Showing posts with label Iran. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iran. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 18, 2025

DIANA WEST: Two hours mainly on Israel v Iran and not a word about Islam and its eternal jihad esp against Jews & Christians. Nothing -- "terrorism," "death to America/Israel," the implications of an Iranian bomb, etc.

American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character, Diana West, 2024.  



Sunday, June 15, 2025

SCOTT HORTON: No [Iran doesn't want a nuclear weapon]. They have disavowed nuclear weapons over and over again. They're members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

00:09.  Do you think Israel has the right to do this and to defend itself and or do you think that this is just a bad idea.

00:17.  Yeah, well two separate questions.  The way you framed it was launching an aggressive war is defending itself, but that's just because you say it that way.  In any other context, of course, it's completely illegal.  This is what Japan did to us at Pearl Harbor, "the day of infamy," a surprise sneak attack against a country that wasn't attacking them.  And so that was what was going on here.  And the fact is they were in the middle of negotiations, and the reporting now is that Trump was actually shining the Iranians on and was pretending to negotiate with them and was telling them, "just make a public statement that he had . . . was trying to dissuade is real from attacking . . . 

00:57.  Let's just insert a couple of things.  It was Israel that was attacked on October 7th by an Iranian proxy and by Hezbollah it was also Israel that was attacked by Iran it was also US troops that were attacked by Iran nevertheless who in their right mind would allow someone, a regime, that runs around chanting "Death to America," "Death to Israel," or if someone was running around chanting death to Scott Horton would you want them to have a nuclear bomb?

01:25.  Well the thing of it is as I'm sure you must know as the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community concluded back in 2007 Iran stopped even researching into how to make a nuclear bomb after George Bush got rid of Saddam Hussein for them they had no more need for a nuclear weapon at that time they opened up their books and everyone watching knows this that Netanyahu has said there are a few weeks away from a bomb for the last 20 years they still don't have a single one and in February the director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard put out the threat assessment the annual threat assessment everyone can read it at dni.gov and it says that they have not made the decision to begin to pursue a nuclear weapon.

02:07.  You don't think that the Israelis have a better have better intelligence come on.

02:12.  Look there's nothing saying that the late Israeli claims of recent advancement are true no one else is confirming that at all in fact what they had all along Leland was a latent nuclear deterrent it's the same as Germany or Japan or Brazil where they had shown they had perfected the fuel cycle they know how to make nuclear weapons fuel but they're not making it and so what has happened here is that what this attack I know you want to hoist up your "Mission Accomplished" banner, but with this attack they're actually more likely to pursue nuclear weapons now whereas before they actually were not pursuing them despite your begged question in your question.

02:52.  Germany and Brazil, a few things, don't run around chanting "Death to America," or "Death to Israel" for that matter, but 

02:58.  And they weren't making nuclear weapons either.

03:01.  What I'm trying to figure out is why do stabilizing a regime that has made its soul mission to destroy Israel and for that matter to destroy the United States why that would be a bad thing?

03:18.  Well George W. Bush told Ejud Olmert absolutely not back in 2007 because the Pentagon told him that it would be too reckless, that Iran is not Iraq, which was already bad enough and way worse than Bush thought it was going to be and that Iran would not be a pushover and that they would have escalation dominance in the region, that they could threaten our soldiers in Iraq which we still have thousands of soldiers in Iraq; we also have tens of thousands as you show on your map there in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia 1 trillion dollars worth of economic targets. 

03:48.  I understand all of that I understand all of that . . .

03:50.  You can close the Straits of or moose you can close the Straits of our moves and bad things will happen to the to our economy.  

03:57.  I understand all the bad things that can happen is the exact same things that the Iranians were doing okay they were attacking US soldiers the problem is once Iran gets a nuclear bomb they had more than 150 attacks by Iranian proxies against us interests during the Biden Administration we just all conveniently forgot about it.  But I continue, the issue here is and the reason the world is safer is because once Iran got a nuclear bomb or was on the point of beyond the point of no return, they could act with absolute impunity; they could do all the bad things you said and the world couldn't do anything to them because they had a nuclear bomb.

