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The Tom Woods Show
Ep. 2740 The Moronic Neocon War with Iran, with Scott Horton, Jon Hoffman, and Brandan Buck
00:54:05
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- [00:02]
A
Get ready to take a flamethrower to the official narrative and learn what the elites don't want you to know.
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B
You're listening to the Tom Woods Show.
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A
Hey, everybody, Tom woods here, episode 2740 of the Tom Woods Show. Kind of like an emergency episode. I don't usually release one on a Monday, but you may have noticed there are things in the news that need discussing. And here to discuss them with us are three gentlemen, one of whom you are likely to know. Two others you may not know as well, but you'll get to know them. Today we have John Hoppen and Brandon Buck, both research fellows at the Cato Institute, which, by the way, is 100% rock solid on foreign policy. Stuff like this, these issues, where we need to get them right at the moment and not five years later. In retrospect, these guys are fantastic, as is, of course, your old friend Scott Horton, the regular of this show forever and has been doing this for so long. You know him from the Scott Horton show, the great Scott Horton Academy. Scott HortonAcademy.com Libertarian Institute. So many affiliations. And you know, Scott, I saw your post on Twitter X and you had a series of numbered points, and point number one was you were apologizing to us. You were saying, look, I'm sorry. You know, I'm supposed to be doing my best to stop stuff like this, and I just failed. And I. We were talking about this before you came on. We don't blame you, Scott, really. We love what you're doing. But let me say first of all that I know everybody on here has a million things to say. Let's make sure everybody has an opportunity to say what they want to say. But of course, we're talking about what's happened in Iran over the weekend with the US And Israeli attack there. Now, what has been most demoralizing for me about this is that even a handful of people I remember from the Ron Paul days are on social media repeating dumb, dumb, low IQ propaganda. You know, I expect that from the mainstream, right? In fact, I said, Scott, I think maybe I said it to you that I'll believe that some of the right has gotten better on war. When there's a terrorist attack in the US and they don't go berserk wanting to bomb a hundred places, that's when I'll believe it is, when it's really tested. Well, it wasn't even tested. There was no attack. There was nothing. And they're still going berserk. They're still all excited about the prospect of Freedom in Iran, as if that crosses the minds of these people even once. And it, I guess it drives me crazy that we have people who seem otherwise sensible, who, when it comes to foreign policy, it's like they can't think. They make arguments that they hear from the official sources, but that they have to know the official sources don't believe they have to know. These are not the motivating arguments behind what's going on. It is, for me, profoundly demoralizing. At the same time, it has been good that at least there's some series of voices on the right that have said, absolutely not. No, this is dumb and ridiculous. That's good. But I don't know. I mean, I hate to start with such a. I guess this is, in a way a trivial concern. You know, how is the right wing responding to this? But it does mean something to me because I thought these people had learned a thing or two.
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B
No, it's crucial. Look, they can't really have a war. They certainly can't sustain war without the American right support, and certainly not with a Republican in power. And the polls show that before the war, anyway. I know the numbers tick up once the war starts, inevitably. But before the war, it was only 40% of Republican voters supported it. So that's 10 points less than half, 11 points less than a bare majority of just Republicans. And then for the rest of the country, they're even more opposed to it than that. So that's real progress that has been made on the right. And as Colonel McGregor says, time wins more arguments than reason. And so it isn't that everybody finally tuned in and listened to me. It's just, you know, they looked at the results of 25 years of terror wars over there, and so we got absolutely nothing to show for it whatsoever. And so people are just rightfully jaded and burnt out on the results. I mean, I know Brandon was over there in the wars, learned this stuff the hard way, and so that's sticking. And plus, Trump, he didn't just mumble something about a humble foreign policy like W. Bush. He went out there and said he's the greatest champion of peace since Buddha or whatever. I don't know anyone ever.
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A
And going into the Middle east was the worst mistake we ever made.
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B
That's right.
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A
That's what he said.
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B
I don't know why. I don't know who Overton is or why it's his window, but, you know, he moved the. He expanded the 3 by 5 index card of allowable opinion, Tom, if you will, to a great degree to allow anti interventionist sentiment on the right. And then it's such a hard flip flop that people really have whiplash by and really rightfully feel betrayed by it. So I think we need to be encouraging people on the right to stick with their guns and stick with their guts or what they know is right. We should not be doing this.
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A
Well, I think what's happened, I want to make sure everybody just jump right in. Don't ask permission, just jump right in and speak. But what I think what's happened is so far people have started to say, well, look, it looks like another quick decapitation attack. You know, they took out the leader, that's great. They took out some other leadership. That's great. And so it seems like, well, this is just going to be easy. You know, this is just going to be a quick thing. And so once again, you naysayers, you know, you're always coming up with your wild scenarios about how everything's going to go wrong. But once again, Trump has outsmarted you with this, you know, this pinpointed kind of attack. Is that plausible? I mean, are you really going to do that and then not answer the question? Who fills the void? Are we really not answering that question?
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C
I tweeted this out the other day. It was never really a question of whether the United States could kill Khamenei. I mean, the United States has a lot of military capabilities, but it's always been this question of to what end are we doing any of this and what comes next? You know, are we going to see, you know, a IRGC led dictatorship? Are we going to see just state collapse? Are we going to see internal discord? There are no clear answers to what the United States has planned for here. And we were talking about this before the show and you, and you mentioned it too, you know, this idea that the United States is doing this on behalf of the Iranian people, you know, to try to bring them freedom and democracy. When the United States and Israel have predicated their regional policies for decades on preventing democratic rule in the Middle east, like, it just defies basic logic that the United States is doing this, one, on behalf of the Iranian people, but two, towards any discernible end game.
