← The Tom Woods Show
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- [00:02]
Tom Woods (Intro/Outro)
Get ready to take a flamethrower to the official narrative and learn what the elites don't want you to know. You're listening to the Tom Woods Show.
- [00:19]
Tom Woods (Host)
Hey, everybody, Tom woods here. It's episode 2743 of the Tom woods show, the great David Stockman. I'm old enough to remember him from Reagan administration. And because he was such a young pup in the Reagan administration, he's still alive and kicking here with us, thank goodness, because he's one of the few sensible people around who has any kind of Washington connection, past or present. He served in the US Congress. He served as OMB director, director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Reagan. My favorite story is the Reagan people reached out and asked how would he like to be so secretary of Energy? And he said, well, I'd really like omb. And Reagan said something like, I'm not exactly sure what that is, but we'll get back to you. So anyway, and of course, David's had a great private sector career since then, and he writes, he edits, he publishes David Stockman's Contra Corner, which I highly recommend. DavidStockman's Contra Corner.com David Too bad we have to really scramble to come up with something to talk about today. But welcome back.
- [01:18]
David Stockman (Guest)
Right. We're. Well, thank you for the good introduction, Tom. And I want to point out, though, that I'm still young enough to be here, even though, you know, I served in the administration way back then. But it's kind of interesting. The one credential you didn't mention is I was a member of the National Security Council, and during that period of time, the whole battle between Washington and the Iranians got underway.
- [01:43]
Tom Woods (Host)
Well, I didn't know that.
- [01:45]
David Stockman (Guest)
Yes, the big event was the Beirut bombing.
- [01:49]
Tom Woods (Host)
I was going to ask you about that. Okay.
- [01:51]
David Stockman (Guest)
The Beirut bombing in 1982. And I'll give you a little vignette here about the difficulty of, let's say, operating an empire and some a story about how government really works in the sense of you don't want to go to the sausage factory and see how they make it. Okay, so what happened was Reagan got bamboozled into putting US Marine troops into Beirut as a peacekeeping force after the Israelis had invaded southern Lebanon and the civil war, which had been going on for years, was rekindled into a pretty violent form. Now, you know, it was really a mistake. He got talked into it by the usual striped pants diplomats from the State Department. And of course, then this tragedy happened because actually the Marine barracks there was hardly guarded at all. One truck loaded with bombs blew up the barracks and a lot of lives were lost. Now, the reason that I mention all of this is that one, it shows how we constantly get into trouble by thinking we need to run an empire with forces positioned all over the planet, with bases and with a massive navy and all the rest of it. And the danger of it is that it basically allows elected politicians the opportunity to meddle in affairs around the world that really do not affect our homeland security in any fundamental military way. And this would be a good example. Now, why am I Talking about Beirut, 1982, the 185 Marines that were killed? I'm talking about it because every speech you hear from the neocons in the last four or five days, every time Trump opens his mouth, it's about 47 years worth of Iranian war against the United States. We're not starting a new war, we're ending one that they have conducted. And it all began with the bombing of the marine Barracks in 1982. That has nothing to do with the Iranians. You know, the Iranian revolution had barely happened at that point. At that point, the Iranians were in the midst of a war, a vicious war that had been launched against them by Saddam Hussein. And a lot of viewers probably don't have either the knowledge or the historic memory because they're not old enough. But Hussein was being armed, supported, and his forces were being targeted by the United States with the help of the CIA and our satellite surveillance and so forth. So when that happened, the Iranians were, let's say, mildly miffed at the United States because we were enabling Saddam to carry on brutal chemical warfare against their military out in the desert of Iran in the middle of 1982. And they were losing the war. They were failing. And one of the reasons they were failing was they had a whole big military they inherited from the Shah. But it was all, it consisted entirely