04:32.  Well, here's the thing of it.  We had a deal before that no that they were not in violation of it that Donald Trump tore up at netanyahu's behest in 2018 under that deal 

04:44.  Why do you hate Benjamin Netanyahu so much?

04:47.  If they decided to break out and try to create a nuclear weapon it would have taken them at least a year to get enough fissile material to even make one much less complete the process of making one.  That was the deal Trump tore up.  At that time, any enriched uranium . . . why don't you let me finish?  Anytime they enrich uranium . . . 

05:06.  Because half of the things you're saying isn't true and the other half are wrong.

05:07.  And exported it out of the country to France they had no stockpile of enriched uranium because they shipped it all out to France to be made into fuel rods and then be shipped back into the country under the old deal.  It was after Trump withdrew from the deal at Netanyahu's behest that they then began to stockpile the enriched uranium that you're referring to that makes them that much closer to the bomb.  Trump could have just got back in the deal and called it "The Trump Deal" instead of the "Obama Deal," and all of this would have been fine.  

05:34.  It was a bad deal to begin with I still don't understand why you believe that we should allow a country that has shown a willingness to Launch Terror attacks on the United States kill Americans launch and support terrorists around the world and attack our allies why even take the risk that they could possibly get a nuclear bomb?

05:56.  That's funny you know I wonder how you think that after Iraq and Somalia and Libya and Mali and Syria and Ukraine and Afghanistan that the United States of America ought to be in charge of bombing countries changing their regimes fixing anything especially in the Middle East especially what Netanyahu wanted he's the one who said if we got rid of Saddam Hussein for him then everything would be that that piece would reverberate throughout the region but instead we put Iran's best friends in power in Baghdad, a war I am sure you supported too.  And then now we supported Al Qaeda and mujahideen in Syria because they are enemies of Iran's friends in Syria.

06:34.  I'll stop you with the

06:37.  Do you support that do you support Al Qaeda in Syria?

06:38.   I've spent a lot of time in the places that you just talked about [a fucking gay reference to the queer Douglas Murray who made "visiting a place" a criterion for expert opinion on a region], but that's beside the point.  So are you saying that under any condition, so under no condition should a country this was not the United States bombing I run by the way this has been Israel there is a distinction is there no country that has a right to keep its enemies it's sworn enemies from getting a nuclear weapon?

07:01.  Well Truman did not attack the Soviet Union to prevent them from getting nukes and Johnson did not invade China to prevent them from getting nukes.  Mao Zedong was by far the worst person who ever lived, the most dangerous person who ever lived.  We didn't launch a preemptive war against them, and they haven't used a nuclear weapon a single time.  Only the United States has used nuclear weapons.

07:21.  So you believe religious fanatics who can't death to America death to Israel aren't a little bit different than the Soviet Union and China come on I mean you're putting an awful lot of weight and somehow the fidelity and goodness . . . 

07:34.  You're saying that Mao Zedong is a better man than the Ayatollah, huh?  We got you on tape, buddy. 

07:40.  I don't understand what your point is.

07:41.  That Mao Zedong killed 40 million people.  You must not know anything about communism.

07:46. I know plenty about Mao, and that he killed 40 million people.  I'm not sure how I said he was better or worse than the Ayatollah. 

07:51.  He killed 4 million people, is that what you just said?  He killed 40 million people, 4 zero million.

07:58.  I understand that Scott.  I'm just trying to figure out why we would let another fanatic get a nuclear weapon.

08:05.  Again you're begging the question with your false presumption as I've already said . . .

08:08.  Have you ever spent time, have you ever spent time in Israel?  

08:11. Iran mastered the fuel cycle 20 years ago. . . 

08:12.  Scott, Scott, have you ever spent any time in Israel?

08:15.  Iran mastered the fuel cycle 20 years ago and they haven't made a single atom bomb yet

08:19.  Scott, Scott, have you ever spent any time in Israel?  

08:22.  No, I have not.  I've not been there.  I also know for a fact . . . 

08:26.  So you've never been under the threat of Iranian missiles?

08:29. Have you ever been to Iran? 

08:30.  No because they won't give me a Visa.  They don't want journalists there because they won't answer questions.

08:32.  Have you ever been to the Isfahan facility?  Okay so you don't know.