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D
Going back to the question about support on the right, it's so all wars are fought with like a bundle of reasons, right? It is a coalition. It's no different here. And there is a clear generational divide. Like, we've seen this in the polls beforehand and you're seeing it now, where older Americans let's call them the boomers. They view this through the lens of 1979 and the hostage crisis. And so their support for this war is rooted in a particular experience which is not shared by younger generations of Americans. And you can see the war party trying to whip up support by appealing to people of my age by saying, you know, they and Scott can certainly comment on this, like, these are the people behind the IED attacks in Iraq and the like. And then you also have on top of that, these more idealistic reasons about freeing the Iranians I think relatively few people buy into. But then there's also this logic, well, if we take Iran off the board horde, that's going to somehow hurt China. But all this is predicated upon, as you say, Tom, like the war being short. And while they got a bunch of generals and of course the supreme leader, the Iranians are still fighting. We had three Americans die today. I believe five were wounded. They're absolutely pasting the Gulf coast states and Israel. So even though you took out leadership, as long as they can continue to stay in the fight, we might find ourselves, and it's looking increasingly like it, in a attritional war in which the United States is not set up to fight. So the US Government is trying to do something which has never been done before, and that is to try to bring about regime change from the air. And pretty soon we might find out that this is not as easy of a task as we think. And even if casualties are relatively low, Americans are going to get pretty tired of it. And the poll numbers going into it aren't great. So those are probably only weakened over time and not through.
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A
Yeah. So even if you're somebody who just does whatever Trump wants and you just go along, you change, you believed one thing 10 minutes ago, and now that he's done the opposite, now you believe that even if you're one of those people, if something like this means that the midterms are even worse for Republicans than otherwise, then you would have to say on net, that is a loss. That is a loss for you. That is a net negative for you. I have nothing but well wishes for the people of Iran, for the people of Nigeria, for the people everywhere in the world. I have nothing but good wishes. But my immediate concerns are the concerns that, that any regular person has, which is the people who are in my immediate circles. You know, that is as far as you can really hope to affect in your life. And I think the best line in that Huckabee and Tucker Carlson interview was when Huckabee was saying that if we got rid of the Iranian regime and he was listing all the good things that would come. He said we wouldn't have this problem on the border with Lebanon. And Tucker interrupted him and said, what problem on the border? I'm not having a problem on the border with Lebanon. I live in Maine. That was a perfect answer. I'm not having a problem on the border with Lebanon. I live in Maine. But they've somehow got even conservatives to invert this natural order, and they're profoundly concerned with the fate of all these folks over there. While to say that the United States has problems of its own is the understatement of the century, it's crazy that I have to even argue this with people.
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B
Well, you know, my thing is my topic is out of fashion here, Tom, but I've been railing, especially for the last couple of years, again, more about the threat of bin Ladenite terrorism in this country as a result of Israel's slaughter in the Gaza Strip. I mean, this is exactly the kind of thing that brought on Al Qaeda's war against the United States in the first place all through the 90s and culminating with September 11th. But, man, bin Laden had no real religious authority, right? He commanded a bunch of respect because he was shot three times in the war and he slept on the floor of the cave, even though he had money and stuff, but he didn't have any real authority as religious leader. And the Sunnis, they have all different religious leaders. They're more like Protestants, all spread out, pick your own minister kind of thing. But they just killed the aa. But they left one ayatollah standing there, Ali Al Sistani in Najaf, Iraq, who is actually Iranian. And he's the guy who told George Bush, I want one man, one voter. You're going to have to start this war all over again, boy. In January 2004 and enslaved George W. Bush to his will. And we continue to fight a civil war for the Shiite side from that moment on in the war. He's the boss in Iraq, and he is right now the boss, Tom, of all Shiites. And if he declares holy war, he puts a Salman Rushdie style fatwa on the west. Then essentially, I don't know the absolute degree, but essentially, that means that all Shiite men will be obligated to fight us, an army, a legion of potential terrorists, far beyond what Osama bin Laden could have ever dreamed of. And so this has been a huge part of our warning. I'm sorry, I've Been saying this for 25 years, 20 something years. That Hezbollah in Latin America, in Europe, and to whatever degree they exist here, they're no threat. They're businessmen, they're maybe drug dealers, but they're not really terrorists and they're not dangerous. But if we go to war with Iran, a lot of guys who were not sent anywhere to be sleeper cell terrorists can become them de facto just by grabbing a gun and causing some trouble. And Tom, last night a Muslim from Senegal took an AR15 and he murdered four people at a bar here in Austin, Texas as direct blowback backdraft terrorism. This war blown up right in our face already in my hometown. And who knows if this guy was even a Shiite or not. One of the warnings from Michael Shoyer, the former chief of the CIA bin Laden unit back in the Bush years, was if we attack Iran now, then that shows we're not just at war with the Sunnis, we're at war with the Shiites too. We're at war with all of Islam. Well, what does that say to a billion and a half Muslims if we're at war with them, that they're at war with us too, then possibly this is the trouble that W. Bush got us in, that we've been sort of kind of steering away from that. Now we are steering right back into the death of here. Never mind that the Bin Ladenites are celebrating the death of the Ayatollah and their advantage now, like Jandala and other bin Ladenite Sunni groups in Iran and ISIS and other groups that can exploit this as well.
