3/19/26 Larry Johnson on the Ongoing and Coming Failures in the US and Israel’s War with Iran

Summary

Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews

Episode: 3/19/26 Larry Johnson on the Ongoing and Coming Failures in the US and Israel’s War with Iran
Date: March 23, 2026
Guest: Larry Johnson (Former CIA Officer, Sonar21.com)

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Episode Overview

In this extensively detailed interview, Scott Horton welcomes former CIA officer Larry Johnson to offer first-hand analysis of the rapidly unfolding and increasingly disastrous US and Israeli war with Iran. Johnson provides deep context drawn from decades inside the intelligence community, details recent military operations and failures, analyzes the geopolitical and economic impacts, and offers critical insight into both the American and Israeli motivations and miscalculations. The episode stresses the limits of US power, the ramifications for regional and global economics, and the mythmaking that underpins much of America’s foreign policy rationale. Throughout, both Horton and Johnson push back against conventional narratives, highlight media failures, and question the role of both the Israel lobby and the Pentagon in the escalation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why the War Happened and its Predictability

• Crisis Action Planning ("CAT stood up") Before Attack:
  Johnson explains (01:35) that a week prior to the US strikes on Iran, the Pentagon activated Crisis Action Teams, signaling imminent large-scale military operations and making war highly predictable. Canceled exercises and operational changes were major tells.
• Disregard for Intelligence Warnings:
  Trump proceeded despite multiple warnings—from the Joint Chiefs and senior intelligence. “He doesn’t care what they say. He’s made the decision.” (01:35)
• Tulsi Gabbard's Failure, Joe Kent's Courage:
  Johnson expresses disappointment at former antiwar politician Tulsi Gabbard, contrasting her with Joe Kent’s opposition to the war: “Tulsi Gabbard is a complete embarrassment...Joe Kent, to his credit, stood up and had the balls to follow through...” (01:48)

2. Strategic & Battlefield Realities

• Iran’s Unexpected Capabilities:
  Despite US air supremacy, Iran managed a significant shoot-down of advanced aircraft, including an F-35 (04:15), and downed US refueling aircraft.
• Denial and Cover-Ups:
  Johnson claims official denials about the KC-135 being shot down (04:59), describing it as “absolutely shot down by a surface-to-air missile,” pointedly challenging the narrative of a routine crash.
• Kuwaiti Pilot Went Rogue:
  The downing of US jets over Kuwait by an F-18 pilot allegedly siding with Iran (05:42):
  “The Kuwaiti pilot who was flying the F18 decided he was going to side with Iran in this war and shot him down.” (05:42)

3. US Vulnerabilities and Limits of Power

• Historical Parallels and Warnings:
  Scott recalls the 2007 Joint Chiefs’ warning to Bush about escalation risks: “We won’t have escalation dominance.” (07:17) Johnson confirms ongoing operational planning since the mid-2000s, which always warned against attacking Iran.
• Iran’s Defensive Depth:
  Over decades, Iran built deeply-buried, protected military and missile installations:
  “Iran...has built miles of underground storage facilities and factories, missile factories...we can’t destroy them.” (10:45)
• Global Economic Impact:
  Iran’s closure of the Persian Gulf, with the knock-on effect on a wide swath of global oil, gas, and fertilizer trade, is “the longtime killer here.” Johnson warns of likely famine, hunger, and continued rising prices worldwide (12:40).

4. Battle Damage Assessment

• Major US and Allied Military Losses:
  Summary of Iranian strikes on 13 US bases (17:05), with largest losses at Prince Sultan Air Base (Saudi), 5th Fleet HQ (Bahrain, “basically destroyed”), and Al-Udeid Air Force Base (Qatar, CENTCOM’s primary hub).
• Air Defense Depletion:
  Loss of advanced radar systems has crippled US air defenses (18:17), requiring risky reliance on AWACS. Johnson describes massive depletion of Patriot and THAAD interceptors with production rates unable to match Iranian missile and drone output. “We can produce in one month what we would use up in one day.” (23:40)
  • Notable Quote:
    “We’ve picked a fight that we can’t win.” (23:55)

5. Iran’s Warfare Doctrine & Restraint

• Proportional Response:
  Iran has been deliberate—targeting military infrastructure, not barracks or desalination plants (26:13). Johnson (citing a Shi’a reader) underlines Iran’s religious avoidance of depriving populations of water, relating to early Islamic history:
  “We’re never going to do to our enemies what was done to our martyr. We’re not going to deprive them of water.” (26:47)
• Historical Restraint:
  Throughout the Iran-Iraq War, Johnson notes Iran refrained from using chemical weapons, despite suffering 20 chemical attacks from Iraq (supported by the US):
  “Iran did not make chemical weapons, and it never responded in kind...it was haram. It was a sin.” (29:35)

6. Failure of Bombing as a Strategy

• Challenging Founding Myths:
  Johnson dismantles the myth that civilian bombing campaigns force surrender, recalling Japan in WWII:
  “We’ve got to stop with this mythology that if we just kill enough civilians, that’s going to force them to quit. No, it’s not.” (30:55)
  • Horton: “Terrible founding myth for your world empire that a few nukes will put the natives in line.” (31:16)

7. Israel Lobby’s Role & US Policy Dynamics

• Who’s Driving the War?
  Horton raises the debate: Is the US leading, or is Israel (via its lobby and American neocon allies) pulling the strings? (32:40)
• It Was a Joint Effort:
  Johnson: “It’s more of the latter...This was a joint effort. The planning was done in advance...going back...to December 29th, 2025...weeks in advance.” (34:18)
• US Aims: Regime Change and Geopolitical Positioning:
  “What is the real intent of the United States? Well, it is regime change...allow us free, unfettered access to their oil and gas.” (37:11)
  Also, Johnson argues Iran is treated as a chess piece in US ambitions against Russia and China (37:42).

