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War is the improvement of investment climates by other means, Clausewitz, for dummies.
The Scott Horton Show.
Taking out Saddam Hussein turned out to be a pretty good deal.
They hate our freedoms.
We're dealing with Hitler revisited.
We couldn't wait for that Cold War to be over, could we?
So we can go and play with our toys in the sand, go and play with our toys in the sand.
No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
Today I authorize the armed forces of the United States to begin military action in Libya.
That action has now begun.
When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.
I cannot be silent in the face of the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government.
All right, you guys, introducing Mark Perry.
He is the author of the book, The Pentagon's Wars, and he writes regularly for the American Conservative Magazine.
And now I'm desperately searching for the title of this article, The Political Forces Behind Rex Tillerson's Firing at the American Conservative Magazine.
Welcome back to the show, Mark.
How are you?
It's good to talk to you.
I'm doing fine.
Thank you.
I should have talked slower when I was saying the title of your book.
I was almost there.
You did a good job.
All right.
I still haven't had a chance to read it yet.
And I'm sorry, but it's on my pile and near the top of the pile.
It's not as if you aren't busy, you know?
Yeah, I'm trying to stay busy.
It's working.
Okay, listen, you write such great stuff, because you know all this stuff that nobody else knows.
The Political Forces Behind Rex Tillerson's Firing, you seem to think this has a lot to do with what the subtitle here calls the Cutter fiasco.
First of all, what's the Cutter fiasco for those just catching up?
Back in June of 2017, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt put an embargo on Cutter.
Their ally in the war on terrorism and a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, and it sent shockwaves through Washington that showed a real falling out between our erstwhile allies.
And the initial response of the Trump administration was to support the embargo and the isolation of Cutter, but Rex Tillerson thought otherwise.
And he scrambled to undo it and to kind of make peace between these feuding countries.
Of course, people in Washington snapped back, especially in the Israel lobby, and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which had always been accusing Cutter of supporting terrorism, and I think quite wrongly.
And we have an air base in Cutter that we've used in Syria and other countries, and that we need the military beliefs in confronting Iran, if we are to do that.
So this was a very controversial move.
This is June 2017, and Rex Tillerson tried to mend these relations, and he was opposed in Washington by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and other very, very pro-Israel groups.
Other very, very pro-Israel groups?
Well, what do they have to do with all this?
Well, you would think nothing, but they'd always claimed that Cutter had supported Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and Cutter does have a relationship with Iran and is trying to mediate the disputes between the Gulf countries and Iran.
And has done, I think, a very profoundly good diplomatic service for the United States, was a very close ally.
But Israel wants to break that up.
Israel wants to follow the lead of the Saudis in particular in confronting Iran, and Cutter doesn't want to do this.
You know, I come from the point of view, and I think you do, too, that if Israel had its brothers, we would be fighting a war with Iran on their behalf.
And anything that forwards that agenda, they're for, and Cutter is not for that.
And I think Rex Tillerson wasn't for it, either.
It's very clear that he would rather keep the agreement, the Obama administration agreement with Iran, but he's been opposed and was opposed as Secretary of State by the Israel lobby.
Well, and now, so part of the background here that I guess is important, right, is that Cutter shares this gas field with Iran, beneath the Persian Gulf, and so business necessitates that they have a peaceful relationship, which puts them, if everybody wanted to get along, puts them in a great position, as you said, to sort of be a middleman to help negotiate.
But that makes them the problem for those who want conflict.
Well, that's exactly right.
I mean, and if you've spent any time at all in the Middle East, I've spent quite a bit.
Cutter is a very high profile presence, and it spends money rebuilding things in the wake of the 2006 war with Israel in Lebanon.
Cutter was there the day after the war ended, rebuilding the country, helping the Lebanese.
Its flags were everywhere.
It played a very outsized role in that.
It has always opposed the Israeli siege on Gaza.
So for Israel, Cutter is the enemy, in addition to having, as you rightly note, the gas field that it shares with Iran.
There's no question in my mind that leaders of Cutter—it's a very small country, 365,000 people.
It's basically a country sitting on top of a gas field, a useful gas field.