of United states supplied equipment, F14s, M60 tanks, and everything in between. And in their wisdom, Jimmy Carter, and then, frankly, Ronald Reagan continued the policy, put an embargo on shipping any spare parts, any maintenance material to the Iranians after the whole hostage crisis of 1979, which is another whole issue we can get into. So I would say at the moment, they saw the United States meddling in another Islamic country, which Lebanon was both mixed Christian and Islamic, but majority Islamic, supporting an attack, brutal attack on them, both by the arms embargo and supplying directly military intelligence that told Saddam where their forces were out in the desert and what to Target. They were in a bad way because their military was mainly, you know, idle, immobilized, dysfunctional because of lack of spare parts. And they had resorted to that terrible thing that maybe some people remember was called human wave attack operations, where they sent young boys, 15, 16, 18, in huge waves right into the battlefield, to areas that were mined or into machine gun fire, or into air force, you know, attack. So it was a bad situation and they were mad. But that I'm talking about all this because it gives the setting for when this all started. And if you look at the facts, it's not clear to any, you know, I would say to an objective Observer Then, in 1980 or 1982, the new Iranian regime, the Mullahs, launched a 47 year war against the United States. I would say rather we were meddling in an area of the world, in Lebanon, in Iran, in Iraq, and you know, other countries in the region, Egypt, where we had no business being there. And we got ourselves crosswise into a fight that wasn't ours. And whether they supplied, you know, the material to the bomber who then drove the truck into the barracks or not, it's a historical debate. But the point is, if the Marines weren't there, this tragedy wouldn't have happened. If we weren't meddling in the Middle east, we wouldn't have gotten in the middle of a war between the Iranians in the Iraqis, if we hadn't undertaken a coup in 1953 by the CIA to throw out the elected government, Mosaddeh, you know, we wouldn't have had the 20 year reign of the Shah, the country wouldn't have been pilfered, the SAVAK wouldn't have ruled with an iron fist in the country and created the Iranian revolution. That happened. Even if you go to the, and I think this is all important background, even if you go to the hostage crisis. Now, a lot of people probably vaguely remember that because it ended the day Reagan was sworn in and they agreed to release the hostage. But you know, The Iranian students, three or four hundred students, took over the embassy in 1979, held about couple hundred diplomats and employees hostage. And this battle went on for 400 days. As some may remember, Jimmy Carter tried to rescue them, sending in a, you know, squad of helicopters and special forces. In the middle of the night, their helicopters broke down in the desert. It was a fiasco. And that all, you know, set the table for 40 years that followed thereafter. But the point was the students took the embassy and the diplomats hostage and their demands were threefold. And they weren't all that crazy when you look at it in the hindsight of history. One, they wanted this shah who had fled to the United States, extradited back to Iran so he could face justice for, you know, the massive economic harm that he had done during his reign. Second, there was about 20 billion or so foreign deposits that had been pilfered from the Iranian state. They wanted those monies back. And third, they wanted an apology for the CIA coup that started the whole mess and put the Shah on the throne back in 1953. Well, we could have easily agreed to all three of these, but why didn't we? Because the people running policy, and Brezhnynski was, you know, Carter's chief advisor at the time, and he was empire firster if there ever was one, said, this can't stand. We can't allow these terrorists, as he called them, they were just students and kind of young religious fanatics to throw around the mighty United States. And so they refused to negotiate. The hostage crisis went on. It was an excuse for the kind of incipient neocons of that era and the war hawks and the military industrial complex to make a big case of how humiliating this is. Some students have taken over our embassy. We've got to rebuild the military. That all led to the buildup of the military in the 1980s. So that's a little background. But my final point on this, I think, is the most interesting, and that is that after the Marine barracks attack and the, you know, terrible death of all of those