David Albright from, they, they call it the good isis, Right. He's the former sort of pseudo weapons inspector who was, you know, he debunked Iraq's nuclear weapons, but stood by the claims that they're chemical weapons. He's a very mixed bag. He's been a very mixed bag on Iran this whole time. On the other hand, he's the only guy I know who's doing real good. Open source or in depth? Open source work on the satellite photos and what all can be gleaned from what's happening at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan. And they had a new report, at least the latest one that I saw was as of last November. And it said that they are totally out of business. Natanz and Fordo and Isfahan are just closed up. They're doing nothing. Now there's a, a site at what they call Pickaxe Mountain where potentially they're digging a tunnel, but nobody thinks they have a spinning centrifuge anywhere. And their transformation facility at Isfahan is all important where that's where you go from metal to gas, back to metal again. And if you can't do that, then you're stuck anyway, right? So the superpower bombed the crap out of them. These are the new facts of life is we're talking about a situation where like when Trump says on one hand their nuclear program has been obliterated, on the other hand, they're a nuclear weapons threat. He's right. The first time it's been very close to obliterated. And in fact, the ayatoll even insisting on enrichment at all at this point is almost like, you know, like daydreaming, right? Like he has no facility to do that. And I don't know about the next president, but this president has certainly already made it clear that any enrichment at all will get you bombed. So don't even try it because I'll just kill your guys, forget it kind of thing. So anyway, it seemed to me like this whole talk about this huge moratorium and then 1.5% limitation and get rid of the rest and all of that and their entire stockpile and for limited type sanctions relief. That to me sounds like the Ayatollah screaming uncle man. And yet back to the question of it just being a pretext. If that's not good enough, if that amounts to a nuclear weapons program, then there's just no question that they don't even give a damn about uranium. This has nothing to do with uranium. They, they're clinging to a pretext for war at this point.

[Larry Johnson]

Well, not only Israel, but, but I think the United States as well. And here's why. Over the course of the last year, there has been a fundamental change in Iran's economic status vis a vis the BRICS countries. When, when the, when they, when Europe voted to do the snapback sanctions under jcpoa, even though Trump had walked away from it and the agreement was no longer valid. Up until last August, Russia and China had been willing to support the sanctions on Iran that were specified in the JCPOA agreement. Once it sort of. In the Aftermath of the June 12day war, Russia and China basically reappraised their situation and have now come out firmly against any of the sanctions on Iran. For Russia, it's important with respect to the north south corridor. A combination of rail line shipping that goes across the Caspian Sea back to rail lines and roads. They go all the way down to a port called Chabahar in southern Iran. This cuts dramatically the time to be required to move products from Asia into Europe and vice versa. They no longer have to go through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. They could go directly over land. Similarly, China set up an East West. They're calling it the New Silk Road, based on the old Silk Road. So with respect to both of those countries, Iran is now a critical geographic center for construction of a new world economic order. And so from that standpoint, Iran now suddenly can see a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel. Whereas it had been heavily punished economically with sanctions over the years, now it's got a way out. And so this is one of the other things that people haven't paid attention to in the aftermath of that attempted color revolution that was launched by my old outfit, the Central Intelligence Agency, with the help of Mossad. On December 28th in Iran, they, you know, they went with an, collapsed the bank, created a financial crisis, got people in the streets protesting, and then outsiders funded by the agency came in, started killing some of the protesters, killing some of the security forces. The Iran, with the help of China and Russia found, discovered the Starlink network that we had sent, the United States had sent, turned it off, shut down the Internet temporarily and they stopped that, that attempted a color revolution. Three weeks after that, January 29, Russia, China and Iran signed a tripartite security agreement. First time there had up to this point been bilateral agreements between Iran and Russia and Iran and China. But now they all three signed on. So Iran's taken on a much more important role now. And they're not going to be, they're frankly not going to be pushed around and bullied like they have been in the past.

