Iran, Incompetence, And The Worst Yet To Come w Malcolm Vance

Summary

Truth in the Barrel – “Iran, Incompetence, And The Worst Yet To Come”

Hosts: Amy McGrath, Denver Riggleman
Guest: Malcolm Nance
Date: March 6, 2026

Episode Overview

This episode features national security expert Malcolm Nance in a sobering and often heated discussion with Amy McGrath and Denver Riggleman, focusing on the rapidly escalating U.S.-Iran war, strategic failures, and the human, economic, and geopolitical stakes of the conflict. Drawing on decades of military and intelligence experience, Nance dissects the missteps behind the war, critiques the U.S. leadership’s lack of endgame, and warns of dire, long-term consequences. The hosts and guest also reflect on the meaning of military service, leadership failures, and the lessons—often unlearned—from America’s recent history.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Chaos of Purpose and Strategy

• Changing Rationale for War

  • The official reason for conflict with Iran shifts by the hour, from retaliation to imminent threats, with political leaders contradicting each other.
  • Pete: “The president had a feeling, Malcolm, and I guess that’s the rationale for this war. But literally the rationale changes every hour.” [02:06]
  • Malcolm: “This is absolute mayhem. Geopolitically...This war is not going to go on for weeks...it could go on for a year or more.” [03:11]

• Lack of Clear Objectives

  • No defined political endgame; is the intent regime change, punishment for terrorism, oil, or something else?
  • Amy: “We spent 20 years and $3 trillion in Afghanistan, which is smaller than Iran...to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.” [08:14]

2. Understanding Iran’s Scale and Complexity

• Geography and Demographics

  • Iran is vast (2.5x Texas), mountainous (85%), with 93 million people—nearly four times Iraq’s population.
  • Malcolm: “Most Americans are horribly ignorant...The country of Iran is huge...the places where most of the population live are in mountains.” [03:41]

• Military Realities

  • Iran's missile and drone capabilities could disrupt global LNG exports, impact South Korea’s chip industry, and destabilize global markets.
  • Malcolm: “Iran has already put its talking points out through ballistic missiles and drones.” [04:33]

3. The Perils of Magical Thinking & Tactical Folly

• Leadership Motivated by Ego and Imagery

  • The administration is accused of “Tom Clancy” thinking, prioritizing symbolic strikes and the spectacle of war over strategic logic.
  • Malcolm: “They are using Tom Clancy novels...as their policy guidebook.” [09:17]
  • Amy: “All he can do is cheerlead like he’s some, you know, college male cheerleader.” [11:47]

• Danger of Escalation

  • Drone strikes, air patrols, and plans to insert dissident groups (e.g., MEK) ignore regional complexities and risks of broader involvement (including Turkish intervention).
  • Malcolm: “What they’re doing...they’re trying to foment a rebellion in the Kurdish areas...without thinking that Turkey will send 100,000 men in there and wipe them all out.” [15:06]

• Disregard for Human and Material Consequences

  • Fears that the administration seeks “cool guy” operations for their own sake, risking unnecessary ground force losses and repeating mistakes like “Desert One.”
  • Malcolm: “It will not be pretty because once you’re on the ground, you’re on their playing field.” [22:08]

4. Violations of Law, Ethics, and Tradition

• Legality and Precedent

  • The war is characterized as a breach of both international law and the US Constitution due to the lack of congressional authorization.
  • Amy: “What we did here was a blatant violation of international law in starting this war...without a vote of the American people.” [17:22]

• Normalization of Atrocity and Loss of Moral Compass

  • Collateral damage, such as civilian casualties (notably the killed schoolgirls), is discussed as a symbol of reckless decision-making.
  • Malcolm: “Our attitude is they’re all non playing characters in some Call of Duty computer game...We don’t care whether they regenerate or not.” [24:28]

• Absence of Senior Leadership Morality

  • Lack of dissent from senior officers/NCOs in the chain of command is lamented.
  • Malcolm: “Are there no senior officers or senior NCOs who will do...‘You are going to kill people.’...These people have no morality.” [27:59]

5. Economic & Global Fallout

• Costs at Home and Abroad

  • The war costs an estimated $1 billion a day, diverting resources from domestic programs for health, food, and education.
  • Amy: “It’s costing us our country a billion dollars a day. And this is at a time when Americans are facing cost increases for everything.” [31:07]

• Impending Economic Disasters: Strait of Hormuz

  • If closed, the Strait could halt global shipping, spike gas prices, threaten food supplies, and destabilize world markets.
  • Malcolm: “There are 200 ships right now waiting between Abu Dhabi and Qatar...They are all within suicide boat and small craft range of the Iranians.” [36:01]
  • Malcolm: “$6 gas for everybody is not an unrealistic prospect.” [38:33]

6. Lessons (Un)Learned from Military Service

• Reflecting on Service, Leadership, and Teamwork

  • The conversation ends with memories of SERE School and the qualities that real leaders exhibit—caring for team and prioritizing collective well-being over ego or artificial standards.
  • Amy: “What I thought my strengths were, were not my strengths and what I thought my weaknesses were, not my weaknesses. It was such a self eye opening time for me.” [41:28]
  • Malcolm: “The strength of this force is if something bad happens, we’ll take care of each other. I’m just upset that at the national leadership level that the thing that gave us Abu Ghraib...is coming back.” [45:03]
  • Amy: “He did it for the team...I think it also, he did it to show everybody else who was in the camp that we need to take care of each other.” [47:33]

