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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. You're listening to the Tom Woods Show.
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B
Hey, everybody, Tom woods here. It's episode 2749 of the Tom Woods Show. We all know who Scott Horton is, host of the Scott Horton show, director of the Libertarian Institute, just everything in the history of the world, director of the Scott Horton Academy, which of course you are all members of. Scott hortonacademy.com and I want to talk to him about a question that is of course related to this current Iran war, but goes beyond it. And that is the issue of not just the subject of Israel, but specifically the question of where do Israeli and American interests diverge? Because as I keep saying in recent episodes, you pick any two countries, they'll always have something in common, but they'll also have areas in which their interests are at odds with each other. And I want to kind of flesh that out a bit. Poor Scott is in the I'm going to just spill the beans here. He's in the middle of moving. So for a while it was Scott in front of bookcases full of books, then it was Scott in front of bookcases with no books on them, and now it's Scott with no bookcases. So welcome, Scott.
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C
Happy to be here, Tom. Thank you.
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B
The US So called special relationship with Israel didn't develop immediately in 1948, even though the US recognized the independence of the state of Israel almost immediately. But I will say that at that time there was a perceived issue that could arise given that the US had implicitly endorsed the state of Israel. It seemed like it was endorsing, you know, by being so quick to recognize it, that it was endorsing its behavior toward the Palestinians and particularly the Palestinian refugee problem, which even Harry Truman, who was anxious to support the state of Israel, at least in his words, said he was unhappy with. And a lot of people were unhappy with the way, to say the least, Israel was handling the Israeli refugee problem. And if you look at State Department statements at the time, they are warning that the United States is going to attract whatever enemies Israel attracts as a result of this unresolved refugee problem. And so we need to proceed with caution. So right off the bat, there was a sense that the interests of the United States and of Israel were not necessarily aligned, certainly on that issue. But this comes into much greater relief, obviously, as the United States and Israel become much more closely aligned, as we can see. For example, in all, not that I Put a lot of stock in the United nations, But all the UN votes that are, you know, whatever, 160 something to 2, and the 2 are Israel and the United States. This problem becomes clearer and clearer. So let's start off, Scott, just speaking very broadly, not about any specific issue, but very broadly, what is it that Israel wants to see happen in the Middle East? Whereas if the United States had its way, what would it prefer to see in the Middle east, assuming it wasn't completely staffed by people who already agreed with Israel?
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C
Well, the Israelis, I mean, are led by the Likud Party, which is a right wing nationalist government that is founded on a doctrine of creating a greater Israel. So at a minimum, that means that they wish to expel all the Palestinians from the west bank and Gaza Strip and keep all that land for themselves, themselves. More maximalist takes, as we can see actually happening in front of our eyes right now, would be the seizure of southern Lebanon, maybe even all of Lebanon, parts of Syria and ultimately all of Jordan and all of western Iraq all the way to the Euphrates river and then down the coast of the Red Sea on the Saudi side and the Egyptian side. That is supposedly all the land of Israel from the Bible. And as Mike Huckabee explained to Tucker Carlson that yes, I'd be happy if they took it all. That's their point of view of the Zionist. And that's why Israel is actually the only country I think in the world. But certainly on America's dole, a so called ally of ours, even though we have no actual treaty of alliance that has no defined borders, they refuse to say where their borders are because they mean to continually expand them. And that means especially back to the more minimal mistake here. It means at the expense of the absolute horrific persecution of the Palestinians whose land they've already stolen and are in the process of stealing the rest of they must be tortured and murdered and their children killed and their societies obliterated so that they can finally be cleansed. As we saw in the case of the two year slaughter of the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip. As I said over and over and over again explicitly, their goal was to reduce the standard of living so low that the people would finally just give up and leave, so called voluntarily, would emigrate to just somewhere else that they would just give up, let Jared Kushner and them build their Miami on the Mediterranean without Palestinians. And same thing ultimately for the West Bank. We see, you know, constant pogroms going on in the west bank. And you know, the potential is there Obviously, for them to just simply start bombing Ramallah and Bethlehem and Hebron and the other Palestinian cities there in the way that they did the Gaza Strip in order to force them all to simply just flee. And I think that's probably in the medium term, if not, you know, short term future here with Donald Trump. It's sort of like they had their last chance to get away with it. Well, maybe not their very last chance, but a big chance to get away with as much as they possibly can. And so we see as soon as they started the war in Iran, they immediately invaded Lebanon and are taking as much of Lebanon as they can take. I remember years ago on your show, I said, yeah, Tom, they want to ultimately go up to at least the Latani river in Lebanon. That goes back to Jabotinsky and the founders of Zionism. And some guy in my email told me what an idiot I was and how I had no idea what I was talking about. Well, that's what they're doing right this minute is taking all that land up to the Litany river and then even the one north of there and cleansed already a million people out of their homes, more than the Nakba in southern Lebanon right now, just in the last few weeks under the COVID of the war in Iran. Now, America's interests are entirely