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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. It's episode 2742 of the Tom Woods Show. Brandon Weickert is here, fresh off his appearance with Tucker Carlson. We'll see. We'll see which program gives him the bigger bump in his career. But he is nat sec guy on Emerald TV and a fantastic Twitter follow. I was just telling him that I feel like I owe him something. You know, like all everybody's Twitter account is free to be viewed, but I look at this and I say, I should probably be paying for this. What is your Twitter is. It's what's your hand? And we the Brandon.
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B
We.
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A
We the Brandon. Okay, so great to have you. Now I'm so. You know, again, it's like when you see somebody at a funeral and you say, I'm sorry we have to meet under these circumstances. Same thing here you and I are meeting for the first time, and I'm sorry it's under these circumstances. But me, too, I've listened to what you've had to say, and I've been reading what you've been writing, and I just have a bunch of questions that, you know, I think some of them nobody really has an answer to. But nevertheless, you know, you are capable of making at least an educated guess on some of these questions. So we have this Iran conflict, as JD Vance now calls it, awkwardly. It's. It's not a war war.
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B
It's a non war.
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A
Yeah, the President keeps calling it a war, but then they don't want to call it. Nobody knows what to say. It's all crazy. But I want to start off actually kind of at the end, if I may, kind of at the finish line to ask now that this has taken place. And there was some question about whether Trump was gonna do this, because with Trump, you're dealing with a guy who can change his mind on a dime, can change the way he looks at the world on a dime. It can depend sometimes on the last person he talked to. So it could have gone either way. For example, when he bombed Iran in June of last year, that could have become a much bigger conflict. He even teased the term regime change at that time, and nobody exactly knew what was going to go on, so maybe this wasn't going to happen, but now it has. And I guess what I'm curious about is what are the possible off ramps here? Because I think it's harder to find them than it might have been for other conflicts.
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B
That's a great question. The Tucker interview aired, I think, last Wednesday. And I said at that point he had maybe 48 hours to take the golden off ramp. And he may still try to end the war unilaterally now. And I know that at some point this week he's going to be addressing the American people, but ultimately the enemy gets a vote. And as you know from my Twitter and what I was saying on Tucker, the Iranians are not defeated. The Iranian regime is not. I mean, it's damaged. But they might not want to stop the fighting now because they think they've made the American colossus bleeding. And in many respects they have. They've certainly made the Israelis bleed. And they've gone after, in a very methodical and efficient manner, the Iranians have gone after the underpinning of America's presence in the region, which people always assume is Israel, but in many respects it's the oil producing Arab states. And what the Iranians have done is systematically damaged and in some cases destroyed the Arab economy to the point that I don't believe many of these Arab states will be fully rebuilt if ever for many, many years to come. They've lost these oil production capabilities. Qatar is completely shut down now indefinitely. And that's not even talking about the damage from the Strait of Hormuz closure. So in my opinion, there is no off ramp anymore. Trump might just jump in the hole and say I'm done. And we can pray for that because that would still be preferable, in my opinion, that this thing continuing up the escalation ladder. But the Iranians do not necessarily now want it to stop. And certainly, and this is the crazy part, given how much damage has been done to Israel, the Israelis don't want it to stop. And Trump even said either today or yesterday. I think it was in Axios, one of the big publications reported this, that Trump apparently said that he basically would love to end the war at any time, but he has to work alongside the Israeli government to get basically their approval.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So there you go. There's no golden off ramp anymore. We're in this thing for the long haul. It's going to be a long haul, too.
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A
Not to mention if he were. Well, I mean, you just implied it with what you said. But if he were to declare, let's say he took that back. Because Trump has a way of saying the opposite one day of what he said the previous day.
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B
Oh, he's very mercurial.
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A
So yeah. And he could say, I never said that. The United States makes its own decision. I mean, he could just say that tomorrow. But even if he does say that, obviously Israel will not be happy if the US Stops in what it would view as prematurely now, what would prematurely be for Israel? It has to be before the installation of an absolutely compliant regime. And obviously that would be a far, far more vast undertaking than I think Trump was prepared for.
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B
Yeah. And this is why they're talking about ground troops now. This is why, you know, which with
- [05:23]
A
the topography of Iran, how is that possible?