8. The Limits of US Strategic Planning

• Short-Sightedness and Obsolescence:
  “There really is no strategic planning on the part of the United States...If there was, we would have understood the future is with drones, not...aircraft carriers.” (39:02)

9. Revisionist Perspectives on Proxy Warfare

• Hypocrisy in Accusations:
  Johnson draws attention to US double standards, noting support for Saddam Hussein against Iran, CIA sponsorship of anti-Iranian terrorist groups, and the contradiction of condemning Iran for supporting proxies.
  “By that standard, we killed far more Iranians than Iranians ever killed Americans.” (43:33)

10. Underlying Motivations: Grudges & Mythmaking

• Enduring US Hostility Toward Iran:
  Johnson and Horton attribute the persistence of anti-Iran sentiment in policy circles partly to resentment over the 1979 revolution and America’s inability to control Iran after decades of dominance:
  “...the fundamental hatred of Iran boils down to they beat the CIA...we keep looking for a way to turn it around...” (50:09)

11. Israel’s Major Role

• Netanyahu’s Advocacy:
  Johnson credits Israeli PM Netanyahu with playing a “major role” in pushing Trump toward military action, including multiple White House visits and aggressive lobbying:
  “This was, as they kept saying, man, this is our last chance. We got to do it now we’ve got them right where we want them. Yeah, that’s not working out so well.” (51:21)

12. Lessons from Syria, Libya, and Proxy Warfare History

• Early Warnings from Alastair Crooke:
  Minor digression discusses early, accurate warnings about US and western covert operations supporting jihadists in Syria and Libya (52:18–55:28).

13. Concluding Remarks: Strategic and Diplomatic Futures

• Diminished US Power and Influence:
  Johnson’s closing assessment is stark:
  “I think Trump has done irreparable damage to the U. S. reputation in the Persian Gulf...The outcome will be...the US will be forced out of the Persian Gulf and...Gulf Arabs to China and Russia for guarantees of security going forward.” (56:54)

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Predicting War and Pentagon Signals:
  “...when they stood up what’s called the CAT, the Crisis Action Team...all the signs were there...I just, I knew this, we were going to do it.” – Larry Johnson (01:35)

• Exposure of Military Cover-Ups:
  “...the KC135 last week...It was absolutely shot down by a surface to air missile because the trailing aircraft saw the launch...” – Larry Johnson (05:03)

• On Depleted US Air Defenses:
  “We can produce [Patriot missiles] in one month what we would use up in one day. This is madness. We’ve picked a fight that we can’t win.” – Larry Johnson (23:40)

• Iran’s Religious Restraint:
  “We’re never going to do to our enemies what was done to our martyr. We’re not going to deprive them of water.” – Larry Johnson (citing a Shi’a reader) (26:47)

• Dismantling Bombing Myths:
  “We’ve got to stop with this mythology that if we just kill enough civilians, that’s going to force them to quit. No, it’s not.” – Larry Johnson (30:55)

• On Proxy Hypocrisy:
  “If we’re going to condemn Iran for supporting proxies...Did America support any proxies that attacked Iran? Well...the Americans backed Saddam Hussein, who started a war against Iraq that killed about 300,000 Iranians.” – Larry Johnson (43:33)

• Ultimate Consequence:
  “The US will be forced out of the Persian Gulf and...there will be a move among the Gulf Arabs to China and Russia for guarantees of security going forward.” – Larry Johnson (56:54)

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Important Segments (with Timestamps)

• [01:35–05:00] – How the war became inevitable; signals and intelligence ignored.
• [07:17–13:40] – Historical planning, the limits of escalation dominance, and risks of fighting Iran.
• [17:05–23:40] – Battle damage, base destruction, missile defense depletion.
• [26:13–29:35] – Iran’s proportional “eye for an eye” response; religious and moral restraints.
• [30:55–31:16] – Debunking the myth of effectiveness in bombing civilians.
• [34:18–39:36] – Israel lobby’s role, US and Israeli joint planning, and strategic intentions.
• [43:29–45:25] – Proxy wars and double standards.
• [56:54] – Final assessment of the war’s consequences for US power and credibility.

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Summary:

This episode delivers a sobering, unvarnished account of the US/Israeli war with Iran, highlighting operational failures, debunking government and media narratives, and tracing deep-seated historical and ideological drivers of American policy. Johnson’s expertise as a former insider provides gravity, while Horton’s incisive questions ensure clarity, skepticism, and context for listeners. The discussion is especially valuable for its detailed account of military realities, the exposure of US vulnerabilities, the bigger-picture economic and strategic ramifications, and the raw honesty about the motivations fueling America's disastrous misadventure.

For deeper reading, visit:

• Sonar21.com for Larry Johnson's analysis
• Scott Horton’s Books and Archives

Transcript

[Larry Johnson]

You ladies and gentlemen of the press

[Scott Horton]

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.

[Larry Johnson]

Libertarian foreign policy, mostly. When the president does it, that means that it is not a liberty. We're gonna take out seven countries.

[Scott Horton]

They don't know what the they're doing. Negotiate now. End this war. And now, here's your host, Scott Horton. Okay, guys, on the line here, I've got the former CIA officer turned decent guy, Larry Johnson. He's a good guy. He writes at sonar 21. The CIA, they lie us into war. Larry Johnson. He truths us out of war as best as he can anyway, and analyzes all of the empire's shenanigans and wrongdoings all around the world, all the time. Sonar21.com welcome back to the show, Larry.

[Larry Johnson]

How you doing? I'm a recovering spook. You know, there you go.

[Scott Horton]

Oh, listen, for shame on you, sir, because, you know, three weeks ago you came on my show and you said that there was a 90% chance that Donald Trump was going to attack Iran, and then he attacked Iran like seven hours later, so.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Scott Horton]

Explain yourself. Why did you think that the chance was only 90% when it was a short king?

[Larry Johnson]