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A
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C
No, I, I would not say that's an accurate description. I think the only thing these attacks preempted are exactly what they preempted during the 12 Day War, which was diplomacy, which was preempting any actual deal. There was no imminent threat from Iran. There was no intelligence that they were, you know, weeks away from rebuilding their nuclear program like Trump claimed. Even Ted Cruz is on TV today. They asked him. He was like, yeah, I don't have any intelligence indicating that that's true. And it's Ted Cruz who's been out cheerleading for this for a long time. There's this idea in Washington foreign policy circles that Iran is this massive threat to the United States and that's Just not true. The only reason Iran even comes up in conversations in Washington D.C. is because of our own failed, I would say, and counterproductive presence partners and policies in the Middle east, particularly that Middle one, the partners one. Iran is really only mentioned because of the United States relationship with Israel. I think, you know, we can say that and, and, you know, others might get angry, but it's just reality that this country 7,000 miles away does not possess the military or economic prowess to challenge US Interests in the Middle east, let alone harm us over here. It's just, it's laughable.
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D
And just more on this, on that particular graphic, but there's been this effort to negatively polarize the right back into line on foreign policy since the war in Gaza. And I hate to sound like a lefty, but it's racially based, right. Israel is this bastion of Western civilization in the Middle east and they're fighting like, you know, the barbarian horde that are at war with the Western society. I think there's been a tension within the Trump movement since the beginning between like, are they civilizationalists or are they nationalists? And they're attempting to get them on side now by appealing to this civilizationalist ethic that we are at war for the larger Western world. And they're trying to make a this in run around some particularly, you know, some pretty pertinent nationalist issues, like how is this an issue for us as Americans? And the only way that they can do that is by trying to broaden this notion of what America is. And oddly enough, this is the same trick that the neocons pulled forever. Right? We're a set of ideas, we're a set of institutions, we're responsible for ensuring the freedom of oppressed peoples, et cetera. And you know, this had existed intention for a while, I think, but now that they need to activate this larger conception of Americanness, they're now just leaning into this civilizationalist ethic.
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A
I don't know where to begin. I'm. Because I've been spending the weekend trying to say to myself, I'm going to be off social media. I cannot handle dealing with every midwit out there. But I failed, guys, okay? I'll tell you something, I failed. I probably tweeted more this weekend and retweeted more this weekend than probably the last three months combined. And I've got all these different claims
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B
off the wagon hard too, man.
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A
Is this, is that true for you guys?
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C
It's across the board.
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A
Yeah. Okay.
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D
I was, I was off for a week and then When I saw this brewing, I was, okay, I have to get back in. I have to.
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A
All right, well, so let me tell you one of the things that just keeps coming up. It's an argument that has been thrown out there long before this. But it's okay, smart guy, what would you do? You're just going to let Iran get nukes. Now, I know we just talked about, even Ted Cruz says he doesn't see any evidence that they've got them and whatever. And we all have heard the video montage of Netanyahu warning for 20 plus years that they're, you know, just moments away from getting them. Okay, leave all that aside because I think what these people are saying is let's just suppose for the sake of argument that they were going to get nukes. What would you do in that situation? Because after all, they chant death to America. So they think that that means that, you know, major American cities are going to be nuked by Iran. So I don't know how, if you can persuade somebody who looks at the world that way. But what would you say?
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B
Well, first of all, just to make it clear for the audience to understand how hypothetical this is, because in fact, they never had a nuclear weapons program at all. And even when the CIA says they had one up until 2003, that's not even true. That's based on good faith misunderstandings by the DIA and a forged laptop made up by the Israeli Mossad. They never had even research into how to make a nuclear weapon. They do have a civilian program and they mastered the fuel cycle, that is uranium enrichment back in 2006, and they've had a civilian program ever since then. And it's essentially just a pretext, a phony pretext for war on the American and Israeli side. You could say at worst, Tom, that it was sort of a latent deterrent by the Ayatollah on the Iranian side that like, see, we can enrich uranium. Don't make us build a bomb. But then what happened last June? Donald Trump called their bluff. Well, Netanyahu and Trump called their bluff. Bomb the crap out of importantly Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan and close them down for business. There's an in depth report by a group called ISIS online, it's whatever it was called that a long time ago. Anyway, they did a big report in November that said Natanz and Fordo are just closed. They filled in all the openings with dirt and there's no business going on there whatsoever, no enrichment whatsoever. They destroyed the conversion facility at Isfahan where you go from metal to gas, which you then enrich and then back to metal again. They can't do that. Their program was obliterated. Their program was set all the way back in the war last June. And so in the current negotiations, they were willing to give up almost everything because their bluff had been called. They said we will not enrich for three to five years. And then when we do, we'll enrich only up to 1.5% uranium 235 and no sunset provisions. That'll be the permanent deal forever. This is Obama's JCPOA deal plus 50. Okay. And Trump still bombed him anyway when that was the offer that they had in hand because it was nothing but a pretext for war. Now let's say, okay, fine for your hypothetical, that, yeah, okay, so they decide they're going to break out and make a nuclear weapon. Well, Truman and Eisenhower didn't invade the Soviet Union. And hell, Truman, a bomb anyone, he is the butcher of Asia. And he didn't invade the Soviet Union to prevent them from getting a nuke. And Lyndon Johnson didn't invade China to prevent them from getting a nuke. And there's no reason to believe that the so called revolutionary regime, the Shiite theocracy in Iran, would be any less responsible nukes than Kim Jong Un and his father before him. If anything, you know, I'm sure Cato's got a study like this that shows that, you know, Doug Bandau talking here, right? That the more nukes a country has, the more responsible they behave. You know, just like when you take your guns to town, you try to not get an argument with the guy in line at the thing and we just have no right to invade. But again, they are members in good standing of the non proliferation Treaty. They've never broken out. Even after Trump called their bluff last June, they didn't break out and try to make a nuke. They don't have the option to. And so it really is nothing but a fake pretext. It's no more real, in essence than Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program, which also did not exist.