• Loss of Honor in Leadership

  • The decline of ‘honor and courage’ is linked to the current crisis in leadership guiding US policy and military decisions.
  • Malcolm: “It’s the act of service. It’s the trappings. They don’t care, as they say. What is it Lord Farquaad said, right? Some of you may die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. I’m afraid that’s where we are.” [46:39]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “This war is not going to go on for weeks. This war is going to go on for months...It could go on for a year or more.”
  — Malcolm Nance [03:11]

• “Do we have the capability [for a nuclear site raid]? Yes. Do we have the capability of doing it without any losses whatsoever...No.”
  — Malcolm Nance [24:28]

• “Our attitude is, they’re all non playing characters in some Call of Duty computer game and...we don’t care whether they regenerate or not.”
  — Malcolm Nance [26:48]

• “What’s going on now is carnival barkerism.”
  — Malcolm Nance [30:21]

• “We’re spending billions of dollars a day on a regime change, on a war while our rural hospitals are closing...yet $6 a day for SNAP is wasteful, but $1 billion for war is fine.”
  — Pete Hegseth, paraphrased [33:29]

• “The American experiment is very personal to me.”
  — Malcolm Nance [33:12]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|----------------------------------------------------------| | 01:39 | Malcolm Nance joins; overwhelmed by nonstop conflict. | | 03:11 | Iran’s scale and the war’s likely long duration. | | 06:08 | The need for congressional approval and an endgame. | | 08:14 | Comparing Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran—no clear objective.| | 14:17 | Air power, regime change, and failed strategy. | | 17:22 | Legal and constitutional violations of launching war. | | 19:41 | Potential future scenarios—boots on ground, escalation. | | 26:48 | Civilian casualties and loss of ethics. | | 31:07 | Financial cost of war versus domestic needs. | | 35:15 | Strait of Hormuz and potential global economic crisis. | | 39:13 | SERE School stories; real leadership and service. | | 46:16 | Fears for the future of U.S. military honor. |

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Tone and Style

Throughout, the conversation balances visceral outrage over current policies with soldierly, sometimes dark humor, and a genuine earnestness for the wellbeing of America’s servicemen and women. The hosts and Malcolm Nance speak candidly, drawing on personal experience and distilling complex military-political problems into clear warnings for listeners and policymakers alike.

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For more information and future episodes, visit: TruthintheBarrel.com

Transcript

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[Pete Hegseth]

Today on Truth in the Barrel, we are joined by one of the top national security experts in the world, Malcolm Nance. Welcome to Truth in the Barrel. We're going to get right to it. We are talk Iran today. So let's get going. How are you, by the way?

[Malcolm Nance]

Oh yeah, yeah, I'm exhausted. Bags under my eyes. I've been up since 2:00am Because I had to do CNN International. It's crazy. And the amount of data that has to be processed from this war is just insane. I mean, you know, you know, a high op tempo flight schedule, right? So this is, you know, high op tempo command and control and just monitoring the world which is responding very poorly to this.

[Pete Hegseth]

We're going to talk about all this stuff. But you're absolutely right. The amount of information that's out there and it's really sad that honestly I'm not sure we can really believe a lot of what is coming from our own government. But, but let's start out with the, the president having a feeling. Okay, the president had a feeling, Malcolm, and I guess that's the rationale for this war. But literally the rationale changes every hour, I think on the hour. But you know, we've heard from the secretary of state, hey, Israel forced our hand. So. And then the president came back and said no, no, no I forced Israel's hand in this. And then the Secretary of State comes back and says, well, wait a second. There was an imminent threat, Malcolm, because if the US Decided we had to attack Iran, because we knew that Iran was going to attack us if Israel attacked them, and that would. And, and we can't have that. I mean, what the f. Really? Yeah.

[Malcolm Nance]

Well, it is absolutely a. What the f. Circumstance here. I think George Conway put it better the best when he said, wait a minute. Our purpose of this war was to attack the bad guys who were going to attack us. So we let Israel kill the bad guys. But of all the bad guys that they killed, they killed one of the guys we wanted to select to be the leader of the bad guys, but we killed him. And so now we don't have any bad guys to choose from to be in charge of Iran. Yeah, I mean, this is absolute mayhem. Geopolitically, this will, I'm going to put it come on the table. I hate to say it, as an intelligence guy, I'm never wrong. I, I'm never wrong on this when it comes to the Middle east, you know, region. But this war is not going to go on for weeks. This war is going to go on for months. And it could be like the Israeli Iranian war could go on for a year or more. The systems that they have in place, the, the size of the country, and this is. Most Americans are horribly ignorant. I'm glad your viewers are watching this. The country of Iran is huge. It goes. It's the size of two and a half times of Texas. 85% of the country is mountains. There are very few flat deserts in there. The places where most of the population live are in mountains. It has 93 million people. That's almost four times the size of Iraq. And we lost almost 5,000 soldiers fighting in Iraq when we went on the ground. So what's about to happen here is that Iran has already put its talking points out through ballistic missiles and drones. If we're going to get attacked by America, everyone will suffer. 80% of the liquid natural gas exports that go through the Strait of Hormuz done. The 20% of the world's LNG comes from one field, right? Ras Lafan in Qatar. Closed, closed, closed. South Korea, by the way, their chip makers, one of the largest chip making companies in the world, Samsung and another company said they have nine days of LNG to power South Korea's power plants and that their entire chip industry, which are producing the most advanced AI chips for the data centers in the world, will come to a grinding halt. Trump doesn't think about primary, secondary, tertiary, or quadratary effects of his big mouth. By carrying out this war, we have now upset not an apple cart. There are now 12 countries at war with Iran and the United States today.