Well, yeah, there's, there's always a chance that the unexpected happens. But, you know, all, well, not only were all the signs there, but a week before the attack, when they stood up what's called the cat, the Crisis Action Team. So there's, you know, a CAT at the Pentagon, CAD at centcom. Okay. So it's basically an operations center. So we start setting up all these operations centers. They, you know, they run 20, 24, 7. And the shifts are usually you work 12, you get 12 off, 12 on, 12 off. And so. And then they were canceling exercises. So I just, I knew this was, we were going to do it. And it was, you know, despite being warned not to do it, Trump was warned multiple times, both by Danny Cain, you know, the raging Cain of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and by even apparently John Radcliffe and then the National Intelligence Council, you know, senior analysts. And as Trump said, he doesn't care what they say. He's just, he's, he's made the decision. We have learned that Tulsi Gabbard is a complete embarrassment. She is a disgrace. And, you know, she has lost any credibility or respect in my eyes. I had, I had held out hope. You know, I thought she was stronger than this. But turns out she's A very weak person. Joe Kent, to his credit, he stood up and had the balls to follow through on it. So, you know, you can't fault the man for, you know, standing up. Somebody needs to stand up. And I thought if Tulsi had followed suit, then we wouldn't be in this mess, man, we, we're stuck. And there's, I, I can only think of one relatively painless way out. And, and, and it's this. Trump will have to agree to lift the sanctions on Iran. And he will agree, not necessarily in public, but the agreement will be no more U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf in exchange for Iran committing to full open inspection of its nuclear facilities to prove that it doesn't have a nuclear weapon. That's, that's the only way, peaceful way, where Trump could then declare, see, we've, we've had such a major effect. We have, we've forced those Iranians to come back and accept the jcpoa. Yeah, that would essentially be the agreement. But you know, it, I, it's only going to come after enormous financial pain and maybe even further combat losses because we just saw today, you know, they, we had total air supremacy. We, we destroyed all their air defense. But somehow they managed to shoot down an F35 stealth aircraft. And you know, they've been shooting down other planes. But the, the Pentagon is lying, Department of War is lying about, you know, the KC135 last week that supposedly it, it crashed. Didn't, didn't quite explain how it, but it crashed. Well, it wasn't shot down. It, it just crashed. Yeah, that happens to planes all the time. Just flying along and then boom, you go into the ground. Well, you know, I, I, I know it from friends who were involved or had access to the material. It was absolutely shot down by a surface to air missile because the trailing aircraft saw the launch, managed to peel off. It got some damage to its aircraft,

[Scott Horton]

but I thought it was a midair collision because didn't they show like the tail was broken off another plane that had somehow been able to still land safely?

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah, but it wasn't, it was, it was a shoot down. The three F15 Eagles that were downed, they said it was friendly fire. No, it was actually unfriendly fire. The Kuwaiti pilot who was flying the F18 decided he was going to side with Iran in this war and shot him down. So, you know, we've had, and, and what's, what's so despicable about Heg, Seth and this crew, the, the six crew members that died on that KC135, they didn't want to recognize them as combat casualties. They just, it was an accident. So. All right. Yeah, they don't get recognized is combat

[Scott Horton]

casualties, Larry, on that shoot down, do we really know that the Kuwaiti didn't make a mistake there? Was there a real indication of that or just best guess what?

[Larry Johnson]

No, what I'm told is he went rogue. It was, it was not. You know, you can mistakenly identify one aircraft but not three.

[Scott Horton]

Deconflexion should have taken care of it. That's.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah, that. That's exactly. Now you could make the case that part of the problem with deconfliction was with the loss of all those radars that Iran blew up. I guess the numbers now total 10. So you're looking at like $7 billion worth of radar that have been destroyed over the course of the last two weeks. Man, that's significant.

[Scott Horton]

Well, this is something that you and I talked about hours before the war broke out, but that, you know, and I'm sure you've been saying the same stuff maybe on my show as well, but I certainly have been saying this for years and years and years. Gareth Porter and I've been talking about this certainly since 2007, that because it was Joel Klein in January of 2007, had the report, maybe the report came out in February or March or something, but it was about how in January the chiefs had taken W. Bush down to the basement of the Pentagon, down to the tank, to the skiff there. And they told him, look, we'll do the surge in Iraq, but don't make us go to Iran. We don't want to do Iran. And the reason why is because, yeah, we can obviously beat them up real bad if it comes down to it, but we won't have escalation dominance. In other words, we won't be able to control every stage of the war. And we don't want to if we don't think we can control every stage of what happens. In this case, we've got in at that time especially, we had hundreds of thousands of guys in the region, but then also all of these bases from Iraq at that time, and even still, but Kuwait and all the way down the Gulf, right, in Qatar and Bahrain, we got the headquarters of Central Command there in Qatar and the headquarters of the 5th Fleet at Bahrain and then all these army and Air Force bases all up and down the Gulf there. And we have interceptors, but it's always a question of just volume. They can only shoot down so many. They can't be completely effective. And so then all those bases ultimately are at risk and the gates of Hormuz are at risk and $200 a barrel oil and the collapse of the world economy and all of these things. So can America beat Iran in a war? I mean, certainly from the air. No one really talks about an actual invasion, but yeah, ultimately, like, we can bomb the crap out of them in a way that they cannot reach out and. And bomb us here in North America. Nobody's saying that. But can we just have our way with them and at a reasonable price? No, we can't. So we should just not. And we've. So that just makes. Since I read that then in 07, like, that's essentially the same way I've explained it on average, like once every couple of days for 19 years. Like, that's exactly the deal, man.

[Larry Johnson]

Well, in fact, back then, so I GUESS it was 2006, a couple of other things. I was involved with scripting an exercise for the Joint Special Operations Command that we were going into. The exercise scenario was we, we, the United States, were attacking a target inside Iran called an HDBT hardened, deeply buried target for the express purpose of either destroying or recovering enriched uranium. So we did that in 2006, I can't remember. I think it was what they call an FTX field exercise. I don't think it was just a communications exercise, what they call a command post, a CP exercise. But the lesson learned out of that was don't do it. Also, at the same time, one of my. One of my CIA buddies was assigned to what was called the Iran Task Force, and the CIA was actively planning an operation inside Iran to remove the Islamic regime. And I remember my friend early on said, raised his hand, said, okay, so let's say we remove him. Then what, what, what's the replacement plan? And was told, oh, don't worry about that, it'll take care of itself. And so he said, oh, yeah, that's. And so he, he went and looked for another job. He got the hell out of there because he knew that it was going to be a mess. So there was, there were active plans back in 2006, 2007, just to confirm what you're saying, to go after and take out Iran. The reality is, had we done it then it might have been, oh, it would have been. We would have had more chance of success. I'm not saying it would have succeeded, but we're stuck right now because Iran in the intervening 20 years, has built miles of underground storage facilities and factories, missile factories, in particular, and those are protected, those are, we, we can't destroy them. And even, even if we were able to insert some, you know, some troops at, at the entrance of one of those, they're literally miles underground. We don't have enough troops to go in and actually secure these, which is the other fantasy that the Trump administration is currently living with. So Iran's got the, the Gulf of the Persian Gulf shut down 20% of the world's oil, 25% of the world's liquid natural gas, 35% of the world's fertilizer. That's the kill that is the longtime killer here. Because right now it's planting season in the Northern Hemisphere and the Northern Hemisphere accounts for at least 60 to 70% of all arable land on planet Earth. So that's where the growth is supposed to take place. And no fertilizer, no growing food in many places. So we're looking at a, you know, going to call it famine, starvation, serious hunger in some countries. Six to eight months from now, the price of gas is going to continue to go up. I don't know about where you live in Texas, but it's up, it's up now a buck in two weeks here, here in Florida. And then the liquid natural gas, that, that's just, it's, it's causing real problems throughout Asia because a lot of the Asian people use that to, for cooking and deep frying things. And then, you know, they're not deep frying right now because it's getting too expensive. So the, that's why I said the economic pressure on the United States is going to grow and grow. And can we militarily open the Strait of Hormuz? Yeah, but at what cost? You know, the, the cost and loss of lives, loss of ships, loss of prestige will be significant. And, and there's no guarantee that we could actually pull it off because Iran, Iran is dug in like, you know, a tick in a dog's butt. And they've got caves, they've got underground facilities, they've got missiles, they've got drones, maritime missiles as well. Maritime drones. So it's, there's, there's no quick, easy military solution to this.

