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Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews
3/19/26 Joe Kent on How the Israelis Drove Trump Towards an Unnecessary War with Iran
00:52:04
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- [00:06]
A
You ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest according to the American people.
- [00:10]
B
What's going on in this country? We're dealing with Hitler revisited. This is the Scott Horton show. Libertarian foreign policy mostly. When the president does it, that means that it is not a liberty. We're gonna take out seven countries. They don't know what the they're doing.
- [00:29]
A
Negotiate now. End this war. And now, here's your host, Scott Horton. All right, you guys. Introducing Joe Kent, formerly of the 75th Rangers and then CIA Special Activities Division or special special activity center, I guess they renamed it. Paramilitary. All fought in the terror wars. And then most recently, he was the head of the counterterrorism center and famously resigned from the Trump administration over principled objection to the war in Iran. Welcome back to the show. How are you doing, sir?
- [01:15]
B
Doing great, Scott. Thanks for having me.
- [01:17]
A
Absolutely happy to have you here. And I'm sorry to do this to you, but we might as well because it is obviously crucial that since we're apparently living in the 1930s, we need your opinion on the rise of national socialism in Germany and the avowed anti Semitism of the new fuhrer over there and whether you think we should take the Soviet Union side against them and whether you agree with their stance on Jews and things like that.
- [01:44]
B
Please, I prefer to keep to what I know, the, the war in Iran, but yeah, your. Your sister here was not lost. I mean it. We. It does feel like we're living in those times once again.
- [01:56]
A
Yeah. Well, look, I know your oath was to the u. S. Constitution and yeah, more closely resemble the kind of guys who fought against Nazi Germany in the second world war, but they're smearing. Yes. So I figured I'd give you a chance at least to crack a smile, if not defend yourself from the onslaught here. Um, all right, so I also am not an anti Semite. So apparently you have other motives for your criticisms of American policy even so badly that you would resign over them other than a hatred of some religious ethnic type group. So why don't you explain what it was that's so important, so objectionable about this war with Iran that you really thought it was worth resigning over?
- [02:46]
B
Yeah. So. Look, my. My bottom line is that I believe that this war, especially the timing of it, was largely driven by the Israelis agenda and the Israelis timeline, and we were forced to react, plunging us into this conflict. Now, there's been a lot of debate over whether there was an imminent threat or not. However, Secretary of state Marco Rubio, the president, speaker of the House, they've all come out and said that we launched this attack because we knew that the Israelis were going to attack as well. And so I think that that tells you pretty much most of what you need to know, that the Israelis were the ones in the driver's seat. And I just think that is completely an irresponsible way for us to conduct ourselves. As far as foreign policy goes, we, we provide Israel everything that they need, or I would say the majority of what they need to defend themselves, but also to go on the offense. And so if we're going to provide them with this level of support and then they need to adhere to our timelines and they adhere to our strategic objectives, or they need to be comfortable with going it alone. And if an attack is imminent because of an action a so called ally is taking, then I think we really need to reassess what that relationship truly is. In my time at nctc, in the White House at this capacity, I just saw an ecosystem that was created around President Trump between influential members of the media such as, you know, Mark Levin, Dubowitz think tanks like fdd, Wall Street Journal editorial pages, et cetera, but then also high ranking Israeli officials and then some advocates, donors, etc. That created an ecosystem around President Trump that told him that, you know, you said that you, President Trump said that Iran could never have a nuclear weapon, but if they can enrich uranium, then they're going to be able to have a nuclear weapon. All President Trump had ever said was Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. And I think most people agree with that. I agree with it. And actually the former Ayatollah, before he was killed, he agreed with that too and strictly enforced a red line with his own, his own government, his own military, that they were not allowed to actually enrich and develop a nuclear weapon. They could enrich, but they couldn't develop a nuclear weapon. So the Israelis came in using their official back channels or unofficial channels and then also the media to create an artificial red line and say that there can be no enrichment. And that was basically laundered into official U.S. policy that took away the President's decision making space. And so my issue was that accurate information wasn't being given to the President. The Israelis were largely in the driver's seat of driving our policies. And I think this is a disservice not just to the American people, but also to President Trump. President Trump is a fantastic negotiator. I think if given the space, he could come up with a deal. I don't believe that war was his first option. So for all those reasons, I tried from the inside for as long as I could to advocate and to slow these things down, to give the president more time to make a decision until, you know, essentially, you know, we were boxed out. Myself and others who were advocating for a more pragmatic approach were boxed out. And I felt like, number one, I couldn't be a part of this. As someone who said that I would not allow the next generation to go off into war, that was a pledge I made to myself, probably on my third or fourth deployment overseas. But then also I felt that this was probably one of the better ways to be able to communicate to the president that he doesn't have to continue down this path. Sorry, I know that was a long answer.
- [06:02]
A
No, that's good. Long answers are good. Okay, so the headline is Blames Israel Lobby. And here you're saying specifically what you mean by that is they're reframing the question of Iran's nuclear program in such a way, in Trump's mind, as him as their primary audience here, to essentially drive all the nuance out of what a uranium enrichment program is for and can be used for, and essentially get him to adopt the Israeli line that for them to have enrichment at all is the same thing as them having a nuclear weapons program and even a very advanced one that must be stopped right now. And it was. That framing being successful essentially over him is really what you're referring to when you say that he was pushed into this by the Israel mob, is that correct?