[Pete Hegseth]

You and I have both been to war. Yes, And I don't take it lightly. I have always felt like. And after. After 20 years, I did three combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. And I've always felt after that time that our military and the nation deserve leaders who, if they're going to put troops in harm's way, if they are going to start a war, that the people have to have a vote on it. Congress has to have the guts to either vote up or down on the reasons why. We have a president that did the State of the Union address two days or three days prior to him, you know, starting this war, said nothing about it, did. Did not make the case. Congress is, you know, we're not even in session. We're not even talked to here. This is a war of choice. It is unnecessary, it is unwise, it is reckless. As you just pointed out. And what I think a lot of people don't fully appreciate is the use of military force only really works if there is a political end game there. Okay, the use of. It's go back to Clausewitz, right? It's the. It's. The use of military force is as a mean to a political ends. So what is our political goal here? And that's why I started out with the purpose. Is the purpose regime change? Is it civil war? Do we want to foment a civil war in Iran? Is it oil? Is it their nuclear program? Are we. Now, I've heard the folks on the right say we're. We're doing this because we got to punish them for 47 years of state sponsor, state support for terrorism. I mean, I'm just like, beside myself. Like, what is the end state? And Also, we spent 20 years and $3 trillion in Afghanistan, which is smaller than Iran, as you, as you pointed out, to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.

[Malcolm Nance]

Right? Absolutely. Amazing. I have to tell you, I have now analyzed all of their presuppositions for what this war was supposedly about. And trust me, as somebody, I started in 1981 as an Arabic cryptologist, right? Lived off of Lebanon when they took Colonel Higgins and, you know, 79 other hostages. I was in Beirut when the first American embassy was bombed. We were fighting in the Shouf Mountains. The Beirut bombing happened. I went my first tour in the Persian Gulf was in the 1980s, 1987 during Ernest Will when we were escorting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz because they couldn't get insurance because the Iranians were closing the Strait of Hormuz. Does that sound familiar? That was 1985 to 1988. Fought the Iranians in direct naval combat in 1988 in a missile duel. I mean, it's like I have recycled back to my early 20s to redo everything and that we're going to war over that. But it's not everything you stated is a stated reason that they say we're going to war. They do not have an end state because if you want regime change. And by the way, it appears that they are using Tom Clancy novels, in this case Some of All Fears as their policy guidebook. You know, clear and Clear and Present Danger. And the movie Sicario Diabell was their policy for Venezuela. This where they kill the Ayatollah at the end of the book as punishment, apparently is their thing. They don't seem to understand there is strategic depth within the decision makers of Iran. That man Khamenei was 89 years old. And the way that I like that, I can't recall which country that said it. It might have been Qatar, where they said it appears that hinted that this was score settling of that Trump wanted to be seen as a person who killed other leaders and he got the Israelis to do it. We didn't bomb Khamenei. That was an Israeli strike done for us to quote, unquote, decapitate the command. Well, as you and I both know, in the military there's always someone below you. And the problem with a regime like this is it's not the old men who have been there since 1979 who helped foment the revolution. It's the deputies of the assistance of, of the, of the aides who are ambitious, who will be adaptive, who are young and who are wedding waiting for the senior leadership to die so that they could get their chance to do horrible things.

[Pete Hegseth]

Well, the Ayatollah was on his deathbed anyway.

[Malcolm Nance]

He was, I mean he 89 years old.

[Pete Hegseth]

He was probably not going to live for the next year anyway. I mean, it turns out, Malcolm, that a vote for Trump was not to end wars, but to start them. You know, he campaigned against this and the, the head of the, the, the Economist right now, which is a magazine, British magazine, that the front of it has a picture of the war and it says a war without a strategy.

[Malcolm Nance]

Absolutely.

[Pete Hegseth]

And I mean, I just can't believe here we are in the Middle east again. Have we learned nothing?

[Malcolm Nance]

I mean you at least retired a rank or two. Two ranks higher than Pete Hegseth who was a National Guard first select major who seconded himself to an active duty unit to go to Afghanistan and is now running the largest war machine in history. And all he can do is cheerlead like he's some, you know, college male cheerleader.

[Pete Hegseth]

He.

[Malcolm Nance]

This is not serious policy. It is not a serious operation other than the fact that we are doing bombs, guns and fighter jet rides and that's what they want. It's almost like they are more enamored with the B2 bomber that flies over NASCAR than what the B2 bomber can do. And what will happen if a B2 bomber hits a flock of birds and goes down over Iran and those people capture the two man crew or the special operations helicopter to extract them from for combat search and rescue, gets shot down and they're captured or a CIA paramilitary officer gets overrun or burned and that person's captured. There is no end state to this war that is not going to be dictated by Iran. Iran has 80,000 drones that they haven't launched. They could launch drones all day, every day. We could have a bug hunt which is by the way, you're a fighter pilot. You're a strike fighter pilot. They intend to put strike caps, strike combat air patrols over every sector of Iran indefinitely. And this was done in the, against Iraq, against Saddam Hussein, in the no fly zone. Right, where we struck every anti aircraft gun, we struck every surface to air missile system. We did that for almost 10 years.