[Scott Horton]

ExpandDesigns.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. You setting up a business working on any kind of online project like that. Check out expand designs.com okay so I mean I think that much is just proven right that this thing is rolling on and on. They can continue to use their drones, they can light up any boat that they want in that gulf. They can it, you know any kind of target essentially in all the states up and down the southwestern, however you want to call it, side of the gulf there. But so let's see, can you take us through. I know I read a great piece by you would have been I don't know, four or five days ago where you went down and kind of gave the litany of the battle damage on the American side here. I think it's crucial to point out that even though apparently they hit every

[Larry Johnson]

last base is it or 13, 13 basis.

[Scott Horton]

So 13 from earbull down to wherever the Oman Muscat down there in Iran and Oman I mean to say but now importantly because you know people's imaginations can run wild on partial information where. So I think it's really important to point out that they were not targeting the barracks and trying to kill every last guy that we have stationed at Bahrain or Qatar or any of these places. And I think they must have been really evacuated to a great degree even leading up to the thing.

[Larry Johnson]

Correct.

[Scott Horton]

So thank goodness we do not have like the worst case scenario of just missiles raining out of the sky on our guys heads over there. And yet what is please if you can in you know, medium length form summarize for us the battle damage from earbill down to Oman. Just how bad is it? What's it look like?

[Larry Johnson]

So mostly the three critical bases, I mean there are 13 but the ones up in Kuwait, those are basically ground detachments so that they don't have any air power to speak of. The three critical ones are the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, the fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain and then Al Udid Air Force Base which has been sort of CENTCOM headquarters as well as the location of what's called the chaoc, the Combined Air Operations Center. And so that that the chaoc, its function is to monitor Every single plane taking off or landing or operating in that entire airspace extending from the Mediterranean north to Turkey, south to the Arabian Sea and over to say, Afghanistan. That has, that has been relocated. I don't know where it was relocated to, but it was relocated. The, the biggest damage was to the radars without those radars because the radars were tied in directly to the air defense systems. The THAAD in particular. Those radars are kaput. Now the United States can compensate for it, I'm told, by using awacs, but it's still not as good as having those radars in place. And they cost anywhere. There are two types. One type cost a half a billion dollars, $500 million. The other one comes in at $1 billion. So 10 of those have been destroyed. So that is, you know, let's put this way, you got at least $5 billion worth of damage and it's probably closer to 8 billion when all is said and done. 5th, the 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain has basically been destroyed. There's no, you know, that was, that was a place where ships, US ships would come refit, you know, like a destroyer after it had been firing off surface, you know, it's air defense missiles, they would have to come in and get reloaded there at that port and, and let's point out the diff. What a difference 40 years makes. So when I moved down to State in 1989, one of my colleagues was a Navy SEAL commander. He had just come off an assignment in the Persian Gulf two years previously when the United States was backing Iraq in its war against Iran. The Iranians tried to block the Persian Gulf, tried to mine it in order to prevent Iraq from getting oil out. So we conducted what was called an oil escort operation. And as part of that operation we erected, there was a, there was a floating barge outside of Bahrain and it was called the Hercules barge. So my buddy Commander Paul Evinco, he was the commander of that and they led, he led the oil escort operations. They boarded, they boarded Iranian mine layers. They took the Iranians captive. Iranians sent out like 24 gunboats to attack them. One night they fought off, beat them back and in fact in that they recovered a surface to air missile that Ali north had sold to the Iranians, just, you know, bring it home so we could do that 40 years ago. We can't do that now. If that base was, if we tried to do something, that base would be destroyed instantly by drones and missiles. And we don't, we don't have a defense at one, at one of Those bases, I won't specify which one right now because it's still, I think operationally sensitive. The air defense has been completely depleted out. No more Pac Threes, no more thads. They are gone, used up, no replacements. And that's the real damage that's being done by the Iranian strategy is early on, you know, they sort of flooded the system with older missiles, older drones and you know our, our radar systems don't have the ability to say oh that's a, that's a 12 year old missile so we can ignore. No, they have to assume that it's always the worst. And in the course of that they, you know, let's assume that on February 28 that we had never used a single Thaad missile and had never used the single PAC3 Patriot missile. Understanding that when those systems are used they have to fire two, two missiles and at a minimum to engage one target, sometimes they fire three or four. The total number of PAC3 Patriots that had been produced since 2015 is 4,620. That's the maximum number we may have produced less than that total number of fads. The, the terminal High Altitude area defense weapon, 900. So just you assume, do the math that you got, you got 6420 so that means you got 3210 missiles that they could intercept and on the THAAD side, 450. Well we know that some of those systems, the Patriots in particular, have been used in Ukraine for the last three years and Russia over the course of that period has fired over 12,000 missiles, cruise and ballistic. So obviously if we'd used all of our Patriots up there, they would have been completely depleted there. We don't know how many Patriots were used last June in the 12 day war, but it's estimated that Iran fired over 800 missiles in that 12 day war. So you know, the math doesn't work out that we are literally running out. If we are not all, we're in some areas we're depleted but across the board we're going to be completely out of Patriot PAC3 missiles and THAAD missiles. Boom. They have to wait for more to be produced and the production rate, you know, do the math. If we could produce 900, they started producing them in the Thads in 2007. So basically in 20 years we produce 900. About four year, you know, five year, something like that. With at least with the PAC3 we get more, we get 50amonth. Okay, so that means we can handle 25 missiles which is about what Iran is firing right now at Israel and at the U. S. Bases in one day. So we can produce in one month what we would use up in one day. So I actually said, this is, this is madness. We've picked a fight that we can't win. And then we were told, yeah, but we suppressed their air defense. Boy, we can fly at will. We got air supremacy. Yeah, they just shot down 35 today.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, I know, I hate to quote the Economist at you, but they had a tweet earlier that said that Trump says that we've destroyed 100% of Iran's military capability, but the remaining zero percent is wreaking havoc all across the region still, you know.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Scott Horton]

