Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri, is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again.
You've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like, say our name, been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, guys, on the line, I've got the great Gareth Porter.
He writes, well, first of all, he wrote the book Perils of Dominance about Vietnam and Manufactured Crisis about the Iranian nuclear program.
He writes regularly for the American Conservative Magazine for Truthout and Truthdig.
And we reprint just about all of it at Antiwar.com.
This one, I think, was from Truthout.
It's called Bolton is spinning Israeli intelligence to push for war against Iran.
And, of course, intelligence is in ironic quotes there.
Welcome back to the show.
How you doing, Gareth?
I'm doing fine, thanks.
But just a quick correction.
It was Truthdig, not Truthout.
OK.
Yeah, strike that, reverse it.
I get it confused.
Yeah.
Yeah.
OK.
Hey, man.
So, yeah, John Bolton is our national security adviser, President Trump's national security adviser.
So that's bad.
And so just to review the actual facts here for a second, John Bolton had announced on Sunday that the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier battle group, I guess, was deploying to the region in order to check some Iranian threat.
Against U.S. forces in the region.
But then that much wasn't even true.
Right.
The ship was on its way anyway.
And he decided to characterize it like that.
What else isn't true here?
Ship was already in the Mediterranean.
And by the way, it turns out that it was already planned to rotate it to the Persian Gulf.
They simply they sped up the rotation to the Gulf.
But anyway, they sped it up a little bit.
So there's something there.
There was a kernel of truth to it.
But so what about the threat that the group was preempting there?
Yeah, that that's really the story here.
That's the major point of my article that that what's going on here and it really needs to be understood clearly that this is a plot by John Bolton, which was started last fall.
I mean, his his big strategy was was undertaken originally last fall with the full cooperation of Mike Pompeo, secretary of state.
And that was to use a the a few mortar shells or rockets that were fired, first of all, in the vicinity of broadly speaking in the broad vicinity.
And I'm talking about a kilometer away from the U.S.
Embassy in Baghdad in the Green Zone and a couple of other shells that fell in the vicinity of the Basra Airport.
And they they used that to suggest that Iran was using proxy forces to threaten U.S. diplomats and therefore issued a warning that henceforth the United States will retaliate directly against Iran for any move by its proxy forces to threaten U.S. interests in the Middle East.
And now a couple of things there.
I mean, first of all, was Jason Ditz at News.
Antiwar.com had it that the same group that had fired at the American mission there in Basra had also attacked an Iranian mission there, whatever exactly you call it in Basra, because they were blaming the Iranians for a lot of their local economic problems and this kind of thing, because Iran does have a lot of sway in that part of Iraq, of course.
And so the same group that was protesting against America and apparently launched a mortar shell or whatever it was, did the same thing over at the Iranian mission, too.
But the way they have it is, hey, any Shia with a rifle in Iraq is an Iranian backed special group or whatever.
I think that's correct, that it was indeed far more likely.
I mean, I don't think there was ever any acceptance of responsibility by anybody, but undoubtedly, you know, the motive there was indicated that it was probably very likely those forces that were anti-Iranian who were very upset about the fact that Basra had lost its electricity because Iran was demanding that they pay their bills.
And so this was part of a broader protest against Iran.
And then the other thing was Bolton took this opportunity to demand that the Pentagon deliver some refreshed war plans in case we decided, in case he convinced Trump to retaliate.
Well, that's right.
But before we get to that, let me just bring it up to date.
I'm describing what happened last September when Bolton then went to the Pentagon and said, I want some military options to retaliate against Iran.
And the Pentagon was not happy about that.
I mean, the people there don't want to get into a war with Iran.
And so they, Mattis was, of course, still secretary of defense.
And he and his people were not happy about this.
But apparently they delivered at least one or two options, but made it clear that they were opposed to any retaliation.
And now, according to New York Times just this week, that opposition did, in fact, quash any further move in that direction at the time.
But then now, of course, you have Mattis gone and Bolton is going on his merry way.
And so what he's done now is to basically take advantage of the situation to add yet another element to this threat to retaliate against any proxy, alleged proxy attack on American interests.