[Scott Horton]

Hey guys, you know I have another podcast now, right? Yeah, me and the great American historian Daryl Cooper, that is martyr made. He's my co host and we host a show every Friday night. We might be switching to two days a week here sometime soon, but for right now we're doing Friday nights live at 8 o' clock Eastern Time on the YouTubes. Checked out our Twitter handle, Provoked show man. So I want to get back to the. The uprising there and ask you all about that more. But there's this incredible story in Politico which I admit I didn't read it in Politico, but I did read in the Jerusalem Post they had a link to it and a quote from it and I'm just too busy, but I, I don't think they forged the quote. And what it was, was, well, hell, I'll tell you a story. You might remember this one and it seems important. David Worms are the principal author of the Clean Break Strategy.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

In 2007, he was bragging at the American Enterprise Institute about a plan by him and the Vice President to get Israel to attack Iran and get Iran into brutality against the United States to do a quote, end run around W. Bush and force W. Bush to do the war that thus far he was reluctant to do and was before the NIE that debunked the nuclear program. This was in fact, instead they were pushing the EFP hoax, blaming every Shiite bomb in Iraq on Iran, which was a lie. But they did that. Him and Petraeus. Cheney and Petraeus were working on that anyway. So Stephen Clemens from the Washington Note broke that story, but then it was confirmed by Barton Gelman of the Washington Post and by, I forgot who at the New York Times. And one more, I forgot I have it in my book, but it was like Time magazine or there's that third confirming source or like, you know, report on that saying, I know it does sound crazy, but David Wormser was spouting his mouth off about that at that time. But see, the point being that when they say end run W. Bush is the end, he's the President of the United States, the one that they're trying to get around and force into a corner where he has to do this. Right, Right, right. Here's this report in the Jerusalem Post by way of the Politico there, where the White House is saying that they want to get Israel to start the war in order to force Iran to attack the United States. Just like in Wormster's plan.

[Larry Johnson]

Right.

[Scott Horton]

To do an end run around the American public.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

Who don't want to do this war. And so now it's Donald Trump himself as David Wormser and we're all W. Bush, the one that he's trying to screw and force us and saying, yeah, well, I guess we have to attack Iran now that they hit our base in Kuwait.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah, right, Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

I mean, this is like, this is honestly, this is no less worse if they really let that happen, anything like that happened. I mean, that is Franklin Roosevelt's treason at Pearl harbor level treason there, that they're gonna get another country to get us into a war to get our guys attacked so that the American people have to rally around our guys that they set up to be killed.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah, that's the gist of it. And you know, going back to 2007, so one of, one of my good friends, former colleagues was directly involved with what was called the Iran Task Force back then and there was a full blown plan to invade Iran, try to overthrow the government. And then the issue though, when it came down, the question was asked, okay, we do this, then what comes next? And the answer was, oh, don't worry about it, it'll take care of itself. So we're still, we're still at that level of planning. That is why this is not. If, if this was simply left to Donald Trump, that Donald Trump was the one making the decisions about I'm going to go to war, I'm not going to go to war, then he could maybe make a case that he was sincere about trying to get a negotiated settlement. But there are too many other of these forces that you identified that are working within the intelligence community, within Department of Defense or a.k.a. department of War, that are pushing for this war. We did see recently that one of the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was basically reassigned, kicked out. And I don't know if that was because he was raising, he apparently reportedly had raised questions and objections to starting a war with Iran. And I think that individual will ultimately have been proven to be a prophet in his warnings because the military leadership is making a lot of assumptions about our ability to defeat Iran, to defeat Russia, to defeat China, and hell, we couldn't defeat the Houthis last March. So I don't know what's made us suddenly more powerful.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, well, good point there. Although the Houthis, you know, they had a lot of practice hiding from American and Saudi airstrikes for those seven years. And yeah, no, but I guess, you know, Iran ain't Iraq. It's not just bigger, but it's all those mountains and all of that too. But now, so. Well, I promise we're going to get back to that uprising. I even took notes so I wouldn't forget. But. So let's talk about that, because I guess your argument then would be, Larry, that last June they just held their fire and decided to take that one on the chin and hope to not provoke a worse war, but that this time they won't. Now, they got a hell of a lot more missile capacity than they did then and a lot more willingness to use it.

[Larry Johnson]

You mean, you mean Iran?