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A
Now, I know that it's very, very old fashioned for me to talk about honor in the year 2026. I mean, we laugh at such bourgeois values from yesteryear, but I still feel like it's dishonorable repeatedly to have the pretense of a negotiation going on. And then in the midst of that attack, the person, doesn't matter who the other side of that is. We would condemn anybody who did that and we would say, I don't care what you have against the other side. You don't do that. You don't do it even for the strictly utilitarian reason that nobody will ever trust you again. And I happen to think that is a, you know, that's a pretty good reason right there. Am I the only one who's a little sensitive about this? Like, this is what the people who represent me, this is how they conduct themselves internationally. I mean, there are actual diplomats that other countries have who carry out diplomacy. They don't pull stuff like this.
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D
Yeah, I think that's right. And I think that's going to be one of the unintended consequences of this action. And certainly in concert with the last one, you see like twice now that, you know, the US Government has been in negotiations with Iran, only to used to call that perfidy. Right. This is considered a crime of sorts. And so, you know, for the supposed dealmaker president who was going to give us the best deals ever, to have the continual inability to reach diplomatic solutions and then to violate them is going to lead to all kinds of ramifications throughout the world. I mean, if you're Putin or Xi, how can you trust this man? I mean, you can say perhaps because you have nukes, maybe President Trump will be a little bit more guarded. But still, that's always going to be in the back of your mind. And as we enter a more dangerous world, a more, you know, one with various power centers, I think this is not going to go down well for the United States over the long haul.
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A
I want to take a moment right dead in the middle of this to mention that Scott and I are actually going to be appearing in New Hampshire together later this week at the New Hampshire Liberty Forum in Concord. And I think Scott's the dinner speaker one night or later in the day speaker at the very least. And I'm the dinner speaker Saturday night. So come out and meet us and say hello. Matt Kibbe will be there also. I know he's a friend of all of ours. They've got a fantastic lineup. It's a great opportunity to meet people in your area who are like minded and it'll be a great time. And, you know, it's a sort of a demoralizing moment right now. And I think we could all stand to be around people who see the world the way we do. So I would urge people who are interested in that and who are in that area or don't mind traveling to that area to check out the information@nhlibertyforum.com that's nhlibertyforum.com I want to say for a minute another thing that I've been noticing on social media, this was a few days before all this happened and I had noticed this for a while about specifically Lindsey Graham and Mark Levin, but I'm sure there are others. You would see Lindsey Graham saying, well, we're going to find out if Trump is Reagan plus or Obama minus. Now Lindsey Graham's supposed to be his friend, right? Could you imagine going around talking about your friend? Well, we're going to find out if my friend is really courageous or a real loser. I guess we're going to find that out. If that was my political ally, I would have called him up and said, pound sand man, this is over. You don't talk about me like that because I'm a man and I defend myself in situations like that. Well, likewise, Mark Levin repeatedly will say things like, you know, I've heard rumors that they might reach a deal, but I know President Trump is better than that, which is an implicit threat. It's, I'm actually warning President Trump. That's really what this means. I'm warning him that if he dares do that, I am the most disloyal friend he has and I am absolutely ready to come out and attack. I mean, have you guys noticed that this is the kind of language the President's brand new friends use? I mean his old friends didn't really speak like this and his new ones are like ready to drop him like a potato at the drop of a hat. And he seems perfectly at peace with that.
- [26:53]
B
He's pwned by Israel, man. I told you, Tom, this is why I rooted for him three times. I admit I hate the Democrats more, I do, but I could never vote for the guy in all three elections. I couldn't. Again, it's because of this. It's the Likud. They just got him and I don't know if they got pictures of him or recordings of him under those redactions or whether just whatever, they just convinced him that them Arabs are nothing but a bunch of sand and words anyway. And you just do whatever you want with them and we'll build a golf course and a new condo for your son in law and just I don't know what they told him. But remember he told the story of how David Friedman, not the son of Milton, totally different guy, David Friedman, who was the ambassador in the first term, he gave Trump a four minute lecture on the golan Heights. And Trump said, I hereby recognize the Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory. Because, you know, they were all in a big meeting with Sheldon and Miriam Adelson. She's given him. They. The two of them, he's dead now, but the two of them together have given $300 million to Donald Trump and on his promises of loyal service to their needs to the Republican Party. And so, you know, I don't know if it's just as simple as all of that. I'm sure he has no sympathy whatsoever for the Palestinians, for example. But, you know, how do you explain him launching a war when he knows his base is against it? He knows that Mark Levin and Lindsey Graham do not represent the Republican base in this country whatsoever. He knows that the risks are huge. It can't just be that they told him, you promised. Our focus group says if we just say the word promise over and over again, that that'll get you to do. It can't be just that. It's corruption, man. One way or another, they got him. Remember, Netanyahu came to Bill Clinton and said, hey, man, I got you on tape having phone sex with your girlfriend, let Jonathan Pollard out of prison. And the only reason Clinton didn't was because the director of the CIA was going to resign and a bunch of top guys with him, and it was going to be a huge scandal.