- [06:50]
B
Yeah, exactly. That's right. I mean, President Trump said Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. I think most people agree with that. And again, the Ayatollah, the former Ayatollah anyways, at least agreed with that. And so that was very dangerous for the Israelis because that leveling of the playing field essentially brought both President Trump and the Iranians to the negotiating table. The Israelis feared President Trump being able to get a deal, which could lead to some form of normalization with the Iranians. The Israelis have been very upfront. I really frankly don't think the Israelis cared that much about Iran's nuclear weapons. What I think they care about, or not necessarily nuclear weapons enrichment, what I think the Israelis care about is regime change. And so they wanted to push this war as fast as they could. And so they came up with this talking point that zero enrichment was the starting point, knowing that that was a non starter for the Iranians, because the Iranians were smart. They knew if they Completely got rid of any kind of enrichment, that they would end up like Gaddafi and Libya. And I knew if they had to BS and say that they had a nuclear weapon, they'd end up like Saddam and Iraq. So they essentially have what I call the Goldilocks methodology, where they just said, hey, we could, we have enough material here and the capability where we could develop a nuclear weapon, but we're not developing a nuclear weapon. So therefore you can't just come push us around. But also you can't justify coming in because we have a nuclear weapon. And again, the Israelis wanted to take away any ability for their immunog because they wanted this regime change war that they can't do on their own. They need the might of the US military.
- [08:15]
A
Of course, Trump called that bluff against their latent deterrent last June. And I think, you know, you can confirm this, I guess, from your former position here, but even from the open source material here, he very much did obliterate their program. Took N and fordo and isang virtually completely offline. Maybe they have a secret enrichment program somewhere, but probably not. Doesn't look like you know any of that. So he called their bluff on that latent deterrent. So much good it did them after all that time at least. But now. So let me ask you about the statements by Marco Rubio and others that the Israelis were threatening. We're going to start this war and we know that it's going to lead to Iranian attacks against American interests and drag you in, so you might as well start the war with us, this kind of thing. And in a way, in a word, blackmailed America into launching the war. Is that your information as well?
- [09:07]
B
I mean, Marco Rubio and again, Marco Rubio and the President and even Speaker House, I think others have now come out and said, well, we knew the Israelis were to go, so we had to go. And so I think the question for every American, especially me and my former position was like, well, who's in charge here? This is, this is going to have massive consequences for the United States of America. We knew what, what the Iranians were going to do. We knew where their missiles were pointed. We basically knew what their contingency plans were. They were going to target bases in the region. Many of us have been advocating for years to limit our footprint in the CENTCOM region just for this very, for this very reason, because it gave the Iranians more leverage. We also knew, and I think the US Government has known for years, that the Iranians would try to shut down the Straits of Hormuz to, to impose economic costs. So my, my whole point was that if we're going to do this war, we cannot let the Israelis drive our timeline. We can't have our hands forced into this because the stakes are just so high.
- [09:59]
A
All right, this episode of Scott Horton show, brought to you by the books I wrote. You can see them behind me there. Enough already. Fool's errand. And then enough already. And provoked. And then of course, one might have fallen down there, but I got Ron Paul, the great Ron Paul. Scott Horton show interviews and Hotter than the Sun. You see that one back there over there? That way hotter than the sun. Time to abolish nuclear weapons that sell interviews. I did all about nukes and really great stuff and I busted my ass on these things and you know, I've gotten a really great reception on all of them. They all been endorsed by Ron Paul and Daniel Ellsberg endorsed two of the three I wrote. He would have endorsed the third one. I know, but he died too soon, unfortunately. Tucker Carlson says that Provoked is the definitive account. In fact, that's what Glenn Greenwald and Aaron Mate said about it too. The definitive account of the new Cold War with Russia and the war in Ukraine. So maybe check that out. So I'm interested in this and don't get me wrong because obviously I agree with you that the Israelis definitely did browbeat Trump into doing this. But it seems to me like they just got agreement from him to do this. Specifically Netanyahu, the Prime Minister himself. And I don't know if you saw this, but there's this interesting article at Politico. This is from the day before the war on Thursday. It says the White House officials believe the politics are a lot better if Israel strikes Iran first. And this was essentially the idea was an agreement between the Americans and the Israelis to have Israel hit Iran first in order to force Iran to hit America so that they could tell the American people, see, well, they hit us and gave us no choice but to do this. Apparently they decided not to do that. This is very reminiscent actually of the David wormser plan in 2007 where he and Cheney wanted to get the Ehud Ulmer government to attack Iran and force Iran to hit American interests in the Gulf as an end run around W. Bush to force him to do it. In this case, it's Trump and his guys trying to do an end run around us, apparently, or at least that was the idea. But my point being that even though they didn't implement this plan, it seems to put the lie to the idea that Netanyahu is like the snarling pit bull, that Trump could not hold on to his leash, rather than they bump fists and decided to do this together.