And that is to say the United States will now retaliate militarily against Iran for any proxy attack, not only against American interests, but any interests of an ally of the United States in the Middle East.
So, in other words, if the Houthis get off a lucky shot at the Saudis, that would count?
Exactly.
Precisely so.
In the middle of a war when we all know that Iran hardly backs the Houthis at all.
Maybe they pay Palin some money every once in a while.
Well, I mean, I don't know exactly, you know, what the degree of Iranian involvement is.
But in any case, you know, they're they're saying very clearly that any attack by the Houthis or for that matter, you know, Hamas firing rockets at Israel will now.
What about if Hezbollah attacks al-Qaeda in the Idlib province?
Well, I don't know.
I mean, I don't think we're going to see that.
But who knows how they can spin things?
So this is this is enormously broadening the range of possibilities for Bolton and his allies to try to get into a military confrontation with Iran.
That is the most dangerous situation we have faced thus far.
And what I'm concerned about is not just that Bolton is going ahead with that, but that there is no apparent opposition from any major power center in Washington, whether it's Congress, the media or the bureaucracy.
And so we're really in the soup now.
Hey, y'all, quick note about a couple of upcoming events.
I'm going to Childerberg, which is that I think what Lake Buchanan coming up on June 8th and 9th.
Just Google search up the Childerberg there and you'll find it.
If you're in the Texas Hill Country or somewhere in Central Texas or I guess anywhere, come on out.
And it's going to be a big camp out and fun time out there at Childerberg, June 8th and 9th.
And then also I'm doing Pork Fest in New Hampshire.
That's on June the 12th, just a couple of days later there.
And I'm going to be sharing a stage with Michael Bolden from the 10th Amendment Center, the great stand up comedian and Libertarian podcast host Dave Smith, as well as Jacob Hornberger, founder, president of the Future Freedom Foundation, who I'm trying to convince to run for president of the United States as a Libertarian Party candidate.
So that should be a lot of fun.
Childerberg, June 8th and 9th and Pork Fest on June 12th with Michael Bolden, Dave Smith and Jacob Hornberger, too.
Well, so, yeah, this New York Times report says they had a big principals meeting of the National Security Council, which included the chiefs.
And is that all we have now is to pray that the standing army is here to check the passions of the civilian elected leadership that maybe they will say, hey, we don't want to do this because look at how many guys we have.
Thousands and thousands of guys we have within range in Afghanistan and in Kuwait and certainly hundreds, if not thousands, in Iraq, probably thousands in Iraq.
And plus, all of the assets in the Persian Gulf that are within range, the Qatar Air Force Base and the Bahrain Fifth Fleet Navy Base and all of these interests.
I mean, you can't move that stuff out of the way, can you?
That's right.
Exactly.
And I think I think you were precisely on target when you raised that to identify the the military services as the best hope, the only hope that we have left at this point without any further organizing by opposition people to raise a stink and get to put pressure on people in Congress and so forth.
That's the best hope that we have.
And that's because Mattis is gone, replaced by Patrick Shanahan, who appears to be a yes man, not interested in trying to oppose any initiative by Bolton.
And what used to be, I mean, back in the Bush era, when you had CENTCOM commander Fox Fallon, who was very much opposed to war with Iran or even getting into a position where there was a risk of such a war, now you have somebody, General McKenzie, who appears to be quite willing to go out with with the warmongers and take all those risks.
So, you know, I think that we are indeed we're going to have to fall back, at least for this moment, on the hope that the Joint Chiefs of Staff will be sufficiently alarmed by this, that they will, in fact, take action to leak to the press, to go public with their opposition to to a warmongering and and, you know, pressure on them.
Provocative actions by the United States.
But thus far, it hasn't happened.
And that's that's quite alarming.
So so I think we are we are in a situation where the possibilities for blocking this are not nearly as strong as they were under George W. Bush.
Man.
And, you know, especially even after in the era where everybody knows it was Trump that left the Iran deal, it wasn't the Iranians.
And that, you know, all this provocation, you know, back then they had this whole narrative that they had built up that there's a nuclear weapons program in Iran.