08:38.  Because they imprison and imprison Americans and execute anybody who speaks out against the regime.

08:40.  So how do you know that they're making a nuclear bomb if you've never been?

08:46.  Because they say they want one.  

08:48.  No they don't.  They have disavowed nuclear weapons over and over again.  They're members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. 

08:51.  Then why won't they let journalists in why won't they let journalists in, Scott?

08:56.  All you've got is misinformation, dude.  You can't make a point without lying.

Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism, Scott Horton, 2021  

Thursday, July 25, 2024


Show notes for Tom's interview with Scott Horton, "Ep. 2521 Iran in the Crosshairs Again?"

02:00, WOODS. I was watching the RNC and Iran is in the cross hairs again.  I thought what?  You'll never guess Scott they're just on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon it's the same thing.  I've been told that JD Vance is a breath of fresh air on foreign policy but then I'm told he said you know if you're going to punch I run you got it you got to punch hard 24 hours a day with propaganda they would not say you know what we probably got to go over there and bomb Iran this is yes so he can send the weapons to Taiwan that's America First for you.  Is there anything in the news over the past, however many months that would justify this abrupt return to John McCain anti-Iran hysteria, where where do you think it's coming from?

03:09, HORTON Well, no true things, but yes things.  The most recent one is supposedly Iranians wanted to kill President Trump.  And it was just a coincidence that this kid in Pennsylvania tried to kill him but that came out last week, people just believed it.  I don't know how it works.  You know it's like you show them a silver coin and they're just hypnotized.  "Oh my God, did you hear?  TV says that there's a report that Iran was going to try to kill Trump," and then people just accept that.  But if you look at all, they go well it's based on one single human source, okay?  Now I got a couple things to say about that.  First of all, that's completely stupid.  There is no way in the world that the Ayatollah put out a hit on Donald Trump because that's how he wants to start a war that he's guaranteed to lose with the United States of America that could end up with Tehran getting nuked off the face of the earth by murdering a presidential candidate.  Only if you believe in some ridiculous cartoon version of the Ayatollah Khomeini, that is not the actual man himself.  You can say all kinds of things, but he's clearly cautious on foreign policy, especially on how he deals with the United States of America.  America.  So the idea that's something like that people ought to be absolutely just Kevlar coated titanium bulletproof on this.  That's obviously a bunch of crap.  And their single source?  Probably comes from the MEK mujahideen, a cult communist, or terrorist cults or the Israelis, but it's definitely not true.  But my second thing to say about that is that as far as the Secret Service goes, I really don't care how not credible a rumor is.  If there's any rumor of someone going trying to kill our president, or our major party presidential candidate, they should have had absolutely had security up to the eyeballs for that.  And I don't care how non-credible the rumor is.  From the Secret Service point of view?  Credible enough.  Should be.  Leave it to the others to decide what the foreign policy response is going to be.  But as far as protecting the president, absolutely, that should have put them to Beyond Red Alert.  I don't care.  You know, let them go to infrared alert to protect somebody running for president of the United States from murderers . . . Based on the flimsiest of pretexts.  But I'm just telling you and your audience, don't believe it for a minute.  It's just crazy to think so.  

The other thing is that they have accumulated a larger quantity of 60% enriched uranium than they had before, which is just a diplomatic hardball.  In all the years of talking about this Tom I've never told you that Iran will never ever, definitely ever, get a bomb.  Because that's not the argument.  The argument is we should not force them to try to get one when so far they have refrained from trying to.  We know that they are not making nuclear weapons.  They do not have a secret parallel nuclear weapons program, and their nuclear electricity program that they do have is completely above board and safeguarded by the IAE.  Now Trump under the influence of Benjamin Netanyahu pulled out of the Obama nuclear deal of 2015, which had expanded inspections and restricted their program to a great degree.  And when Trump broke the deal, the Iranians stopped abiding by it although they did not officially withdraw from the deal it signed with the entire UN Security Council that they made the agreement with.  And so they have ceased abiding by its restrictions, but it actually says in the deal that they can do that.  That if the Americans break the deal, or anybody else breaks the deal, that they can stay within the deal but stop abiding by it's actual restrictions.  So they have gone ahead and begun to stockpile much more 60% enriched uranium 235, but you could take that as a subtle threat that I got bullets in one pocket and a revolver in the other don't make me go ahead and get to the point where I'm making bombs out of this uranium now that's it's a latent nuclear deterrent is what they've got
.  