- [12:21]
B
You know, from, from my perspective, there was just a lot of bad information coming from the Israeli side, particularly around that enrich really just kind of convoluting the lot. The, the idea of zero enrichment. And then, and then the nukes as I described. And, and then I think as the Israelis got more and more nervous that President Trump may strike a deal again, he was deploying more diplomats. From my vantage point, the Israelis just decided to really force our hand and say, we're going to go do this and you know what's going to happen next, you're going to be attacked. And, and to me, that is just, you know, that that was a red line for me. And I said, hey, I can't be
- [12:54]
A
a part of this right now. I'm sorry to keep confronting you with like the silly stuff, but obviously you're a senior official who's resigned over a war. I mean, it's a huge thing. The attacks against you kind of are relentless. And you had mentioned, I believe it was in your resignation statement, but definitely you addressed this a bit in your Tucker Carlson interview, that there was an important role played by the Israel lobby in getting us into the Iraq war and into Obama's war in Syria as well, which obviously you have a lot of first hand experience. I, I know I read that you were deployed 11 times. I interviewed you a few years ago. Forgive me, I forget if you had gone to Afghanistan as well, but I know you spent a lot of time in Iraq and Syria. Right? And so again, they want to say, well, this is an anti Semitic blood libel from the Middle Ages or something. And so I just thought, like, maybe you have an actual explanation for what you meant by that.
- [13:49]
B
Certainly, I mean in the lead up to the 2002 declaration, or basically the 2002 portion, while it was being publicly debated whether or not we should go to war with Iraq, while the Iraq war was being sold to the American people, the Israeli lobby, led by Benjamin Netanyahu at the time, who I believe off the top of my head was their finance minister, was over here in America heavily campaigning for us to go after Sam Hussein, saying that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The Israeli lobby, aipac, had these talking points in all of their different briefing books. So they were pressuring members of the House, members of the Senate, to support the war against Iraq. The Israelis had a lot of interest in Iraq they obviously thought Saddam was a threat, but they were also concerned with being able to get some of the Iraqi oil for their own uses and their own interests. But also they viewed Iraq as a staging point for Syria and moreover for Iran. I mean, the Israelis have been very, very, I think, straightforward on what they view as a threat. And they basically view the vast majority of the countries that surround them as a threat, some more so than others. But Syria, Iraq and Iran were top of their list for quite some time. So they. And then also, of course, they didn't do it alone. It wasn't all, it wasn't just the Israeli lobby. They had a lot of, you know, fellow travelers that were neoconservative. There's a lot of bleed over there. But the neoconservative movement, as you know, and I think most of your viewers know, they helped really sell the war to the American people and then ultimately to the Bush administration that launched us into Iraq. We basically screwed up Iraq so much that we, we kind of handed the keys to the kingdom over to the Shia majority. But not just the Shia majority in particular. The best organized guys were the Bar Corps, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, who, these guys had fought on the Iranian side of the Iraq Iran war. So they were loyal to Tehran. Because of our own ignorance and then a lot of other lobbying by outside groups, these guys basically took power in Iraq. And so by the time we were leaving Iraq in 2011, it was evident that we had basically handed over Baghdad to the Iranians. And so the Israeli lobby said, hey, this is a major problem because now we basically have a Iranian superhighway, a land bridge that goes from Iran all the way into Syria through Iraq. This, this directly supports Hezbollah's efforts against Israel. So it was a major problem. And so we had basically tipped the balance of power in the region over to the Shiites. So then the dirty war in Syria was launched because Hafez Assad and Bashar Al Assad had always been longtime friends with the Iranians, supported the Iranians, helped support Hezbollah and Hamas from Syria. And so who, who do we rely on as our proxies inside of Syria? Well, it was by and large the Sunnis. And the most radical elements of the Sunnis, there was the Free Syrian army and there were some so called moderates, but the guys who were out there and really aggressive against the Assad regime were members of Al Qaeda and then eventually members of isis. ISIS got so out of control that we eventually had to go back into Iraq, back into Syria, Largely re empower a lot of the same Shiite militias that we are trying to take power away from in order to, to take out the ISIS caliphate. That's where I lost my late wife was fighting the isis caliphate in 2018. But this is how really the goals of the Israeli government have driven a lot of our foreign policy in the Middle East. And so at the end of the day, I really think it's time for Americans to reflect on what are our vital national security interests in the region. And truly is the relationship that we have right now with this hyper aggressive, Likud driven government inside Israel, is that worth it to us? Because now here we are, we're diving headlong into another war and this may be the most consequential war in the Middle east that we fought in quite some time. Is it truly worth it? And I think if these facts are laid out to President Trump and we have the ability for an off ramp, we have the ability for negotiations, I think President Trump can get us out of this. But I think it's time for us to have these hard discussions, these hard conversations right now and be truly objective about what our relationship is with Israel and what the American interests in the region truly are.
- [18:00]
A
A point of clarification here. I believe it was in the Tucker Carlson interview. I saw actually someone quote you critically here, but I thought maybe they misunderstood you. But I wanted to get a little clarification. At one point recently here you had said that you had fought with Iranian backed groups in the region. I think it was a little vague. So then I wondered, did that mean that you were part of the surge in 2007 against Sarder's forces in Iraq War Two or in the aftermath of Iraq War Three against the Caliphate? I know that they're Iranian backed militias that hit guys, but I think you were out of the service by then. But so I was wondering if you could clarify that because I saw someone say, oh, this guy's saying that Al Qaeda and ISIS are backed by Iran. But I know you're not saying that.