There's a civilian one that's safeguarded.
But if you point out that it's safeguarded, then no, I think maybe there's a secret one there where they're making a nuclear bomb.
And if you're not impressed by that, how about every time a Shiite kills an American in Iraq or two, they're now claiming six hundred.
I think it was more like five.
But out of the forty five hundred guys that died there, about five hundred of them were killed by Shia.
But that means, according to Pompeo, they were killed by Iran.
That was the story back then as it was happening.
And so if Cheney, this is the first time I interviewed you famously in January 2007, when they launched the surge and Bush blamed all our problems in Iraq or two on Iran in his famous speech from the library there.
You came on the show.
Well, you wrote an article about it and I interviewed you about it saying, everybody, calm down.
If they do attack, it's not going to be till the end of the spring, beginning of the summer, because Connelly's Rice made this statement to a few important reporters at the State Department where she explained this and that.
And so don't get too carried away and all of that.
But still, in other words, though, what I'm trying to say, though, is they had all this momentum behind it, whereas here there's no real momentum.
I mean, I guess the media will go along with any crazy thing that Bolton cooks up.
Why not?
They love it.
And then the Democrats, too.
It's not just the wingers.
It is the centrists.
But they don't really have a case at all, other than what, they're mad that Iran helped destroy the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria?
Or, you know, maybe they want to blame all their problems in Yemen on Iran.
That's not much of a cost to Spelly.
I guess they could try to arrange a Gulf of Tonkin type incident.
But isn't it so clear who's the bully here and who's sitting there trying to stay out of a fight?
Well, look, you know, I want to make sure that we don't leave out of this discussion, of this analysis.
Absolutely.
The central political factor in this is that Bolton is, you know, by his background, by his contacts over the years, beholden to and allied closely with the Israeli right wing Zionists.
And this is this is very, very deeply embedded.
This connection is very deeply embedded in this current crisis.
Because as I point out in my article in Truthdig, two weeks before, a little bit more than two weeks, but about two weeks before Bolton made his White House statement, Bolton had a secret meeting.
Well, it wasn't secret, excuse me.
It was a, it was a openly secret meeting.
He announced a meeting with the Israeli National Security Advisor and had both Israeli and American teams assembled.
And the Israelis presented their Mossad origin set of analyses of possible contingencies having to do with what Iran could do in the Middle East and how Iran, how the United States and Israel should respond to them.
So the origins of Bolton's statement have to be viewed in the context of the fact that he had just had this systematic presentation by the Israeli National Security Advisor based on Mossad's analysis, not on intelligence, contrary to the all the coverage that has been given to Bolton and that statement and supposedly the intelligence that was behind it.
It was not intelligence.
It was simply their speculation about what the Iranians might do because they were convinced that Iran has to do something because they're under such terrific pressure.
And so there is that very deep connection with the Israeli policy, the long term Netanyahu government policy of trying to maneuver the United States into a military confrontation and indeed, if possible, a U.S. unilateral attack on Iran on the assumption that the Iranians would not dare to attack Israel because then the United States would let Iran have it, you know, systematically.
They've clung to that belief for many years now and they've been taking actions that would lead to that outcome.
And I think this crisis now has to be seen as a product of that Israeli strategy and the fact that Bolton is so enthusiastic about working hand in hand with them.
And by the way, just one further point on that.
This goes back even further to before Bolton was National Security Advisor in December 2017 when McMaster was National Security Advisor, he had what was a secret meeting in the White House with the Israelis, with the Israeli National Security Advisor, again, the same kind of both Israeli and American teams to go over the possible joint Israeli-U.S. strategy for dealing with Iran.
Then they agreed on four points.
They agreed on a joint strategy that had four points.
And the fourth point was a common strategy for how to deal with various contingencies in the Middle East involving an Iranian alleged Iranian move or military attack.
Hey, y'all, here's the thing.
Donate $100 to The Scott Horton Show and you can get a QR code commodity disc as my gift to you.
It's a one ounce silver disc with a QR code on the back.
You take a picture of it with your phone and it gives you the instant spot price and lets you know what that silver, that ounce of silver is worth on the market in Federal Reserve notes in real time.