different. America's interests are. Well, first of all, there's the interests of the American people, which is we just want to be free and live in prosperity. And we don't need that oil. It really has nothing to do with us. So our interest is just in peace and commerce and free trade throughout the world as best as we can. Honest friendship with everybody. That's the American people's interest. But even the American empire's interest is in dominating the nations of the region, keeping compliant puppets in there and controlling the choke points so that in the event of war with China, we can cut them off of Middle Eastern oil, or for that matter, that we can lord it over our allies, especially in eastern Asia, like Japan and South Korea, that they better stay our allies and not dream of becoming anybody else's allies, because we can close off those choke points. But that, of course, is all in the event of a crisis. I mean, the major interest of certainly the oil companies is simply instability. And that tends to go really, I think, for the Pentagon, for the Joint Staff and the major, at least, old establishment. You probably heard me point out before that at the end of the Cold War and the onset of the Bill Clinton administration in 1993, that you had zabimi Brzezinski, who along with Jimmy Carter, you know, was tied for most agonist face for the failure of the hostage crisis in the Iranian revolution and all of that. Well, by 1993, Brzezinski was saying we should normalize relations with Iran and because really wanted to stick it to the Russians and stick all their soda straws in the Caspian Basin and then pump all that oil across Iran to stations on the Persian Gulf. And Alexander Haig, who had been Reagan's Secretary of State, agreed that was what we should be doing. And then so did drum roll. Dick Cheney, the former Defense Secretary and then CEO of Halliburton, on numerous occasions denounced Bill Clinton's policy for his sanctions on Iran because he said we should build oil pipelines out of the Caspian Basin across Iran. They all agreed this would be a way to help normalize relations with Iran as well as make some money for the Americans. And again, the strategy of sticking it to the Russians and getting all those hydrocarbons out of the Caspian Basin without having to go through the caucuses or through the north caucuses. And then we see, for example, I think fairytelling is after H.W. bush won Iraq War One, he and his Secretary of State, James Baker, started pushing for and did create the Madrid conference where they wanted to get the ball rolling on a Palestinian state. And he had a notorious fight with the Israel lobby over his withholding of loan guarantees. As you and your audience know, a loan guarantee is when Uncle Sam gives welfare to a foreign country on the American taxpayers dime. They call it a loan at first until they don't pay it back, and then don't worry, it's guaranteed by the American taxpayer. So H.W. bush said, you can't have these loan guarantees until you rein in the settlements on the west bank, and famously said, geez, I'm just one guy up against all these lobbyists on the Hill. And that's what he's talking about, was the Israel Lobby. And they went after him really hard. And this ended up becoming a real problem for his reelection campaign in 1992 because his secretary of State, James Baker, I'm sure he said it in jest. Tom, if you're familiar with James Baker and his character, I sincerely doubt he meant this in a bad way, in a sincerely bad way. But he was quoted and it was in print, and it's not as funny in print. He said, f the Jews, they don't vote for us anyway. Well, they do write checks and they do control MTV and the entire Rock the Vote movement. Dude. And so out you go and in comes Bill Clinton, who ran to H.W. bush's right in 1992 on the issue of the settlements. In fact, you can read@mondoweiss.net where H.W. bush later did blame the Israel lobby for his loss, that they arrayed the entire kind of media establishment and everybody else against him for the election of 1992. And then the same thing happened after September 11, when like his father, W. Bush had an approval rating in the high 80s and even above 90%. And Colin Powell, who had been chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for his father and before that had been nationalist Security Advisor for Ronald Reagan, was now W. Bush's Secretary of State. And Powell said, now is our chance to push through a two state solution for Israel and Palestine. You have to understand, Mr. President, this is one of the major causes of terrorism against the United States of America is that we support Israel in their perpetual denial of independence to the people of Palestine. Now we have to do this. And Colin Powell again is after September 11th. So Powell was able to convince W. Bush that this is necessary. This is one of the main causes of terrorism against the United States is that we support Israel and their perpetual denial of independence and or citizenship to the Palestinian people. And this is a problem that we absolutely have to solve.
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B
Wait, do you mean in the occupied territories?
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C
Yeah, exactly. Well, why can't they just go live in somebody else's country? Which is, yeah, exactly the same thing as them telling you, why don't you go live in some other country? At least they're from there. Why don't the Israelis move to Europe where they're actually from, although many of them were born there now after all these decades. But anyways, point being that they were to have this sort of pseudo state, not a real state, but something like a binational type arrangement in the west bank and Gaza. But it would be much more independence and prosperity than what they have under the current occupation situation for sure. But then Ariel Sharon beat him and it's in Mearsheimer and Walt's paper, the Israel Lobby, which anyone can read@antiwar.com, and they also wrote a book developing the same thing. And they tell the story of how the Majority Whip of the House of representatives, so the third ranking Republican in the House, the exterminator Tom DeLay, came and told W. Bush, hey Mr. President, you want to be a one term president like your father? Because I guarantee you, you do this two state solution, every single evangelical Christian is going to stay home in 2004 and you're going to lose. And so Bush blinked and backed down and Eero Sharon's men even mocked him in the press and said, yeah, we saw the whites in their eyes, but they blinked first and turned around. And so.