- [18:45]
B
No, no. So I first deployed to Iraq in 2003. I missed the bachelor invasion. I was still in the Special Forces qualifications course. Got to Baghdad in the summer of 03. And then I was in the Special Forces group as a Green Beret. And so basically every year from 03 until 2011, I would be in Iraq for anywhere between six to eight months at a given time. So I fought against the Iranian backed militias of all varying stripes, primarily Sadr's militia, Sabah Katabul, Hezbollah beginning in really 2004 in Najab. And that's where we. That's where we saw the Iranians come in heavily and support them. Members of the goods force fought them heavily in Solder City. I was there in the surge, yeah, pretty much throughout the country. Spent my time divided between fighting and hunting the Iranian back Shia militias. But then also the Al Qaeda guys went back after the. The ISIS caliphate took over and fought between. I was in, in Baghdad for a little bit, but then was mostly up in Kirkuk, Mosul, that area a little bit into Syria. So when I say I fought with, I guess you could take that either way. At the time in the counter ISIS fight, we essentially were acting as the air force and our ground shock troops were the Shia militias because at the time we had a common enemy. As that fight wound down, I was out of the service, but then my wife was killed in 2019, I left. I left the CIA that I had transitioned to after I retired from the military in 18. But that's when the Shia militias turned against our forces and President Trump ultimately decided to retaliate by killing customer Solmani.
- [20:20]
A
All right, so as I said, we've talked before, but it's been a few years and I don't remember we might have even had an argument about this or I don't. I don't know. But I want to bring it up because it is crucial. A major talking point against Iran is that they killed 600 of our guys in Iraq War Two. And now clearly there was some Iranian support for Solder. But then again, as you already described, the Supreme Islamic Council and the Dawa Party were much closer to Iran even than Sauder was. And it was really America's attacks against Sauder that drove him into Iran and drove him closer to Iran. But a huge part of this whole narrative then, especially at the hands of David Petraeus and Dick Cheney and Michael Gordon, then of the New York Times, not the Wall Street Journal, was that Iran was responsible for every copper core EFP roadside bomb placed by any Shiite militiamen, especially in the first half of the year 2007. And as I show in my book, and I actually have them all here, if you really want to squabble. I have report after report after report after report of these machine shops being found by American soldiers in Iraq and these bonds being made by Iraqi Shiites for use against the United States, as opposed to the myth that every single one of these things somehow were all part of an Iranian plot. And really it was Petraeus who had attacked Sauda rather than the other way around in 2007. Anyway, I wondered if you wanted to comment on that because it is a real crucial talking point equivalent to essentially in the narrative, equivalent to the Beirut bombing of 1983 and the hostage crisis or one of these things that proves that Iran is America's eternal enemy.
- [22:00]
B
I think I'll kind of meet you halfway. So I was over there and I worked heavily on a small task force going after the EFP threat. So the idea of an efp, it's not incredibly advanced. The Iranians just did a very, the goods for, just did a very good job of finding ways to manufacture them and employ them against our up armor technology and to beat our jammers and then also to punch through our armor. The Kutz force were kind of like my counterpart as a Green Beret. They were very good at training, manning and equipping. And then what we, what we would say as Green Berets is work yourself out of the job, train your proxy force so that in short order they don't need you there anymore. And that's essentially what happened with the EFPs. So the initial EFPs that we found, they were being constructed inside of Iran. And I know exactly what you're talking about with the copper plating, because we did, we did run ourselves in circles looking for like where the Iranians were storing all this mythical copper. And like, were they smuggling the copper across the border? I think that was something of chasing ghosts because really what the Kutzworse did was they may have manufactured. I, I'm, I'm confident they manufactured the first run of the EFPs inside of Iran and they probably tested them there as well. But they, they were able to take that technology because it's pretty rudimentary, and then show Iraqis how they could basically build them in Iraqi machine shops, local machine shops in southern Iraq and Solder City, etc. But largely the, the TTP, the tactic of the EFP did come from the Iranians. As for the back and forth relationship that we have with Sauder, I, I think that if we would have been more deliberate about engaging with Sauder, especially after I've drawn a blank on the Imam. I think the Imam Kohei, somebody can check me because it's been a while since I thought of this after he was killed, when he returned from Iran, I think we could have made much more progress in kind of making an alliance with the more nationalistic Iraqi Shias, which is what Sauder represented, as opposed to like you said the scary and the Dawah branch that were much more beholden to Iran. But yeah, but I, I, I do agree that Iran was responsible for, I'd say 600. I mean, I'm not sure exactly where they got that number from, but they, they were responsible for, for hundreds of casualties against American forces. Now again, should we have been there in the first place? Absolutely not.
- [24:22]
A
You know, what happens is it's, the narrative is basically pushed where you're supposed to just believe that every Iraqi Shiite militiaman was an Iranian rather than an Iraqi Arab Shiite fighting under an Iraqi Arab Shiite militia. And you know, as Gareth Porter showed and maybe I'll follow up with you and show you this. Gareth Porter found where it was actually that they had learned it from. And I don't know exactly what you're referring to. Maybe you have facts on this that you could back it up. But Gareth showed where they learned it from Lebanese Hezbollah, not from Iran, and that Lebanese Hezbollah got it from the ira, not from Iran. And that that was kind of the origin of the technology of how again, they're pretty simple bomb, but it's, you have to hear the idea somewhere first put the copper plate here, you know, on the shape charge here kind of thing. And so apparently that was where it came from according to Garrett's great journalism back then. But, and then I did kind of flash on the screen there a few different examples of these news stores. In fact, I'll go ahead and show you this one because the, the, the main ringleader in the media at the time again was Michael Gordon. He was the same guy who was the byline on every Judith Miller Hope story about the nuclear program in the New York Times and the run up to the war. Same guy. And yet here is his co journalist from the New York Times, Alyssa Rubin, writing in the same paper, you see the day, April 7, 2007, right during the same time frame. And down here she talks about how they found, I should have had it all highlighted, but here they go. They recovered an assembly area for powerful roadside bombs known as explosively foreign penetrators. The statement said. In other words, the military told the New York Times that. So then, in other words, when they weren't pushing the Michael Gordon, you know, David Petraeus, Dick Cheney narrative there, they kept having to admit that they kept stumbling across these machine shops. So you may be right that the idea came from Persia, but it sure seemed like what they were doing was trying their very best to conflate solder with the AYATOLLAH Khamenei in order to justify strikes inside Iran, which Bush ultimately refused to do.
