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 us, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like, say our name, 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, you guys, I got Gareth Porter back on the line.
He wrote one for TAC this time.
Do Iranian threats signal organized U.S.-Israel subterfuge?
Yeah.
Hey, welcome back.
How are you doing, man?
I'm okay, Scott.
Thanks for getting me back on.
Pretty obviously the usual suspects are acting suspicious.
Take us through a little bit of the history of the recent threats here with the claims of the Trump White House that they are reacting to Iranian moves in the region.
We'll get back to Israel and all this kind of background in a minute.
But first of all, just sort of catch us up on the recent tensions.
The headlines that everybody's been reading, of course, for the last two or three weeks, have been basically that the Trump administration has credible intelligence that indicates that Iran may launch some sort of an attack on U.S. personnel or interests in the Middle East.
And that's been the headline writ large ever since Bolton's May 5th pronunciamento in various ways and various forms.
And, of course, there's been a lot of events that have followed and accompanied the unfolding of that story.
You've got these two incidents involving the oil tankers near the Gulf, the Persian Gulf, near a UAE port.
Four tankers supposedly sabotaged with some sort of hole in the hulls.
A couple of pictures showing at least one tanker with a hole.
And then you've got the lone Katyusha rocket falling into the green zone on May 19th, a week after that incident with the oil tankers.
And both of those incidents, of course, accompanied by multiple stories connecting that up with the warnings from the Trump administration's national security team, Bolton, Pompeo and company, to the effect that Iran was in the process of preparing threats to Americans and American interests.
So it all seems on the surface to hang together to constitute a credible storyline, which seems to show, and I emphasize the seems in quotation marks here, seems to show that, indeed, Bolton and his friends were correct that Iran must be waging a campaign here to threaten, to frighten, to terrorize Americans and American interests in the Middle East.
That's the way I would summarize the storyline thus far, as it appears from reading the press.
And behind that, of course, is a very different story.
Well, and in fact, behind all that are many contrary leaks coming from inside the government.
For a change, the resistors, you know, the resistance and the never Trump fifth column inside the government that refuses to obey the elected power, they're doing the right thing in this case and putting it right in the Daily Beast, where you would expect to find the worst hype against Iran, in this case saying, you can't trust Trump on Iran, him and Bolton, they're trumping this stuff up.
Well, you're right.
There is over the past week or so, I would say there's been the first stirrings of dissent resistance, as I think you put it a moment ago, to the whole Trump administration line about Iran, about the new credible threat from Iran, coming essentially pretty clearly from the uniformed military people in the Pentagon, who are genuinely, I think, not in sympathy with that line, who believe that Iran is not about to threaten the United States or Americans, and who regard this as part of a broader initiative by Bolton and Pompeo to prepare the public and the media for further steps toward war with Iran.
I think that they're genuinely concerned about that.
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In fact, Gareth, you end your article with this quote in Newsweek, where one kind of officer, a military official said, I don't know, be on the lookout for Iraq 2.0 justifications.
Think about the intel indicators prior to the Iraq invasion.
Compare.
Then get really uneasy.
I didn't need him to do the conclusion part for me, but okay.
It's a wonderful quote, though.
It really is.
It says a lot there in relatively few words.
Yeah.
Well, and so, you know, Colonel Douglas MacGregor had said on the Tucker Carlson show that Mr. President, beware of Gulf of Tonkin type incidents and provocations.
It's the kind of thing sounds like there's a risk of this thing actually happening.
Well, of course there is a risk.
No question about it.
In my mind, there is a risk.
It doesn't mean that it's a sure thing.
There are lots of things that can happen to block it.
But definitely it's a risk and the most serious risk that we've faced thus far.
Well, and the thing of it is, is there's really nothing to fight about it.
That's what makes me so skeptical is, you know, just like always, they have to essentially just lie about what Iran is doing and what their motivations are.
In order to justify war.
And so far, it just hasn't worked.
That you give us, give the military, nevermind us, give the military a good reason to attack Iran and they'll do it.
But right now, everybody's just kind of, other than those who are, you know, full in on the news cycle narrative here, everyone else is kind of shrugging and asking, well, what did they do lately?
I mean, what's the emergency right now?
What is the big deal?