It's the future of currency in the past, too.
Commodity discs dot com or just go to Scott Horton dot org slash donate.
So just to reiterate this very important point here, you're saying there is no new intelligence about Iran preparing to do anything.
In essence, there's a new assessment by the Israelis that if we were them, we would consider doing a thing.
And that's about all.
That's about all.
That's about all.
I believe that the evidence is very clear on that, that that there was no there was no new evidence in terms of intelligence, U.S. intelligence community, either raw reporting or they the intelligence community analysis or assessment that would undergird what we heard from Bolton or what Bolton was saying in that statement or what has been reported by the media.
Quite irresponsibly, totally irresponsibly, as as though there was real intelligence behind it.
Now, there's a story that came out today that that claims that Friday afternoon, the what was it?
What was Friday afternoon, the third of May?
Yeah, of course, not.
I mean, I mean, and I don't want you to hide any more.
But I don't want you to run into it.
I mean, this is this is this is this is Ming.proxies do something.
But I don't believe that for a moment.
You know, it just doesn't add up.
Yeah, of course not.
I mean, I mean, and they weren't even specific, like, well, we think that I say all al-haq in Iraq is going to attack or this or that kind of thing.
It's just so many things, maybe something mumble mumble, nothing specific, because it would be silly if you said it out loud.
Yeah.
And let's let's connect this up with the latest outrage here, which is this business of limpet mines attached to oil tankers outside a UAE port near the entrance to the Gulf.
The idea that now the United States intelligence suspects that Iran was behind it without having actually done any investigation or only having begun an investigation at most.
And this is simply another case of total politicization of the intelligence process.
I mean, just on the face of it, that's a pretty weak firing on Fort Sumter to start a war.
If you're the Iranians, here's what we're going to do.
We're going to sneak around and sabotage a couple of boats, not spilling the oil, but mess up a radio antenna or some garbage Just to carry that further.
I mean, look, we know that at most there was a gash in one or possibly more oil tankers that did not affect its seaworthiness.
There was no no sinking or anything like that.
And that in other words, it was not going to prevent them from going into the Gulf.
It was not going to stop or inhibit shipping.
All it was going to do was raise the question, hmm, who could have done that now?
And who has an interest in that at this point?
Not the Iranians at all.
Maybe the Israelis, but maybe Ayman al-Zawahiri's men who would love nothing more than to see the United States attack Iran, which is a point that nobody ever makes, Gareth, but I think is a good one.
Well, absolutely.
And, you know, that ties into the point that I made in a tweet yesterday, which is that the last time an oil tanker was hit by any sabotage or attack in that part of the world that is outside the Gulf, but near UAE, near that port of Fajrah, it was an Al-Qaeda group, the Abdullah Azzam brigades.
It was 2010 and they took responsibility for it.
Just like Jake Sullivan wrote to Hillary Clinton in February of 2012, AQ is on our side in Syria, where, of course, the mission was to check Iranian power by getting rid of their friend Assad.
And very same thing here.
Of course, Ayman al-Zawahiri is sitting back laughing his ass off right now watching this.
Right.
He would love to have this be blamed on Iran and have, you know, be closer to war between Iran and the United States.
I mean, that would serve their purposes.
They've actually said so publicly and in other ways in the past, and it makes perfect sense.
So, yeah, there are a number of suspects, but Iran should not be one of them, if you're using your logical capabilities.
You know, what's interesting, though, is all the dynamics of the deep state politics, this, that, the other thing where the Daily Beast, which is called that for a good reason.
I know it's supposed to be a takeoff on Dickens or something, but it's more like they represent the CIA all day, every day.
And, you know, the state itself, the national security state is in this, I wouldn't say at war with, but they're in a kind of cold war with the president here.
And thank goodness that includes Bolton then.
And so they ran this piece saying that multiple intelligence officials say that this is all overblown and that it's inflated intelligence and that we shouldn't make that much of a deal out of it.
I know they don't run Gareth Porter at the Daily Beast, but they ran one article that was worthy of your type of reporting here.
I guess as much as they hate Iran, they hate Trump more.