- [26:37]
B
I agree with you on that. Yeah. There. I mean, the whole time I was in Iraq, that was. That was especially, I'd say, the surge years and on it was that the Iranians were the main threat, and basically we needed to take the fight to them. So, yeah, that line of thinking was very much at play. And I think something that we always missed or we never really factored in was that Iraq and Iran had fought a bitter war against each other, and the majority of Iraq was Shia. So the majority of Shias picked up a rifle whether they wanted to or not, and they fought against the Iranians. And that was something that we never really wrapped our heads fully around, that there wasn't a lot of nationalistic Iraqis who were not sympathetic with the Iranians until they had a horrible experience with foreigners coming in and invading their country and us trying to impose our will on them. So, again, like, we never should have been there in the first place. We continued to get it wrong. And again, this is why I think a lot of our actions right now are completely and totally counterproductive. If we ever wanted to stabilize Iraq after we toppled Saddam, we immediately should have been working with guys like Sauder. We should have been working with the nationalistic Shias and not played into the hands of the Iranians, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the Ayatollahs. Much like right now, if our goal is to get rid of the Ayatollahs and the irgc, the last thing we should be doing is killing off the Ayatollah. Especially because that was the Ayatollah that had a prohibition on developing a nuclear weapon, but also because it's creating a rally around the flag type of scenario now where you have Iranians who may have been out in the streets a month ago complaining about the cost of living and ready to overthrow their government from the ground up. And that might take a longer time, but it at least would have been organic. Whereas now, now that we've killed off the Supreme Leader, we're starting to kill off all the moderates. The hardliners case is being vindicated, and the Iranian people are now digging in because they're prideful people, like most people are. Like, I would be. Like, probably you would be. And we're moving even further away from anything that would resemble, like, an organic regime change inside of Iran. So really just basically eliminating any kind of option that we would have other than the war option.
- [28:43]
A
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. Okay, I have a couple questions about that. Just how organic was that? Because it seemed like there was a big protest, but then all of a sudden you had armed teams of guys burning mosques and sacking police stations and causing that fight. And then I have a second question about that, which is that I wonder if you agree with this, that it seems that the, the purpose of embellishing the casualty count on the part of the uprising, whether protesters or armed fighters or whoever, all it was. Exactly. Which must have been apparently like three or four thousand, something like that on both sides, including the cops and all that. But then they embellished that up to 30, 40,000. I'd like to know. Well, your opinion on that. That's my assertion that they embellished it, you know, far beyond reason and that obviously the purpose of that was as war propaganda to get people to say this is unacceptable, as you know, on an atrocity, on the level of the anfall campaign or something, we have to go in there and do something about it. But it then it also seems like it must have had a perverse effect on Donald Trump because that story could be interpreted to mean that the Iranian regime had to kill 30 to 50,000 people to get the other hundreds of thousands of them to finally quit and go home, or else surely they would have been overthrown any minute when that's just completely ridiculous. And if it was only 3,000 killed and, and they were the vanguard of a protest movement that made up, you know, whatever, a few tens of thousands of people, then that would not indicate that the Iranian regime is so brittle and is ready to fall. But if you really believe that they had to kill 30 to 50,000 people in some like battle of the psalm sized massacre in order to cling to power in January, then you might have believed Netanyahu that you can just, you know, give them a flick and they'll fall right over by the end of February.
- [31:00]
B
I mean, in war the first casualty is always the truth. And I'm always skeptical of like any kind of numbers coming out of a conflict zone. From my former vantage point, it was hard to know which number was accurate. I share your skepticism. In the Larger numbers. But what I do know from my past experience and just pattern recognition, anytime we launch a war, even if it sounds like it's under noble auspices, like we did in Libya, with the responsibility to protect doctrine that the Clintons and Samantha Power were so fond of saying, hey, we have to go in with military force to topple this regime to save the people. It sounds noble, but it always ends up in the same catastrophe that regime change driven by the Americans results in. So, look, I was very skeptical at the time. We need to go in and save the protest movement. I was always of the mindset that, look at this protest movement is going to be real and they're truly going to drive this current regime from power to. They've got to do it on their own for it to actually have any, for it to really resonate and be a real lasting thing. If we want to make sure that the protest movement fails is we go in there and we say, hey, we're. We're the Americans. We're here to back the protesters against the government. That just does not work for us, especially in the Middle East.
- [32:15]
A
Okay, now can you tell us what's your best assessment of the state of the negotiations before the war and whether they really could have been successful?