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B
Well then, back up for a minute.
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C
It's a big loser.
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B
Back up for a minute. In that case, then, if we're talking about American interests versus Israeli interests, well, look, the Christian Zionist heretics though they may be, they are American just like you and me, and they have an opinion and they have a stance. So if a lot of them think you're right, you know, so maybe that's American interests. So how. What makes you say that's not the true American interest? Hey everybody, Tom woods here with a quick tip for small business owners. If your business isn't showing up online, your competitors are getting the leads and you're missing out. That's where Persist SEO comes in. For over 15 years, they've been helping local businesses grow through SEO, paid ads and the latest in AI powered search optimization so you stay visible and competitive in the digital age. Whether you're in home services, legal or healthcare, Persist SEO delivers real results without locking you into long term contracts or overwhelming you with tech jargon. Visit Ineedseo Help or call 770-580-3736 to schedule your free consultation. That's Ineedseo Help. Easy to remember, powerful for your small business.
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C
Well, I don't know exactly what the proportions are, but I know that it is far from unanimous, even among dispensationalist evangelical Christians, that somehow they are supposed to participate in politics as far as the Holy Land in order to somehow coerce Jesus into coming back sooner and performing the Rapture. You know, this is the line that has been pushed by the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Robert Tilton and especially John Hagee and others of these guys over the decades. And of course this was very popular in the W. Bush years because it was right the new millennium, the turn of the year 2000, and you had all these left behind books that they sold at Walmart that said that here's what the end times is all going to look like. And it's, you know, basically David Koresh and a nicer jacket. But it's the same kind of like it's your role to not just read the biblical prophecies, but to decide with certainty that you know what they say and exactly what they say and what you are supposed to do to make it all come true. And basically what's happened is they were all promised that 25 years ago, 20 years ago, and none of it came true or they got left behind with the rest of us. But you know, obviously the whole thing was a hoax and so a lot of people are really seeing through that. In fact, I saw your great interview on Oren McIntyre show the other day where he said that was the milieu that he was raised in. People just don't believe in that stuff anymore, especially the young. They're just not buying it. So yes, some Americans do believe that the usa, even though North America is not in the Bible anywhere for obvious reasons, that the middle part of North America is mandated to carry out this policy to serve the Israelis over there. It's a vanishingly small number of American Christians who believe that it's nothing like the majority will of the population of this country. And frankly it's completely stupid, ridiculous, idiotic superstitions that no offense to people, but if they do believe in it, they're victims. They've been propagandized by people essentially serving a foreign power. But there couldn't be anything further from the truth then Jesus is about to come back because evangelical Christians twisted Uncle Sam's arm into supporting the Likud over there and that, oh, but if you didn't play that proper role then he wouldn't come back and it'd be all your fault that the Savior didn't come or this is complete nonsense and you know, whatever. Not to tell people their religion, but give me a break, dude. There's a million sects of Christianity that don't believe that. Obviously people pick and choose their pages
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B
of Bible, but, well, why don't we say that as it happens for your convenience, the Scott Horton Academy actually created a course on what actual Christianity has to say about these questions with a, I would say distinguished Lutheran theologian teaching it. So if you're not a member of the Scott Horton, see if you're a member of the Scott Horton Academy, you'd know all this stuff inside and out. So check that out Scott. Hortonacademy.com See, I'm good at this Scott.