soldiers that occurred, there was a huge debate inside the administration about what to do. And I was at several of those meetings, and I recall one very well, in which a debate was going on between different forces, the National Security Council, the State Department, Tapp Weinberger, who was Secretary of Defense, as to who was actually responsible for the attack, where were they located and what could we do to retaliate and punish them? And sort of the consensus that came out was, well, they're hiding in the mountain. You know, Beirut is. There's a ring of mountains around Beirut and it goes to the sea. So all around the exterior is a ring of mountains called the Shouf Mountains. And the consensus was that they have retreated to the Shuf Mountains. They're hiding there. So then the next question became, and this is the absurdity of it, but I think it puts perspective on this whole thing. It was, well, how can we get at them in the Shouf Mountains? Because we don't have any other forces. And the Marine barracks was wiped Out. And then someone had the brilliant idea, one of these, probably, I think it was the NSC that the New Jersey battleship is right offshore outside of Beirut at the moment. And, and then the question from President Reagan began was well, he knew the New Jersey has these big legendary guns, Big Bertha kind of guns, and what is the range and can we hit them from the New Jersey? And so the answer from someone who seemed to know was their range is 30 to 40 miles, but anything beyond that is pretty tough. So the next thing I know, the Secretary of State George Shultz and aide were bent over this big map that was laid out on the cabinet room table of the greater Beirut area, putting their fingers on where the Shof Mountains were on the one end and where the battleship, New Jersey battleship was located right offshore and testing that against the scale of miles on the map to see whether or not the New Jersey guns could hit the target. You know, this is a bunch of grown men fumbling around because of a situation that never should have occurred or unfolded in the first place. The Marine shouldn't have been there. There shouldn't have been a bunch of people in the White House Cabinet Room trying to figure out the range of, you know, the New Jersey battleships, big guns, and the rest of it became history because that event they cited over and over as the opening, you know, battle in a 47 year attack by the Iranian state on America. Now that isn't a one off. That's just the beginning of the whole saga that unfolded as the Iranians became the number one target of Bibi Netanyahu. That's how he stayed in power, by demonizing the Iranian state. I have no brief for the Iranian state. The theocrats are, you know, pretty miserable old men who do a lot of bad things to their people, but they have never been any serious threat in any way, shape or form to the security of the United States. And we have gotten into this 47 year struggle simply by being pulled in as a proxy and as a backup to the Netanyahu, you know, endless war against the Iranians. Now if you go back to that time, there was some phrases that were used that I think are pretty interesting. The real battle at that time until then, this is 1982 again and I know we're doing a little history here, but it's probably worth it. Battle before then, the Israelis battle had been against the near enemy and the near enemy was Syria and Egypt on either side of Israel on the coast. But those issues had been padded down, let's say quite substantially when Jimmy Carter at least was able to negotiate the deal with Sadat, which took Egypt out of the battle, off the map. And the Cold War had moved to a point where the Russians were less than eager to support Syria and Assad's father, actually. So suddenly the excuse that the Israelis had always used that they couldn't settle the Palestinian problem because they were surrounded by enemies and the potential for war to break out at any moment had abated substantially. And therefore the young Netanyahu, who was as ambitious as they come, and as you know, I think as ruthless as they come, said, well, we need a new enemy. And Iran way over there, a couple thousand kilometers, might be just the shape that we need. And so this whole demonization of the Iranians began as basically a political slogan that Netanyahu built his whole career on of 40 years dominating Israeli politics, Israeli policy, and sucking us in, time after time after time, into a conflict in the Middle east that shouldn't have happened in the first place and that we never should have been involved in. Now here we are, 2026, and it's just another episode of the same stupid war.