- [32:25]
B
I think the most, the biggest chance that we had was before the 12 Day War and before Midnight Hammer. I, I personally believe that, you know, Steve Witkoff and, and the folks working with him and then the army, his Iranian counterparts, I, I think they were close to a deal. That's just my opinion. I, I wasn't involved in the deal making. I don't want to portray it as that. My opinion of that, though, was that those talks were going very well. They were continuing to meet. There was discussions on. They're having real discussions on enrichment. And again, this is where the idea that no enrichment was our red line. That's where I saw the echo chamber that I alluded to in my resignation letter. That's where I really saw that go to work between members of the media and then Israeli officials coming in and basically saying, no, no. But you said, you know, no enrichment, which is complete and total nonsense. So I think there was a potential for a deal there. Obviously, the 12 day war, midnight Hammer set back the potential of the deal. But the Iranians are very, very calculated. And when they retaliated for Operation Midnight Hammer, they did in a very, very calculated way, they shot back an equal number of missiles that we dropped as bombs. And so that signaled to us that, hey, they were still interested in Actually cutting a deal. And again, this is what the Israelis feared because they knew that President Trump and his negotiating team probably could get a deal because you had the Iranians willing to go back to the table, holding their self imposed prohibition on developing a nuclear weapon and just saying, hey, we just want to have a conversation about enrichment. When we were having a conversation about enrichment, I think there was a real potential for a deal there. And that's why we had the Israelis come in, full court press with the echo chamber and say, no, no, we have to go now. They're going to develop a nuclear weapon. They're developing ballistic missiles that can reach America. They were just throwing anything at the wall to see what would stick and then to force our hand to say, hey, we're going to go right now and if we go, they're going to hit you guys back. So that's where I saw a lot of the negotiating space get taken away and kill any potential for a deal. But, Scott, I think right now there is a potential still for a deal. And I think only Donald Trump can do it. I think he's got to address the Israeli issue first and foremost and demand and force them to stop going on the offense. I know he sent out a true social last night saying just that, to stop bombing the energy sector. My opinion, my advice to him, if you would take it, is that, look, we, we have enough data on how the Israelis behave. If you tell them that they need to stop bombing this target or that target, they might back off for a week or so, but they're not going to listen to you. You have to take away their ability to do that. You have to take away some feature of your defense system to say, hey, look, we're going to take away a feature of your defense system and we are not going to support you while you're on the offense. If you go completely back on the defense, we will support you. But until we take something away from the Israelis, they will not listen to us. If President Trump addresses that threat first, that will give him the space to reach a deal. And we already, we already saw him today through his Commerce Secretary talking about lifting the sanctions on some of the Iranian oil that's already on the water. And so I think we, I pray that we're actually moving in that direction. But I think the timing is crucial. I think we have a lot of potential right now to get that deal.
- [35:29]
A
Yeah, I mean, politically that would be a huge climb down for him to have to overtly restrain the Israelis as part of probably even an official negotiation with Iran. I mean, I agree with you that he should seek peace at almost any cost anyway. But politically speaking, what you're really saying is, boy, did he already jump into the deep end of this ocean and, you know, where he cannot touch the bottom. And how is he going to get himself out of this thing without something like that? Where he's implicitly saying, boy, we just shouldn't have done that, or whatever, call it victory now. But if Israel's still in a position to force the war to continue on and they're willing to without him absolutely putting his foot down, then that really goes to show that the best he can do, the best he is doing, is calling time out rather than actually achieving any kind of success, much less victory. Like David Petraeus would say.
- [36:31]
B
Yeah, I mean, the fundamental issue is restraining Israel. And until we do that, we may be able to buy some time, but we'll be right back in the same situation all over again. So that's why I say we, we have to actually be pretty forceful with them and just say, look, we're paying for the majority of your defense. We will not pay for you to go on offense. We have a different strategic goal than, than they do. Like right now, we share some tactical objectives. Like we've said that we want to take down their ballistics or they got their navy, et cetera, and the Iranians or the Israelis are on board with that. But beyond that, that's where our interests go in completely divergent paths. The Israelis want full regime change, and the Israelis have a very high tolerance for chaos. Like, they're completely okay destroying that whole system over there and having a chaotic situation where the straight support moves is still in jeopardy, where potentially there's mass migration, where you have different fractionalizations within, inside of Iran that destabilizes the region but poses less of a threat to Israel? The Israelis are fine with that. We are not. That would be absolutely catastrophic for us, for our partners, our allies in the GCC states, potentially even in Europe, and then also for the world energy, trade. So the stakes are very, very high from our strategic objective standpoint. And so to let the Israelis continue to essentially call the shots and drive the ferocity and the strategic objectives of the battle, that is not doing any service for the American people. And I think as soon as President Trump can realize that and use his force that only President Trump has to with strain to restrain the Israelis, we're going to be, we're going to continue to be in this cycle.
- [37:55]
A
Now, do you think that Plan A was to parachute the monarch, Reza Pahlavi, the grandson, in there. Or it was really, the Israeli goal was just convince Trump to get it started and the plan is destroy Persia.