- [05:25]
B
I know well, and I think it's key to understand. I've said this, I think I said this in the Tucker interview, but I've said it in subsequent interviews. The United States does not have the force structure to actually conduct an invasion on the level that it did in 2003. We have allowed that capability to diminish. And I'm not saying that we should do a ground invasion, but even if, you know, under the best circumstances we wanted to do that, we're not going to be able to. There's no amount of buildup that we could participate in to ensure that we would have on the order of several hundred thousands of troops, unless there's a draft, which I thought, interestingly, the administration is now not shooting down when that was brought up to Caroline Levitt. Now, I don't know that's just because she's ignorant or it's because there's some other discussion occurring behind the scenes about this war. But the only way you're going to change the regime in Iran is if you get boots on the ground. That's a bloody mess. That's Vietnam redux. That's Vietnam in the deserts and the mountains. That's basically what you're getting. And it's going to end very badly for the United States. Even if we could constitute an actual invasion force, what's probably going to happen is it'll be a redux of Afghanistan. And in fact, you're seeing the 82nd Airborne now being mobilized. I suspect they're going to do things like try to take Carg Island. I would just remind your audience this was a quote, unquote strategy not created by the Pentagon, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs Staff. This was a strategy created by Lindsey Graham, who I am sure divined it while he was polishing Netanyahu's shoes. So, you know, this is the Kharg island strategy, where they're going to take this island off the coast of Iran, which is probably the epicenter of their energy production and refining capability. But that's a bloody mess waiting to happen. And then also they could replicate the Afghanistan 2001 strategy by deploying large numbers of Special Forces and CIA paramilitaries into Iran to link up with organized groups like the Mujahideen e Kalk Mek to basically use them and to force multiply off of them in order to drive into Tehran. But I just want your audience to understand something. The United States military was adamantly opposed to the recent Israeli airstrike on north Tehran that took out the massive oil refining complex there that basically created a toxic plume over Tehran. And the reason they were opposed to this in the Pentagon and the Israelis flipped them the bird and said we're doing it anyway. Great ally stuff there guys. But the reason was because the US understood this would damage the protests. Remember, this was the whole thing is Trump wanted to use these anti regime protesters. Well, they're certainly not going to have any friends in Tehran today. And in fact, what you're noticing is in Persia, the Persian community in Tehran is rallying now around the regime because Trump is now floating this concept of cantonization for Iran. You know, if we can't replace the regime, we can at least break Iran into four or five or six smaller countries. Well, the Persians don't want to hear that. This is a thousands of years old culture and country. They're not going to be okay with foreigners coming in and breaking them up any more than the Russians would have been okay with during the 1990s and early 2000s.
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A
Everybody, I got some bad news for you, but then also some good news. The bad news, we're living through historic deficits, persistent inflation and a Federal Reserve that can't unwind what it's created. That's why gold is back in the spotlight. Not as a trade, but as real money. Here's the problem. Most gold just sits in a vault. It protects purchasing power, sure, but it doesn't generate income. Monetary metals changes that. They let you earn a yield on gold paid in gold. I lease my gold through monetary metals and earn a return of around 4% annually paid in physical ounces. So I keep my gold and I get more gold over time. So that means I, I benefit from rising gold prices and I grow my holdings in ounces. No paper promises, no fiat payouts. Gold becomes a productive yield bearing asset again. The Fed can print dollars, they can't print gold. Learn more at monetary-metals.com woods and see how you can start earning a gold income. That's monetary medals.comwoods this point you just made about people in Iran today, I mean, obviously there are substantial numbers of people who will rally to the Islamic Republic, but at the same time there are plenty of modernizers who are repelled by it. Well, the diaspora of Iranians around the world at least if I'm sorry to be judging them based on TikTok videos, but that's all I got to go on, Brandon. And there's a lot of them I keep seeing. Now, I don't know if this is because some of them are Israeli slash Jewish with some history in Iran or what it is, but they're super enthusiastic about what's been going on. And it's like either you are coming at this from some kind of a Zionist perspective and you view the US and Israel very favorably, or you have not been paying attention to the way the United States deals with countries in the Middle East. I mean, you really think that this was to make things better? Better? I mean, what's happened in Syria? You think people in Syria are doing really well under the present regime there?
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B
I mean, well, the Islamists are doing well there.
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A
Where is the naivete coming on the part? I kind of thought people in the Middle east or with roots in the Middle east would be more informed than Americans would be. And yet I, I listen to these, these Iranians so called making these videos and it's like they're dumber than Americans.
- [11:15]
B
Yeah, a lot of them have not been to Iran ever. A lot of them are like born and raised in America and a lot of them, maybe their parents lived there for a period of time, but ultimately they don't represent the majority opinion. I mean, look, remember the Shah was overthrown in a popular revolt and people need to remember that. And I'm no fan of the regime in Iran. I think that they are a supporter of terrorism and I do think that they are not our friend. But ultimately the regime, at least initially, was put into power on the back of a very popular wave. Whereas the Shah, who I thought, okay, he did serve American interests, but he clearly was not popular. He clearly was not the popular leader that people wanted to claim him to be. And a lot of these people, these expatriates, are themselves monarchists and they are basically carrying the water of the monarchy that is wildly unpopular to this day. The Shahs, I think is his son is basically a lobbyists in Northern Virginia. And ultimately that's who the British and the Israelis really want to see take power. And even the CIA is saying that's not going to work because the monarchy is not popular. But a lot of these expatriates are monarchists at heart because their parents were and their family members were and they lost all their possessions. But that doesn't represent the majority opinion in Iran. And I think that you're witnessing the fact that there hasn't been a popular revolt. You know, there's been protests, but a lot of that we're finding out was generated by CIA and Mossad and these sort of non governmental organizations. Again, sort of like what happened in Ukraine in 2014 and sort of like what we were trying to do in 2012 in Russia. So this is not necessarily organic and not reflective of the majority opinion of Iranians.
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A
I might be putting you on the spot with this question because I don't know how much anybody really knows, but what do your instincts tell you about the claim that the regime murdered 30,000 protesters?