[Scott Horton]

Yes.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah, yeah. No, actually they, they got caught with their pants down that the attacks that took place on radar sites and on air defense systems were carried out in country through networks that have been set up through Mossad and through CIA. Alistair Crook has looked at this extensively and he insists actually no Israeli aircraft actually flew in to Iranian airspace. It was all done from the ground or with missiles launched air to ground. Missiles launched from a distance outside of Iran. Iran. But this time they're ready because we've been, we've been warning them that we're coming after him. We've not been coy about that at all. And it's gone from the initial. What I've been told by someone who is in a position to know is that Trump was actually planning to do the first military strike on January 13th. That would have been, you know, 16 days into this attempted color revolution. But the, the Iranians basically got it turned off on January 10, so he, he walked it back. But they were ready to go on January 13th. And now we've seen how the narrative shifted that, oh, Iran was persecuting and killing protesters to Iran's got a nuke and we got to stop the nuke. So, you know, they're very, they're very flexible when it comes to picking up what the, what the, the causes Belli is.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, exactly. Well, and they wore the casualties out. They embellished so badly so quickly to numbers that were like on the level of World War I battlefield casualties, where it was just completely impossible. Either the Ayatollah carpet bomb, the capital city, or those numbers are lies. Right. Like there's a Dresden sized firestorm, or there wasn't. But otherwise, how do you explain, you know, 30 to 50,000 deaths? It's. The answer is simple. They're lying about that.

[Larry Johnson]

The numbers, you know what, you know why they use the number 30,000? I, I believe if you go back and look at what the Shah did, it was documented in killing 30,000 Iranian students and protesters in the year and a half prior to his ouster. I think they went back and used the 30, 000 as sort of. Okay, you know, they updated it, but it was, you know, one of my. I've been in contact with a podcaster by the name, name of Nima Al Kurshid. Nima lives in Brazil. He's a, he's a professor, engineering professor, but he runs, he runs a pretty good podcast. And he went back home to Ron for a visit, first time in 12 years. So it took his wife and his two children, you know, the parents, his parents and her parents hadn't seen the kids. And again, he, his last trip there was in 2014. And, and what he reported on was I, I, I, I took his view as much more credible because he's not an ideologue. He's not, you know, some devout Shia fanatic, but he's just, you know, he really is an academic. And he said the one thing that had happened is, as a result of that January 13th attack or the June 13th attack last year, is it has united Iran in the same way that we experienced that unity in the immediate aftermath of the 911 attacks, where partisan differences between Republicans, Democrats, Independents, at least temporarily evaporated. And if you think about it, the last time Iran was actually attacked from an outsider was the Saddam Hussein invasion back in 1980. 81. And the people who remember that, where it's a vivid memory for them, they're 53 years, 55 years of age and older. The people who are under the age of 50 in Iran right now had never experienced that kind of attack until last year. So the irony is the United States and Israel and launching that attack actually galvanized support for the Islamic Republic away from. Prior to that, yeah, there had been some complaints and protests, but it had the exact opposite effect.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah. So again, like Iraq War two, there's the liars and the lied, too, who repeat it and, you know, have their own thing. So you can see how there's a lot of people go, yeah, no, we just have to support the people. We bring violence to that regime, that people will take their chance to free themselves and all that. Where you and I know that, God, it's got to be that somebody in charge knows that that's a lie at least, and they know that what they're actually doing is just trying to destroy the place and that that's the most likely result of what they're doing. But we have the same kind of arguments about freeing the Iraqi people when what we're really talking about is, well, you're going to have a civil War now, as the majority takes power from the minority by force, you know, who've been kept from this whole time. Now, in this case, though, Shiite Persians are the majority.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

But then again, there are a lot of minorities. But then again, they may have all different degrees of patriotism and nationalism in mind. And rather than sectarianism, I have no reason to believe that the average Sunni Arab Iranian, or the average Aziri or the average Kurd of the average Baluk wants to secede in a violent civil war.

[Larry Johnson]

Right.

[Scott Horton]

Other than here, the Americans are giving them guns and money again, more.

[Larry Johnson]

But the, the ethnic composition of Iran right now is 61 Persian, 1819 Azeri, and then, you know, the, the remaining, you know, 20, 19, 20% split between Kurds and Baluch and some others. What's interesting, though, is the Ayatollah Khamenei, he's a zeri, you know, he's not a majority Persian. He's. He's a zeri. This, you know, right now, this is like deja vu for me all over again. Going back to in. In May of 2003, I was interviewed on National Public Radio by Michelle Norris. And I remember telling her at the time, based upon my colleagues who were still at the CIA, one was Fulton Armstrong, who is the national intelligence officer for Latin America. But it was telling me that the entire intelligence case for going into Iraq had been cooked. It was manufactured. And trying to put that word out. I mean, I was debating the name I'm sure of. Lori Milroy may be familiar to you. Oh, yeah, yeah. I debated her and debunked her on several different occasions, but from the 90s,