- [38:10]
B
The Israelis were big fans of throwing everything at the wall to see what would stick. So I think at some point in time they probably briefed like the Monarch Son or the MEK or the Kurds, et cetera, et cetera. But really, at the end of the day, the Israeli goal was to get in there and hammer the regime, kill the supreme leader. And killing the supreme leader, I think was twofold. I mean, basically it killed the guy that was restrained, the nuclear program. And so now there's a more compelling case to make that, hey, look, if they have anything that even resembles any kind of enrichment or any nuclear component, they're going to make a bomb. Because actually, probably now they will. Because we killed the one restrainer. Actually, we killed several of the restrainers. I say we, I mean, I mean, between us and the Israelis, we will all be blamed for it. But really the entire Israeli goal was just to launch this, to topple the regime at any cost. Because they know the time is short. They know that they're losing a lot of support on both sides of the aisle in America. And so for them, timing was of the essence and they basically work out the details later, get us deeply entrenched in this thing as fast as they can. And after that, they basically met their main strategic objective. Everything else is just a matter of getting us to stay committed to the fight. Yeah.
- [39:19]
A
Hey, guys, Scott here for Mundo's 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 it'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 Do's 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 all right, so I want to get back to the state of the war over there in a minute, but I have to tell you, I've been thinking about you a bit for the last year or so here, knowing that you're up there running the counterterrorism center at a time where I am completely paranoid to the point where I need to take pills or something about the danger of Bin Laden night blowback terrorism in this country. And yes, I know, you know, we all know that bin Ladenite factions overall, these Wahhabi, Salafi factions most often work for the United States, Britain and Saudi Arabia going around being mercenaries, killing people and taking over Syria and, and fighting in Bosnia and Chechnya and wherever Bill Clinton or Joe Biden need them. Republicans too. But also these are the guys who kill Americans. And when Al Qaeda turned against the United states in the 1990s, I know a lot of people think that that was all puppetry and an of thing, but I don't think so. I think Bill Clinton was backing them here while they're backing them there, while they're attacking us here and continued to do that. And their primary motivating factor for attacking the United States was support for Israel and Israel's mandated policy, of course, of dual containment from the bases in Saudi Arabia. But so then after the two years of war plus in the Gaza Strip and the horrific slaughter of 70,000 plus people in that war, it seems like Americans must be, you know, greatly susceptible to this kind of terrorism. And then now add on top of that the Shiites who, you know, Trump and I guess Israel assassinated not just their political leader, but they're one of their highest ranking religious leaders in the world in the Ayatollah Khomeini. And I know Sistani so far has not issued a fatwa against us all, but if people think of like the fatwa against Salman Rushdie where they said kill this author, well, what did they did not do then was do that to all of us. There was just that one guy.
- [41:50]
B
Right.
- [41:50]
A
But they could do that. Sistani could say all true believers fight and we would have a whole new fight on our hands. So can you please address, don't get yourself thrown in prison for telling me secrets or anything, but tell me about how justified is my paranoia about bin Ladenite terrorism in this country right now. And then also please add on top of that the worries, any worries about Shiite terrorism in this country. And you know, they're kind of oftentimes in right wing media rumors about Hezbollah sleeper cells and that kind of thing. But that's not impossible. So I don't know. You tell me.
- [42:28]
B
Yeah, I mean there's a lot there. I, I would say you're right. The, the bin Ladenite selfie Wabi. Unfortunately, because we're so consumed right now with this war in Iran, there's several places where they are predominantly, I would say in Yemen also what's taking place in Syria needs to be monitored, but we're not paying as much attention to those areas as we should be. And we have active Al Qaeda cells, active Al Qaeda organizations there that are very threatening. And they exist solely, especially in Yemen. AQAP exist solely to attack the homeland. And they don't do that by infiltrating covert cells anymore. That, to my knowledge, what they do is they reach out and they inspire. I'm Inspire magazine, but they're using social media as a way to reach out and to inspire people. The majority of the terror attacks that we had last year, they were not done by someone who had traveled overseas and then come here to attack us in some sort of a sleeper cell. They were inspired to action. Most of them cited what was taking place in Gaza because a lot of the propaganda coming out of Gaza, a lot of the media coming out of Gaza was just so graphic and inspired people to action. And they actually cited that in their manifestos or the last wills, whatever I call them. So that is, that is very concerning. And that combined with the wide open border that we had under the previous administration, we frankly just don't know who came into our country. Over the last four years, I publicly testified that we had identified a potential 18,000 known suspected terrorists who had gained access to the country. Basically, the further we dug into the books of what took place with immigration over the last four years, I, I realized, like, the less we knew. There just wasn't any accurate data. There was, there was limited amounts. I shouldn't say there wasn't any, but there's limited amounts of accurate data. But that wide open border just presents such a potential for actual radicals to infiltrate our country, and then at the time and place they're choosing to carry out attacks. But then in terms of blowback terrorism, I think we've already started to see it. In the last two weeks, we've had had several terror attacks here at home that they appear right now to have been inspired by what was taking place in Iran. As you indicated, we took out an Iranian Shia cleric, the Ayatollah. For many, he was the number one. He was eventually. He was essentially their version of the Pope. We took that. The Israelis killed him. President Trump said that, hey, we were, we were a part of doing that as well. So I think there is a high potential for blowback terrorism. And again, while most of our resources are focused right now on the fight in the Persian Gulf and against Iran and in that region, we are kind of taking our eye off the ball on the threats to the Homeland that we should be focused on. So there is a lot to be concerned with there. I think we've got our work cut out for us here at the Homeland. I think that's where our focus should be, not on picking new fights overseas. And I think your overall point, I've heard you make this many times, I think it's very accurate. Just the amount of blowback terror that we receive because of our support for the state of Israel, that's got to be addressed as well, too. And at the end of the day, it's not really about any love or affinity for anyone. It's like, hey, is this relationship worth it? At the end of the day, are we getting more than we're having to pay a cost for? I think that's worth discussing.