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B
You know, I have no idea. You know, so much coming out of the Iran. I mean, look, let's just be honest. The regime there is not great. They lie about stuff too, and they do bad things all the time. We all do, as you know, in terms of our governments. And this is not like anybody's hands are clean on this thing. I mean, I could believe it. It doesn't really matter. Ultimately, the bottom line is, I mean, it's terrible if it happened the way they say it happened, but ultimately the bottom line is this. The Iranian government doesn't care about their people the way that we think that they would. They just want to stay in power. And they have secured that power base and now we are actually helping them secure it. Because what we're doing is, is we're putting a big target on any potential rival to the regime. Their internal security identifies them during these protests, take them out, weakens the resistance. And then also when we bomb and we do these horrific attacks on schools, on oil refineries that completely, that set the streets on fire as if it's Dresden. What that does is it tells the Iranian people we can't trust the Americans, why would we want to rely. This regime may be bad, but there ares and they're going to rally around the flag. And ultimately, if that is true that they killed that many people in response to political upheaval that should have caused people around Trump to sit Trump down and say this regime is not going to care about public opinion. You can't just start a war expecting they're going to be overthrown, because they haven't been. And they're clearly very proficient in staying in power and feel free to disagree if, I mean, you know, I, I'm open to whatever you want to do.
- [14:55]
A
No, but I think I have no basis to judge it either, except I keep getting fed BS stories that justify intervention.
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B
That's the thing. And this is just like in Iraq, you know, your audience probably, if they followed me, know that at one time I was unthinkingly part of the neoconservative side of the party. I think, like Tucker was. My, my story is very similar to Tucker. Obviously not on that level, but, you know, I just was sort of, hey, I'm a Republican. Everybody's, you know, on the Republican side. We're pro Iraq war and okay, let's just. And you realize very quickly studying it and living it, that, oh my God, they just straight up lied. They just straight up lied and they didn't care. And there was no punishment for the people who got us into a really disastrous war that we're still paying for. And you're seeing the same people, in some cases, certainly the same kinds of policies and lies being propagated today about this war, which is why every American who, who cares about America first must oppose this war. It isn't about being pro Iranian regime at all. It's about protecting our troops and protecting our standing in the world and protecting our interests abroad, because this does not run in our interests at all.
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A
I have a guy, I wouldn't call him a friend. We disagree very, very intensely on foreign policy, but we have some agreement on other things. And he was saying to me privately that he is convinced that, quote, America's enemies are in some way behind the various anti war movements, or as, you know, if you can even call it that, they're so pathetic in the US right now. But he was convinced and I couldn't understand. I thought if I were China, which I, I don't necessarily go for, China is necessarily an American enemy. Doesn't have to be. But that's another conversation. Yeah, if I were China, I would say this is fantastic.
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B
Yeah, that's exactly what they're saying.
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A
Let this thing go on and drain these people as long as possible.
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B
That's exactly what they're saying. That's why, you know, I do a lot of sort of stuff with, you know, other networks on the right, and they're very Zionist and they. This is a common refrain you hear from all the usual suspects that, well, this is a heavy blow to China. Well, I sat down. I don't know if you saw, I posted it on Twitter about Three or four days ago, I sat down for half an hour with, with Brendan O'Reilly, who is an actual China scholar and an intelligence analyst, wrote a great book, Everybody's Wrong About China. And then my buddy Dan Collins, who to this day runs high end rare earth mineral factories in China, I had two scholar practitioners who sat and they speak the language and they lived for decades in China. And they both told me that the Chinese are eating this up, that, yes, it's gonna pinch. Yeah, because, you know, 14 to 16% of their oil is coming from Iran.
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A
So.
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B
But the Chinese began to change that profile around knowing that we were going in. They're purchasing more oil from Russia. Before Saudi went offline and Qatar went offline. They soaked up a lot of oil over the last several months from those resources. So they've been hardening themselves and preparing for this. And remember, China right now has a massive industrial base, no problem churning out weapons and systems that could conceivably be used to, to fight the United States if a war between us ever did break out. They have what's known as surge capacity on a level that we haven't seen in this country Since World War II in terms of the industrial might. And oh, by the way, the Chinese hold all the cards in rare earth minerals. And we've been blowing through all of our standoff munitions going back to Ukraine. We've been doing this and we're not replacing them at a necessary level because the industrial base here is so sclerotic. The Chinese can just say, hey, you blew through all of your Tomahawks that you need to possibly fight us. We consider rare Earths dual use, and we're going to deny you access to those so you'll never be able to replenish those stockpiles again. And then there's a capability taken out of Uncle Sam's pocket and never to be seen again while the Chinese continue enhancing their own capabilities relative to ours. So if anything, the Iran war is a massive win. And by the way, their ships are really the only ships right now passing through the Strait of Hormuz. They're container ships full of all the, the oil and whatnot. So China's still getting oil, by the way. That's another story that's not being reported. China's still receiving Middle east oil. We're not, I say we, I should say the West, I should say, because obviously we have other. But the west is not. Europe is hit hardest here.