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C
Absolutely. And then look, okay, so if you believe that like yes, we're all going to get raptured, it's fine. So let's start a nuclear war then. Yeah, great. But for everybody else, no, this is absolutely, completely dangerous and preposterous to get us into war for religious reasons in this way. And based on, especially predictions based on prophecies interpreted out of the Bible. It's Just nuts to think that that would have sway over how these decisions are made. You know, give me the old line Episcopalians over this kind of craziness, you know what I mean? But again, there are many millions of American Baptists and Methodists and other sorts of evangelical Christians who do not believe in this stuff. And even, you know, I'm not the expert on this, but the dispensations and the dispensationalists. There are dispensationalists who think it's very important that we're changing from one age into another right now or whatever. They still don't believe the blasphemies of the preacher of San Antonio who says that you got to go kill babies for Israel in order to make this stuff come true. And so that is really being soundly rejected. But by the way, so then that would be us scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for excuses for what America has to do. What about our interests coincide with the Israelis at all when if you look back at the end of the Cold War when their excuse was no longer will you need us to keep the commies at bay, which was not really an issue anyway. But without that excuse, they had to come up with this scam about we have to fight together against Islamic fundamentalism. It was just public relations, Tom. You know, Trita Parsi shows in his book, he interviews these high level Israeli strategists who said, listen, our goal was we had to come up with an excuse. We needed new glue for the alliance with the United States of America. So we decided to turn on our friends, the Iranian fundamentalists who had overthrown the government more than a decade before over in Iran. And they decided to turn on them and say, look, Islamic fundamentalism, just to come up with something to have in common with the United States. And then by the way, in that convenient that Muslims are most of the people who they want to murder and steal their property from. And so if they can get Americans to resent Muslims and hate and fear Muslims and they can get us to aid and abet, they're conquering a Muslim people in their own neighborhood. And I'll tell you something, Tom, and we talked about this a lot of times before when it comes to bin Ladenite terrorism and the motive of really America, Saudi and Britain's pet terrorists, to turn against the United States as they have done on numerous occasions, that it's America's support for Israel that has driven so much of that. And guess what? I know you're familiar with that New York Times story From the night of September 11, 2001, when James Bennett from the New York Times called up Benjamin Netanyahu and he asked him, benjamin Netanyahu, what do you think that this attack means for America's relationship with Israel? And Netanyahu said, quote, it's very good, end quote. And he said, oh. Or, you know, I mean, not that it's very good, but just it'll help to strengthen the sympathies, you know, between us for our common enemy, et cetera, et cetera, blah, blah. But guess what, Tom? You won't be surprised to find out the New York Times actually edited out part of his answer. But 10 years later and lost to me. Thank you to John Schwartz. No T, J O N, no H. Schwartz pointed this out the other day, that on the 10th anniversary of September 11, September 11, 2011, James Bennett, the same reporter, wrote a piece to the Atlantic where he has another quote From Netanyahu from September 11, from that same interview that the New York Times decided to leave on the cutting room floor. Guess what it was. It was Netanyahu musing to himself, I wonder if the Americans will blame us for this. No, he decides, I'm sure it won't. It'll just, you know, strengthen solidarity and sympathy between us. But he couldn't help but wonder out loud whether the American people would blame Israel for September 11th. And he didn't mean Mossad agents crawling around, putting bombs in the towers. He meant, because he knew good and well that it was Israel's sins that motivated the bin Ladenite terrorists to attack the United States of America. Not entirely, but in great measure, especially Bill Clinton's dual containment policy that kept the troops in Saudi Arabia in order to bomb and blockade Iraq throughout the 1990s, and then outright support for the Israelis in their wars against the Palestinians and the Lebanese. I've told the story many times about how when Shimon Perez invaded Lebanon in 1996, that day Muhammad Atta, the head hijacker from September 11, and his buddy Ramsay Din Al Sheed decided to fill out their last will and testament, which was like their symbolic joining the army in the great fight against the United States. And then a couple of days after that, it was literally Naftali Bennett, the once and future Prime Minister of Israel at that time, future prime Minister of Israel. He called in an artillery strike on a UN shelter that killed 106 women and children. And when he did that, bin Laden ended up writing about that in his first declaration of war against the United States a couple of months later. And Right there on the first page, he talks about the Khan of Massacre, says we'll never forget the severed heads and arms and legs of the babies and the children and women from Khana. And that was when Muhammad Atta and Ramsay Bin Al Sheb decided to join up the fight against the United States. So here we have Egyptian engineering students go to Afghanistan to volunteer for a Saudi sheikh to kill Americans as revenge for what Israel's doing in Lebanon. And Benjamin Netanyahu understood that dynamic. That's what he was musing about out loud to James Bennett. I wonder if Tom woods will say that this would have never happened if it wasn't for Bill Clinton's support for Israel. And they said, no, no, no, Tom, they hate you because you're free. They hate you because you love your mama. You're not going to stop loving your mama, are you? Well, then we got to go to war. And that was the way that they pushed it, that was the way that they sold it. They couldn't possibly tell the truth to the American people that actually Bill Clinton is not just a face fighting rapist and a church burning serial killer here at home, but he's also been considered by many to be the mad bomber overseas, where he bombed Iraq on average every other day for eight years straight. And where he supported the Israelis and their ruthless violence against the Lebanese and the Palestinians. That's why, Tom, when Ron Paul said the truth in May 2007 when he beat the crap out of Rudy Giuliani in the famous Giuliani moment, what was it? What was the Giuliani moment? It was Ron Paul said, we were bombing Iraq for 10 years before the terrorists attacked us. And that's why they attacked us, because we were bombing Iraq from bases in Saudi. And Giuliani said, geez, I never heard anything so crazy. But the American people knew that that was true. Hey, I remember Bill Clinton using massive violence the entire time that he was in office. I wonder if that, if Ron Paul's right about this and clearly he had the respect to tell us the truth about the nature of our problem. Our problem was ultimately Zionism.