So look, God dang, I mean, I'm sorry, but I happen to remember, as I'm sure we must have discussed at the time, right before the war broke out, three weeks ago, one day short of three weeks ago, is it. They put it in the Wall Street Journal. I think the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff put it in the Wall Street Journal. I told Trump there are a lot of reasons not to do this and one of the main ones is they have more missiles, offensive missiles, than we have defensive missiles.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

And as you just said, we need double and we don't have them. And so at some point the arithmetic's there. They exhaust our defenses and then they keep firing and then what? And you know, I'm sorry, I've done so many interviews today, they all kind of blend together. I don't think we mentioned so far in this interview that they reached out and blew up oil refinery in Haifa, Israel today. Well, David Worms, there's magic pipeline to Haifa. It was a missile pipeline.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah, well they, this is in, you know, it's been fascinating watching Iran's. They've not been a strictly eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth response. They did say if, you know, if you hit our air bases, we're going to hit your air bases. If you hit our oil and gas facilities, we're going to hit yours. So we did yesterday and Iran wasted no time. They fired right back. The one area where they haven't. And this goes to the, the, what I'll call the integrity of the Islamic regime when they're desalinization plant was struck last week, it thinking, oh my God, if, if, if Iran follows through on this, they are going, it will end up killing a lot of people in all, all the countries are going to have to vacate a lot of their population because they depend heavily upon the desalinization plans for fresh water. Iran didn't respond. It didn't react that way. It left those other desalinization plants long alone. And one of my, one of my readers, a Shia Muslim, he, He explained it. He said, look, the Shiism began with the Imam Hussein, who was facing off against an Army. He had 70 men facing off against an army of 3,000. And he was deprived of water for three days, he and his men. And he said, so out of that, we have learned as Shia, we're never going to do to our enemies what was done to our martyr. We're not going to deprive them of water. And I thought, huh, you know, I hadn't thought about that, but it makes sense. And, and again, this, this I, I've got a real thing about the demonization of Iran. When you go back to 19, September 1980, when Iraq attacked Iran, at the time it was. There's no written document showing that Carter ordered it, but I guarantee you it was done with the encouragement of the CIA as a way to apply pressure on Iran, who was still holding Americans hostage. That war started in September of 1980. The first chemical weapon attack was in August of 1983. And that attack was made possible by Don Rumsfeld supplying chemical precursors to Iraq. So they could do that. And Iraq from, from August of 1983 through August of 1988, carried out 20 chemical weapon attacks, weapons of mass destruction, courtesy of the United States, helping them do that. And what did Iran do? Iran did not make chemical weapons, and it never responded in kind with chemical weapons. Why? Because within their theology, it was haram. It was a sin to do that. So I'm just, I'm just going to point out that Iran is not. They are not devoid of legal boundaries and, and they're really not keen on killing civilians, unlike us. I, I went back as part of this question about effectiveness of bombing campaigns. Now, you know, you growing up in the United States, like me, were taught basically in school that the way we ended World War II in the Pacific was by dropping the atomic bombs. You know, we dropped those bombs, kill all those civilians, and the Japanese went, oh, we give up, stop. But that's a lie. That's not what happened. We started a bombing campaign in Japan in March of 1945, killed in the initial Tokyo firebombing, like a hundred thousand Japanese. And before our bombing campaign was over, with the August 9th dropping of the last atomic bomb in Nagasaki, over 700,000 Japanese civilians had died. Japan didn't surrender on August 10th, they surrendered. On August 15th, if I remember correctly. And what happened? Well, on August 8th, the Soviet Red army entered the war in Manchuria as they had promised, as Joseph Stalin had promised the FDR at the Alta conference they had had earlier that spring. And in the first days, the Russians crushed the Japanese army. And, and there are documents from the, the, the, the, the Japanese government at the time that show they were still even getting bombed with an atomic bomb. Hadn't convinced them to surrender. They thought they still had a chance. They could negotiate with Russia. They could still save some of their. And when Russia said, no, you know, it's unconditional, it was Russia's intervention in that war that finally brought that war to an end. That's why I said, we got to stop with this mythology that if we just kill enough civilians, that that's going to force them to quit. No, it's not.

[Scott Horton]

Terrible founding myth for your world empire that a few nukes will put the natives in line.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

Year of this battle station, you know.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

All right, guys, well, if you're like me and pretty much everybody else, you use Amazon.com all the time because what are you going to do? They got prime. They bring this stuff right to your door and all that. So that's fine. But what you do is make sure and stop by Scott Horton.org and click the Amazon link in the right hand margin there. Get yourself a bug assault shotgun. Assault shotgun for destroying flies trespassing on your property. And then also whatever you get from Amazon and the Scott Horton show will get a kickback from Amazon's end of the sale, which is very nice, man. So listen, I'm jumping around for you here. There's so much to talk about, about the war itself and all of that, and maybe I'll try to figure out a better way to ask a good question about that later. But I want to get to the politics here in the United States a bit. It seems like a pretty kind of a stark bifurcation of opinion between whether America calls all the shots and Israel's just our client state and that kind of thing, or whether, no, the Lakud and the Israel lobby and the neoconservatives and their remnants and allies and whoever the think tanks and they really have the sway and they've hijacked our foreign policy and bent it this way. I hear and see a lot of people rationalizing that. No, see, this is somehow about sticking it to China and depriving them of hydrocarbons or this kind of thing.

[Larry Johnson]

That's nonsense.