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A
All right, so that was exactly the way I was thinking about it, that, I mean, Every major country, the Russians obviously would like to see. The more the US Is expending resources on this, the less it can expend them on Ukraine or Taiwan or whatever the case may be.
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B
And if I can just quickly inject here and we can, I just want to inject here because I made a speech in 2017 at the Institute of World Politics, my alma mater in Washington, D.C. it was not very well received, but the title was Russia is the only beneficiary of an Iran War. And what I was getting at was the funding mechanism for the war machine in Russia is predominantly their oil market. Well, when the oil spikes, when oil prices spike globally and remain high, the Russians are able to generate a lot of money. I think, Tom, it was something like 1,762% increase in profits in the last week for these Russian firms because of the global price of oil spiking because of this war. So the Iran war is benefiting the Russian economy, which is now spending that excess money on continuing the war in Ukraine.
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A
And even if it did do short term damage to China, what is the Trump slogan right now? Short term pain, long term gain. I'm sure they view it the same way.
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B
I'm sure they view it the same way. And I'm sure the Chinese don't actually think that's going to affect them the way Trump does. Remember, China is the world's primary and you know, it's the world's first sweatshop. It's the world's labor shop. It's a high end tech dynamo. They are basically the leading exporter of goods to the Global south, which is where all the developing markets are. Tom. So remember when we started the blessed trade war and guess what happened? The Chinese. Yeah, again, they felt a pinch, but all they did was shift over to Global south because ultimately their exposure to US Markets was not as significant as America's exposure to key Chinese markets. So when we initiated the trade war, it had massive amounts of blowback on our soybean farmers, on our high tech sector, et cetera. Whereas the Chinese, they got burned a little bit, but they just moved. They repositioned themselves because they are the key exporter to many of these developing economies in the Global South. And that's exactly how it's going to play out from here on out on a variety of issues.
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A
Let's talk about what the goals of, of this operation are. I'm, I'm, I'm avoiding the word. I call it a war all the time.
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B
But it's funny, there's so not war war. It's the non war war.
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A
There's so many euphemisms that I can use.
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B
I mean, it's like an episode of Veep. I mean, you know, it's.
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A
Exactly. And the thing is, it's like they all know that we know it's a war.
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B
You.
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A
You know, like. So it's all a charade.
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B
Well, I'm reminded of the Solzhenitsyn quote. Right. You know, they know we're lying and
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A
they know that we know that.
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B
Yeah. I mean, that's the level of absurdity that we've reached. I mean, not even. Look, I was. I ended up being very critical of the George W. Bush team, but not even George. I mean, at least George W. Bush had the courtesy to lie about the cause for war. We didn't even get a discussion about this thing. It was just one day. Trump woke up like the Mad King and said, we're going to war, but we can't call it a war. You know, but that's what it is. It is, and it's leading. I think we're in the beginning. I think we're in World War iii. That's what I think. Because if there's no off ramp and everybody keeps getting involved in this thing, it's like an insuperable wound. It keeps getting gangrene, and the infection is spreading to the whole bloodstream. I think that's where we are right now. You have the British talking about sending their dilapidated aircraft carrier. The French are supposedly sending their carrier. This, to me, is a world war. This is not even just a regional war anymore. And it was kicked off by the Mad King in the White House. Right.
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A
We're dealing with a country of, I guess, 90 million, 96 million, I believe. 96 million. All right. Apparently, square footage of Western Europe.
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B
Yep.
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A
That's not the same thing as Venezuela, where you go in, you take out the one guy, then you don't really do a whole lot about the regime other than the one guy.
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B
Right.
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A
And you can unilaterally declare that the whole thing's over now, because what are they. What's Venezuela going to do?
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B
Right.
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A
Not so obvious that this can be done.
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B
Well, there's also. The logistics chain is very different for operation like this in Persia than it is in Venezuela and culturally. And I'm not putting down the Venezuelan culture, but let's just face it, the Venezuelans are not as fanatical as the cadre that's leading the Islamic Republic of Iran. They're just not I mean, there is a. Their ideology is a very key factor here. And I was told that Kamani had stopped worrying about his safety toward the end there and was getting sloppy basically with his personal security. The reason he was staying above ground more was because he was telling his people, his team, listen, I'm old and if it's God's will to take me, then it's time and I'm prepared to. That doesn't bother me at all. And that's the mentality of the people you're dealing with at that upper echelon. That's not the same mentality that dominated Maduro's regime, which was basically a gangster state. Just give him a cut of the action and they're happy. That's not who you're dealing with in Iran. These guys are believers and on some level they're okay with dying in a way that the Venezuelans certainly are not.
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A
I think there is something about the west that makes it incapable of understanding.
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B
Well, we're materialists at heart and this is the problem. This is the problem. We have this weird thing where there's a group of people, the Christian Zionists, who clearly are more than materialists, but they're belief is heretical. If you know anything about Christianity.
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A
Oh, it absolutely is.
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B
Anyway, we don't have to get it. I mean, I don't know how far you.
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A
I've done that on this show already.