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B
But might as well fast forward to Iran today. Regardless of how this, you know, what the ins and outs are of whatever Trump is able to hammer out, if anything, if the Iranians are in the mood to negotiate, which is a big question. But what I want to know is I hear a lot of propaganda about, look, Iran has been at war with the US for 47 years and they did this and they did that, this, that, and the Other thing. And so, you know, Donald Trump isn't actually starting a war. And of course, we're not even calling it a war. He's finishing one. You know, this is. And so this is, quote, america first. You know, they have to misuse the term America first over and over and over just to really stick it to us. But they're framing it as all these other presidents were wimps, failures, because they wouldn't face the Iranian regime head on, which has been our mortal enemy for 47 years. So the way they're phrasing it is the US has had this mortal enemy for 47 years, and now is as good a time as any to put a stop to it. Now, that doesn't sound like it has anything to do with Israel. So what's the real story? And again, where's the divergence? Just today I haven't. I'm sorry, I didn't have time to watch it. But Dinesh d' Souza released a video in which he said the ground invasion idea is where the interests diverge. The United States should not engage in a ground invasion even though Israel wants us to. That was a surprise to me to hear him say that. So fill in all these gaps for us.
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C
Yeah. Well, first of all, just like in your question, isn't it funny how when America is literally bombing the Jesus out of their country, including their capital city and all their military forces and all that, that's not war. But when Iran is just sitting there or maybe chanting death to America or calling us names, oh, the Great Satan, that's a war. And we're supposed to be upset. We're supposed to believe that they've been at war with us for 47 years, but we haven't been at war with them for five weeks. What? I mean, the same people who are telling you that clearly don't believe what they're saying because their lives are too preposterous.
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B
And by the way, consider.
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C
But then also, by the way, Scott,
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B
I am pretty sure that if I go back and look, I can find rhetoric from the Christian right, the really hardcore Christian right, in which they essentially call the US Government the Great Satan because of abortion, because of homosexuality, because of transgender. I'm sure they've called it the Great Satan. You know, here's an area of agreement you have.
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C
Yeah, exactly. That was actually Dinesh d' Souza wrote a book like that. He said, you know, they do hate us for our freedom. That's why we should give up freedom and we should have much more authoritarian right wing society. So that we're not so free so that the terrorists don't hate us anymore. So that guy's an idiot. He's lost and too bad. But the thing of it is, look. And notice they picked 47 years. Well, why not 73? That was when America overthrew the government there. America supported the rise of Muhammad Mossadegh and then stabbed him in the back and overthrew him and supported the reinstallation of the Shah Rez of Pahlavi. You mean fascist dictator, I think.
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B
Did you say 53 or 73? Yeah, 53.
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C
Yeah, yeah, 73 years ago.
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B
Oh, 73 years. Yeah, right. Of course.
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C
I think I did the math. Yeah, yeah. We've been at war with them for 73 years.
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B
Yeah, right.
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C
Not they've been at war with us for 47.
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B
Right.
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C
You know, and so. Or was it 72? I don't know. I suck at arithmetic when I'm live. Leave me alone. The point being that America's overthrew their government in 1953, in the Eisenhower years, and supported a right wing military dictator over their country until 1979. And then Jimmy Carter was convinced by the CIA and the State Department that it would be a good idea to send the Ayatollah Khomeini home from France to inherit the revolution. They said, we know this guy, he's a friend of ours. He was part of a group of Shiite clerics who helped agitate against mosaddegh back in 53. We can deal with him. And the revolution was successful in February of 1979. The hostage crisis didn't break out until November. People forget that Carter spent most of the year 79 trying to be friends with the new regime. But what happened was David Rockefeller convinced Jimmy Carter to let the Shah into the country for cancer treatment. And the Iranians, at least the students and I guess IRGC took that as a symbol that they were going to try to nurse the Shah back to health and reinstall him in a counter revolutionary coup. And so they raided the embassy, which is where the previous coup had been staged from, and took those hostages. Not to justify it, but just to explain that was what actually happened. There was America could have got along with the Ayatollah after the revolution. It was just that they really screwed up doing this favor for David Rockefeller that created this absolute, you know, public relations disaster for the Democrats, which was then compounded when they did their failed rescue mission, Eagle Claw, where the guys were killed out in the desert and had to abort. And so then they launched the Carter Doctrine, which declared that the Persian Gulf was an American lake and started building up massive military bases across the region. And then in September of that year, Jimmy Carter's government gave the green light to the new dictator of Iraq, who was not the result of a revolution. He took power in a bloody coup d' etat against his predecessor in that same year. And in 1980, Jimmy Carter gave him the green light to invade Iran in an absolutely horrific war that included American purchases and financing and satellite targeting information to help Iraq wage chemical war against the