- [45:38]
A
Yeah. On the first day of the war, a terrorist went and killed three innocent people drinking at the bar in my hometown, Austin, Texas. Wounded 15 more.
- [45:46]
B
Yeah.
- [45:47]
A
And he just happened to pick a spot where there's cops everywhere so they were able to corner him. But, you know, you know better than me as a former special operator and whatever. But any man could tell you that'd be really easy for any man to kill a lot of people if he's willing to die trying. And there's this entire nation from Bangor to Bangor is there is a lot of soft targets of innocent civilians standing around everywhere. The only way to protect us from terrorism is to not do this kind of thing over there and not motivate. And I'm not saying, yes, we should have open borders. We certainly should not be bringing these people into our country, potential terrorists, into our country. The guy that attacked the synagogue the other day, they say that he was brothers with a Hezbollah guy. I don't know if that's really true, but if that is true, he should have never been allowed in the country in the first place. And they absolutely, as, as Ron Paul said, if they ignored the danger, then they're putting the people of this country in peril. They think they can just go around, do this stuff and that there won't be consequences because there absolutely will, too. And now, I'm sorry, I know you got to go, and I'm almost up at the time, Wal, too. But I have to ask you really quick about these alleged Iranian assassination attempts against Donald Trump. And my friend Ken Silva is a great reporter, and he's already shown that these are complete nonsense. But then again, that was your job up there. So can you tell us whether it's really true that the Ayatollah put out a hit on Donald Trump.
- [47:13]
B
Leading up to this war, after President Trump killed Qasem Solmati, the Iranians were pretty vocal that they wanted to have vengeance for. For President Trump killing Qasem Soleimani. So there was a legitimate threat. Now, in terms of how much resources the Iranians put behind it, that's up for debate. So far, all we found is that the trial, that of Asif Merant that Silva covered, I think he did a great job of covering it. So Asif Merchant was recruited by the Iranians, came over to America. We learned about it ahead of time. So by the time he even got into America, the FBI basically put him under surveillance and was able to have a confidential human source go befriend him. And so as Merchant was planning this assassination against President Trump kind of in a kind of clownish way, but you have to still have to take it seriously. He was planning it under the FBI's control, essentially. I think that that should be looked at, that that trial is done. Kinsel has done a good job of covering it. Merchant was arrested just two days before the assassination attempt in Butler. And according to the FBI, the two events aren't linked. Again, as I discussed last night on Tucker's show, there's still a lot of unanswered questions. If we've done our due diligence to truly see if there was any linkage between what Merchant had cooking and then also Thomas Crooks and everything that took place there. The DHS IG has been blocked from investigating what's taking place in Butler. So I think there's still a lot more work to do there. A lot of unanswered questions, but that was about the most serious threat against the president's life that I. That I had seen. But there was a very real. The Iranians did threaten to kill President Trump. That was real. The Iranians did seek to avenge Qasem Solmani. Qasem Solmani was a hero to the Iranian Iranian regime and also to a lot of the Iranian people. So that. That part was real. Again, the amount of resources they dedicated to it is kind of unknown. So far, all we can put our fingers. All we can put our finger on is Marshant.
- [49:14]
A
And even the threat, it was not. Was it equivalent to, like, the fatwa against Rushdie?
- [49:21]
B
I don't believe there was ever a fatwa. I'd have to go back and check. I'm sure someone can research that, but to my knowledge, there was not a fatwa. There was lots of just kind of Internet smack talking about they were going to kill him. But I mean they did recruit a guy and send him over here. So I think you have to take those threats very, very seriously because the Iranians have tried to kill, they tried to kill the Saudi ambassador in Georgetown before. That was a pretty serious plot they had.
- [49:46]
A
That one was fake too.
- [49:47]
B
That was fake too?
- [49:49]
A
Yeah. You know, I, I think we all gotta look real close at Ken Silva's. First of all, on the, on the recent story here, on the timeline of who was recruited by who, when and, and who started telling what to which informants and all that. We should be really skeptical. And then now the one against the ambassador in the Obama years, that was fake. The guy was a, the absent minded car salesman from Corpus Christi who couldn't find his car keys and was like caught on a phone call with Hezbollah drug dealers and they just embellished it into this plot when that ambassador wasn't even a member of the royal family. He was some kind of lackey. There's no real point in them. And then supposedly he, this guy was going to blow up a restaurant or whatever. I think the whole thing fell apart once Gareth Porter started looking at it, as many of these stories often do.
- [50:34]
B
Yeah, it's been a while since I've looked into that one, so I'll take your word for it. I, I, but it's been a minute.
- [50:39]
A
Yeah. All right, well, listen, thank you, Congratulations and thank you for doing the right thing and standing on principle and resigning over this war. I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to, to ask you about the choice to stay and make it less worse or go ahead and stand on principle. I know it was a difficult one for you and you're gonna face a lot of heat even going forward here, but you obviously did the right thing and I really appreciate it and appreciate your time on the show, Joe.
- [51:02]
B
Absolutely, Scott. Thank you so much.
- [51:04]
A
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 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 the above@scott Horton.org and I'm serializing the audiobook of Provoked at Scott Hortonshow.com and Patreon.com Scott Hortonshow Bumpers by Josh Langford Music, intro and outro videos by Dissident Media Audio mastering by Podsworth Media. See y' all next time.