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B
Yeah, yeah, okay. I mean, it's clearly heretical. And so you have a small group of people who believe in this heretical ideology leading us, but you have. The entire west is post Christian. It's a pagan. We've gone back to paganism. And so it's all materialism and it's all short sighted. You don't have that in Iran today. Iran is a, it's an Islamic culture and the leadership, it is a theocracy and they are willing to die for their beliefs and they're going to try to take out as many unbelievers and heretics as they can. Which is precisely what they're doing.
- [25:41]
A
This is so rhetorical. I'm going to, I'm going to rephrase it. So it's not merely rhetorical. The goals of this operation are notoriously shifting. Yes, shifting, unclear, mission creepy. But also from one administration official to the other. It's like the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing with telephone. Yeah, it is. So what's the best you're able to put together for. Because I want to have the. Let's try to propose what the best case scenario is, that it's. They have in mind something that does not actually involve years and years and years of a slog, that they have something finite in mind and they're aiming at accomplishing it, what would that be?
- [26:22]
B
The best case scenario is oil prices remain high over the next several weeks, which makes Trump get skittish, and he can't. Well, I believe the market is manipulated because some of the responses to what we're seeing is not tethered to reality. But that's another story for another time. But basically, Trump will not be able to use the power of his office to keep the economy from looking bad on paper, which is. Which is what he cares about. Fundamentally. He cares about that more than anything because he thinks that's a measure of his success and his chances or his party's chances for staying in power. So if prices of oil, like I believe, will remain relatively high and Americans are going to be screaming over that, and rightly so, that might force him to just say, I've gotten the Ayatollah, I've degraded the missile capability, I've degraded the drone capability. I've killed a lot of IRGC top echelon guys. I'm good, I'm done. Let's call it a day. We're going to come home. And he's probably not going to be able to reconstitute, and that's a good thing. Not going to be able to reconstitute our facilities in Bahrain or in some of these Arab states, because they're never going to want to see us again after this. Yeah, but ultimately, that, to me, is the best case scenario, which, of course, isn't an optimal scenario because the Iranians might say, hey, we're just getting started, buddy.
- [27:47]
A
And Israel may say the same thing.
- [27:49]
B
Well, Israel's the real wild card, and I think it's very predictable what they're going to do. I think we're moving toward nuclear weapons use from Israel because it is very dire on the ground in Israel. They just killed, I believe, Benjamin Netanyahu's brother in a missile attack. I know they're saying it was a car accident, but. Okay, you know, whatever. But, you know, they targeted the largest underground bunker for the Israeli government and successfully destroyed it. Nobody's seen Benjamin Netanyahu, as far as I can tell. I don't know where he is. And that starts making me think, could he be dead? Could he be injured? And they're covering it up. So Israel is in a very bad way right now. And it's getting worse every day with every iteration of this fight. And so my concern is that nuclear weapons come on the table at that point. But that's the secondary topic here. Let's just focus on the objectives. I just am gonna go off of what the President said because at the end of the day, our battlefield commanders are not listening even to Pete Hegseth. They listening to what the commander in chief has consistently said. It's very clear his objective is regime change. His objective is denuclearization. His objective is getting. You're seeing how many objectives there are now. This is becoming highly complex. His objective is, I want to get rid of all the ballistic missiles. His objective is I want to get rid of the Iranian navy. What is the objective of the Iranian regime? To survive. Just to hang on. They don't have to do anything other than that. So long as the Islamic Republic of Iran remains the leader of the Iranian country, they win. And so far, they're winning. It doesn't matter how many sorties we fly. It doesn't matter how many underground facilities we bomb. We will never know if we got them all. And as long as there's one of those facilities around, they have clearly demonstrated a capability under degraded conditions to continue to effectively fight. They are combat effective in a way. I know for a fact the Pentagon was not anticipating this far into the war. So what does our mission set look like? I just said those are the objectives. You could say, okay, we got rid of the Iranian navy, but there's some debate on that, too. That's probably our biggest success so far. Okay, we degraded the ballistic missile capability. But if you saw the New York Times at the beginning of the week, or, I'm sorry, at the end of the week. Last week on Friday, there was a closed briefing in Congress in which the US intelligence agencies said at least 50% of those ballistic missiles, Tom, remain operational. That's after 3,000 sorties and counting. They remain operational. The nuclear weapons, you know, who knows? Who knows about the nukes? We know that they weren't obliterated, but we also know that the Iranians were very easily convinced to get rid of them. Which indicates to me, you know, during the negotiations, which indicates to me that they were never really very serious about really mass producing these weapons because they knew they had the ballistic missile wild card that was their key thing, and they're using it deftly. And then again, regime change. Well, regime change is not just getting rid of one leader and replacing it with the leader from the same group. Like we did in Venezuela. That's really not regime change. That's regime stability or survival with a different face. So what we've seen in Iran is I think as of today, the son of the Ayatollah Khamani, I think is Mosheba I think was his name. He took power and he might have been injured now in an Israeli attack. That's a rumor that's going around. Who knows if that's true? But the point is that's still the Islamic Republic of Iran. So the number one objective the President has consistently stated regime change. It ain't happening. After all of this, it ain't happening.
- [31:20]
A
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- [32:27]
B
Absolutely.
- [32:27]
A
But yet to a layman it would certainly seem like bombs coming from the sky 24 hours a day. Seems like that should shake things up a bit. What is it that's so considered to be so inadequate about air power alone?