So it came out that way.
Right, right.
I'm, you know, there, there are people who could leak something to the Daily Beast from the Pentagon who would say that, no doubt about it.
Yeah.
And then, and what they said was that multiple sources close to the situation said the intelligence was out of proportion, characterizing the threat as more significant than it actually was, which is a pretty nice way of saying a bunch of trumped up nonsense.
So now we're back again to the, you know, the overriding narrative and the real facts underlying them and, and how far we are away from any kind of even pretended legit excuse to do anything here, even a claimed excuse to do anything here.
Sabotage of a couple of little ships here and there.
That's not a good enough Gulf of Tonkin to do anything.
And so, I mean, what do you think is going to happen here?
They're going to end up backing down because the Ayatollah is too smart to take the bait again?
They're not going to back down on the, on the, on the basis that the Ayatollahs are too smart, that's for sure.
And, and I would just want to add the, the, the overall point that, you know, we are up against a long history here now of years in which the national security state, their congressional allies, of course, and their media allies have joined in this chorus of creating a myth about Iran's proxy wars across the Middle East.
And what a threat that is to peace and security and American interests and our allies interests.
And that is what is, has now taken the place of any precise specific threat.
It's now a regional threat that has to do with Iran and its proxy wars.
And so anytime we talk about this problem, we have to address that fundamental issue.
Right.
So it's all George Bush's fault is how you address that.
If you don't like the Ayatollah, then you should go back in time and not get rid of Saddam Hussein for him.
And if you don't like the Ayatollah, then you should go back in time and not have Barack Obama launch a pro-al Qaeda war against Assad in Syria, which only backfired and increased Iran and Hezbollah and Russia's position in that country.
And you shouldn't have paid off Abdullah Saleh to attack the Houthis over and over again until they were powerful enough to drive him out of power or his, you know, successor anyway, and seize power in that country with actually Saleh's help by that time they'd made an alliance, but such as you many politics.
And then encourage the Saudis to go ahead with their bombing campaign.
I mean, that's the that's the biggest single problem in this entire, you know, cascade of of terrible crimes that were committed that the U.S. national security state is totally complicit in and which are now creating this situation where there are all these multiple opportunities for Bolton and the Israelis to do their damage.
Right.
In other words, because the Houthis are now at in a full scale war with the Saudis, sometimes they get off a lucky drone strike in Riyadh and this kind of thing.
Right.
And more so lately, which, by the way, you know, all the real experts, including your journalism, but also a lot of other real great experts have written and shown how Iranian support for the Houthis is absolutely minimal and probably the biggest portion of it is simply the United States of America giving Iran credit for every one of the Houthis successful acts in the war.
And so if you know, just like with Bush in Iraq and Obama in Syria, the Trump government here and Obama started this war, of course, but the Trump government here, they're only empowering Iran.
Iran hardly has to lift a finger to do it.
You know, they just accept all the credit that the U.S. gives them in the name of scaremongering about the new Persian Empire over there, which America has built for them and just in this century.
And the underlying point is that people who are ready to oppose the U.S. policy that's now being pushed ahead by Bolton and Pompeo must be much more active in, you know, making clear this entire background that this is a complete, I mean, this is the worst case of the creation of a phony narrative surrounding the Middle East that we've ever that we've ever faced.
It's built up over years.
And I mean, it makes in a way it makes the phony narrative about the Iranian nuclear program look puny by comparison.
Yeah, it does.
Well, at least the one one great talking point we have here, one great fact on our side in this narrative, just like with Iran, is this is literally John Bolton's fault, not just figuratively speaking.
He wasn't just, you know, some hack writing at the National Review.
His job was making sure, working for directly for the vice president, making sure that Colin Powell and his man, Dick Armitage, couldn't stop the march for war in Iraq.
I mean, he was an integral player, and including going on TV and lying all day to the American people, too, in the first Bush Jr. administration.
So he did this, just like when he's complaining about Iran has nuclear weapons.
Well, he's the one who kicked them right out of the NPT.
So.
Right.