But if it were up to Cutter, you know, there would be real, firm and substantive diplomacy with Iran, instead of confrontation and war.
And that certainly is not the point of view of Israel or Saudi Arabia.
All right, now, so when it comes to their relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, I guess this goes back as part of the reason for a split between them and Saudi.
Do I have it right that, at least in the early times—I don't know the details—but that at least in the early years of the Syrian war here, that Cutter really was backing Arar al-Sham, which was the militarized version of the Muslim Brotherhood, once the war broke out.
Isn't that right?
Yes, that's right.
I mean, you know, what's of more than passing interest here is that some of the claims made by Saudi Arabia about Cutter, that Cutter supports terrorist groups, are on the face of it, correct.
But I've always believed, in talking to Qatari officials over the years, that, you know, their approach here was an attempt to mediate conflict and not promote it.
And this has really struck Saudis, who view themselves as kind of big brothers to the Qataris, as a heresy.
And so, yes, you're right.
I mean, Cutter has had, I think, an outsized role in the Middle East, as kind of the diplomat to the region, which sends the Saudis into orbit, of course.
And then, so, in the political system in Cutter, they have some kind of parliament that the Muslim Brotherhood participates in, and that's what drives the Saudis crazy, too, right?
Because they don't want to see anything like that.
Yes.
And, you know, this is a—for many people, it's an overcomplicated issue, but I think it's pretty simply stated.
Political Islam includes groups that believe in democratic processes.
They believe in votes, constituent services.
And these are Sunni groups, included in the Muslim Brotherhood, of course, Hamas, which started out as a part of the Muslim Brotherhood.
And Cutter thinks that the Muslim Brotherhood is, in fact, kind of the wave of the future of a moderate political Islam that believes in democracy and constituent services.
For Saudi Arabia, the Muslim Brotherhood is radical, uncompromising, and an opponent of the Saudi version of Islam, which is Wahhabism.
So they're enemies.
So anyone that's a friend of the Muslim Brotherhood is an enemy of Saudi Arabia.
And that means Cutter is an enemy of Saudi Arabia.
So they, you know, they attempted to choke off Cutter back in June of 2017 and wreck the kind of anti-terrorism front that the United States had so carefully cobbled together over the previous 15 years.
We were taken completely by surprise, had no idea the Saudis and the Emiratis were going to do this.
Plus, my friend, as you know, Mr. Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, has had dealings with both, with all of the above, the Qataris, the Saudis, and the Emiratis, and has attempted to even raise money for 666 Fifth Avenue from each of them.
The Qataris turned him down.
And this has caused Mr. Mueller to start investigating Jared Kushner's ties with Saudi Arabia, which preceded the embargo.
Yeah.
I mean, this seems like, you know, all this stuff about Russia, Russia, Russia, notwithstanding, if the FBI, the special prosecutor, is on the case of this guy Kushner trying to get cushy loans from these foreign governments as he's coming into power as the White House advisor and son-in-law of the new president, there's going to be plenty of felonies there if they actually want to pursue that.
But so, is that really what's going on here?
That was what was behind it, was Kushner got turned down by these guys, so then he had a meeting with the Crown Prince of Saudi, and they decided to do this?
Something like that?
You and I are of incredibly similar minds on this.
I don't know how much of that is proven.
That's my impression, I guess.
None of that is proven.
None of that is proven.
But I think that Mr. Mueller, I mean, listen, I'm a believer in Russiagate, but I'm not obsessing about it.
I'm not doing a Rachel Maddow on it, for instance.
My focus is on Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, and I think that Mr.
Mueller is probably focusing on that, too.
This would be, if what you say is true, this would be a straight pay-for-play operation on the part of the son-in-law of the president of the United States.
We'll support, that is to say, we would support Saudi's foreign policy and Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince, and his efforts in exchange for whatever they can do to help the Kushner family business interests.
But again, I have to add very quickly, and our listeners should know this, this is not proven.
The pay-for-play could not be true.
But certainly I think that's what Mr. Mueller is looking at.
But it is certain that Kushner was the one who was behind this in the White House when they went ahead and went along.
And what does that mean, my words anyway, but to what degree do the Americans go along with what was really a local blockade and siege and all this?