- [32:41]
B
Well, I would argue it doesn't take into account human will. Ultimately, war is a human endeavor no matter how we try to sterilize it, no matter how we try to condition it for the public. So that's more palatable. Or how many AI systems. Very flawed AI systems as it turns out, we use to try to mitigate the human factor in war. It is inherently a human act. And it is if you are waging war, and I should say it's also an extension, to quote Clausewitz, it's an extension of politics through other means. So if you're trying to regime change rather than just degrade. So if our goal is just to degrade, we've already done it. They've degraded. Maybe for two years, maybe for 10 years, we've degraded them. Okay? But if the goal is we want never again to worry about the regime, it's nuclear weapons, it's ballistic missiles. Well, you need to have ground power for that. And I would just remind your audience, in the entirety of the Vietnam War, and I posted this on my Twitter the other day. In the entirety of the Vietnam War, the US Air Force flew 5.29 million sorties against north and South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. And that was with, what was it, 100,000 or several hundred thousand troops on the ground for 10 years, and we still lost that war. So not only does air power alone not win a war of regime change, it's not even guaranteed that a fully stacked military like what we had in Vietnam can achieve that against a hardened enemy who's committed to cause the North Vietnamese war. I believe the Iranians are.
- [34:16]
A
What about what we're hearing? Or maybe more to the point, what we're not hearing, I guess. Are we getting real damage reports from the US And Israel? And are you entirely convinced by these damage reports? Do you think it's worse than they're saying? Again, I'm putting you on the spot
- [34:31]
B
because are you saying battle damage in terms of what we're receiving or what we're dishing out?
- [34:35]
A
Oh, well, in terms of what we're receiving, and I hate saying that.
- [34:38]
B
I think they're lying through their teeth. I think they're lying through their teeth. In fact. In fact, the Pentagon's been caught lying on several occasions about the damage to the bases. So you had these third party private satellite imaging firms, I think Maxer or one of them, that basically released the imagery of the Fifth Fleet headquarters at Bahrain, which is really the most important facility for the US Navy in the region. It is the hub of all of our activity in the region, and we spent a lot of money on it. It looks like Gaza. It's completely flattened. And moonscape Pete Hegseth or one of his minions said the other day, oh, no, no, it was just damaged, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, no, it's flattened, it's gone. And the Bahrainis are not going to let us come back anytime soon to rebuild it and reuse it, no matter how much money we throw. I shouldn't say that probably no matter how much money we throw at them, given the amount of damage Bahrain has specifically received. And Bahrain is the most permissive of the Arab countries in terms, well, of the Middle Eastern countries, because they're technically Shiites and there's a whole other thing there. But they're the one of the more permissive regimes in the Arab world, in that Gulf world, which is why we based so much there and why the British before us based so much in Bahrain. And we've lost that facility. It is gone. So the US Is routinely. And some of that is operational security. I don't want to say it's all bad because they're just. But I think a lot of it is being lied about because of the political optics, because it's a non war war. And if we start having all these images and we start admitting true casualty numbers, which I hate to say I don't believe the casualty numbers for a second, if we start admitting that, you know, then suddenly the President has a very big, big problem on his hands politically. This, to me, Tom, reminds me of the worst excesses and more of the COVID era. And remember, Trump crapped the bed during that whole thing as well. And to me, his worst instincts on this are coming out as president, and you're seeing it play out in real time. Only this time it's not just a virus that we're dealing with, it's nuclear weapons that are probably going to be used soon.
- [36:44]
A
Well, I don't like to bend over backwards at this point to give Trump the benefit of the doubt and say, well, he was dragged against his will into this. At some point point, you have to say he must have wanted this on some level, or at the very least, given the choices that he thought he realistically had, he went for this. I think the, the analogy with COVID is apartment in that Fauci was obviously anticipating a long campaign. Trump wasn't. Trump said, well, I hope this will all be over by Easter. Now, it started in March, Easter was in April, and Fauci was saying to him, now, hold on a minute, this is going to go a long time. Trump hadn't counted on that. So likewise, even though I don't say, oh, this was against Trump's will or he had to really be dragged into it, I do think there are indications that he thought it would be a lot faster than it turned out to be.
- [37:34]
B
He did. No, he did. In fact, I was told that he was operating off of what Netanyahu told him, which of course is always a terrible idea because Netanyahu is an inveterate
- [37:43]
A
liar and has a vested interest in the situation. Absolutely you got to balance him with somebody else.
- [37:47]
B
And.
- [37:48]
A
And by the way, I'm sorry to cut you off, but he's taught so much to other Middle Eastern countries. I was wondering, are any of them saying to him, look, we get that you have a huge Zionist presence in the US in your political system, and we understand that whether you agree with that or not, you have to deal with it, but you need to know the facts on the ground. I was hoping somebody sat him down and talked to him like that.