[Pete Hegseth]

Yeah. Lots of money.

[Malcolm Nance]

So what do they intend to just live have the entirety of U.S. navy, Marine and air, you know, the East European Air forces living over that country of 93 million people and blowing up every box truck that they see? Because that's, that's it. That's as far as I can tell, no regime change. No, but they expected regime collapse because they had been listening to these people from the Iranian diaspora tell them the country was ready to collapse and it was probably in January when we abandoned the 10,000 plus people to be murdered by the regime.

[Pete Hegseth]

I mean regime change through air power. If, if anybody in this administration ever opened a book, open an industry book.

[Malcolm Nance]

All right.

[Pete Hegseth]

Because we know we, we know they don't have experience. Right? And I've always said this about Pete Hagseth. He is a tactical guy. His, his, his head has always been at the tactical level. He, you know, look, 040304 they're not, they're not strategic thinkers. Right. I mean, and especially from, from where he came from. And so we, everything that he talks about in terms of objectives, it's all tactical objectives. Tactics do not win wars. Okay, well, they're important, but you have to have a strategy. What is the strategic goal? And they don't even talk about that. I mean, I don't even think they know.

[Malcolm Nance]

They don't know. And right now what they're doing is twofold from what I can see, what we analyze, because I do this about an hour every morning. What I see them doing is right now they're trying to foment a rebellion in the Kurdish areas in the northwestern sector. Right there's the Iranian Kurdistan. That's there up there near the city of Maravan and Sanatajad, which the Israelis are bumping farting relentlessly for the last three days. There's talk of getting a group called the mek. The Mujahideen Al Khalq. The Mujahideen Al Khalq, when I was a young collector back on the Iran Iraq war was a terrorist group Saddam Hussein formed to infiltrate into Iran during the Iran Iraq war and blow up bombs in Iranian cities. We co opted them after we invaded in 19. I'm sorry, in 2003 we brought them under our wing and now people are talking about inserting them into Iran to foment a rebellion on the Irani Kurds side without thinking that Turkey will send 100,000 men in there and wipe them all out because they hate Kurds and they don't want a Kurdish nation. This is insane. So what are we going to do? We're going to fly circles over that country and drop bombs. Vietnam was a country where we had total air supremacy, right?

[Pete Hegseth]

Yeah, complete.

[Malcolm Nance]

And here's two words that they're in love with this last 48 hours, supremacy and dominance. I heard Caroline Levitt use those words in non military terms. They think they are God and that they are Zeus throwing lightning bolts down and that that's going to affect the 10 Revolutionary Guardsmen who are sitting at a tea shed drinking tea with their rifles, holding the sway over that neighborhood and watching the smoke go up and go. Yeah, that's supposed to be regime change. So long as the 93 million people are there, the 25 million who are card carrying members of the Basji volunteer group, the 800,000 militia men that are in charge, and the hundreds of thousands of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commandos. You don't control that country, you control the airspace.

[Pete Hegseth]

I Keep thinking about former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who once said, anybody that wants to start, Any American that wants to start another war in the Middle east needs to have his head examined. And as soon as this happened, I was like, oh, my God, here we are. And I want to ask you a little bit about the precedent, though. And I know we're in it. We're in this war, and it's changing by the hour. But what we did here was a blatant violation of international law in starting this war. It's a blatant violation of our U.S. constitution states since the greatest generation fought so hard to build a world order after World War II for us that we benefited from. States do not go around assassinating leaders of other countries and bombing other countries. There are a lot of bad regimes out there, and they. A lot of those bad regimes do cause instability around the world. But we're in a new place where we're just going to go around and assassinate leaders and bomb countries without the congressional authorization, without the will of the American people. I. I'm very worried about this. I mean, it started with swacking speedboats in the Caribbean. Then it went to, oh, we're just gonna, you know, nab the leader of Venezuela and capture him and use the military to do all of this stuff. We have a Secretary of War, defense, whatever the heck he wants to call himself. I mean, he's completely insecure and unfit for the job. Who says that the laws of war and rules of engagement are stupid and ridiculous? And I'm very worried now. I mean, I just feel like the military, our military that we love, that we served in, I'm worried that, like, where does it end? Like, there's no one now. There's no check on this president. And our military just has to go along.

[Malcolm Nance]

Well, you know, let me give you some bad news first, because it's been so upbeat the entire time we've been talking. First off, I wrote a sub stack yesterday on my Black Man Spy special intelligence substack called 1001 Arabian nightmares. And I only give four scenarios that are very, very possible of happening because. Let me speak Marine fighter type talk to you. Do you remember the movie the Great Santini? Robert Duvall.

[Pete Hegseth]

Oh, love that. Last week on the podcast, Fighter.