[Scott Horton]

even shoveling, she was trying to claim that it was Saddam who done Oklahoma City.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was. There was a massive propaganda effort there, and it succeeded, it is succeeded in fooling the American people. But at the time when Bush decided to invade Iraq, 71, 72% of the American public was behind him. Not now. Those numbers have flipped. You've got over 75% of the American people oppose going into Iran. So this, this, you know, Trump and his team stupidly, instead of going out and trying to, you know, build, even build a false case, but get Congress to vote on it and support him, he's now, he's going to be on his own. And, and, you know, Washington, boy, if you're out there on your own and things go bad, you're looking around for all your friends, they've disappeared.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, it's good to be king until everything goes to hell and it's all your fault. Expand designs.com that's my friend Harley Abbott's company and he is the webmaster for the Scott Horton show as well as the Libertarian Institute. He is the guy that redesigned the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity website. He's done a lot of great work for other friends of mine. And unlike a lot of web masters and web developers and different guys that I have worked with over the years, the thing is about Harley Abbott and his team is they do what they say they're going to do when they say they're going to do it, and are just extremely reliable and extremely knowledgeable and 100% vouch for the great Harley Abbott over there. You got a website, you need it fixed up, you need a new one. Setting up a business, working on any kind of online project like that. Check out expanddesigns.com and look, I mean, I don't know, but I, I know that Tucker was there and this has to have been what Tucker told him the other day was that like, don't do it, man. You're crazy. Don't let these kooks tell you it'll be fine. It will not either. And like, I mean, honestly, man, I'm sorry because I'm a broken record. We've been talking about this for 25 years in a row now. Now look, Iran is bigger. They got mountains. They have not been at war ever since 1980, the way Iraq had basically been. If you count the Iraq war one and a half through the 1990s. Yeah, they have not been at war this entire time. And it's a much. But the population, I think is three times the size of Iraq's population or no, the population is four times the size the country is three times the size of. And, and well, as Marco Rubio put it to the Senate that, you know, we don't have a plan. Right. It's the same thing that they said about Venezuela. Well, look, we got to keep the commies because we can't put the right wingers in there because it just won't work to do a whole regime change. And we learned that from Paul Wolfowitz's error. We're not going to debot the five Venezuela and abolish their army and rebuild an entire state. So we got to keep the commie. Well here. What are they going to do? They're going to have to keep the next cleric in line. If they do, kill the AOLA because there's no one prepared to rule. You have the monarchists who absolutely do not have support inside the country. You have the MEK, the Mujahideen, e communist terrorist cult of total freakos who have no support whatsoever in the country. And then you have, you know, bin Ladenite type suicide bomber sorts and Kurdish communists, you know, the, it's funny, the Wall Street Journal, they even admitted that the CIA was backing them. They're not called P Jack anymore. I guess for some reason they dropped the J. But back in the day in 07, they were called P Jack when the CIA was backing them then. But now it's just P. AC I guess the Kurdish commies, the Kurdish version or the Iranian version of the PKK or the YPG from Turkey and Syria. And, and so even Rubio says that like, well, so what's this supposed to look like the day after we bomb the government out of existence? We don't know.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah, we don't know.

[Scott Horton]

So, okay, I mean, I'm sorry, forgive me please, Larry. Because on one hand I'm just going, maybe it's a right brain, left brain thing. I'm not really sure how that works. But on one hand, I says to myself, I says, look, the, the, the biggest argument against doing this is completely stupid. It's almost guaranteed to be an absolute catastrophe. And the Ayatollah does not want to bite. It's just crazy to launch. I mean, hell, even. Fine, I'll define it down for argument's sake today here. Just that like bombing Porto and Natanz. Fine, like whatever it is, what it is, it's already over. That's a pinpoint kind of a thing. 12 bombs here, 12 bombs there. I don't know. You can do a real ass war here when every sign is pointing that this is crazy, that Lindsey Graham is the only one who thinks that it's smart, you know, who's like, you know, licking his chops and the whole rest of the world is like red alarm lights, every ally in the region begging him please don't do it. And all of these things. And again, the Ayatollah not begging but everything but begging to avoid this fight, right? He's not going to lose face like that. But they're not doing anything to aggress against us or threaten us in any way. It seems like what I just said there. And I'm sure there's more and better arguments to it too. That right there ought to amount to. So we're not going to war. We can't go to war. Donald Trump couldn't possibly make that bad of a call right now. In a way that even he would have to. It's inescapable comparison to George W. Bush, the idiot who ruined everything when he did the giant, stupid, horrible thing he did not have to do. And how could he possibly do that? And especially Obama in Libya, whatever, you name it, Afghanistan. For him to repeat that kind of error now after running on no new wars and all these things like the Israelis must got him by the balls or, or what? I mean, I don't even, I mean honestly, it's the same pile of lies that they, they couldn't get W. Bush to do it in 07. Well, how can it be that they can get him to do it now?