- [38:10]
B
So here's what I know happened, and this is when Bannon started bringing me on his show to talk about it, because he knew that I had the story. Politico has confirmed this, by the way, since I reported it. On January 15, Trump was ready to initiate bombardment of Iran. And it was the Mohammed bin Salman and the Qatari emir and Erdogan of Turkey who basically called him in the middle of the night and said, if you do this, you will not be able to use our airspace, and furthermore, we will not use our air defenses to stop any incoming Iranian missiles and drones that would be fired at the bases, US Bases, and at Israel. And Trump backed down. In fact, at the end there, Netanyahu called him and said, we're not ready to go yet. Just hold off. That is what dissuaded. And again, there was another time three weeks after that. So in the early part of February, Trump wanted to go again. And my understanding is that the Arabs again told him, nope, you're not going to do it. And then the Navy sat him down and said, sir, we really need a second carrier. And that was the impetus for bringing the Ford into the Mediterranean. But then, of course, like, a couple weeks later, three weeks later, that had all changed. And Netanyahu said, now we're ready to go. And Netanyahu initiated the fight. But ultimately, I want to make it clear, Trump believed, based on what Netanyahu told him, kill Kamani and the whole regime collapses like a house of card, and you could run the tables on them. And so if you look at it, that's exactly what they did. They killed Kamani at the very beginning, using, I believe, diplomacy as a ruse, which we'll be paying for that for many decades.
- [39:42]
A
Unbelievably dishonorable.
- [39:44]
B
Yeah, well, remember, and I think I said this to Tucker, Remember, this is what Stimson used to say, you know, to the press in the 1940s, the reason America's on the right side is because, unlike the Japanese, we don't use diplomacy as a ruse to initiate A surprise attack. Can't say that anymore, guys.
- [40:00]
A
No, you can't.
- [40:01]
B
You know, you can't. And so we'll be paying that one down for a long time. But ultimately Trump believed Netanyahu, that this would be a quick thing, over and done. And then once Netanyahu, I mean, once Kamani's gone, you know, it'll. There'll be some shifting and some missiles here and there. Remember, they were talking about dead enders, like Rumsfeld was at the height of the insurgency in Iraq. You know, the Trump administration, oh, it's just some missile. They're just going here and there. But it's fine. We've got their command and control, their C2. Well, that's not accurate. We did degrade their command and control. But their leaders were smart over the last 30 years, 20 years, to begin decentralizing command and control functions to local battlefield commanders, which is why you're still seeing, despite all of the damage we've done to their central authority, you're still seeing these, these units fighting quite vociferously against us.
- [40:54]
A
You could imagine if this were a, I'm going to use the word war that had enjoyed popular support, unlike this one where the President got no bump. He had no polling bump from this at all.
- [41:06]
B
Just like after Venezuela, by the way.
- [41:08]
A
Is that so?
- [41:09]
B
He did not get any bump. My understanding is he did not get the usual bump. You would have thought people were happy, people felt good, the military felt good. But my understanding is there was no significant polling bump on that.
- [41:21]
A
But if it had been the case that people were really. I mean, Americans don't even notice Iran exists, you know, so the, the over the top language about it just seems disproportionate to the average person. I don't even notice that this country's even there, you know, and I'm supposed to think that my life depends on regime change over there, you know, but if they did feel that way, then if reports of casualties were to start coming in, you could imagine a scenario in which that makes the American public more committed to it, because now they're even angrier. But if they weren't committed in the beginning, then now we're losing people for a reason that doesn't seem adequate to me.
- [41:58]
B
And this is why I think that they are manip. I think what they're doing is they're slow walking the release of casualties. I don't have any proof of that, and I hope that's not the case. I really, I don't even like talking about the Casualties, because I'm not rooting for high American casualty numbers or anything like that. So. But I just, based on, you know, I've studied multiple conflicts, Ukraine being the most prominent now, where literally every side in that war is lying about the number of dead, and usually it's Team NATO that's the worst liars about the casualty figures. So that's why I'm very concerned that. And it's because of the political ramifications. They didn't make the case to the American people. They didn't really go to Congress. The Democrats are claiming, the Gang of Eight is claiming that Rubio withheld intelligence from them right. Before deciding to go into Iran, which if that is true, you are going to see when the Democrats, and I believe they will take back power in November. There is going to be such an investigatory scope on the Trump administration that there's going to be a lot of people taken down by this. I think if that's true.
- [43:04]
A
Yeah. Unfortunately, that will make the worst of the Republicans dig in their heels on this crazy position, of course, that the president can just go to war whenever he wants to, and that's what George Washington would have wanted.
- [43:13]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [43:15]
A
Are we to be spared nothing?
- [43:16]
B
Yeah. Mike Davis, who I'm told is an excellent attorney, and he maybe is, because he can play wordplay so well, but he was on the same episode of Bannon as I was last week, and he. He gave this insane disquisition about, oh, you know, there's a difference in the Constitution between making war and declaring war.
- [43:35]
A
Yeah, they all, they all pull that
- [43:37]
B
one and it's like, well, there's a reason Shakespeare said, first kill all the lawyers. I mean, that is insanity. That is insanity masquerading as policy. And I understand that he's an influential member of the Trump team advising him on legal matters. I mean, this is the height of mania right here. I mean, shredding the. You know, Steve Saylor once said that the. He said that the Democrats often wear the Constitution like a serial killer wears the skin of their victims. I think you can apply it now to a lot of the Republicans as well in power.