Thursday, March 7, 2024

PROCLAIMING HIS COMPLETE SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL'S GENOCIDE OF GAZA ALL BUT ENSURES TRUMP'S RE-ELECTION

Trump just declared war.  Not so much a peace candidate.  Wait until the U.S. turns its war machine on its own citizens.  They've already replaced you with illegal migrants, proving that the U.S. cares not one stitch for your being as an American citizen.     

from ZeroHedge.  Cannot imagine Trump sidling with Netanyahu.  Please recall the early reports of the invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023. that involved Israeli agents.  So this is Israelis firing on Israelis.  And now we have Trump joining forces with Netanyahu.  This will be coming to America sooner than you think.  

Saturday, February 10, 2024

HORTON, 5:42  Let's go back to 1979.  America used to have a friendly government in Iran that fell, and the American government knew the government in Iran was going to fall but that they couldn't do anything about it because the Shah, the dictator himself, had cancer and was a dead man.  And so the CIA and the State Department, you know, let's go ahead and tell our friends, the French, send the Ayatollah Khomeini home to Iran to inherit the revolution which had been rising up to overthrow the American-backed dictatorship there.  Because after all, we know the Ayatollah.  He's an old friend of ours.  We know him from 1953 when his group helped agitate to help destabilize and overthrow Prime Minister Mosaddegh to reinstall the Shah back in the last coup. 

DAWSON, 6:30  Operation Ajax, Kermit Roosevelt.

HORTON, 6:33   1953 when the U.S. government overthrew the government of Iran, and reinstalled the dictator, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, kept him in power for 26 years, 1953-1979.  Then he fell and his regime fell in 1979, but as I said, the CIA and the State Dept. told Jimmy Carter, we better go ahead and let the Ayatollah come to power.  We think we can deal with him and it'll be fine.  Horton recommends Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States, Trita Parsi, 2007.

Friday, February 9, 2024

COL. DOUGLAS MACGREGOR ON WHAT HAPPENS IF U.S. GOES TO WAR AGAINST IRAN

 

24:11. That's where we are.  Now, this is not going to happen this time.  If we become embroiled in a war in the Middle East that involves Iran and other states, as I pointed out and it will, you're going to see terror acts here in the United States.  You even have the director of the FBI, who I don't think very highly of, because I think he's more concerned about harming Americans than he is anything else, but he did point out you know we've got a problem.  9 million people have poured into this country.  We don't know who's here.  Hezbollah has a huge chapter in Mexico, so does ISIS.  How many of these people are here?  What could they do?  What could happen to our power grid?  What about our nuclear power plants?  What about our military installations?  What about our population?  There are all sorts of terrible things that could happen.  Nobody seems to be thinking about that in Washington DC.  All they can think about is let's get this war with Iran started.  Maybe they think it's 1991 and that we are the preeminent military power in the world.  We aren't.  We just demonstrated that conclusively in Ukraine.  Our equipment has not performed well.  Our technology has not performed well, and our advice from all of our wonderful Generals, who've delivered nothing but defeat for 20-plus years, was terrible.

WOODS, 25:35. I understand the United States has had a bellicose posture toward Russia for quite some time, but do the Europeans really believe the propaganda that the Russian bear is coming?

COLONEL, 26:02. Many do.  In fact, in many cases, the Europeans are even more slavishly devoted to inhaling the lies and fiction than we are. You would think that after the Trump Administration, the riots of 2020, the elections, and so forth that Americans would question a great deal that comes out of Washington and New York City, which is the hub for all the news.  

WOODS, 28:12. Is the US in fact in some way winding down its intervention or involvement in Ukraine?  