Well, not surprisingly, and as you know, when the siege against Qatar started and the embargo was put in place, Rex Tillerson and Jim Madison opposed it and tried to dampen it and tried to mediate it, but not Donald Trump.
He came out on Twitter in support of the Saudis.
And I was told, because I wrote an article, as you recall, in The American Conservative in June 2017, saying that Rex Tillerson believed that the United Arab Emirates had communicated their wishes to the son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and he'd whispered in Mr. Trump's ear that we should support the embargo.
This is certainly not the intent of Rex Tillerson.
So the result is that we had two foreign policies, one running out of the State Department, one run by the President of the United States.
The one running out of the State Department was a diplomatic effort.
The one running out of the White House was an effort to stand behind Saudi Arabia and this counterproductive and really silly and divisive embargo on Qatar.
And what's the state of the embargo now?
Well, it's still in force.
There has been some easing, but it is clearly the case that the Saudis are still pretty set on changing the foreign policy.
And I would guess even the government of Qatar, if they had their way.
So it's still a festering, if lower level, crisis.
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Thanks guys.
And now you mentioned the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and then I went from there into their motive, but I should have asked you more about what it was that they had done here.
Well, the Foundation Defense of Democracies is a nonprofit organization here in Washington, D.C. that is, as I believe, simply a mouthpiece for Israel.
And it has always banged the drum for a confrontation with Iran.
So they supported the blockade of an embargo on Qatar.
And they've been anti-Qatar for as long as they've been around.
And it culminated in 2010 to 2014 with many of their officials writing editorial and op-ed and report after report after report about the perfidious nature of the Qatar government.
So of course, when Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates proposed their embargo, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, very influential now that Trump's in office, stood up and applauded.
And when Rex Tillerson was fired last week by the president of the United States, they stood up and applauded.
As Mike Pompeo, Mr. Tillerson's replacement, is a close friend of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
So, you know, I think what we're facing, to be very blunt, is the possibility, the strong possibility now that Mr. Trump will undo the negotiation that Mr. Obama succeeded in on Iran's nuclear program, that he will reject it and void it, to which the Foundation for Defense of Democracies will applaud, because it's the first step towards war with Iran.
Well, now, so I'm not sure to what degree you're expert in the workings of the deal, which includes all these snapback sanctions and this, that and the other thing.
But I wonder if you have a good handle on if Trump refuses to certify that Iran is within the deal or just refuses to participate in it anymore, because he says it's just not good enough.
It needs to have no sunsets and it needs to include missiles and it needs to include support for Hezbollah and whatever they come up with to try to ruin the thing.
Well, what exactly will that do?
Because the rest of the U.N. Security Council members, i.e. the major powers of the earth, they are all signatories in the deal with Iran as well.
And so does that mean America will put sanctions on their companies or...?
I don't think that'll happen.
I don't think that we will sanction European companies or European governments that refuse to follow us when we try to wreck this deal with Iran.
I think it's almost certain what will happen, however, is that it will divide us from our European allies, from those who helped to negotiate this deal, so that they would oppose it and that Mr. Trump won't care.
So we're, in the name of being friends with Saudi Arabia, we are about to wreck our relationship with Germany, France, Great Britain, who are absolutely opposed to any kind of confrontation with Iran and would actually like to moderate Iran's behavior through economic trade and diplomatic efforts.
Mr. Trump opposes that.
So I think what we're facing here is not simply a confrontation with Iran, but a confrontation with Iran in which we will be isolated from our most important allies in Europe.
It's bad news all around.
Well now, but maybe Trump is a brilliant genius and this is just the art of the deal and he's pretending to be drunken, crazy Nixon, like he's done with Korea, but now he's good cop to his own bad cop and he's saying, hey, let's sit down and talk with Kim.
And so maybe here he's just trying to escalate the pressure so he can get an end to the sunset provisions and get some restrictions on Iran's missiles.
And then he will be happy with that.
And this is all just, you know, three-dimensional chess.
No problem.
What do you think?
I think that that's unlikely.
Me too, man.
I'm trying.
I don't know.
You are trying.
You're trying pretty hard.
I mean, that's, and that's the argument that Trump supporters use as well.