[Malcolm Nance]

Fighter pilot. I love the movie the Great Santini. But there's this scene where he's flying, right? And I think this now encapsulates Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon, right? They are this avenging spirit, this angel. And Duval goes, I am Santini. The Great Santini. I come in out of the night. That's it. That is all US defense policy in the Persian Gulf right now. Let's do cool ass guy things in a place where we can generate videos and do things. One of the scenarios, and you're going to hate what I'm about to say. One of the scenarios that I'm afraid, I'm afraid that they are going to do because Hegseth is now fighting with Rubio over boots on the ground. And it's not putting CESAR assets there or you know, what we would call unconventional combat, Search and rescue, recovery or dealing with paramilitaries, CIA paramilitary officers. No, I suspect that he wants to do an amphibious demonstration somewhere along the Iranian coast. Land, you know, a small, you know, Marine battalion or do a raider raid in Bandar Abbas or Chabahar or hit a Revolutionary Guard post. He wants to get boots on the ground and apparently he's got a checklist from every military service of the cool guy things that they think they can do. And I think he really feels that after he used cag, the Delta Force in Venezuela that everybody else is wanting. You got Team six, you've got Dev Group, I mean you've got all the SEAL teams, you've got Force Recon, marsoc. Everybody wants to get on the ground on this one, right? Bronze Stars for everybody. I'm afraid that that's what's going on because there is no need for, for a teams guy on the ground when we have drones that can fly from the United States and get you all near real time motion color imagery with a 500 power magnification that I need to risk 13 man Seal platoon or force recon team to go in. We don't need to do hydrographic survey when we are sinking the submarines with laser guided bombs. But I swear to you this is going to happen and it will not be pretty because once you're on the ground, you're on their playing field. And it could always be some screw up like the AAV sinks and 16 Marines are dead or you go in and a tilt rotor finally does what it, you know, the props come off mid flight, 28 guys go down. We don't need another desert one where the, where the environment, the weather, the people and the population and the terrain defeats us. So we can do something cool.

[Pete Hegseth]

We haven't even talked about the fact that you know, the first day of the war we killed what, a hundred schoolgirls? I know things go bad. I know things are not black and white. I know we would never try to do that. But I think it just goes to show how reckless starting this is, that it is not going to be clean and it is not going to be perfect. And for what reason? I'll give you another scenario that I worry about. The nuclear material. We, Iran has nuclear material. They've got it. They may have weaponized it, we don't know. But if we foment a civil war here and we want regime collapse, which I guess was the answer, did anybody think about how that was going to be safeguarded? I mean, how is it going to be. It's going to fall into the wrong hands. We won't even, we don't have a clue where it would go. It could be enriched material. We have the, we're talking about the largest state sponsor of terrorism. And then we're just going to unleash all this material out there without any plan to do anything with it. I, I mean, I, I worry about that.

[Malcolm Nance]

I think this is a component of where the Israelis are trying to push us to put feet, boots on the ground. And the scenario that pops into my head is somebody does, you know, an intelligence mission, the Israelis or somebody isolates what they think is nuclear materials. And the next thing you know, they think they're going to be doing that Venezuela thing, right, where they fly in with the MH, you know, MH47, and they drop the Rangers in there, right. Parachute 100 Rangers and they do in, they do a combat jump and then they secure the material. This is Tom Clancy level thinking. Do we have the capability. Yes. Do we have the capability of doing it without any losses whatsoever or the population or, you know, all of those tens of thousands of soldiers with rifles trying to hit us and put the golden bb. That's right. You know about that fighter pilot talk of the one stray bullet that hits you in the one critical place that they told you was impossible to hit and it hits you. Right. And you go down in Iran that hates you, not Iran that loves you. In January, a bunch of people loved us. They don't love us today with regards to those children being killed. That was an Israeli strike. That's one thing that we have confirmed. But bombs, you know, they're called dumb bombs for a reason. Right. Even the smart bombs go stupid from time to time. And intelligence, you know, aerial intelligence is only as good as the intelligence from the ground. So if you're striking off of imagery, you're going to hit images, not reality. We did this in Iraq during Desert Storm. We blew up a, a bunker that we thought was a command and control bunker. It had over 400 civilians in it. My problem with this is, look, I've been, ui been to war. I've been from Beirut all the way to Ukraine. I don't like it when civilians get killed. I don't, I don't call it a collateral damage or an act of war. I feel sorry and I, I think we should compensate people for that. But now our attitude is they're all non playing characters in some Call of Duty computer game and you know, we don't care whether they regenerate or not.

[Pete Hegseth]

Yeah. And we have the White House tweeting out pictures and videos with the Call of Duty, you know, music and I mean, what the heck are we doing? As somebody who has been in combat and drop bombs, I think it's sick. I think it's absolutely sick. You know, it was, for me, it was the guys in the squadron that would do that sort of thing were the guys that didn't actually do it. They were the guys like in the back that always wanted to, you know, have a combat tour but never did. They were, they thought they were, you know, great stuff by putting together a montage of, you know, your greatest hits and putting music to it. And I just think it, it looking at it now, it's, it's, it's sick. And, and for our President and for this administration to put that stuff out, it's just, it's unprofessional. It's wrong. I know there, there's a reason that they've said, oh, it's, it's, it's propaganda and it's going to help us and all of that. I just, no, man, that's not the American way. We don't, we don't, we don't cheer when, when, when these things happen. I, I just, I just think it's wrong.