MACGREGOR, 28:16. Inevitably what did we do at the end of the Vietnam. We just walk away when things don't go our way we pack up and leave for how long do people insist that we were "turning the corner."  How many times did we "kill the insurgency in Iraq" before we finally left in the middle of the night? The first time we thought about leaving, we found out that everybody that we were working with in Iraq was ratting us out.  In other words, so when we finally left Iraq in 2011, we didn't tell anybody.  We went out in the middle of the night.  That's a great victory, isn't it?  But no one ever goes back and tells the truth because again these are things that happen overseas.  Americans have a bad habit of dismissing what happens beyond their borders as "Okay, that's fine.  It's not a big deal.  We move on from here."  How many strategic failures do you have to have before someone wakes up and says enough and every year we have a bigger defense budget and the bigger budget for the intelligence organizations and special ops.  You're spending over a trillion dollars a year now, and roughly a trillion is what we pay to service the national sovereign debt.  I mean Good Lord! This is insane.  And everybody says, "That's not a problem.  We'll print more money."  Well, you can print until you can't, and we're rapidly approaching that point as I think people will find out the hard way this spring.

WOODS, 30:00.  The America First alleges that threats to the US are overblown, and the interventions are unjustified.  But they change their tune when it comes to China.  They say, "China is the real threat."  In what sense is China a threat to the US or otherwise?

MACGREGOR, 30:24. If you look at China today which is in a very serious economic crisis.  Its shadow banking system has finally been exposed, the corruption has engulfed everyone in China.  That's why Xi spends all of his time imprisoning them.  That's why he's imprisoning all sorts of so-called corporate leaders. China is a mess.  A lot of the people that are now pouring into our country are single young men from China, while large numbers of them were wanted by the authorities inside China for embezzling, stealing, and cheating on a whole range of topics.  China has always had the problem of being too large, too big to govern.  They can't barely manage themselves.  Historically, the Chinese are not a great military power.  Military power and the military profession are not really held in high esteem.  What they want is a force that can protect them.  They think they deserve that, but as far as invading somebody else's country, no.  They tried that against the Vietnamese after the Vietnam War, and what happened to them?  The Vietnamese crushed them.  The Japanese, the Mongols, the Tartars, all of these people historically, and Europeans have crushed China mercilessly.  There's no threat from China.  If we leave China alone, there are enough other actors in the region that the Chinese are not going to put themselves at risk.  

MACGREGOR, 32:10.  Japan is an enormously powerful state that never gets any attention in the United States.  The Japanese armed forces are superb.  I would argue better than our own.  So the bottom line is, no, there is no threat from China.  However, if you are in Asia and you ask the Japanese, the Koreans, the Vietnamese, the people that border China what the threat from China is, they'll say it's Chinese.  If you let the Chinese into your country, they come in they colonize you.  They take over your business sector.  And then they bring in women, and they peddle their women to the locals, and suddenly, within a generation, you're no longer Vietnamese, Japanese, or Korean; you're just Chinese.  In other words, they fear the population overwhelming them in the region.  So you look at the border between North Korea and China, the Chinese want to keep the North Koreans out, but the North Koreans don't want anything to do with the Chinese.  They're afraid that if the Chinese into their country again as they did during the Korean War they'll never leave they'll have millions of Chinese and they will cease to exist.  The Manchus were a Mongol Turkic people.  In Manchuria, they ceased to exist because they had been Sinofied.  This is not a new phenomenon.  This is how China has expanded.  You move in and your population overwhelms the indigenous people, destroys ethnicity, destroys their culture, their identity.  That's the danger that people in Asia fear.  They Don't Fear the economic danger they want to be part of the Chinese market they want to do business with them they certainly don't fear the Chinese military. 

WOODS, 35:50. Asked David Stockman how he felt about the Cold War.  At 16 over the summer, Woods read Nixon's book, No More Vietnam, 1985.  And it convinced him that Vietnam was necessary and just. He was an interventionist for several years.  Where did you stand during the Cold War?