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C
And.
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B
And so I guess he explained that they got me in a bind. I just can't do it. But Netanyahu had the balls to say that to Bill Clinton, that I've been tapping your phone, pal, and I'm going to ruin your life if you don't do what I say.
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D
Jeez.
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A
And I mean, the things that actually did come out about Bill Clinton, he's still doing fine. It ended up not really mattering, but. So who knows what else. What else might have been going on. But another thing that just shocked me, maybe I'm just naive, but again, from people I thought knew better are telling me you shouldn't second guess the President because you can't possibly know the things that he knows that you don't know, you know, and that is straight out of the playbook of every BS thing that this foreign policy establishment has done. And I say foreign policy establishment, which is what he's at this point, obviously part of, because when Jeb Bush is cheering for you, you're part of the foreign policy establishment. The whole he knows stuff that we don't know should at this point be making you laugh. Now, I'm not saying that it's metaphysically impossible that he could know stuff that we don't know. What I'm saying is that time after time after time they cover over the crazy things they do with the, well, you know, we know things and you don't know them. No, it turns out, then we find out later, no, no, there wasn't anything that they knew. It turns out everything we, we believe turns out to be right. But I've got people saying that to me that he, you know, he must have known this was the time to do it. And the other thing that's surprising me is how many alleged right wingers suddenly think Marco Rubio is a genius. You remember Marco Rubio in the presidential debates. There was one night where he started. It was like the silicon chip that's in his head was malfunctioning. And he just kept repeating the same passage over and over that he'd memorized.
- [30:36]
B
Maybe Trump even, I think called him Obama's doing this on purpose.
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D
Yes, that's right.
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A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and suddenly we have right wingers saying, oh, we have a great team with Marco Rubio. When did we stop thinking Marco Rubio was a neocon blockhead? I just, again, I'm sorry, I'm just venting to you guys. But the he knows stuff we don't know. I thought. No, no, you are not telling me that. I just refuse to believe that you're telling me that.
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C
Well, I think we have enough evidence just in open source that there's a complete lack of cost. His bell eye for even doing this operation. There's a lack of any sort of coherent strategy. I mean, you even hear that in just the past 24 hours after the strikes, the internal contradictions of different people speaking in the administration. You know, Trump now today said that this could be a four week long operation. He said they planned for it to be four weeks long. But then you have different parts of the administration, like from the Pentagon saying, hey, we only have the munitions and so on and so forth to keep this up for about a week, maybe a week and a half. The folks who say, like, oh, just trusting me as access to different information. The information that we have access to is poking holes in all of their narratives. And this is just, this is just open source information.
- [31:50]
D
Yeah, John and I have been ticking around the office and I don't think it's mine. I don't know if it popped into my head, if I heard someone else just call it this, the phrase maga, Inc. And that is like the institutionalization of like the MAGA brand. And it's almost as if it's been pulled away from any sort of pretense of America first and. But I also think, like within the president's own head, even back in the first term, he would talk about not wanting to do forever wars and the like. He still had this militarist edge to him. Right. We're going to blow the snot out of, out of ISIS and the like. And I think, you know, he was able to keep these two things even though they were intentioned kind of without one overruling the other. But here in the second term, he's really leaned into this peace through strength stuff. And I think that is a huge umbrella. And I wrote a long piece for tac, I think it was almost last year, basically just arguing that there's a period of liberal extension in the world, whether it's Vietnam or the neocons with Iraq and Afghanistan. And then comes in a supposedly conservative president who then says, I'm not going to do all that nation building stuff. I'm just going to do peace through strength. And I think either it's his own mind or it's the institutions that have surrounded them. They've been able to use that to smuggle in everything else in the liberal, imperialist or neocon agenda, like destroying states. I mean, look, you've seen this in people, not necessarily in the administration, but in his orbit. Guys like Mark Deason at AEI say, you know, you don't have to buy it, you can just break it. And I think they're starting to put that to the test now, but at a larger, a far larger scale than they've ever tried this before. I mean, there's a. I often tweet we have a midwit air power fetish in this country. And I think this is something that the administration really has really globbed onto realizing, perhaps cynically, as long as they keep the relative costs low through air power, they can keep Americans on the sideline. And that might be true if you're blowing up a bunch of alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean or small militia groups in the Fertile Crescent. But when you're talking about a state, albeit a relatively small compared to the U.S. i think we have now found ourselves in a. Just to say we, but the government has not found itself in a war of attrition that, as John just said, that we probably don't have the means to fight for all that long.