[Scott Horton]

But then so, and look, you and I already agree about the role of the Israel lobby, but there's even there, and I did speak with Joe Kent earlier, there's still a couple of things there. One of them is the absolute obvious incontrovertible fact that it was Netanyahu and then his friends Lindsey Graham and the guys at the foundation for Defense of Democracies and others who just continually beat Trump over the head until he agreed with this and did it. Then there's this other narrative that says that they really blackmailed Trump into doing it by threatening to go ahead and launch the war and force Iran to attack American targets in response and then drag Trump in kicking and screaming. So he decided he better just do it anyway, as Rubio put it, and so forth. I know for a fact that in the, especially the first Obama term, well, maybe Even in the second Obama term, certainly in like 2012 especially, they were really afraid that Netanyahu was going to start the war and drag them in. But ultimately, the president, United States puts his foot down and that's it, you know, kind of thing seems like. But then they want us to believe that really Netanyahu almost kind of blackmailed the world emperor here and made him do this, where it seems much more likely that they just came to an agreement and they decided to do this together. But I wonder, you know, what's your interpretation of all that stuff?

[Larry Johnson]

Well, actually, I think it's more of the latter because we already, we already had one example where Israel attacked Iran on June 13, 2025. A surprise attack, a decapitation attack. Now, Trump gave us two different stories. On the first, he said, oh, I knew nothing about it. You know, he was like the actress from Gone with the Wind. I don't know nothing about birthing no babies, Ms. Scarlett. You know, there he was. I don't know nothing about Israel bombing Iran. Then later, you know, two days later, oh, yeah, no, I knew all about it pre coordinated. But the point was Iran in its response did not attack US Military bases. It saw this as a street strict. It's Israel versus Iran. And in, in the course of that, Israel suffered and was begging Trump at the end, hey, got to help us get out of this. And Trump, I, I don't know who the intermediary was, maybe Oman, but they negotiated an end where this gets the bomb and, you know, obliterate Iran's nuclear program, which, you know, Ron says, find bomb, that we've already got the enriched uranium out. And then in exchange, Iran, this deal was, it got the Bomb Aludid, you know, showed some, that they punched back, but they got up, they got a get out of jail free card on the sanctions side in terms of being able to sell oil to China. That was the deal. So that what makes this different is United States jumped into this full. The, the planning was done in advance. You know, it wasn't like the, the Israel said, hey, we're, we're, we're going to hit Iran tomorrow, so you better, you know, you want to come on fine. And remind. We're doing. No, no, no. Weeks, weeks in advance. You know, going back that, that was one of the issues that was being discussed between Trump and BB Netanyahu on December 29th of 2025. This, you know, just before the turn of the new year. It's the latter. This was, this was a joint effort. But, you know, Rubio is trying to blame it on. Oh, the, the is the Israelis made us do it. Now, Israel does exert an enormous amount of influence and power over, over U.S. foreign policy. Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

Still their fault. Just not like that.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Scott Horton]

And as we had talked about that day, you know, it was just a few hours before they launched the strikes was that you can tell by the way that they're dealing with the issue that they're clearly just using the nuclear program as a pretext for war. They're not trying to solve this thing at all.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah. If, you know, people say, well, what's, what is the, the real intent of the United States? Well, it is regime change. It's to put in place a regime that will do what we tell them to do and that will allow us free, unfettered access to their oil and gas. That. And that way we can assure that Iran that Israel has free.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah. I mean, is that just Netanyahu talking to Trump and going, yeah, this is about America's oil and gas kind of, I think.

[Larry Johnson]

But it's also, it's, it goes back to a longer strategy of the United States with respect to Russia and China because they basically is like Iran's one big chess piece. You got to take it off the board because then, because you got to have that control of that in order to make your move against Russia. You make your move against Russia, which they tried with Ukraine.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, but why you need Iran to screw Russia? I mean, if you really want to screw Russia, you just have the Saudis increase production, right?

[Larry Johnson]

Well, no, no, no, it's not, it's not that. It wasn't so much. It's not on the oil front, but it's just the physical placement that you, where you can launch operations literally onto the belly of Russia through the, through the Caucasus. You know, that's why the United States has been spending so much time with Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan. Those, those are critical, critical nodes. Now that's one of the reasons why the CIA station in Armenia on a per capita basis is, is probably one of the largest in the world, if not the largest.

[Scott Horton]

Well so then, all right, on the a scale of like 1 to 10 or whatever, how do you score the Joint Staff and their stacks of papers on global strategic planning for the next few decades versus the Lecud cracking their whip and demanding this war?

[Larry Johnson]

Well, there really is no strategic planning on the part of the United States. I mean if there was strategic planning, we would have understood that the future is with drones, not with 14, 15 billion dollar aircraft carriers.

[Scott Horton]

Attempted strategic planning or. No, they're. But in other words though, like this is as you said, that you know, this is ultimately about the ongoing Cold War against Russia and China or. No, this is really about Greater Israel and taking the Shiite menace off of their problem list.

[Larry Johnson]

Well, yeah, yeah, I think it's, I think it's more the former. This is ultimately more about Russia and China over the long term. The, you know, when you, when you look at the actual. The what, what kills me. And I don't know if you got a clarification from Joe Kent on this. I listened to him last night with Tucker and he was talking about all the Iranian proxies that they were fighting in Iraq.

[Scott Horton]

I did, in fact I saw where you wrote about that this morning and I did get clarification on that against the Saudarists in March 2004 and again in 2007 and 8 when Petraeus was attacking them. So it was. And in. On the occasions when we were literally fighting against the Iranian back Shiite militias that he was talking about not conflating that with Al Qaeda and isis.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah. And.

[Scott Horton]

And he's actually really good on the redirection and how Iraq War two backfired. Empower the Shiites and then that's why they decided to take out Assad as a consolation prize and back the Islamic State and all that. He's really good on that stuff.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah, well, because you know, the, to justify to, to blame Iran for backing Shia Muslims who have been illegally invaded by the United States. Shia Muslims who are fighting for their territory and then to characterize Iran as this bad guy for supporting what are assess essentially freedom fires. I mean that's where that's why the problem I have with our narrative? Because we like, yeah, how dare they put explosively formed projectiles against us. Well, we had no goddamn reason to be in Iraq. We were

[Scott Horton]

some nasty guys. But yes, our guys were trespassing. And also those bombs were made by Iraqis, not Iranians. That's all propaganda hoax in the first place there too. Yeah, and we talked about that. Also about how, you know, I think he thought that the Iranians taught them how to make the EFPs. They learned it from Lebanese Hezbollah who got it from the ira.

[Larry Johnson]

No, no, no, no. U. S. Special forces trained the Iranians back in the 60s. Oh, okay. That's where they got it.