MACGREGOR, 36:39. He went to VMI, Virginia Military Institute, in 1971.  His mom believed that they should support the troops in Vietnam.  His maternal grandfather, who had been in the First World War and hated Woodrow Wilson, concluded early on that that war had been a total mistake.  He'd turn to her and say repeatedly "Well, if you want to support the troops, get them the hell out of Vietnam and bring them home.  He was right; we didn't need to fight in Vietnam.  And you'll listen to people who will argue until their death, "Oh, if we hadn't done that, all of Southeast Asia would have be communist."  Doubtful.  I don't think so.   There was this assumption about communism that it was monolithic.  It never was.  Stalin's famous comment on the Chinese after spending time with Mao is, "These people are red onions: they're red on the outside, and white on the inside. In other words, they act like communists, but they're really a bunch of capitalists.  Of course, he was right.  The Cold War is something that was very different because it began in a very different environment. Everybody runs around and talks about our great victory in the Second World War, but truthfully, by the 1950s, people realized we had not won the Second World War.  We advanced to the middle of Europe and stopped.  And Europe was divided.  Half of Europe and all of Asia had been conquered by Soviet communism, and so people said "My God!  What did we do?  You know you can go back and read [George] Kennan and he talks about the fact that we moved so slowly out of France and into Germany and we took horrendous casualties while we were moving by the way so it didn't save us in terms of American lives very much.  And by the time that we arrived, the game had been called.  The Soviets occupied Berlin, Prague, Vienna, and Warsaw.  Remember Churchill and FDR promised the Poles high in the sky you will be a free and independent democratic state; that's why we're fighting this war.  Didn't work.  Was a complete failure.  So the aftermath of World War II was a little different from what everybody thinks today.  There were lots of people that said "Gee, you know this hadn't worked out well. It could have been a lot different; could have been handled better.  The aftermath of World War I was much more clear-cut because people all knew that we shouldn't have gotten into the war.  We made a mess out of Europe.  I urge people to do this. Warren Harding's inaugural speech [1921] is worth reading because he makes the argument for no more alliances, no more commitments to anyone, that America's future should not be hostage to another country's interest.  We have no interest in becoming part of other people's Wars, well, until 1929 and the Depression struck.  That was the attitude.  The Depression changed everything.  It suddenly propelled FDR into power, who was by standards today and neocon trying desperately to embroil us into war.  He worked tirelessly through the 30s to get us into war against the Germans and refused to see the danger presented by Stalin.  We could go on and on and on.  

MACGREGOR, 40:13. This is 2023.  Have we had enough?. How many American lives have been sacrificed how much treasure has been wasted we were talking about the thousands of hospitals that could have been built with half of the 14 trillion lost on the last 20-plus years on these interventions what kinds of things could we have done for our own country in our own population?  People need to start asking those questions and they need to understand that we have one existential threat today that emanates from the southern border.  Someone who says it's not an invasion has lost their minds.  We are being invaded and our own government is helping it.  9 million have come in since Biden became president, but there are probably another 20 million illegals already in the country from the 1990s and during the. Bush and Obama Administrations.  This is a catastrophe for us.  We can't absorb these people.  And thanks to President Obama who announced that there was no requirement for anyone to assimilate in order to be an American citizen, how many people are running around with American citizenship are just here because it's a ticket of admission to the great consumption machine.  What's happened to our national identity, our culture?  Well, that's being erased.  Finally, some people are standing up.  They're standing up down in Texas, thanks to Governor Abbott. Maybe this is a turning point.  Maybe finally the American people . . . .    That's the real danger, and, again too many people inside this country with uncertain origin and uncertain interests. We don't know what that means for the future, but it doesn't mean much good.  Somebody said to me the other day, "Well, you must be a racist. You don't like Mexicans."  I said "No, of course not.  That's got nothing to do with it."  He said, "Well then what do you think we should take from Mexico?  I said I'll be happy to bring in every Mexican who speaks English and has a degree in Applied Mathematics engineering or science this guy says well that's not going to happen I said well that's what we should demand now we can be selective we don't have to take everyone.

WOODS, 42:32. Why doesn't that guy ask the Mexican Government why it's so stingy about allowing immigration.  There's almost like a double standard.  I want to make myself two people everybody hates.  You mentioned Warren Harding.  He also has a fantastic speech when [1920] he accepted the Republican nomination for president.  It's interesting these presidential speeches that we're all supposed to read in school are all the terrible Messianic ones that we should ignore.  But Warren Harding actually gave great speeches

Thursday, December 14, 2023

SCOTT HORTON: Let me tell you back in the good old days. Judy Miller, Michael Gordon and David Sanger would print any lie about Iraq and Iran the Likud told them to print. It was glorious. Millions were killed.