- [33:59]
A
Everybody, Tom woods here with a quick tip for small business owners. If your business isn't showing up online, your competitors are getting the leads and you're missing out. That's where Persist SEO comes in. For over 15 years, they've been helping local businesses grow through SEO, paid ads, and the latest in AI powered search optimization so you stay visible and competitive. And in the digital age, whether you're in home services, legal or healthcare, Persist SEO delivers real results without locking you into long term contracts or overwhelming you with tech jargon. Visit Ineedseo Help or call 770-580-3736 to schedule your free consultation. That's Ineedseo Help. Easy to remember, powerful for your small business. I'm thinking back to the beginning of the COVID lockdowns. You know, Trump went along with that and I remember him saying, you know, we're hoping to have this whole thing wrapped up by Easter. And Fauci was the naysayer there saying, oh, I'm hold, not so fast, you know, and it was obvious that Trump had not. And by the way, I don't single him out. I think any other president would have been equally clueless in that situation. I don't think he realized exactly what kind of commitment people like Fauci were contemplating at that time. I think he thought, well, we'll shut down for a few weeks and then by Easter we really got to wrap this up. And he's being told absolutely not. And I wonder if there's a part because the Atlantic is reporting that early this morning they spoke to the President and he said, speaking about the leadership in Iran now, he said they want to talk and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them. They should have done it sooner. Now, who knows what he thinks he's going to accomplish with that. But he's got to understand that Lindsey Graham is not going to be satisfied with anything that will come out of conversations with them. Is he thinking that, you know, he now he said it could be four weeks. But if he's thinking he's going to get on the phone and maybe, maybe this thing winds down in three to four weeks, I don't think he gets exactly the commitment that his new friends expect him to make. In the the same way he didn't anticipate where Fauci was going to take him.
- [36:09]
B
The best thing about him is that he can flip flop around on anything. He said regime change. Yesterday he could say, well I gave him a chance to regime change. They didn't take it, so what the hey? And he could say that the day after tomorrow and it's fine. So thank God for that, at least that he can climb down. I this is all completely unnecessary. So what's the cost of knocking it off? You're only saving, right? So he definitely be smart to do that. And it's going nowhere. It's not like the Mek cult is about to seize power and hold on to it. They can't. The regime is not going anywhere without, well, I don't know, after four weeks of bombing, we'll see who all they kill. But I would think that even then there, you know, wouldn't make sense. So at least we had that part going for us, you know, that he can change his mind. Oh, by the way though, so y net this morning the Israeli paper said that he offered a ceasefire. Maybe he's already getting a little afraid and offered a ceasefire and they told him no. And it only makes sense really at this point after what happened last June and then with this war and again, as you say, Tom, interrupting alleged negotiations in order to.
- [37:11]
A
What are we going to do? Go back to the negotiating table. We're going to go back to the negotiating table now.
- [37:15]
B
Yeah, it only. And what these guys are saying too about they have more offensive missiles than we have defensive missiles. And so it only makes sense from their point of view, which by the way, exactly as I warned you for years and years and years and years, we have bases in Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, uae, Saudi and Oman. And the Iranians have hit every single one of them in the first day. They attacked every single one of those countries. And including economic targets, as also said, a zillion dollars worth of economic targets all up and down the Gulf. So far they're not hitting oil, but they're hitting five star hotels and they're, you know, causing all kinds of damage. They close the Straits of Hormuz. So it's not quite worst case scenario, but it's pretty bad already. And it only makes sense that they would decide for a strategy to make this hurt the United States enough that it hurts Donald Trump enough that he doesn't do this anymore.
- [38:11]
C
Right.
- [38:11]
B
It's Joe Biden's strategy for Putin. Give him a strategic defeat here. Ukraine's going to lose, but make it really hard for the Russians to beat him. So it cost them back home. That's basically, you know, it's an asymmetric fight. So Iran just has to hang in there long enough for Trump to be humiliated enough that he really has to stop. And then I guess from their point of view feels so stung that he doesn't want to try it again for the next two and a half years.
- [38:37]
C
Yeah. To go off of what Scott was saying, I would certainly agree. I think Iran is trying to signal after the 12 Day War and after this most recent war that Israel and the United States cannot adopt the so called mowing the lawn strategy within Iran whenever they please. And the only way to do that is to signal to the United States this comes with costs. But going back to your, your question about, you know, what are we going to do, return to the negotiating table. It might be helpful for viewers in D.C. there's really two debates going on here when it comes to Iran. The first one is a debate about nuclear non proliferation and the best way to actually achieve that. And the whole arms control community was unanimous in saying the JCPOA worked. Scott just earlier laid out the concessions that Iran was willing to make this time around, which, like he said, were objectively better than the jcpoa. Trump could have taken those, ran with them and spun them as, you know, the greatest deal ever made. But the problem is, is because of the second debate, and that is the regime change debate. Because for folks in Washington and in Israel who view Iran as the chief problem in the Middle east, any nuclear deal, any nuclear deal is viewed first and foremost as a form of appeasement and then second as a barrier, as a blocking mechanism to what they want, which is regime change.
- [39:56]
A
Right. And of course you remember, I hate to be so pedantic, but you remember that, you know, the middle of last year when there was that brief moment that Trump mentioned the phrase regime change. It was fascinating to watch. Not his. He has some intelligent supporters. I'm talking about the cultish ones who they'll believe what the opposite of what they believe five minutes ago. So they were saying, oh, you people are all crazy. It's not going to be a regime change war. And then Trump said, well, regime change. And they're going regime change. And then he's saying, all right, it's all over. And they'll go, how did you guys think it was a regime change war? Now that it's expressly portrayed as that? Now they're all cheering. So they were criticizing us for worrying about something that they now celebrate. I mean, I think they ought to just not just stop talking because I think obviously we had good reason to be concerned about that. Obviously we had a good reason to be concerned about that. And again, I just can't understand if you're a conservative. I think you understand that societies are not like tinker toys. That you can just kind of pull pieces apart, put them back together, that you can just. That in a few days you could just dismantle an entire regime and then replace it with. With something that'll be an improvement. That's easier said than done, to put it mildly, according to the testimony of history. But as long as we're on it, I know that we kind of glided over this before, and I know that this has to be speculative, but still, I am curious to hear a little more about what you guys think in terms of what in theory could come next. What are the possibilities? I mean, everybody's saying that the son. Or is it the son of the Shah, the grandson of the Shah. Who. Who's this guy?