[Larry Johnson]

Well, see, I, I'm old enough now to remember vividly, George H.W. bush and his promise. Read my lips. No new taxes.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah.

[Larry Johnson]

And then what did he do? Imposed taxes and his base pummeled him and it brought us Bill Clinton and, and this was in the aftermath of quote, winning a war on the ground in Kuwait with the first Gulf War back in 1990. He still got pummeled in the polls. The American people, when you get a politician making a promise like that and you break it, they don't forgive you. And that's where Donald Trump is headed right now. You know, I've, I, as we go over all this old territory, you know, I knew, I knew Paul Wolfowitz. I mean we sat together at a foot at our son, my son and his son were in the same class at Bethesda Chevy Chase High School. So I knew Paul, but I also knew, you know, the lies that they were telling and they got away with at that time. This time is going to be different because the entire political geopolitical space has changed and changed dramatically with Russia and China now firmly committed to creating an alternative financial and political order that's outside the reach of United States bullying. The United States efforts to coerce and punish other countries to has really produced the backlash and they're looking for a way out. And it's starting to emerge as more and more countries are dumping U.S. treasuries. They're not buying U.S. treasuries. The United States is finding its currency being devalued, but it's not by in devaluing the currency, it's not bringing about a greater production, industrial production on this side. And then here once again, we're going to go into a war that on paper we look like we're dominating. But I keep encouraging people said we're not wimps like number two, we're going to dismantle the Houthis of Israel. How did that work out? We had at the time two aircraft carriers that were there operating together with five destroyers. Right now, even though they claim we got two aircraft carriers, the Gerald Ford, which has been rechristened from aircraft to air crap carrier because of plumbing malfunctions. It's in a simply, it's in a defensive posture off the coast of Israel. Its job is to shoot down missiles and drones if Iran launches on Israel after the west attacks Iran. So we got one aircraft carrier down in the South Arabian Sea. Well, so we go back where we had twice if you will, the naval combat power of the Red Sea and much easier, much easier access to Yemen itself. We didn't have to stay a thousand miles offshore and we were pretty confident we could defeat some of their anti ship missiles and we were trying desperately to find their mobile missile launchers. After seven weeks, after losing seven MQ9 Predator drones at a cost of $35 million apiece and then losing the three F18 fighter jets and suffering damage to one of the aircraft carriers, we declared victory and pulled out. Now if we couldn't take, you know, we had complete supremacy of the air and yet we couldn't stop the Houthis from firing missiles. And now we think we're going to do that to Iran which is nine times the physical size of Yemen and has as you pointed out, these mountains, underground cities, underground, launchers, mobile launcher. It's mission impossible.

[Scott Horton]

Hey guys, Scott here from Mundo Artisan Coffees. It's the Scott Horton show flavored coffee breakfast blend. It's part Ethiopian, part Sumatra. It's really good. All you do is go to Scott Horton.org/coffee and they'll forward you on there to Moondo's Artisan Coffees. Get it? They hate Starbucks because they represent the war party of course. And so they're moon dose and they support peace. And guess what? Scott Horton Show Coffee is the number one best selling coffee at Mundo's Artisan Coffees right now. Just go again to Scott Horton.org coffee. Tell me more about this tripartite pact that Iran just signed with Russia in China. It can't be a full article 5 style war guarantee there. What is it?