[Scott Horton]

All right, so then he may be right then. So then the Iranians taught it to the Saudarists. But then the point being that it really was a propaganda campaign in 07 to say and as they still do repeat like minor birds, they always skip a few on the explanation, but they just say Iran killed 600 of our guys in Iraq. And then if you nail them down, they'll say well that means Iran supplied the bombs that killed 600 of our guys when they were fighting the Shia. Yeah, of course it was. The number was really 500, not 600. And those bombs were made by Iraqi Shiites, not by Iranians, even though they were Iranian supported groups even then. As Kent is good on this because he really was in the thick of this and knows what he's talking about and may have read my book and like got some clarity too where he, he, he agrees and understands that Dawa and Skiri of the three major Shiite factions who were part of the united Iraqi alliance that we fought Iraq war two for that Solder was the Iraqi nationalist and it was Dawa and Skiri who had taken Iran side in the Iran Iraq war and had lived in Iran for the last who are now coming to inherit the power. And America took the side of Iran's puppets and Dawa and scary against Solder because Solder wanted America and Iran out. And we said, well we prefer the Iranian parties because at least they're not kicking us out, not yet. Which, that. And then they bet that like they're going to love us more than their friends next door in the end. Which was not true. And that was why in the end Maliki told Bush to beat it. Thanks for giving me all the power. Now get the hell out. And, and that's why also Sada remains one of the most influential Shiite leaders in the country to this day.

[Larry Johnson]

It was really, the war was fought

[Scott Horton]

for him, even though they attacked him a few different times.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah, well, and, and let, let's use the proxy standard, okay? I'm saying if we're gonna, if we're going to condemn Iran for supporting proxies that carried out attacks against Americans, then let's use the same standard. Did America support any proxies that attacked Iran? Well, as a matter of fact, the Americans backed Saddam Hussein, who started a war against Iraq that killed about 300,000 Iranians. So by that standard, we killed far more Iranians than Iranians ever killed Americans. Okay, number one, then, how about the Mujahedino Culture, a designated foreign terrorist organization in 1997? That was then when, when we invaded Iraq in 2003, we found these guys, and it took us about six months to figure out, hey, they hate Iran. And so then all of a sudden, the CIA takes over. And the CIA then, in the incident like 2005, 2006, gets them, you know, in a camp, and they're protected and they're supported and they're funded. And then they get him into Albania. And by 2012, then, hey, Hillary and Barack say, no, they're not terrorists. They're our buddies. And this is a bipartisan decision. I mean, John Bolton was wildly applauding, and it was. And, and the, what did the MECH do? Carried out assassinations, carried out terrorist attacks. So that's what I, I, I, I don't want to hear a thing from any American complaining about, oh, Iran sponsored these terrorists. We've done more, we've killed more, we got more blood on our hands, for God's sake. Sorry, you're, you're muted. You're still.

[Scott Horton]

I always do that. Sorry. Hey, guys. Scott here. You know, you've probably noticed when I'm interviewing somebody or somebody's interviewing me, that I've got this great bust of Dr. Rom Paul in the background on my bookshelf here. Well, you can get one like that, too. They're available again from the great artist Rick Casale. Just go to my website, Scott, Horton.org and look in the right hand margin. Click the link through there and use promo code Horton. You'll save 25 bucks and get free shipping at least in the lower 48 states. And he does custom work as well in, in the case of Joe Kent, he's not really moralizing and demonizing Iran doing that as much as saying, look, as a guy who went toe to toe against Iranian back Shiites, let me tell you, we also fought on their side over and over again, too. And as he talked about on my show after Obama's support, along with Israeli and Turkish and Saudi and Qatari support, helped build up the caliphate, and then they launched Iraq War 3. America was not only backing Iran's best friends among the Iraqi Shiite militias, but there were literally Iranian forces on the ground when America was cooperating, flying as air cover for them. Particularly, for example, in the case of the liberation of Saddam Hussein's hometown of T is it was literally the Koods force on the ground and American air power flying. You know, at the time. In fact, there's. You may know this guy. He's a decent guy. I've never met him, but I've talked with him on the emails and things before. His name is Michael Horton. No relation to me, but he was at the Jamestown foundation, which I know is very hawkish kind of thing, but he's a real terrorism expert type. And I remember he told Mark Perry in March of 2015 when Obama was launching the Yemen war with Saudi and Qatar and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula against the Houthis.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

Michael Horton told Mark Perry, the great journalist Mark Perry. He said, John McCain complains that we're flying as Al Qaeda. Sorry, that we're flying as Iran's air force in Iraq. Well, we're flying as Al Qaeda's air force in Yemen. And then the thing was, of course, the irony was John McCain had supported Iraq War Two and the war, the dirty war in Syria and Iraq War 3, all of which put us on the side of doing Iran's dirty work in that whole thing. And then he had the nerve to complain that America was helping the Iranians liberate decree from Baghdadi's caliphate.

[Larry Johnson]

Yes. Yeah. I mean, the, the reality was Iran and the United States were natural allies in fighting against isis. And, and, you know, the, the Shia I've talked to. When. Because I'll talk it. I said, it is radical Islamic terrorism. And they'll say, no, it's un Islamic. This is. He said, this terrorism is not in accordance with Islam. These are takfiris. Now, they are, they are apostates from true Islam. It's okay. But, but it's that attitude. And, but, but again, we. On average, again, when I was working with J. Sock and it's right after 9, 11 and 2001, the, you know, the average folks out in the field, they didn't understand Shia from Sunni. They didn't understand the histories and the, and, and the, and the different symbolism. And, and, you know, some learned. But, but, but Again, and I, it's not faulting Joe Kent, but Joe was never, he never had the chance to get, if you will, formally educated joining the army at 17. So he didn't go to college and he wasn't able. I don't know how much reading he did over the years. But this demonization that's been part of demonizing Iran in America for the last, you know, we keep talking, they've killed all these Americans. Go through, go through and count the numbers. Show me the number of attacks and do the proxies as well. The number of proxies, attacks by Hezbollah, the number of proxy attacks by Hamas. What you'll find is that most of Hezbollah's attacks are against military and or government targets. They're not strapping a suicide bomber up to run into a cafe and blow himself up. That, that's not their thing. And so you find that the, the death count. And I got this as well from the Israeli government's own website. It's been, it was not tens of thousands of Israelis and foreigners. It was less than 1600 from 2000 to 2022, even.