- [17:33]
Tom Woods (Host)
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- [20:04]
David Stockman (Guest)
Yeah. Let me try to answer both questions. The first one is this was the genius idea of the State Department because they decided that it wouldn't be good for stability, that it wouldn't be good for the empire if a hot war continued between the Israelis and the remnants of the government in Lebanon. And by then, as you remember, in 1982, Israel invaded, led by General Sharon, who was one of the great hawks who preceded Netanyahu, invaded and occupied southern Lebanon because the PLO at that point in time had been driven out of Jordan, where they had their base camps, ended up in southern Lebanon, where there were huge refugee camps of people that had fled from Palestine in 1948 and years beyond and settled in southern Lebanon. So it was a hotbed of both Palestinians, activists from the PLO as well as tens of thousands of refugees. And in the conflict that developed the Sharon said, there's only one way to solve it. We got to go in, occupy the area and clean it out. You know, the kind of phrase that we've been hearing for the last 40 years. They're, you know, once and for all, they're going to fix the problem, clean it out. But that created so much tension that the State Department decided that we can help an international peacekeeping force interject itself between the non Shia population, which was southern Lebanon, and the other groups and ethnic groups in Lebanon. Because there was Christian, there was the Christian Maronites, the so called Phalange, there were a lot of Sunnis, there were Druze. I mean, Lebanon was the worst polyglot admixture of every kind of religious identity and ethnic identity that the Middle east had ever seen. But somehow the State Department got convinced that we could lead international peacekeeping force that we would put in southern Beirut to keep the forces separated and thereby help facilitate negotiations that could get some kind of peace settlement. Well, okay, maybe you can say they were idealistic, maybe you can say their intentions were good, but that doesn't justify why they put 240 Marines in harm's way in the situation, by the way. And this is another thing, after all these years, Tom, you talked about how long ago I was, you know, involved back then as this thing emerged. I said, holy moly, what's going on here? I was hearing all these names about, you know, the, all the whites and the Druze and the Shia. All these names that weren't familiar to anybody, including me. And I was fairly knowledgeable about what was going on in the world. So I got the CIA to come to my office one afternoon right after this crisis to give a briefing of, you know, the social, economic, demographic, racism, religious background in Lebanon. Well, they stayed all afternoon. And it was unbelievable how complex it was in all the historic, both alliances and conflicts that had occurred between all these forces. The reason I'm mentioning all this is that when the Secretary of State recommended to Reagan that we put Marines in as part of the international peacekeeping force, nobody laid out this whole complex picture of, of, you know, that we were stepping into. But Reagan got convinced to do it. You know, it would be temporary and the negotiations would then get back on track and someone would come up with a settlement, take it to the United nations, the United nations would ratify it and, you know, the empire would be stable again. Okay, nobody called it an empire, but that's what it was. Now, when the whole thing blew up unexpectedly, because it's hard to believe, but this is 1982, not today. There was a Marine barracks with a Checkpoint at the entrance bay compound where there were a couple guards who weren't armed. Can I say that again? They weren't armed. And the guy just drove the truck through, ignited a whole payload of explosives and the rest became history. Now the interesting lesson from that is what did Reagan do in response? Well, first he was very chagrin, miffed, very upset about the loss of Marine lives, obviously, but he actually wanted to know, what do we do now? Where do we go from here? And how do we not get ourselves sucked in to an even bloodier, more long lasting conflict? So after they went through the exercise I described before of trying to figure out whether they could hit the Shoe Mountains with the big guns on the New Jersey, you know, it got to the point, this is the spring of 1983, where basically they gave him several options. And one of the options was to redeploy the, the US forces, you know, this peacekeeping force, what was left of it in Lebanon, in Beirut, redeploy it to aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean. So Reagan realized this was really a retreat from the typical perspective of the time, because we were not getting even with anyone who had done this. We hadn't found the bad guys and incinerated them or whatever, but we were simply moving the remainder of the US Forces to an aircraft carrier. And then they moved the aircraft carrier way out into the deep Mediterranean where there was no opportunity for further engagement in this whole mess. So basically what I'm saying is Ronald Reagan and retreated. He realized that a mistake had been made and that you don't compound a mistake by doubling down or adding more forces or sending in the bombers and all the ridiculous stuff that Donald Trump and his predecessors had been doing. He basically justified this as a repositioning of the American forces and then moved on to deal with other things that were important and ultimately became, you know, the deal with Soviet Russia that ended the Cold War. So that's, you know, a little bit of answer to your question. And it was a different time. And it was a president, I guess, who had enough self confidence and principles to believe that if a mistake had been made, you can correct it by not doubling down, but by moving on. And that's. We haven't seen much of that for decades and decades now.
- [27:38]
Tom Woods (Host)
No, we sure haven't. And in fact, I would say over the past week or so, what we've heard from a lot of people, not just Lindsey Graham, is the strong implication that unlike Donald Trump, Reagan and all the others were just wimps who didn't want to take on the perpetrators of the 47 Year War. Because obviously the correct response to the, again, the absurdity of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, but the correct response should have been a bloody rampage through the whole region, apparently. And Reagan didn't do that.