- [41:31]
B
Well, the guy you think of as the Shah was really the son. There was a father before him. So this is the grandson.
- [41:37]
A
This is the grandson. Okay. So everybody said, well, that's unlikely to be the scenario. So what is the scenario? I mean, did they really go into this without an end game, without having selected somebody or thought about how this would work?
- [41:50]
B
Chaos in civil war, if they can get it, I think that's their best case scenario is to destroy the nation. And I don't think they're going to be able to do that, probably because Shiite Persians are the majority. So it's not like Iraq where they're helping the Shiite Arabs kick the Sunni Arabs out of power and cleanse them out of the capital city in a big civil war and all that kind of thing. You know what I mean? That takes huge power on the ground. And that was a majority helping a majority run off a minority. We're here, and even though there are Kurdish groups and Arabs and Aeris and bin Ladenites and all different kinds of armed groups that are. Or dissident groups that can be armed up to fight, I don't think anyone really believes that any of them have the power to take over the country. There's a group called pj. I think they dropped the J for some reason, but CIA is still supporting this group. But they're Kurdish communists. They're basically like the PKK in Turkey or the YPG in Syria. They're not going to be able to seize power in Tan. Same for the Mek com terror cult.
- [42:49]
C
Same for.
- [42:49]
B
Same for the monarchists. There's no one to put in there. Rubio even said before the Senate, we don't really have a plan for who to put in power next. And so what's the point? Four weeks of war, you know, in theory, I Guess their theory is you kill enough government employees and military leaders that the place breaks up into civil war as different competing factions go to fight and declare their warlord status or whatever. But I don't think that's really going to work. I think the next guy to be declared ayatollah is going to be the ayatollah, and the whole thing will come up a big failure. Remember in Venezuela, they got the head of state and his wife, but then they just kept the vice president because, like, what are you going to do? De bothify the whole damn government? We're not doing that in this case. We have no ability to do it. This ain't Venezuela. We couldn't possibly. We could reach out and touch the
- [43:40]
C
leader, as I said.
- [43:41]
B
Remember I said they could drop a 20,000 bomb on his head, but you can't put the 82nd Airborne down there. So what are you going to do? Hope for the worst?
- [43:50]
D
Yeah, I think from our point of view, I mean, I. I don't make predictions anymore. I've been pretty wrong in this administration. It's just that eventually, you know, the US And Israel just declares victory and stops and then puts a form of, you know, like aggressive containment on Iran. Maybe they can't bomb the country into bedlam and anarchy, but they can certainly pick away at the edges arming like the Baluks or Aziri factions or certainly Kurds, and then just be just basically to push the war against Iran further, you know, into the country itself and keep that up forever. I mean, again, like, we should not underestimate the ability for these folks just to change narratives. I. I got into a little back and forth with a neocon on Twitter. I talk about this all the time with John, and I get, quote, tweeted by him. But I basically called that mission a failure because, as you say, Tom, they were saying this is a regime change back in June that doesn't happen. Now. All of a sudden, they changed the purpose of the mission to just degrading the regime. Now, I could think, I. I think we could see the same thing here in a week, right? They'll say, well, now it's up to you Iranian people to rise up and take, you know, U.S. government sold out the. The Iraqis after Cold War one when they said the same thing.
- [45:01]
A
But it's degrading the regime enough for Netanyahu?
- [45:05]
D
Probably not, but eventually, if Israel's getting pasted and we're running out of interceptors and there's a certain exchange rate here and ammunitions, they might have to make the hard choice about putting the war on ice, because the history here for regime change from the air is not good for its proponents. There isn't a case. I mean, and the only, the closest one you have is Serbia. Even in that. That's not a very good case. I mean, these things only work whenever you have boots on the ground in the form of separatist militias, like in Libya, or an army. And right now, the US Government doesn't have either of those. And we know that there's no appetite for putting a half a million troops into Iran because that's what it would take. So what does that leave us with? It leaves us with, in about a week's time, basically calling a sort of ceasefire, declaring some. Some victory, and then, you know, going from there with a kind of advanced, aggressive containment plan. At least that's how I see things shaking out. I don't know if John has a. An idea.
- [46:01]
C
Yeah, I mean, one of the things that, you know, we were warning against, you know, by just even starting this war was, you know, for a while there, there was this idea that, you know, Trump might start with a, quote, unquote, limited strike within Iran. But what we were really trying to raise the alarm over was for the Netanyahu of the world, the Lindsey Grahams and so on, There is nothing limited that they want. And this pressure on Donald Trump is going to continue to, one, quote, unquote, finish the job, and then two, likely to try to oversee some sort of internal transition. And I think for Netanyahu and for foreign policy establishment in Washington, in an ideal world, they could get some sort of compliant client state. But again, there is no organized, real organized element of the opposition that could fill that vacuum. And two, I think there is a large segment of the foreign policy community here in Washington and in Israel that are fine with just essentially breaking the state. And we saw the Wall Street Journal ran an op ed a couple weeks ago that essentially said this, like, a fractured Iran wouldn't be bad. And if I remember the article correctly, it said, you know, quote, unquote, removing it from the geopolitical chessboard would be just as good as, you know, getting a client state or whatever. So I think there is this broad recognition that if we can't get this, you know, compliant new client regime, then we'll just collapse the state and essentially remove it from the board.