This is the art of the deal.
You'll see at the end of the day, this will work.
Iran will give up its missile program.
They will, you know, and we'll effectively disarm them.
I just don't think that's in the cards.
I think that Trump could care less about Iran's missiles and that what he's doing now and what he's done throughout his administration is that anything that Obama did, he's going to try to reverse.
Yeah.
Because he has, you know, he has an infantile approach to foreign policy and, and it could walk us into a confrontation, which by the way, we wouldn't necessarily win.
That is, that is a confrontation like unto the confrontation we had with Iraq during the Bush years.
We all know how that worked out, which will bankrupt the country and cost American lives.
And I think that's a, it's a very real danger and I think it's an everyday danger.
Well, it seems like, I mean, what would happen if there was a war, it wouldn't include marching in the third infantry division.
It would just be a massive air war, which I think by definition means it would be indecisive anyway.
All we could do is start it and then what, just call it off at some point after having not achieved goals other than just bombing them?
Iran has a very robust air defense system.
The war would be costly, even though you're quite correct.
I think it would primarily be an air war and not involve American ground troops.
There's no guarantee it would work.
And the Iranians are very good at defending their country.
They would dig in their heels.
So I think it would be very indecisive, very costly, further bankrupt the country.
And you know, the likelihood of some of our flyers being held prisoners by Iran would be high.
At the end of the day, we'd look foolish.
This is a road that is, we're headed down a road, I mean, I, you know, there's no guarantee, of course, that a war could happen regardless of what Mr. Trump would want, or we don't know what he wants.
But certainly the danger is there.
The people who think that the American military is all-powerful and able to impose its will on a country like Iran, I think, are sadly misinformed.
This is a country that has very sophisticated air defense and military systems, and that would have, I think, much of the world behind it, especially if the attack were unprovoked and were to follow the negation of what I consider to have been a very successful negotiation on Iran's nuclear arsenal.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, on their civilian nuclear program, which just safeguarded it beyond any reason.
On their civilian nuclear program, they don't have a nuclear arsenal, thanks to Mr. Obama.
Well, and so now here's the thing.
So to get back, and we can talk more about the war in a minute, because I want to ask you about Madison and all that again.
So as far as the deal itself, if the Americans abrogate their end of the deal, again, it is still in effect.
I don't presume that the Iranians would then leave the deal on their end.
They would say, you know, it only makes sense for them politically to say, well, look, everybody knows that Trump's a nut on this, but the British and the French and the Germans and the Chinese and the Russians say that we're still within the deal, and we're staying within the deal, and we weren't making nukes in the first place anyway, because they weren't.
And so if that's true, what does it look like a week after America ruins the deal?
We put sanctions back on Iran, but the European countries don't.
But then, I mean, again, I guess what I'm trying to say about their reaction is I don't think they're going to say, oh, yeah, well, we're going to withdraw from the nonproliferation treaty and start making nukes now, and then give the Americans that fake excuse for war that they've wanted all this time.
I think they're too smart to do that.
So would it necessarily lead to war or it would just lead to, I don't know what?
Well, I don't think it would necessarily lead to war.
But I think that it's an exercise in self-isolation on the part of the United States.
We would isolate ourselves from everyone except the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and Egypt.
Big deal.
And we would undermine our relationship with China, Russia, to the extent that we have a relationship with Russia, but most especially with Germany, France and Great Britain.
Something we don't need is to be isolated in the world.
This would be a self-isolating move.
And I think that—and, of course, we would not isolate ourselves from Israel, which would continue to bang the drum for military intervention against Iran.
And Trump has taken the first step in that.
You understand, in his public comments, he does not deny that we stopped Iran's missile or nuclear program, but—and that Obama did that.
But now he's talking about their missile program, which was never part of the deal.
Yeah.
I just read a great thing the other day, actually, I think it was War on the Rocks, about how they don't have an intercontinental ballistic missile program, a three-stage rocket program or anything like that.
And, yes, they do have a satellite program, but that's really not the same thing.
Even though everybody thinks it's Sputnik and it proves that, in theory, they can get a rocket high enough, that the rockets that they're developing for space are really not suitable for delivering nuclear warheads anywhere in Europe or the U.S.