- [28:11]
David Stockman (Guest)
He did not do that. He basically cut his losses and moved on and for a while, but nevertheless, this becomes a foundation event. You've heard the speeches in the last couple weeks, weeks, last five or six days, whatever it's been from the MAGA spokesman, from Trump himself, from Hegseth, from Rubio and the others that they have been committing terrible acts against Americans for 47 years. And it all started with the Marine barracks. But the real lesson for us on the non intervention side and on the president side is the real lesson is we never should have been there. It was a huge mistake. We had a president who was man enough to recognize it and take appropriate action and get out of there at the time. And it is not any kind of indication whatsoever that a war started that the Iranians conducted against the United States for 47 years and now we finally have to put it to an end. Now the other point I guess we can get into at some length here is 47 years later, they weren't a threat then. Obviously the Iranian regime had barely gotten its feet on the ground. The radicals and the, you know, the hardline theocrats, Khomeini had taken over because of the hostage crisis and the inflexibility of the United States. But here we are 47 years later and we have a situation where the attack has been justified on the grounds that Iran is a tremendous military threat that was ready to start a war against the United States any day until Trump had the alleged good sense to take preemptive action. Now, the truth is the Iranians have no missiles with a range greater than 2500km. And in the world, I don't know why they use kilometers, but that's what they measure. So let me put it for our viewers. To get to the, from Tehran to get to the Strait of Gibraltar is 5,000 kilometers. So basically they can get halfway there with the big, biggest, baddest, longest range missiles. They have to get to Washington D.C. is 10,000 kilometers. So basically they can barely get a quarter of the way there. Now that's the first point. No threat whatsoever from their missiles. And that would be the leading force. The second thing that's very interesting is why are their missiles limited? Why do they have the maximum range of 2,000, 2,500 km? Because the answer is it's the policy. It was the policy of the Ayatollah and the clerics who run the place that they shouldn't have any greater range than 2000 km, 2500, in order to signal very clearly to the Great Satan, as they call us, the other side of the Atlantic, that we have no ability, intention or purpose to attack the people of the United States. And that those missiles were basically for their own self defense because obviously they'd been attacked over and over and over again by the Israelis over the decades that Netanyahu has been in power. So that's the first point. Second point is, do they have any long range bombers that could put some payload, even if it was a suicide mission, you know, on Passaic, New Jersey or you know, some other coastal city in the United States? And the answer is no. They have no long range aircraft. They barely can get, you know, out of the Persian Gulf with the relics of old Soviet aircraft or aircraft United States F14s or F15s that they purchased during the Shah's era. I mean, how many years is that? They're 50 years old. They barely flight worthy. Now the navy, okay, they had a navy that allegedly is at the ocean bottom now or the Persian Gulf bottom, as Trump has been bragging about. But their navy was basically consisted of little coastal patrol boats that are glorified speedboats, some one or three man subs and a couple of converted tankers and container ships that passed for aircraft carriers that could maybe carry a couple of helicopters and a few drones. That's what they had. Now when we look at Navy, there is one good metric that is a shorthand way, so you don't have to go through all of the details and the extensive facts that involve this. And that is what is the displacement tonnage of the ships that you have, the warships that you have available? Because the displacement tonnage basically tells you how big the ships are. And the size of ships are important in terms of the lethality because how many planes can they carry if they're aircraft carriers? How many guns and missiles can they launch if they're other kinds of warships? Well, the answer is, our navy Is, has roughly 4 million tons of displacement because we have 11 carrier battle groups, we have all these escort ships, we have all the submarines, et cetera. The Iranian navy had 200,000 tons of displacement. Now let me say those numbers again. 4 million versus 200,000. Okay? So it was roughly 3, 4%. Their navy was 3 or 4% the size of the American Navy. It wasn't anything, okay? And their threat to the Persian Gulf was always drones and missiles anyway. It wasn't the Navy. So if you don't have missiles that can get even a fifth of the way to the United States, if you have no long range bombers, and if you have no blue water Navy whatsoever, just a little force that could work the Persian Gulf pond, what the hell was the military threat? Well, then they get to this. But they're making a nuke. Now, if you have a nuke, I don't know what you're going to do. Put it on the back of a yacht and steam it over to New York harbor and hope it blows up. You got to have a delivery. But even forget that if you don't have a delivery vehicle, you don't have a nuke either. I mean, the whole this is such a exaggerated, absurd lie that it's amazing they can keep repeating it. But the fact is the CIA and