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Matthew Hoh joins the show to talk about the dangers of a war with Iran. As Biden moves towards some kind of military response to the rocket attack that left three American soldiers dead over the weekend, Hoh has been gaming out what the first week of a war between the U.S. and Iran would look like. He and Scott work through different scenarios and discuss some of the big-picture political forces that have driven us to this dangerous point.

Discussed on the show:

• “What the First Week of War With Iran Could Look Like” (Antiwar.com)
• “US Plans Weeks-Long Bombing Campaign Against Iranian Targets” (Antiwar.com)
• The Reluctant Spy by John Kiriakou
• “Rudy’s Ties to a Terror Sheikh” (Village Voice)
• The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
• Perfect Soldiers by Terry McDermott 

Matthew Hoh is associate director at the Eisenhower Media Network and formerly worked for the U.S. State Department. Hoh received the Ridenhour Prize Recipient for Truth Telling in 2010. Subscribe to his Substack and follow him on Twitter @MatthewPHoh 

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Moon Does Artisan Coffee; Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott.

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Patrick Cockburn, author of ISIS: Battling the Menace, discusses why Donald Trump’s ‘Muslim Ban’ will lead to more terrorist attacks instead of preventing them; and why Al-Qaeda’s greatest success wasn’t bringing down the twin towers on 9/11, but provoking George W. Bush into invading Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Joseph Stromberg, an independent historian and writer, discusses how the Smoot-Hawley Tariff and worldwide protectionism ground the US economy to a halt in the 1930s; the enduring “accordion effect” of increasing government power and decline of civil liberties during wartime; how the distribution of defense contractor jobs among key congressional districts makes cuts in military spending politically impossible; and why government rationing is more a show of force than an attempt to fix economic problems.

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Gareth Porter, an independent journalist and historian, discusses the coalition of pro-intervention US think tanks trying to sell the Trump administration on a more muscular anti-Assad policy in Syria – a policy that has been repackaged from the previous version designed last summer for their preferred choice for president, Hillary Clinton.

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Doug Bandow, a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, discusses why US sanctions against Sudan, put in place not long after President Omar Hassan al-Bashir took power in a 1989 coup, have failed to produce any positive results, serving only to economically cripple the Sudanese people and alienate them from Americans. Yet the sanctions endure, even though their original purpose – punishing the al-Bashir regime for sponsoring terrorism – is no longer valid.

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Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), discusses the “gap” in the Russian hack case; why it makes much more sense that a Democratic insider, fed up with the sidelining of Bernie Sanders, gave the DNC emails to WikiLeaks; why Obama protected the CIA and John Brennan from the Senate Intelligence committee’s investigation on torture; and how Donald Trump could fulfill his professed goal of quickly knocking out ISIS.

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Kelley B. Vlahos, a Washington, DC-based freelance reporter, discusses the unusual number of recently-retired generals in Donald Trump’s administration and whether security and foreign policy will be negatively effected as a result; and how Trump’s shift to the right on Israel has alarmed moderate Jewish groups like J Street who worry about an end to a two-state solution.

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Chase Madar, author of The Passion of Bradley Manning: The Story of the Suspect Behind the Largest Security Breach in U.S. History, discusses President Obama’s commutation of Chelsea Manning’s unprecedented 35-year prison sentence for leaking government documents; whether Donald Trump could undue the commutation if he wanted to; Obama’s otherwise terrible record on government whistleblowers; and Manning’s personal motivation for giving WikiLeaks and the world an incredible treasure trove of documents showing the government at its worst, including the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and the State Department diplomatic cables.

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Stanley L Cohen, a lawyer and human rights activist, discusses the UN’s most recent toothless resolution chastising Israel’s occupation of the West Bank; why Israel’s treatment of Palestinians since 1948 amounts to genocide, as defined in international law; how secular and religious Israelis differ in their devotion to the state; and how love (sex and intermarriage) can ultimately overcome segregation in a bi-national state.

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