It's just not what they're up to right now.
They're not even close to designing or fielding a system that could deliver a nuclear warhead, which they don't have anyway.
Right.
This is not, you know, North Korea.
This is a country that has a different position on nuclear weapons.
In talking with Iranian officials over the last 15 to 20 years, which I have, they've said again and again and again and again that their approach to Islam means that they cannot design nuclear weapons.
I'm not naive.
I think that under some circumstances they would, but they have not done so.
And you know, trust but verify, as Mr. Reagan said, that's fine.
But you know, right now there's no evidence at all that they're developing nuclear weapons, regardless of what Israel and the Foundation for Defense Democracies would have us believe.
There's no evidence at all.
So this agreement, not only has this agreement worked, we're dealing with a country that has rejected the development of nuclear weapons to begin with.
I mean, this is an example of, you know, we can't, you know, we can't embrace a victory that we have.
Why not?
Let's begin the celebration and let's deal with Iran on a different level.
Let's negotiate economic and cultural and educational agreements and try to pry open that country and reach an understanding with them.
You know, I don't know why we have to open this toolbox and take out a hammer.
There's a lot of tools that we can use if we really want to moderate the behavior of Iran.
Yeah, I think it was probably you and I joking before a couple of years ago or something about we really need to get Boeing and Lockheed to step up their arms sales to Iran.
That's how to smooth relations over, is get the military-industrial complex, you know, arming both sides of this thing and maybe get them so heavily invested in, I don't know, helping refurbish Iran's F-14s, for example, that, well, we couldn't possibly fight them now.
We have too many assets inside their country at the moment and too much money going back and forth.
That's sad to mention, aside from arms deals, which are in the far distance, as we joked.
But there are plenty of companies in the United States would love to have economic contracts and business contracts with the government in Iran.
This is a very fertile market for American business, and that's what I believe the American people hope that Mr. Trump would do, instead of, you know, continuing these endless confrontations and winless wars that we've had over the last 20 years.
Yeah.
Well, I certainly think, and I say it all the time, but I think it's important somehow it's going to get through to somebody, maybe to him, that he could, he could go from his meeting with Kim where he says, listen, you give up your nukes and your missiles and we will give you an outright security guarantee and a final peace deal and an end to the Korean War of the 1950s.
Shake hands.
Let's do this.
He could ride on the plane and he could go to Tehran and say, let's end this cold war.
This is ridiculous.
Let's be friends like it was in the days.
And who cares?
You know, I mean, in fact, that's the expectation.
I think that that is the standard populist expectation of why this man was elected.
But apparently he hasn't gotten the message.
He's re-upped in Afghanistan.
He's increased the defense budget.
And here we go again.
He looks like a neoconservative and not the populist that he ran on, the platform that he ran on.
It's too bad.
It's a missed opportunity.
Well, and the thing is, too, as you could tell, he really believes all the propaganda about Iran.
I mean, there's this whole narrative about Iran.
And hey, it's right, right around now, Mark, it's the 15th anniversary of the war to topple Iran's adversary, Saddam Hussein, from power in Baghdad.
You know, Jonathan Landay told me the story.
He was in Kurdistan and sat there and watched as Abdulaziz al-Hakim from the Supreme Islamic Council came across the border on America's heels to come and take over that country.
And then it seems to me like everything they've done, especially what's gone on in Syria, and as we're talking about with Qatar and even partially the war in Yemen, although it's a pretty poor excuse, if you ask me, is all about trying to make up for this massive own goal that America did in empowering Iran's friends in Iraq, because they listened to Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, who listened to Ahmed Chalabi, and they're all idiots and liars and it didn't work out the way that they wanted it.
And so now they're trying to make up for that.
But the narrative, of course, and Trump, I guess, probably knows a little bit better himself.
He said so.
He said the narrative in D.C. has nothing to do with, OK, yes, we admit this is really all our fault in the first place.
However, it doesn't even say that.
It just says Iran is on the march.
Iran is more powerful than ever.
Iran somehow has a lot more influence in Iraq than ever before and other places.