what you probably know, Tom, is their periodic assessment of threats. Threat assessments, and they're called national intelligence estimates, NIEs. And these come out periodically and they're put together by the 17, if you can believe that we have 17 intelligence agencies and they become a consensus. Of those 17 agencies that are issued, most of them are top secret, but they're issued as guidance to policymakers in what we loosely call the warfare state down in Washington. So the NIEs, since 2007, and this is a very important critical debate date, have said that the Iranians had a small research program that was focused on how they could weaponize a nuclear weapon and then make it bomb ready. But that program was abandoned in 2003 by an edict of the Ayatollah himself. Okay? And that was issued in 2007. And it famously became the flashing red light stop here kind of sign that even George Bush the younger W had put in front of him when he was about ready to launch in 2007amajor military assault on Iran just like the one that's now underway. And you can go read his memoirs. And they say in black and white, I was about ready to authorize the launch, the attack. The NIEs came out and it was very clear to me that how could I justify bombing to smithereens a country because nuclear weapon that they didn't have. Okay, now the reason I mention this is that that was a very important landmark pivot point. And the NIEs ever since then have reiterated the same thing. They didn't ever restart that small research program for weaponization that they had and disbanded in 2003. And the latest iteration of it came, believe it or not, in March 2025, which is within, you know, the first three months of the second Trump administration. And it was issued by Tulsi Gabbard herself, who's, you know, the NDI national head of one of the major agencies in the intelligence community. And it reiterated that the weaponization program has not been restarted and we don't see any evidence of anything moving in that direction. Now, the fact that they have enriched uranium because they have one of the largest civilian nuclear reactors in the world, the fact that they agreed to reduce enrichment to practically a very low level in 2015 and the Obama agreement that Trump then tore up in 2018, doesn't prove that they want a bomb, they have a bomb, or they're near a bomb, or that every time Netanyahu says that it's six months away that there's any validity to it at all, because there isn't. Okay, so now if they don't have missiles, they don't have long range bombers, they don't have a Blue Water Navy, and they don't have a bomb, what the hell is the threat to the United States? The answer is non zero, Nixon nada. And therefore the only thing from our point of view that we believe in, the only time a peaceful republic should ever go to war is if it's being directly attacked. And the military security of the homeland itself, not some ally in the Far east, not some, you know, God forsaken country in North Africa, but, but the homeland itself is under attack. Now, when we go through the inventory that we've just covered here, where is the threat, where is the attack? How in the world can anybody, in a straight face, with a straight face say it's imminent when it couldn't possibly be imminent because they have no missiles and they have no bomb. Anyway, that shows you how deep into the morass we are right now because we have, you know, empowered over the years, Tom, a president to have these vast discretionary powers over a trillion dollar war machine. And you get a wackadoo in that office by accident or otherwise. And we have one now. And look what the dangerous possibility actually is.
- [40:34]
Tom Woods (Host)
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 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@monical metals.com woods and see how you can start earning a gold income. That's monetary medals.comwoods all right. Well, given the limited time we have, I have to get right to this exact moment because we're now hearing from Trump because you never know what it's going to be, you know, because he could say we were all joking. He could say tomorrow, okay, I think it's all over. And David, that's almost what he did. He said, yeah, I think it's just about over. And this is a day when Hegseth had said it's just the beginning. This is also a day when like earlier in the day, Trump had clearly made some remarks indicating that he envisioned this going on a long time. So obviously something's going wrong. Obviously somebody wants an off ramp. Israel may want an off ramp. This isn't exactly turning out the way they want. Who exactly knows? But the problem is there's multiple problems. It's quite possible that he's not in a position to put a stop to it. Maybe Iran doesn't want to stop. Iran's getting some things that it wants. That's the first problem. But then the second problem is nobody's happy as a result of this because Mark Levin sure isn't happy. You can already see he's going hysterical, that we're not getting the regime change that we want. We have a more militant guy in charge now who's even angrier and we have even less leverage over them now. So we have that thing. But meanwhile, the people who didn't like the intervention to begin with are unhappy because what do we just how many billions of dollars we just blow on absolutely nothing that we couldn't have had otherwise. So what's the next step? What do you think happens now? And we never know, like one day to the next. It's very hard to know. But especially with Trump in charge, what are they going to do?