So so it's it's a it's one big mess of of issues that are all connected by precisely the points you're making, which is that, you know, one administration after another has been complicit in actions or carried out actions directly which have created situations that Iran had nothing to do with until, you know, they were forced to make decisions to respond to opportunities or threats that were created by by these by these actions that the United States and its allies took.
Which, by the way, and this will be the last I know you got to go to.
But this is something that you and I covered, you covered and I interviewed you about back during Iraq War II as well, was that, yeah, the Iranians took the most cynical advantage they could of George W. Bush.
George Bush volunteered to get rid of Saddam for them and put their pets from the Supreme Islamic Council and the Dawa party in power, first and foremost.
Hell, yes, they took every advantage of that.
And they did push, contrary to Muqtada al-Sadr's wishes, for example, the other Shiite leader who had more domestic authority rather than imported, like the Skiri and Dawa guys, that they pushed this whole federalism plan, meaning cleanse and defeat and destroy the Sunni Arabs instead of having more of a nationalist alliance and reconciliation like Sadr wanted.
And that was why he constantly denounced them for years.
And so Iran absolutely was one of the most malign forces in Iraq War II, in alliance with the United States of America, as George W. Bush had the army and the Marine Corps and the U.S. Air Force doing all of their dirty work for them in cleansing the capital city and creating the dominant Shia-stan state there that exists now to this day.
And so, yes, they're horrible.
And yes, 99.99% of it is America's fault.
The rest is Iran's.
You're absolutely right.
And you're one of the very few, if not the only one, who has continued to make that point over and over again.
And I just want to add one more point to what you've just said, because it brings it up to date in terms of this whole business of blaming Iran for 600 or so deaths of American servicemen in Iraq.
What is missing from that is the point that those deaths would not have been anything like 600 had it not been for the fact that Petraeus decided to target those forces on, you know, he took the initiative to target those forces to make them the next enemy of the U.S. military in Iraq.
He didn't have to do it because they were not seeking a war with the United States.
And he was blaming the most nationalist Arab Shiite militias, the Saudis, for being the Iranian cat's paws when, again, it was the Supreme Islamic Council and their Baader Brigade and those guys who are really Iran's force that Petraeus was allied 100% with.
And so he was really only enhancing Iranian power while attacking the nationalists who wanted to compromise with the Sunnis in the name of fighting Iranian and Shiite sectarianism.
And if I'm not mistaken, they're also including in that figure all those Americans who died early in the war when they went into Basra and started fighting.
And, you know, there were Shia who were in Basra who were opposing.
Oh, that's how they get to 600, right?
They include the first battle of Najaf in 2004 and stuff like that.
Najaf, yeah, yeah.
That's correct.
Which is such garbage.
You know, I just wrote a thing for, I put on the blog at the Libertarian Institute and at Antiwar.com back last week called, Did Iran Kill 600 Americans in Iraq War II?
Where I remind everybody about the ruse about the so-called EFP bombs and the lie that they were all made by Iran and imported into Iraq and all that stuff.
So if people want to look at that, and that, of course, refers back to a lot of your great work from that time.
Yeah.
So there's lots of, there's lots of information there to use to refute all this.
The problem is getting it out to enough people that we can make it, we can make a difference.
All right.
Well, listen, I really appreciate your time on the show as always, Gareth.
Glad to be back on the show.
Thanks, Scott.
All right, you guys, that is Gareth the Great.
Gareth Porter, he's at Truth Out, Truth Dig, and at TAC, the American Conservative.
This one is in Truth Dig.
It's called, Bolton is spinning Israeli intelligence, quote unquote, to push for war against Iran.
So you like supporting anti-war radio hosts.
That makes sense.
Here's how you can do that.
Go to scotthorton.org slash donate, and there's all kinds of options to do so and all kinds of different kickbacks at different levels.
Of course, take PayPal, Patreon, and all different kinds of digital currencies and all of those sorts of things.
And anybody who signs up by way of Patreon or PayPal to donate $5 a month to the show will automatically get keys to the Reddit room, my own private Reddit group that I have.
Quite a few members now and lots of fun in there every day.
So check out all about that at scotthorton.org slash donate.
And thanks.