Iranians, including with sarin and tab and nerve gas and mustard gas, and help them to develop anthrax, although I don't know if they ever actually deployed it in the war. They later tried to frame up Iraq for doing the anthrax attack on the United States in O1, you might remember, because guess what? We know he has anthrax because as Bill Hicks would say, we looked at the receipt, says it right there. And so, you know, something like half a million were killed on both sides of that war. Is that Iran being at war with the United States when Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan support Saddam Hussein, you know, the Hitler of the Middle east, exterminating them by the hundreds of thousands for a decade straight. And then, you know, in the 1990s, as I said, when Brzezinski and Haig and Cheney said, let the sanctions normalize with Iran, it was the Israel lobby that vetoed it and said, absolutely not. We have to do dual containment. A policy invented by Martin Indick, who had just come from the Yitzhak Shamir administration over in Israel and came to work for Bill Clinton, who founded the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as literally, not just figuratively, literally a spin off of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. And it was his policy, Israel's policy, that said Bill Clinton has to stay. Can't normalize relations with Iraq or Iran got to stay in Saudi Arabia to contain and Cold War and balance against them both through the end of the century. Again, major, the major outfront precipitating cause for turning the Al Qaeda terrorist network against the United States. And so then in Iraq War two, which W. Bush, you know, named them in the axis of evil, put all these sanctions on them and then invaded Iraq, which they thought was going to weaken Iran because they're stupid. But as soon as they did that, Iran sent what they called the golden offer, or I don't know who called it the Golden Offer, but they sent it through a Swiss ambassador and the Americans, the W. Bush government just Completely rejected it out of hand and even gave the Swiss ambassador dressing down. Oh, I'm skipping a step. Because see, after September 11th, they helped the Bush administration with their invasion of Afghanistan, gave them all kinds of intelligence about the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan to target them at the start of the war. And so they had an ongoing relationship with the W. Bush administration. They had enemies in common in the Bin Ladenites and they were working with Flint Leverett on the W. Bush National Security Council on all kinds of stuff through the end of the year 2001. But then in January 02 is when W. Bush put them in the axis of evil. And then they started adding all these sanctions and ramping up pressure. And then there was a bad terrorist attack on some barracks. I think it was in 2004 in Saudi Arabia. And the neocons convinced W. Bush that it had been ordered by Al Qaeda commanders inside Iran and that Iran had put them up to it. So that then, because idiot W. Bush didn't know anything because they were able to convince him of that, that then destroyed the idea of Iran being an American partner in the war against Al Qaeda. And they said, no, if you're going to back Al Qaeda, then we hate you too. Then they refused to talk to him. Then came the golden offer. After America invaded Iraq, they said, listen, we hate Saddam Hussein too. We'll work with you. You want to build a new government in Iraq? Negotiate with us, work with us. We'll work together with you. We'll build a new government in Iraq. If you want us to trade, to give up on the Palestinians, fine. We'll turn our back on the Palestinians. You want to negotiate over oil? Over the nuclear program, which they were only just barely getting started. They had totally, you know, just a medical isotope reactor, research reactor in, in Tehran at that time. They said, we're willing to negotiate all of this stuff and normalize relations right now. And W. Bush told them to go to hell. As you know, America fought Iraq War II for Iran anyway, but refused to talk to them the whole time. Blamed them every time a Shiite ever resisted. When Americans attacked the Shiites then. And then, why did they support Al Qaeda in Syria and ended up even building the caliphate in Syria that they had to go to war to destroy again. It was just despite Iran and the Shiites and then it blew up into a caliphate so bad then they had to take Iran's side to destroy it again in Iraq war III in 2014 through 18. So the Americans have been doing everything they can this whole time. Really to stick it to the Iranians. Now obviously it started out over control of oil in the Cold War, but that has not been America's interest, you know, since then. Again, the Rockefeller guys wanted to normalize relations with the Ayatollah regime. They weren't insisting on a regime change over there. They were saying we should normalize relations, we should do business with these guys. And it was the Israelis who said that we can't. And so in the broadest strokes, America's interest would be in keeping the Bin Ladenites down and keeping the oil flowing. Where the Israelis position is actually they need the Bin Ladenites because the Bin Ladenites kill Hezbollah and they hate the Shiites more. So you couldn't have a starker difference there. And then on top of that, the Sunni, Shia divide. They prefer chaos, they prefer to reduce as like in the odedian plan from 1980, they want to reduce. And even David Worms are kind of hints at this in the clean break and in coping with crumbling states that they would like to see all these nation states in the region reduced to warring tribes so that Israel is then the unquestioned power. I mean, that's what the clean break in the title even refers to. It's a clean break from the policy of Oslo which Bill Clinton had begun to pursue even though he ran to Bush Senior's right in the election. He did begin to pursue the two state solution with Yitzhak Rabin before he was assassinated in 1995. And so in 1996, David Wormser and Richard Pearl wrote this study for Netanyahu when he was first coming in saying let's make a clean break from the idea of negotiating with Arafat and having anything like a two state solution with the Palestinians. Instead what we should do is seek to simply be the regional hedgeman, completely dominant in military power so that nobody even can mess with us. And that way we don't even have to worry whether they want to.