- [47:32]
A
You know. So, in other words, are you saying that if people go into this, start reading about all this, and they form their opinions on the assumption that the US Regime Wants, you know, ideally what's best for the Iranian people. They're going to be completely misled as to what is likely to happen.
- [47:50]
C
Very much so. I mean, the United States has for eight decades rooted its Middle east policies in support for illiberal actors. You know, and this spans the entire region. You know, Mohammed bin Salman, Mohammed bin Zayed, you know, the Shah, you know, this is a practice that dates back eight decades. So when we're, you know, our conversation here about, you know, oh, they have more information than we do. We have eight decades of history to look at of the United States supporting dictators in that region and constantly, constantly, constantly subverting, diverting attempts at self determination and democracy. So if somebody is hiding something that maybe this time is different, please, for the love of God, share it. But, you know, the track record's not good.
- [48:35]
A
Well, I want to wrap up and respect everybody's time. So first let me say I'll put everybody's Twitter slash X is up@tom woods.com 2740 that's our episode number. If there's any other link or anything you'd like to link people to, now's your time or forever hold your peace. And then in doing so, if you have any final words or something that you've been dying to say but I didn't give you a chance to say it, everybody feel free to do that. And I'm, I'm not even going to go in order. Just start talking. And whoever talks first gets to go first me.
- [49:06]
B
So I want to say first of all, Brandon mentioned it, but I didn't get a chance to follow up a little bit. But it is important. There's a. One of the major talking points they always bring up is they claim that Iran killed 600American soldiers in Iraq War Two. And what they mean by that is Iraqi Shiites killed 600American soldiers in Iraq War Two. When David Petraeus turned on Muqtad al Sadr in 2007, in the spring of 2007, and there was a giant propaganda campaign based on the total lie that every time a Shiite set off a bomb, that bomb came from Iran and was supplied to Muqtad Al Sadr's Mahdi army by the irgc, that was never true. And in fact, as I show in the book, there were at least what, six or seven different American reporters embedded with soldiers fighting the Mahdi army in Shiite neighborhoods in eastern Baghdad or down in Najaf, who then found the machine shops where they were making these copper cored improved IEDs, the EFP bombs, the explosively formed penetrators, they were called. And I also have high level intelligence officials who confirmed to me that they never had a shred of evidence proving that those bombs were coming in from Iran. And even if they were coming across the border, they had no proof that they were coming from the government there. There was a giant black market in arms. But when they laid out their evidence to prove it, the reporters started noticing that the parts had made in Hadithah on them and things like that. In other words, they were made in Iraq by Iraqis. And so they closed down the press conference. And even Stephen Hadley, the National Security Advisor at the time, admitted that they did not have the evidence that they needed to show the press as they had long promised. And we're going to prove what we've been claiming here. And they never could prove it because they were lying and it wasn't true. It was Mutad Aladr and his Shiite Iraqi Arab army, the nationalist. He was the least Iran tied of all the Shiite leaders. And America supported the ones that Iran loved best, Dawa and Skiri. So stop letting him lie to you about Iraq War two. And then the other thing I want to say is I really miss having Brandon Buck at the Libertarian Institute. But I'm very glad that he's doing such a great job over there at Cato. And I'm just so thrilled that Justin Logan and, and John Hoffman and Brandon Buck and the entire foreign policy crew over at Cato are doing just fantastic right now. And even Nick Gillespie over at Reason magazine said an unequivocally anti war thing there yesterday. Tom. So things are looking up pretty good for the Libertarian movement, man.
- [51:35]
A
Yeah, now we just need know 99% of the country to come along with us. All right, gentlemen, any final words?
- [51:43]
D
Yeah, just to dtail off that. Just, you know, if you're on the opposing side of this, things might look pretty bleak. But just don't give up. You know, it takes a long time to change institutions. We have public opinion, we have increasingly elite opinion. We have journals and magazines. These things didn't exist back in the wake of Vietnam. You just got to gut it out. We are fighting. Well, I hate to say this, but we are fighting a asymmetric war at this point. So we just have to survive because right now it's not looking like the polls in this thing are going to shake out. So again, there's going to be a political opportunity to advance a authentic America first message that puts the peace and prosperity of Americans first when it comes to American foreign policy. So hang in there. Don't quit.
- [52:24]
C
Yeah. You know, I think the poll that came out today about approval of Trump strikes, you know, is somewhat of a silver lining here that only about one out of four Americans actually support this. And I talk about this a lot with colleagues on the left and the right. I think we're at a unique moment here where there is a real critical mass forming in this country that is against the warfare state, that is against American empire. And this is an opportunity for bipartisan cooperation on trying to curtail the failures of U.S. foreign policy. And I think nowhere are those failures more clear than the Middle East. So, you know, it's. If we can't do it there, we're. We're doomed. But I think this is a real moment where the public is waking up to these failures and fact that they need to change.
- [53:12]
A
All right, well, John Hoffman, Brandon Buck, Scott Horton, I appreciate your time very much. Let's all hope for the best. Thank you.
- [53:18]
C
Thank you, Tom.
- [53:19]
D
Thanks.
- [53:20]
A
And thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Make yourself and those you love less vulnerable to the regime, both mentally and physically.
- [53:30]
B
Get more forbidden information@tomsfreebooks.com and be sure
- [53:34]
A
to subscribe to the show wherever you listen.
- [53:37]
B
See you next time.
- [53:46]
A
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