And of course, the narrative right now in Syria is, oh my God, Iran, Iran, Iran in Syria, with no explanation that they're only there to counter America's support for, hey, the al-Qaeda guys, the American people's actual enemies in the world.
Well, I think there's a lot to what you say.
I think this is compensation for getting it wrong to begin with, is to get it even more wrong.
Yeah.
It's a pretty sad commentary on American foreign policy that one of the options that we have is to make up for past mistakes by making more mistakes.
Yeah.
I say call it off.
That's a bad idea.
All right.
Can I ask you one more thing?
You got to go.
One more thing.
One more thing.
Is John Bolton going to be the National Security Advisor?
Gosh, you asked me the hardest question of all.
Please just tell me.
No, I don't think so, Scott.
No, I don't think so.
I don't.
I think it's going to be Keith Kellogg, but I could be wrong.
If John Bolton were announced this afternoon, you can go on the air and tell your listeners, Mark Perry got it wrong, because I hope I'm wrong.
And you know that I hope I'm wrong.
But I don't think it'll be John Bolton.
I think it'll be- No, you hope you're right.
I hope I'm right.
I hope I'm right.
I hope you're right.
And I, but I, you know, Bolton is in the running without a doubt, and he certainly wants a job.
But I think that Mr. Trump would be more likely to appoint Keith Kellogg.
And I think Jim Mattis has weighed in on this.
I have no, again, I'm speculating, but I think that Secretary of Defense Mattis has told Mr. Trump he would prefer not to work with John Bolton.
All right.
Well, and Kellogg, he's, is that the guy that was Connolese Rice's guy back before?
Yeah, he's a four star.
He's a- Oh, okay.
I hope that I'm going to have a- Oh, I know who you're talking about.
I'm sorry.
I was thinking of somebody else.
Somebody floated the name of a guy who used to work for Connolese Rice on the National Security Council, and now is at something tank or another.
But that's not Kellogg.
No, no.
Keith Kellogg is a four star special forces officer and paratrooper out of the US military.
And he's a, well, he's a user friendly, as it was described to me.
It seems to me more likely that- Yeah, I've read that Trump likes him, that they get along and joke together.
They get along and Trump likes him, so it'll probably be him.
Okay.
All right.
Well, I'll take it.
As long as Bolton's still around, he's like this specter floating, this possibility that he'll be in there at some point if he's only persistent enough.
I hope that we're all wrong about that and that John Bolton never gets appointed to anything.
All right.
Listen, thanks so much for coming back on the show, Mark.
I really appreciate it.
It's always a great pleasure and good to talk to you.
All right, you guys.
That's the great Mark Perry.
He's at the American Conservative Magazine, and this one is called The Political Forces Behind Rex Tillerson's Firing.
And that's theamericanconservative.com, scotthorton.org, youtube.com slash scotthortonshow, twitter.com slash scotthortonshow, antiwar.com, foolsaron.us for my book.
The audio book is now available.
Go and get it.foolsaron.us for that.
And follow me on Twitter.
I already said that.
What did I leave out?
Oh, the Libertarian Institute.
Libertarianinstitute.org.
All right.
You guys have a nice day.
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And what you'll want to do then is go to Roberts and Roberts, Brokerage Inc.
That's rrbi.co, rrbi.co.
And platinum, palladium, gold and silver, of course, as well.
They take the slightest commission and provide great service.
And if you buy with Bitcoin, there is no service fee at all.
That's rrbi.co for all your precious metals.
And then, of course, Zencash.
It's a new digital currency, but it's also an encrypted messaging app and file transfer app.
And you can learn all about it at zensystem.io, that's zensystem.io for Zencash.
And then libertystickers.com, we've got a brand new website.
In fact, just don't even go to the current website.
Wait like 15 minutes and then go.
We've got a brand new website going up there for libertystickers.com.
It'll be up sometime next week.
And I finally got Illustrator again, so we're going to be getting some new stickers up there.
Lots of good anti-government propaganda for you there at libertystickers.com.
And listen, if you want a new website, a 2018 model website, you've got to keep up with the times for your business or whatever it is you're doing.
What you do is go to expanddesigns.com slash scott and you'll save 500 bucks.