- [36:22]
B
Hey gang. If you've ever searched for your name or address in Google, I bet you were shocked to find how many results contained your personal information. That information is out there. Your name, address, phone number, financial info, income and hundreds of other records. It can be sold and shared publicly without your consent. I can't imagine Tom Wood show listeners really being at peace with that. Well, Incogni is here to put an end to that. You sign up, give them permission to act on your behalf, and they go out and demand that data brokers delete your personal info. You don't have to email anyone, fill out forms or jump through hoops. They handle the entire data removal process for you. Its professionals will handle any objections and keep checking back in to ensure your information stays off these sites. Now they've introduced something huge. Custom data removals with their new unlimited plan. You can copy and paste any link where your info shows up on sites beyond their usual list and their privacy team will work to get it taken down. Incogni's privacy experts actually go in and handle the removal manually, even from sites that are harder to deal with. It's like having a privacy SWAT team on speed dialogue. Right now you can get 60% off an annual plan by going to incogni.com and using code woods that's I n c o g n I.com woods and use code woods at checkout live free from dangerous spam by using incogni that's I N C-O-G-N-I.com woods for 60% off their annual plans. Now, we all know Donald Trump speaks in a, you know, kind of over the top language. But early on he said something like, you know, we hope that what comes out of this is an Iran that is, you know, greater than ever before. You know, he loves than ever before. And you know, we, we want to see a prosperous, successful Iran. And a number of observers said, see that right there is a problem because that is the last thing Israel wants is a prosperous, successful Iran. So I assume that more or less carries into what you just said.
- [38:21]
C
Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think, look, if they really believed that they could parachute the Shah Reza Pahlavi's son, which would now be the grandson to be the new monarch, I think they'd probably be happy with that. But they know that they can't do that. There is no faction ready to take over power in that country. That's why when they talk about dissident factions, they talk about Kurdish communists like Pjak or the Mujahideen e call communist terrorist cult. They're Persians, but crazy cults of Marxist terrorists. Then you have John Dolla suicide bombers. You have Marx monarchist mercenaries. The people of Iran are not going to accept any of these groups seizing power. They have no ability to seize power and wield it in that country. As Donald Trump himself has admitted, he threw the monarch under the bus and said that, no, we're not going to put him in power there. They don't have any illusion that it would work.
- [39:13]
B
Did you see a cpac? He got a huge like standing ovation.
- [39:16]
C
Yeah, from a bunch of Iranian expats, Right.
- [39:19]
B
Yeah.
- [39:19]
C
Who are essentially traitors to their own country, urging their own country's bombing and invasion by the United States. But he's got no support outside of Los Angeles or that APAC conference. And so, you know, just like in Venezuela, remember, Donald Trump said, we're not putting Machado in there. The Venezuelan right wing has no popular support in the country, and we're not going to try to voice them on there. So we just want to keep the current vice president and hopes that she falls in line. Well, apparently they were going. The Americans wanted something like that to happen here and said that the new regime is not going to just fall in line. I think they had that worked out in advance with the vice president of Venezuela. In fact, I don't know that, but it seems, sure seems like it. They don't have anybody here. And in fact, as, as repeatedly confirmed, the Israelis continue to assassinate anybody that the Americans try to negotiate with. And Trump even hinted at this when he said he didn't want to say who he was talking to because he didn't want them to get murdered. And now that could mean that from other people inside the regime. But I don't think so. I think he meant the Israelis will kill them as they killed Narjani and others who they were afraid that Trump would be able to negotiate with. So I think that, yes, their plan at least be here, is to simply try to destroy Iran, to try to see what they can do to turn it into a civil war. Except, again, I think the problem is when you name all of the different dissident groups, I think you give them a billion dollars each, it ain't going to make a difference. They're just not going to be able to bring the firepower to bear in a way that would truly threaten the state there.
- [40:48]
B
Well, and then, of course, other people have said that whenever Trump says, I mean, you know, Trump says all these things about this war. All, you know, he says one thing that he says another. But when he first started indicating that it, he might wind it down. I mean, now nobody knows whether to take that seriously because he said it 12 times. But when he first started talking that way, he would say something like that. And then, you know, almost immediately, Israel would bomb something, some part of civilian infrastructure in Iran that makes it harder for him to do that. And obviously, the ground invasion, which Netanyahu said from the beginning you would have to have and that they're not going to participate in, would have the effect of drawing the United States in for A longer period of time, because it seems like their interest is just in whatever erosion of the regime can be carried out by the US Being present there is a good thing, even if it's an impossible slog for the US well, that's on our dime, and those are our people dying. But it's not Israel's problem.