[Malcolm Nance]

Well, right now it is the American way. And unfortunately, people like us, professionals like us. You know, I was senior enlisted, right. I was the senior chief. And, and this is one thing that bugs me the most. I'm gonna, I'm gonna get a little military for your non military audience. There have been times where I've done analysis of the stupidity that comes out of hegseth, particularly like when they were doing that phone chat thing. Are there no senior officers or senior NCOs who will do. What we say in the Navy is we drop our anchors. That's when we take our anchors off our collar and we go, you are a, what are you doing? You are Going to kill people, right. And to inject that senior leadership morality back into the chain of command at risk of a court martial, I would have. If I, if I had seen some of the stupidity that I'm seeing right now, I'll tell you right now and be like, I'm going to be the most famous chief in history because I'm going to chew you out because you're a moron, right? And, and you know, catch me, catch me later on when I'm doing my book tour. These people have no morality, Colonel. I mean, I just don't understand it. I've got flag rank officers who were all bought the Quantico, right. With their senior enlisted. You know, we did a number count out of that. 800 people, 32,000 combined years of military experience in the room to be lectured

[Pete Hegseth]

about hair standards, to be lectured about

[Malcolm Nance]

grooming standards and whether you can do push ups or all these things, right. You're not lethal. The most lethal force in the history of the world. This is an aerial firepower demonstration like they were carrying out at Cherry Point or Oceania, right. For fourth of July. Low passes, loud noises, hot cats off the bow, cats on the carrier. Yay. A team. This is ludicrous. Right. The only person I see acting professional all is General Kane. And I can tell you I have a lot of doubts about him, but he's filling the role. But you and I, I don't know whether you served a Desert Storm. I think you might have been.

[Pete Hegseth]

I'm not that old.

[Malcolm Nance]

Well, let me tell you what it was like back in the aughts because I'm old. I'm 64. And you know, I was in Desert Storm. Colin Powell and General Schwarzkopf's briefings will always be the pinnacle of military operations and campaigns. We got the Syrians to help invade Iraq with us. I mean Kuwait with us. What's going on now is carnival barkerism.

[Pete Hegseth]

Well, what's happening is it's a circus. And, and, and I want to, I want to shift here a little bit because it's, it's a circus that not only hurts people, but is completely reckless. And it didn't need to happen, but it's costing us our country a billion dollars a day.

[Malcolm Nance]

A day.

[Pete Hegseth]

We lost six servicemen and women already, but a billion dollars a day. And this is at a time when Americans are facing cost increases for everything. Right? Health care is unaffordable. We're cutting SNAP benefits, we're cutting school lunches here at home. And now we're going to foot A bill of a billion dollars a day for an unnecessary war that we started. That we started in the Middle East. I mean, I just can't. My head explodes.

[Malcolm Nance]

Inconcionable. I mean it is. It's like we don't care about people anymore. Do you know they're closing all the armed forces high schools and schools. They want to put it out to civilian subcontractors or put them in the local schools. This is crazy. They don't about people anymore. And they're so adept at lying and showing that what they believe we're doing now is a benefit of the billionaire lifestyle. Right. Christy Gnome with the flying sex jet and you know, going out and being arrogant and, and insulting to your face. Right. People like us, they broke the arm of a marine yesterday trying to drag him out of the capitol with an ex teams guy. Right? What's that guy?

[Pete Hegseth]

Sheehy.

[Malcolm Nance]

The guy. You know, it's just arrogance of the rich. And I don't. I don't say that just because I'm not rich. Okay? I say it because my family has served. The Nance family. There has been a Nance continuously in the armed forces since 1864 when my great great grandfather and his brother ran away from slavery and joined the Union Army. Non stop Army, Navy, Marine Corps. And I gotta look at these people who don't care about the American values I was raised on. I'm from Philadelphia, born and raised in a naval hospital. The American experiment is very personal to me.

[Pete Hegseth]

Yeah.

[Malcolm Nance]

And that they are tearing it down and insulting our. They don't even have the decency to maintain the decorum of the service.

[Pete Hegseth]

Right.

[Malcolm Nance]

They just use it like it's literally toy soldiers on a risk board.

[Pete Hegseth]

It's disgraceful. It is disgraceful. And we're spending billions of dollars a day on a regime change, on a war while our rural hospitals are closing and people are getting kicked off their health insurance and Republicans are cutting SNAP because you know, $6 a day for SNAP benefit for that needy kid Malcolm. That's wasteful.

[Malcolm Nance]

That's insane.

[Pete Hegseth]

You know, $6 a day, but. But a billion for a war that we don't need. That's. That's fine. That's.

[Malcolm Nance]

And they want a $50 billion supplemental on top of a $1.5 trillion budget. Someone explain this to me. We're going to be burning JP5, JP8 alone. That could fund the entirety of all US hospitals out there. That's jet fuel, people. I mean it's insane. If you were to ask the members of the armed forces. Would they rather have shorter deployments. Right. And less op tempo than to take away from food, from the mouths of the American public when they're getting fed three times a day or four times if you take sliders at night. Right. They would give it up. They would give it up. I've been, look, I've written ships, subs, land warfare, unconventional warfare worked within, you know, clandestine intelligence agencies. I would give up a lot to make sure that the American public was safe, cared for and not the laughing stock of the world. And these guys are the opposite. They, they want to see, you know they're bragging about our B2, B52 sorties over that place. Well, you know we're going to, it's Afghanistan in Iraq again. You're going to fly circles, you're going to drop bombs that you're going to do for the next 10 years.

[Pete Hegseth]

I know. And the other thing is, we're talking about, and you know this because of your navy background, the shutting down of the Strait of Hormuz is going to cause widespread economic problems both in the region here at home. You know the Middle east, they get all of their food imported so that comes through the strait. We've got global shipping that now can't go through there. We have the President of the United States saying, tweeting out oh the, the United States is going to insure you now you ships going through their maritime, you know, vessels.