- [43:08]
David Stockman (Guest)
Well, you're putting your finger on it. We're dealing with chaos. We, we're dealing with the proverbial gang that can't shoot straight, that have no game plan. And Trump slides by the seat of his ample britches by the day, by the hour, by the impulse, and says so many contradictory things that it wouldn't be surprising to see even the deep state lining up in a circle and firing at its itself because no one can figure out what to do next or what he wants, like, you know, to go on with a couple of things you've said. Last Thursday, he said, we think maybe the Kurds are about ready to join the battle to replace the regime and help us bring about a safe country. Two days later he said, no, I don't want the Kurds to get involved at all. They might get hurt, okay? I mean, what kind of nonsense is that? Within two days, when there's a whole history of the United States mobilizing and then rug pulling on the Kurds going all the way back to, you know, the 1970s and 80s, you know, it's not even worth getting into all the facts of it. But ending recently when we welcomed the head chopper back into the presidency of Syria, who immediately moved with the Turks to wipe out the Kurds who had helped us get rid of isis. I mean, this is so crazy, this environment. And now you have a guy with, you know, the attention span of a gnat one day looking at the gas price and starting to worry about the congressional elections because if the Democrats sweep, he's toast. They won't mess around this time. They'll impeach him in a heartbeat if they sweep the House and the Senate. And on the other hand, he is on a high because, you know, he kidnapped the president of Venezuela and now he thinks he did a great thing by agreeing to the assassination of the ayatollah. But now the new guy, he gets and he says, I'm going to pick the next leader. It's got to be acceptable to me. Well, the guy he gets just witnessed in the same building, okay, his mother and his father and his wife and his sister and his son in law and his niece and his nephew all being blown to bits in the same building that he was in. Now, do you think this guy is going to be of a frame of mind to forgive and forget that he's going to be ready to, you know, run a regime that in any way furthers our own objectives in that region? I mean, this is crazy. And, you know, we ought to talk about this. Tom, what kind of policy is it for a major power to run? Policy based on assassinating leaders who, you know, you have a Disagreement with. That's the Israeli policy. It's been their policy for decades and decades, and now the United States has embraced it. And I think it's a pretty sad day when we decide to use as an instrument of policy assassination of the top leadership. And not just one bad apple, but they knew that the whole top echelon of the Iranian leadership was gathering that day to decide on instructions to send to their negotiators, who were meeting on Monday morning. The following Monday morning were to meet with Jared Kushner and Witkoff to continue this negotiation that was underway on some kind of settlement of the issues, the bomb, the issue, missiles and so forth. Now, this is the second time that they have been lured into negotiations only to have a decapitation attack occur in June, obviously, and now in February, March. And after the deal that they negotiated to such, you know, detailed degree with Obama back in 2015 was torn up like a piece of paper in 2018 by Trump. So I don't see why anybody who's rational that may remain in power in Iran will want to negotiate with the United States. Why? You know, it's a no deal is going to have any value or have any. You won't have any confidence in it, given this history. Because these weren't just minor double crosses. These were like, almost, if you don't have to even be a tinfoil hat man with a paranoia streak about you, to say they were lured into a negotiating trap so that their leadership could be decapitated by Israeli and American bombers. That's.
- [48:15]
Tom Woods (Host)
Now, David, I hate to try to apply the same standards across the board here, but could you imagine if the situation were reversed? This would be further example, further evidence of the 47 year war, Dave.
- [48:26]
David Stockman (Guest)
Yeah, I know, I know, I know.