[Larry Johnson]

No, but it was. It was establishing that both, both Russia and China were now going to supply unnecessary equipment and that the key thing here is Iran was willing to accept it. Back prior to the 6-13-12 day war, Iran, Russia and China had both been offering assistance to Iran. But Iran was like ah, you know, mother, please, I'D rather do it myself. We've got it under control. We don't, we don't need your charity, we don't need your help. After that 12 day war, Iran had a change of heart. They went back to Russia and China said is that offer for help still open? And they said of course. And so they, they began to supplying ample amounts. The, the most interesting one is this radar that China has provided is described as a three dimensional radar that penetrates out to 430 miles. So if you, if you set that up at the border with Saudi Arabia, that essentially reaches all the way to Prince Sultan Air Base where a number of US fighters and tankers are now currently based. So that gives, that gives the Iranians the capability to detect stealth aircraft. That was what it was specifically designed for. At the same time you've had Russia reportedly deploy S3 hundreds, 400 as well as Iran has. I mean the Chinese have supplied some long distance surface to air missiles for taking out aircraft. So that tripartite deal was basically to solidify said, okay, we're in this together. Now it's important to note that Russia, China and Iran have been conducting annual naval drills exercises since 2019. But this is really, this was a broadening of that relationship both on intelligence sharing, on receiving militaries, military equipment that would be employed in Iran and then also economic cooperation.

[Scott Horton]

Okay, now I guess last question, the one that I put off from a long time ago. Tell us more about the uprising in January seemingly. And we've seen this happen in numerous places including in Kyrgyzst Kyrgyzstan and in Kazakhstan where there's a tax protest and then all of a sudden there are armed men attacking police stations, this kind of thing. So I don't know who is exactly behind the uprising in Kazakhstan in January of 2021. But I, my guess at the time was that America had Turkey do it.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah, we, we were involved heavily. It's important, important to understand that one of the largest CIA stations is in Armenia and you go what? Armenia's got like 3 million people but you got this massive CIA presence in Armenia. And the reason is it can work with dissident groups in, in Iran, in Russia, in Kazakhstan. So it's, it's a big op center from that standpoint.

[Scott Horton]

And then we still steadily betray them in favor of the aeris. Anyway. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy.

[Larry Johnson]

Oh I know it's now what happened

[Scott Horton]

in January because I again the Wall Street Journal said hey, we're backing these Kurdish communist terrorists on the ground. They're the Ones chanting, death to the Ayatollah, Godspeed Kurdish communists, I don't know. And then you got the MEK and you got the monarchists and you got who. But tell me about CIA and Mossad and the extent to which the Turks, whoever's involved in this was the. I don't think the terse want to overthrow Iran right now.

[Larry Johnson]

But no, no, no, in fact, so what happened was, so we've got to go back a couple of years. The United States or there's a group out of the Netherlands called gnae, G A N A A M and they're working in tandem with a VPN provider out of Canada. Well, when I dug into it, it turns out that both of those organizations are funded by National Endowment for Democracy and usaid. And what they were doing was they were conducting an online poll and their poll results said that 80%, overwhelming 80% of Iranians supported getting rid of the Ayatollah, that there was this massive, massive popular support for an uprising. So essentially we were lying to ourselves. We created the lie, sold it to the policymakers that, hey, there's this massive opposition. Now the, the Maryland Institute for National Security Studies, I think that's its name. They had also been conducting polls in Iran and they had discovered the exact 180 degree opposite. Yeah, people were upset about some of the economic things, but they weren't ready to overthrow the government. Then when that started, I said at the outset, I said, this is a US backed, this is a US created crisis. And sure enough, man, three weeks later, Scott Best had admitted, yeah, we did that. We crashed that bank. We caused that financial crisis and, and it had been preplanned with, they had smuggled in, we've learned now through the Wall Street Journal, you know, several thousand Starlink terminals. So these, these groups, these, and they're working primarily through minority groups really upset with some of the economic corruption. But then we sort of these outsiders that were backed by CIA attached themselves. And then just like we saw in the Maidan in, in Ukraine in 2014, which you've written about, these outside forces also started shooting some of the very demonstrators in order to make it look like the government was killing them. And they were attacking the government and they were coordinating all of this through this Starlink terminals. Once the Iranian counterintelligence folks were realized that was going on, and then with the assistance of China and Russia, they shut that off and that movement started collapsing. So the effort to try to spark a color revolution again came undone. Once the Iranians realized what was Up. Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

All right, Larry. Well, that's a very handsome book behind you on the shelf there, I must say.