[Malcolm Nance]

What?

[Pete Hegseth]

So we can afford insurance for, for maritime vessels but we can't afford health insurance for our own people.

[Malcolm Nance]

I mean it's Operation Crazy Operation Earnest will all over again. Only this time you don't have to have a flag US flag on your tanker. And we're not just escorting six Kuwaiti tankers. We're going to ESC ship. There are 200 ships right now waiting between Abu Dhabi and Qatar. 200 very large crude carriers, ultra large crude carriers and the most explosive and expensive, the liquid natural gas carriers that are supposed to be transiting the SOH. Right. The Straight of Hormuz. There are another 250 to 300 outside of Fujairah. They are all within suicide boat and small craft range of the Iranians. Why? The Iranians haven't launched their 1000 anti ship missiles yet that belong to the Rev Guard, not to the navy. I don't know why they haven't launched their suicide bomb boats of which they estimate have 2,000, we don't know, 33,000 small craft that handle 10 men at a time. In 1987 they almost invaded eastern Saudi Arabia with 3,000 men in small boats. And we stopped it because we had advanced intelligence on it. They could devastate the entirety. They could land forces there that no amount of aircraft could stop. You put a thousand small boats there, maybe you get 50 with cluster munitions, maybe you try to run and gun them. They're going to be across the Gulf and then it's going to be a land warfare battle with the Saudis, the Qataris, the Kuwaitis, and then they send another 5,000 men over the same night. This could go very bad. The soh, the straight of Hormuz could be closed indefinitely.

[Pete Hegseth]

Yeah, I, I very much worry about that. I was talking to a maritime security and law expert just the other day, and he said, he said the same thing. He's like, you know, these people that are, they're cheering that, you know, we're, we. We've sunk the Iranian navy. That. That's not where their strength is. They have showcase navy. Yeah, that was the showcase small boats that, that, you know, can. Can do some really lethal things. And the Strait of Hormuz is only 20 miles. What, 20 miles long or 20 miles wide?

[Malcolm Nance]

33 kilometers. So 26, 24 point.

[Pete Hegseth]

Okay, so that's not very big. You know, I've looked across it.

[Malcolm Nance]

I've looked across it from Musandam, Oman, and you can see Iran on the other side. You can see Bandar Abbas from there. I mean, it is tight. It is restricted navigation, let's just put it that way.

[Pete Hegseth]

Yeah.

[Malcolm Nance]

If tankers start visibly burning within the SOH itself. Right. More than the three that have been hit thus far, Things are going to get dynamic now. $6 gas for everybody is not an unrealistic prospect.

[Pete Hegseth]

Well, it's really been a great discussion with you today. I mean, there's so much going on, it's changing by the hour. You have so much experience. You've written numerous books on issues of counterterrorism and all of your experiences. And Malcolm, you've also been a SERE school instructor, and I read this in your bio. Okay.

[Malcolm Nance]

Yeah.

[Pete Hegseth]

And for those people that don't know what sear school is, it's a very difficult, tough school within the military called Survival, evasion, Resistance, Escape, if I remember correctly. And I had to go through it. Where'd you go every other. I went to Warner Springs in California.

[Malcolm Nance]

Oh, what year did you go through?

[Pete Hegseth]

I went through. In. It would have been 2005.

[Malcolm Nance]

Oh, wait, 2007. No, I had just retired. Oh, you went through. That's my program.

[Pete Hegseth]

Here's the deal with me. When I left flight school the first time I was a back seater and then I became a front seater after one tour. So when I went through flight school the first time to be a naval flight officer, they needed NFOs. They needed back seaters so badly. This was pre 9 11. They needed back seaters so badly that they said you don't need sear school.

[Malcolm Nance]

Right.

[Pete Hegseth]

So they sent us right to the fleet. So I never went through it. Okay. And then 911 happened and they needed, they needed air crew so they said we're going to send air crew. So I went to, I did two combat tours without going through sear school. And I thought I had it good because I'd heard all kinds of bad stories about Sears school and, and, and, and so I went back to become a, a front seater, right. And I had go through flight school again. And then when I, right before I went to the, the operational squadron, my commander said well you haven't been through sear school. You gotta, I was like I gotta go. And, and I said okay sir. And so by that time, and you'll appreciate this, Malcolm, guess what? I was in 03.

[Malcolm Nance]

Oh, you were senior ranking officer. So I Were you senior ranking officer.

[Pete Hegseth]

I was the Marine Corps captain. And so I became the sro, which is, and I knew it. And I was like, okay, this is gonna suck. Royally sucked. And I have to say it royally sucked. I, I, I.

[Malcolm Nance]

Did you get the device?

[Pete Hegseth]

Things I ever did. I got everything. And I mean it was, I've looked back on it now, but it was really hard. I learned so much about myself.

[Malcolm Nance]

Yeah.

[Pete Hegseth]

What I thought, Malcolm, my strengths were, were not my strengths and what I thought my weaknesses were, not my weaknesses. And so it was such an eye opening, a self eye opening time for me.

[Malcolm Nance]

Yeah.

[Pete Hegseth]

And some stories out of that of course that you know, then they, they teach you how to, how to eat rabbits. I had to eat the eyeball out of a rabbit and all that stuff. But that was just, that's that that makes for the good stories. I think it really was one of the most, the weeks of most that I most learned about myself.