[Scott Horton]

That's probably embellished. Right. They throw in Argentina, the hoax and other things like.

[Larry Johnson]

Right, yeah. So it's just, we've got, we've got this. You know, I think it's just the fundamental hatred of Iran boils down to they beat the CIA that. I mean, the CIA had taken it over and they kicked us out. By God, we can't let that happen. We gotta go back and we keep going back and we keep looking for a way to turn it around so that we can once again control what goes on in Iran and that's what. And so to that end, we got to demonize them.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, well. And, you know, this goes along with Trump and so many of these older guys talking about the hostage crisis of 79, like, this is just a grudge. They're. Oh, they're not over it. And that, you know, they'll bring up Beirut 83 and say any reasonable person, it sounds like they're screaming, we have no plausible excuse to launch this war right now.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

But they're saying what they really think, which is we're going to get those guys for what they did to us. We'll have the last word eventually and all that. Although, again. Well, let me bend it back toward Israel. So how do you measure Netanyahu's role in, in egging Trump on and getting him to do this? Is he more minor player then.

[Larry Johnson]

Oh, no, no, no. He's Major player. I mean, he was a major influence. Seven, seven trips to the White House. This was, as they kept saying, man, this is our last chance. We got to do it now we've got them right where we want them. Yeah, that's not working out so well. You know, Alan, I, I rely upon Alistair Crook for a lot because he was there.

[Scott Horton]

Oh, he's great, by the way. You know, what nobody ever says about him is that he was one of the first guys to say, hey, there's a massive covert operation to back the jihadists in Syria. Like, everybody knows the support for the jihadists in Libya was like, from February and March right from the beginning of 2011 on. But Alistair Crook was, as far as I know, he was the first guy to say it's on in Syria too. And there are a couple of others. There's only like 2, 3, 4, 5 sources from 2011 that were really good on that. A lot of people have 2012 and then 13 with timber sycamore or whatever. But Alistair Crook was way out.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah, yeah, he was, yeah, he was early. I, I, I got onto it, I got onto it after Benghazi because.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah, which was September of 11 or 12.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah, September of 12. Because what happened, you know, the sequence of that is David Petraeus flew to Ankara, Turkey on like, September 4th, met with the Turks, basically say, okay, this, this armed shipment program we got coming out of Benghazi, we've got to turn that off until after the election.

[Scott Horton]

Okay.

[Larry Johnson]

And then Ambassador Stevens, that's why he went the following week, you know, like on Sunday the 9th, to, and he met with the Turkish counterpart there to close down. That was what they were doing, they were closing it down. That a weapons transfer. This, because that, that base in Benghazi, you know, it was huge. Compare, you know, a normal CIA base or station, particularly in places like Africa, they'll sometimes have like six people. You know, you don't have 26 people running around. So this was, this was a big deal. And so that's where we knew that they were funneling all these weapons. And in fact, at the time, I, I, I came across one of the guys who was supplying, who was getting the missiles by getting them out of the, out of Libya. It was one of my old CIA buddies, he called me, he said, hey, we got this guy, and, you know, let's talk to him. So my CIA buddy's wife, she was a hairdresser. One of her clients came in, they got talking, and she says, do you know anybody that does taxes? And my, the Guy's wife said, sure. My husband, you know, Mike, he used to be at CIA. And she goes, oh good. Because my husband, he's been doing something, he's been engaged with some top secret activities, et cetera. Well, it turned out this guy had been a member of the 75th Rangers. He got a dishonorable discharge, you know, poor weapons handling something. But then he got recruited by the CIA, or so he thought. Now what made my friend Mike so important is Mike used to be the admin officer for the non official cover program, the NOC program. People who are not alleged, not really associated with the CIA, but are working for the CIA. So this guy comes in and goes, yeah, he goes, I'm a knock for the CIA and Mike's suspect. And goes, really? And starts asking him questions as he got dug through it. He'd been recruited by the Brits who had convinced them that he was working for the CIA, but he's really working for the Brits and his job was to go into Tripoli and buy up surface to air missiles. So I said, yeah, CIA was up to its ass in working with the, the, the radical Sunnis to overthrow Assad. Sorry, didn't mean to go for the detour, but.

[Scott Horton]

No, that's okay, I did. I just wanted to give credit to Alistair Crook because he's so great. But anyway, go ahead because you were going to say something else about him entirely.

[Larry Johnson]

Well, you know, Alistair has been all over Iran. Yeah, he was in, he's been in the tunnels, in the silos, in the underground cities. He knows what they're capable of. And the west, you know, the west doesn't want to listen. They've, they've, they've constructed a fantasy and they're now wedded to that fantasy. And as a result, you know, it's, it's, it's, you know, not only burning up dollars, but burning up military resources that we really can't replace anytime soon.

[Scott Horton]

Yeah. Okay, so listen, I'm sorry, we're almost out of time here, man. Yeah, I'm sure you got to go as bad as I do, but let me final question here is considering the amount of damage that's already been sustained, the amount of relative power between all the size and everything, the way that you see the risk board laid out now, what difference does it make? What does it mean here? I mean, obviously there's a lot of variables and how long the war could continue and all of that.

[Larry Johnson]

Yeah.

[Scott Horton]

But overall, is there going to be something that Trump can spin as a partial win or no? This is the absolute destruction of the American empire or something in between.

[Larry Johnson]

I, I think Trump has done irreparable damage to the U. S. Reputation in the Persian Gulf that, that you're gonna, I think you're likely to see a collapse of the United Arab Emirates. I mean, it, it's 83% of its GDP is now shut down, literally shut down. So they don't, they're not going to have a source of continuing cash flow if this war continues for six months, which I think it will at least. So, yeah, I think, I think the, the outcome will be it will, the US Will be forced out of the Persian Gulf and, and our credibility that there will be a move among the Gulf Arabs to China and Russia for guarantees of security going forward.

[Scott Horton]

All right, with that, I'll let you go. We'll have to catch up in another few weeks, but really appreciate you spend some time with us this afternoon.

[Larry Johnson]

Always honored by the invitation. Scott, thanks so much.

[Scott Horton]

Thank you. 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 Witt's Liberty Classroom and 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 [e-mail] and I'm serializing the audiobook of Provoked at scotthortonshow.com and patreon.com Scott HortonShow Bumpers by Josh length of music, intro and outro videos by Dissident Media. Audio mastering by Podsworth Media. See y' all next time.