- [48:28]
Tom Woods (Host)
It's just crazy. And they can't get their story straight about what the goals of the thing are. And if Trump's going to try to get out of this early for political reasons or for, frankly, military reasons, maybe he can. As I say, maybe this is spun out of his control, maybe he can't. But even if he does, the neocons are still going to be red hot angry they didn't get what they wanted. Now, the Israelis might be willing to cool down because they didn't like the results so much because they attributed impossible standards to the US Military. Maybe they're ready to cool down, but the neocons aren't going to be. So Trump's going to have an absolute mess on his hands.
- [49:05]
David Stockman (Guest)
Yeah. And this is where the real danger comes in. This is the last point. We're at this inflection point, and either we're going to have the next roll of the dice and I'll explain that in one second, or the Taco man will be back into business. You know, by the Taco man, of course, we mean Trump always chickens out. Now, that last scenario could end up very simply as, you know, remember the thing back in the Vietnam War where Senator Akin famously said to lbj, the way to settle the Vietnam more ass is to declare victory and leave. Okay? So they may try rhetorically, the Akin solution, declare victory. The Navy's at the bottom of the sea. The missiles in the missile factories have been mostly obliterated. There is no bomb capacity left, and the air defense system has been completely eliminated. And so therefore, Iran will be naked in the future. And if they try to do any nonsense or they get huffy, get out of line again, we'll just bomb them because there's no risk. They have no air defense. We'll just go in and spank them and move on. So that may be one scenario that could happen, but the other scenario is the. All these neocons you're talking about, and the administration is infested with them. I mean, Marco Rubio, he's a script reader of the Neocon Bible. At any moment in time, he doesn't even think. He just reads it and says it and acts it because he's got a very important voice in policy. But anyway, they're saying the way that you're going to, and this is really critical, I think, to understand the way you're going to finally finish off the regime. And it doesn't matter what raggedy raghead they put in charge after this. But the way you're going to finish off the regime is to send in special forces to kidnap the remaining enriched uranium supplies that are hidden somewhere in deep caverns and mountain hideouts in Iran. And they know where they are. And secondly, you got to go in and take Karsh Island, K H A R G E where 90% of all the exported oil and oil products that come out of Iran, you know, are gathered and then shipped out. Because Kars island generates the oil sales and the oil revenue that keeps the irgc, the Republican Guard, and they're the evildoers in the regime in business. So if we cut off their economics by obliterating. But they got to do that. They've got to land forces on Kaj island and snatching the enriched uranium that's left, then we can say you know, the plan is complete. No navy, no missiles, no air defense, no uranium and no oil. But that is a pretty dangerous thing because once you put Special Forces either somewhere into the interior of Iran, probably around Ishvan, or on Karj island, you got boots on the ground and who knows where that will lead to. But you also have, you know, the remnants of the IRCG31 commanders spread all over the country who have nothing, you know, on their mind except revenge and retaliation. So if they go this second route, you know, finishing it off on Karsh island and snatching the uranium, it could open up a real nasty further chapter.
- [53:03]
Tom Woods (Host)
Well, David Stockman, I have to let you go, but I didn't know about the National Security Council stuff. So that is fascinating. I'm really glad. Given that Scott Besant has been talking about foreign policy, I thought, well, maybe the OMB director might have known something about it at the time. So I was going to ask you anyway. So very interesting to hear about that. But the, the website, once again, everybody, look, if you want to be super informed on everything, have all the numbers and all the details and arguments that none of your friends even know about, I'm telling you, you cannot go wrong. Over at David Stockman's Contra Corner. Yes, it's many characters to type in davidstockman's contra corner.com, but you will be amply rewarded after you hit that enter key. David, thanks so much.
- [53:43]
David Stockman (Guest)
Great to be with you, Tom.
- [53:45]
Tom Woods (Host)
Thanks and thank you. Ladies and gentlemen,
- [53:50]
Tom Woods (Intro/Outro)
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 to the show wherever you listen. See you next time.
- [54:11]
Tom Woods (Host)
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- [54:38]
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- [55:06]
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