[Malcolm Nance]

We had a Marine officer that was a graduate that went down in Desert Storm. And when he came and did his debrief, he said, you guys punch harder than the Iraqis. You slap better. And he goes, they just like pain. You really hurt people. So but he knew what CYR is what we call stress inoculation. You're going to know what's coming and I actually have upset people by shouting out there in what we call that language. We shout at you in the comrade wrangler, which right, you are shutting your mouthing and you are kicking your boots together when you are understanding my commands. You understand me? American pig dog. And I've had people go, just don't talk like that in front of me. They were very. And I was senior enlisted when I went through. So as a prospective instructor I got the maximums of everything in the book.

[Pete Hegseth]

Yeah, yeah. And I also learned a lot about other people too. And I learned, you know, for example, we had a, we had a guy in, in the platoon who was a first lieutenant Marine. He was sort of the picture perfect first lieutenant, you know, that you would see on the poster. Could probably, he could definitely do, you know, lots more pull ups than me. I'm sure that he could run three miles faster than me. I mean he was picture perfect. But I tell you what, Malcolm, 48 hours with no food, he couldn't tie his shoes.

[Malcolm Nance]

Yeah, yeah.

[Pete Hegseth]

And we, we ended up having to, you know, we ended up having to fire him, you know, and replace him with a Navy chief, you know, in that squad that could, could run things because he literally could not function. We had to drag him through the rest of the. And that taught me a really important lesson about all of these, you know that all of this argument about women and standards in the military and all this because I'll tell you what, some of the, that one of the toughest people in sear school was like a 110 pound translator. A woman who was, who was a Navy in the Navy who was, spoke many languages and everybody sort of, you know, all the, all the seals and all the tough guys sort of laughed. But I'll tell you what, she, she was one of the best ones at the end of the day. And it wasn't, it isn't so much about these sort of artificial standards that we put of how fast can you run three miles in sneakers? You know, it's really, man, you. Can you go three days with no food and then get an objective out there in the, in the woods? Can you lead people? Can you stop thinking about yourself, right, and, and look at the platoon and figure out what needs to happen right now? And I'll tell you, the people who, who can do that, they're not necessarily the people who you think can do it.

[Malcolm Nance]

I was chief of resistance, which means I ran the camp and, and help run the camp and do interrogations, all that stuff. The key thing is we Want you all to be a team. We want you to be, you know, to do things that would get you beat. Right. We used to tell our students, a beating is a victory. I read John, we also are the repository of all survival and captivity knowledge. I read John McCain's original typewritten, flimsy debrief that was in the SEER classified library. And when you read about people who went through this experience, but how they took care of each other. Right. It's absolutely, utterly amazing. And they, these guys typified what we would call dei, right, Diversity, equity, equality and inclusion, which we used to call teamwork. And that is the strength of this force is if something bad happens, we'll take care of each other. I'm just upset that at the national leadership level that the thing that gave us Abu Ghraib, the attitude of do what you want is coming back and that our force will respond in a negative way that will disgrace us or hurt our shipmates. Marines and guardsmen, airmen and, and guardian.

[Pete Hegseth]

I worry about that too. The, the concept of honor and courage in our military. I, I, I don't see it at the highest levels. I don't see it in, in P. Hexeth. I don't think he knows what that is. And, and I certainly don't see it on our commander in chief. Never have.

[Malcolm Nance]

It's the act of service. It's the trappings. They don't care, as they say. You know, what is it Lord Farquaad said, right? Some of you may die, but I am willing. That's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. And I'm afraid that's where we are.

[Pete Hegseth]

That is where we are. I mean, I'll never forget during SERE school in the prisoner camp and you know how the SRO is treated.

[Malcolm Nance]

Oh, yeah.

[Pete Hegseth]

And there was a point where I was at the breaking point. I was very much at the breaking point. And my executive officer, who's the number too, Right. He saw it and he, he made sure that the guards went after him. When he saw that, I couldn't do it anymore. And I'll never forget that to my dying day. I will never forget him doing that because he knew it. He, he was going to get it.

[Malcolm Nance]

Yep.

[Pete Hegseth]

But, you know, he did it, he did it for the team. He did it for, for us, you know, for, for this. And, and I think it also, he did it to show everybody else who was in the camp that we need to take care of each other right where we can.

[Malcolm Nance]

Beatings are victory. And did they put you in the little round cage, all three of you.

[Pete Hegseth]

Oh, yes, that.

[Malcolm Nance]

I'm going to. I'm going to tell you what the objective of that is. It's to give you a chance to coordinate as a commandeer.

[Pete Hegseth]

I'm not sure we did that. I'm not sure we did that. Well, we smelled so bad. All we wanted to do. Well, great to talk with you, Malcolm.

[Malcolm Nance]

Oh, thank you so much for inviting me. I have so much respect for you and what you did in your service, you know, and now all of your. Your fellow shipmates are out there flying circles over Iran, so. So hopefully you can impart some wisdom for them. It's. You know, the Golden BB is a real thing. And let's hope that SEER does not become a reality for our service members.

[Pete Hegseth]

God bless. I certainly hope so. And I know they're the best of the best. I taught many of them at the Naval Academy in my time teaching there. And I, you know, I'm.

[Malcolm Nance]

I.

[Pete Hegseth]

My prayers are for our servicemen and women out there. I wish they had better leaders.