[Larry Johnson]

Yep.

[Scott Horton]

Very happy to have your endorsement for Provoke there.

[Larry Johnson]

You did great work on that. As you, as you have in all the other books that you've done too.

[Scott Horton]

Oh, well, I appreciate that. And, and seriously, man, I appreciate your time on the show, I guess. Oh, last thing I did want to ask you. So give us your percentage here then, man. 60, 40, 70, 30, 99 chance we're going to war or what?

[Larry Johnson]

I'd say 90 chance.

[Scott Horton]

Ah, geez.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah, I, I, man, I hope I'm wrong. And, and if we don't go, call me up and say, boy, you were stupid, you were wrong. But I what I'm, I'll be matter if you're right. Yeah, I'm, I'm hearing, this is, this is just what I'm hearing from my, my friends in the military who are, they're not sitting off in some other location. They're, they're involved, man. We're absolutely got it. You know, we're cocked and loaded and it's just now get the order to press the trigger.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah. I wonder, I guess this would be more heavily and deeply kind of rumored, right, if it was something as simple as just the things behind those redactions in the Epstein documents that still pertain to Donald Trump. Something that blatant. It's just absolute blackmail like that. Yeah, this is, he's not really dumber than W. Bush. W. Bush is so stupid. Jesus Christ. It's just, it ain't that, you know what I mean? It has to be that he's able to weigh many of the things that we're talking about here, but he just doesn't, he's going to do this anyway for reasons that aren't the pretext. The pretexts are just the pretext. If it's some blood debt he owes to Netanyahu, then it remains undefined to me. It can't just be because Miriam Adelon bribed him that he's willing to do this to us, you know, it's just nuts, man. I can't believe it.

[Larry Johnson]

Well, if you've been fed a saying

[Scott Horton]

because he's a good guy, I'm saying because W. Bush wouldn't do it. Yeah, because that's how damn dumb and wrong it is to do.

[Larry Johnson]

Right. Well, right. And the I, I, I, I, I explain it this way, that when you're told, when you're Trump and you're told repeatedly that Iran's the Number one sponsor of terrorism that Iran has killed millions of Americans and you don't have the critical thinking skills to say let me see the actual evidence on that. And, and that. That oh, the Hamas and Hezbollah are killing tens of thousands of. Of Israelis. Again, not true. The. In fact the. The la. Last statistic. I'll leave you with the. The Israeli Foreign Ministry keeps a list of every attack since August of 2000 and they record death or. Or wounded during that. From. From August of 2000 through April 30th of 2024. That's when I first pulled the station statistics. There had been 672 terrorist attacks in that time frame. Only 105 of them were attributed to Hamas. Five who were attributed to Hezbollah. Yeah, you know, not exactly dominating the field of play on the terrorism front.

[Scott Horton]

And by the way too and this goes for years past, but also during the last most recent war too, when bin Ladenites fellow Sunni Arabs still. But when bin Ladenites poke their heads up in the Gaza Strip, Hamas kills them dead. They shoot them right in the head. They don't behead them, they shoot them and kill them. And they don't tolerate that stuff. That was why I'm an Al Zwari always denounced them as a bunch of sellouts for participating in democracy and trying to go along with Western wishes and compromising instead of waging holy jihad and all of that. So I don't know exactly the political spectrum, how you measure this, but they're at least a click or two away from Al Qaeda when it comes to all of that, you know.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah, yeah. All right.

[Scott Horton]

Anyway, I'll let you go. Thank you, Larry. It's been great to have you on again.

[Larry Johnson]

Hey Scott, thanks for the invite and we'll see you again. Thanks.

[Scott Horton]

Thanks man.

[Larry Johnson]

Bye.

[Scott Horton]

The Scott Horton show is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Robertson Roberts Brokerage, Inc. Mundo's Artisan Coffee, Tom Woods, Liberty Classroom and APS Radio News. Subscribe. Subscribe in all the usual places and check out my books, Fool's Errand. Enough already. And my latest, Provoked How Washington Started the New Cold War With Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine. Find all of the [e-mail] and I'm serializing the audiobook of Provoked at scott hortonshow.com and patreon.com Scott Hortonshow Bumpers by Josh length of music, intro and outro videos by Dissident media. Audiobook mastering by Podsworth Media. See y' all next time.