- [41:50]
C
Yep. And by the way, I gotta admit, I don't know exactly what they're planning, but the rumors that they put out, the leaks that they put out about sending in the 82nd Airborne to try to seize the buried uranium hexafluoride gas in canisters or, you know, whatever that they have there at Isfahan sounds like an absolutely impossible task. I mean, you can imagine them dropping all of SOCOM and JSOC in there, plus whatever 75th Rangers and 82nd Airborne and whatever, to try to secure the perimeter. And then what? Build a Runway and land C130s full of Earth moving equipment? Or we're just going to carjack bulldozers and backhoes from the neighborhood and use them to dig down, you know, past boulders into, you know, wherever they buried this stuff at Isfahan. And they're going to be able to hold back the absolute, you know, teeming hordes of people. I mean, the Isfahan facility is not far from a major city, the city of Isfahan. I mean, you could have just the men of the town come with pitchforks and rifles, could be an unstoppable force, never mind their million man army. And Isfahan is like more or less in the center of the country, like somewhat west, but basically due south of Tehran. It's deep inside the country. And then how do you get them back out again? I mean, it sounds completely crazy. It sounds like a Hollywood movie where all the guys die at the end, except, like one or two somehow escape or whatever. Like, it sounds like they would be insane to do it, you know, or maybe they would have some idiot idea that they could just threaten to use nukes if anybody comes near our guys, we'll nuke you or something like that and think that that would hold them at bay. But like, you know what I mean? Like, you can imagine if it's a Hollywood movie, you know, a 10 warthogs flying the perimeter and keeping the teeming hordes back. But again, we're talking deep behind enemy lines here. And for how long is this mission supposed to be sustainable? For weeks? Until they find every last bit of partially enriched uranium or something? It sounds completely bananas. I mean, there's just no way and especially when the day before or a couple of days before the war started, the Iranians were offering to turn over their entire stockpile, even to the United States, not just to the Russians, to turn into fuel rods, but even give it to the US and then we would only ship them back fuel rods at low levels of enrichment, diluted, weighed out. That was the deal that they really started the war to stop that deal. I think they were worried that Steve Witkoff was bringing home an offer that was too good to refuse. So they went ahead and launched the war before we could accept it.
- [44:22]
B
But at the same time, Scott, is there any indication from Israel at all that maybe even they are concerned that this thing is not going the way they want, that maybe their missile defense isn't exactly the way they want it, and maybe they do need an off ramp here? Is there any prospect of that?
- [44:40]
C
Yes. Yeah. I mean, I'm not hearing that from Netanyahu's people, but there have been people inside the government have been talking to the media like that. There have been massive, or I don't know how massive, but there have been, you know, significant anti war protests in Tel Aviv, which are banned, and people are getting, you know, cracked over the skull for daring to protest against the war now. And I think, you know, obviously they were running low on missile defense system stuff last June, and I guess it was kind of weird. I wasn't quite sure what to make of this, but, like, you know, there were at least some stories that said that Netanyahu actually urged Trump to wait when he wanted to start the war a little bit earlier in February, maybe even January, because they wanted to get their defensive systems together a little bit better first, which is kind of funny because, you know, the rumor is, of course, that Netanyahu essentially, like, blackmailed Trump into doing this war. As Rubio tells it, they were going to start the war anyway and drag us in. I actually don't believe that. I still blame Israel just the same, because I think that it was Netanyahu and his people that convinced Trump to do it. But I don't think that they forced him to do it. I think they convinced him to do it, and he bought their line of crap. As close as you can get on that one. But, you know, by the way, it's worth pointing out that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff put a story in the Wall Street Journal two days before the war saying we're going to run out of interceptors here, and we got to be really cautious if we're going to do this and maybe we shouldn't. And then they went ahead and did it anyway. And I think, you know, by the way, according to the Washington Post, anyway, the National Intelligence Council put out a National Intelligence Estimate saying that this will not work to collapse the regime. And Trump evidently went ahead based on the word of Benjamin Netanyahu, that don't listen to them. Trust me, we hit them good and hard once and they'll fall. And so I may have said this on your show after the Venezuela thing, that this was the real danger of Venezuela was that it was so easy to kidnap the president and his wife that they'll think they can do it again in Iran. Not that they'll try to kidnap him, but they'll think that they can just drop a bomb on his head. If you put eyes on the ayatollah, you could drop a bomb on. And then. But the narrative would be that, see how easy this is? You just got to get the top guy and then you can get what you want. And that, unfortunately, Donald Trump, I think, was really reinforced in that point of view by the ease of the Venezuela operation.
- [46:55]
B
Well, I had exactly the same concern. Well, we're going to let Scott go because he's in the middle of moving and which is a fate we would not wish on our worst enemy. It is awful, as you all know. It's terrible moving, but he was a great sport to come on here all the same, with a makeshift setup in order to keep us informed. So also, of course, everybody, if you're finding that it is sometimes hard on your feet to deal with the boomer cons, because they've got like bumper sticker slogans on their side and you feel like, well, my side requires like 10 paragraphs, so how do I compete with these people? Scott, Horton Academy will fix you up real good. So that's Scott's new venture that I hope you guys will go support and get a lot out of. Scott, Horton Academy.com is the website. Scott, thanks again.
- [47:40]
C
Oh, yeah, they can get a taste of that at the facts about iran.com. that's a good thing.
- [47:46]
B
Taste of it, yeah. I beg your pardon, Scott, I forgot to mention that the facts about iran.com. check that out. I'll have everything linked@tom woods.com2749 but the facts about iran.com go check that out. Thank you, Scott.
- [48:00]
C
Absolutely. Thank you, Tom.
- [48:01]
B
And thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
- [48:05]
A
Make yourself and those you love less vulnerable to the regime, both mentally and physically. Get more forbidden information@tomsfree.books.com and be sure to subscribe to the show wherever you listen. See you next time.
- [48:27]
B
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- [48:52]
D
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