- [44:10]
A
Well, you can make an argument that the president, acting alone, was authorized to repel sudden attacks. But the thing is, Pearl harbor would have been a sudden attack. And even at Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt went to get a declaration of war.
- [44:26]
B
Right, exactly.
- [44:26]
A
He would never have done that today.
- [44:28]
B
That's right. Well, yeah, and let's face it, I think he would have preferred to have never have done that. I think that he would have because of his, you know, his penchant for executive action. But ultimately it ended up working in his favor politically because he had cover, he had cover from both parties. They gave him, you know, you go, and this is what I never, you know, I always disagree, I didn't always disagree with, but over years I started thinking a lot about this and it's like actually if you're a politician, it's actually really good to go to Congress and get the declaration. Not just an authorization, but get a declaration. Because then if something goes pear shaped, it's not all on you and your party. You can say, hey, absolutely. And by the way, when you declare war, in some cases there is more power conferred to the presidency for a limited time to fight the war. But what we've done is we've done all these authorizations to use military for and it's like, well now it's indefinite war. We've always been at war with East Asia type of thing. And war is peace, Peace is war. And it's destroyed the constitutional fabric here in this country. We now have a surveillance state that will never go away. They're getting ready to upgrade it and impose I think a Chinese style credit, you know, social credit system, palantirs. Behind that you got all these different tech firms working with CIA. So I mean these so called wars, maybe they're not wars, they're just sort of endless, you know, commitments that we just never divorce ourselves from. And I'm worried that's at play here in Iran.
- [46:02]
A
Last thing, do you have any sense? I mean obviously the neocons have wanted war with Iran for a long time back, since George W. Bush. Yeah, but they didn't get it. And there were various reasons they didn't get it. I mean one, there was an intelligence report by all the agencies in late 2007 that said they haven't got the weapons and all that. And that was back when that was enough to actually derail something like this. But also it was the Pentagon, it was the generals who would say this would be a fool's errand, this would be supreme folly, there is no way we can do this.
- [46:36]
B
Right.
- [46:36]
A
But yet that doesn't seem. But I guess what I want to ask you is there a sense that the Pentagon is, if anybody's been dragged into this against their will, it's not Donald Trump, it's the Pentagon. Do you think?
- [46:47]
B
Yeah, no, I think that's true. And I think that's why you had Vice Admiral Fred Kocher fall on his sword The Friday that the war basically was ordered to begin, there was a particularly contentious meeting between Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Kaine, Air Force General, who is Trump's guy. He was pulled out of retirement personally by Trump. So he is Trump's guy. He got into it with Trump and said, look, he gave him the parade of horribles, as Rumsfeld would say. He gave Trump the parade of horribles. And Trump, at one point, apparently Cain kind of went like this to the president. He goes, Mr. President, I don't actually think you're listening to anything I'm saying right now. And apparently that conversation was dictated by. Was note taken by Kocher, who was an adjutant to Cain. I'm the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee or their staff. And he basically leaked it to Reuters. He was reduced for doing that, but I noticed he wasn't actually fired. And so that's where people are saying to me, kaine actually asked Kocher to do that. And in return, he basically protected Kocher on some level. Kocher's no longer working on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, you know, their staff, but he's now gone back to the Navy in some other lesser capacity. But that, to me indicates that, yes, the upper echelon of the US Military was very opposed and very worried about this war because of mission creep. But ultimately, look, the military of today, the leadership class, even under Trump, which I think is better than under Biden, but even they are a shadow of what they once were, even 20 years ago during the Iraq war. And I think it shows by the fact there wasn't a mass resignation by these flag officers. If you're that opposed to it, it's not your job to salute and say, yes, sir. You're actually morally obligated by your oath to the office to resign and protest. And you don't have to, you know, be mutinous. Of course not. But you have to. You ha. You. If you think it's an unlawful order at the very. Or a bad idea, at the very least, you have to resign. You have to.
- [48:52]
A
Yeah. And none of them did, Right. Well, that's a whole other question. There are certain people I would have thought, might have thought about resigning, but
- [49:01]
B
I thought Kane would have because, you know, he was an aerospace executive. He was very wealthy. He made a lot of money in the private sector. He was doing very well for himself. He. He didn't actually need to come back. It wasn't like his career required it. So. And he would have landed on his feet, you know, after doing that, but he chose to stick around. So it's it's on him and Pollyanna, Pete and all these other ones.
- [49:21]
A
Yeah, no kidding. Well, Brandon Weickert, I appreciate your time. Those of you who are on Twitter, slash x I'm telling you, you are not going to be unhappy. If you follow and it's at we the Brandon B R A N D O N you are not going to be unhappy. You're going to be very edified and it's going to be another example of how Old woods improved your life. So Brandon, thanks again. It was a great conversation.
- [49:44]
B
It's nice meeting you.
- [49:45]
A
Thank you. And thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Make yourself and those you love less vulnerable to the regime, both mentally and physically. Get more forbidden information@tomsfreebooks.com and be sure to subscribe. Subscribe to the show wherever you listen.
- [50:02]
B
See you next time.
- [50:11]
A
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