Something about they were preparing to hit our guys in Iraq, Gareth?
I don't really get down to the specifics of what has come up in some of the coverage more recently.
I'm writing about that at this very moment, just to let your listeners know in advance.
I am working on a piece that looks at the apparent attacks on the oil tankers and the lone rocket that landed in the green zone on May 19th as false flag attacks and looking at in depth at the evidence that shows very clearly that that's the case.
And part of that story, you know, which has already been in the press, is that when Pompeo went to Iraq suddenly on May 15th, if I remember correctly, he was basically talking to the Iraqis about intelligence, according to Reuters report, intelligence about Iranian missiles being given to Shiite militias that were supposedly pointed toward or menacing U.S. military facilities in Iraq.
I'm not going to go into detail about it, but I mean, it turns out to be a completely misleading storyline that fits into a larger picture of deceit.
So, I mean, that's the kind of thing that we're up against here.
And behind that story and the entire larger credible intelligence, quote unquote, that this is all about, it goes back to the Israelis.
I mean, that's the real underlying story.
Wait, get back to that in a second, because before the Israelis, too, it's also the logical syllogism that, well, the Iranian empire is out there doing everything everywhere.
So, if they want, the next time Islamic Jihad sets off a rocket and Israel blames it on Hamas, then America can just blame that on Iran and say Iran is attacking poor Israel.
We have to defend them.
Or if the Houthis get off a successful drone strike against a target or another in Saudi Arabia, then that's an Iranian proxy hitting an American ally and, hey, my costus belly red line has been passed.
How about yours?
And those are the markers they've already set down.
So, where any normal person should respond to your talk about this rocket in the green zone with a shrug.
Who cares about one rocket fired by some Iraqi insurgent?
Maybe.
What does that mean?
The reason it's so important is because they want to try to turn that into an excuse for a real attack.
Right.
You're right, of course, that there has been really years of laying down a narrative in which the Iranians are accused of essentially plotting in multiple ways to basically take over most of the Middle East, constantly supporting terrorism, being prepared to and carrying out attacks against Americans, etc., etc.
But now I think we have a heightened case of this narrative being turned into an immediate narrative of threat that is imminent.
And that, of course, accompanying the moves by Bolton and his allies to increase the tensions with Iran, prepare the public for further moves by the United States, and to justify a much more aggressive policy toward Iran and the Middle East generally.
And so it is in that context that we have this pair of incidents in the Gulf and in Iraq, the green zone in Iraq, taking place and being sort of touted as clear evidence that they were right.
They were right all along.
And so it's the combination of all of that background and the immediate sort of scene setting by Bolton and his friends and the careful cultivation of this narrative through the series of events that then culminates in the present situation.
And I think that's why we're up against a new level of threat from the warmongers in the Trump administration.
And listen, I'm going to let you talk all about the Israeli angle on this in just one second, because, I mean, what the hell, I've buried the lead this far, so I might as well continue with that for a second.
But I want to mention this interview with Donald Trump on Fox News from Sunday, which got a lot of attention because he talked about the military-industrial complex and how when he wanted to get out of Syria after defeating the Islamic State, that this town, Washington, D.C., went completely nuts.
And they love war, he said.
He could have said for the money, but we all know that that's what he means.
And he complained about that.
And then so the interviewer says, yeah, well, you know, but you keep saying all this hawkish stuff.
But what people like is all the anti-war stuff, he said.
That's why they voted for you in the first place.
And he says, oh, I know, I know, I know.
Look at me, I want out of Syria, I want out of Afghanistan.
I'm trying to make peace with Korea.
But let me tell you something, we've got to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
And the thing is, if that was George Bush or anyone in the Obama administration or anything saying that, or if it was John Bolton saying that, then I know they know that they're lying.
But when I was listening to Donald Trump, and this is a flaw I think a lot of people really do.
David Swanson had a great article about this the other day.
Everyone always assumes that anyone who's arguing with them really secretly agrees with them or knows everything that they know and just, you know, are essentially dishonest people in every way.
And they don't mean really what they say because they just couldn't and this kind of thing.
Whereas, of course, anything we say is always the driven snow and this kind of deal.
But so I was thinking that Trump really believes this.
And he's repeated this numerous times that the generals all told him, you and I may have talked about this part before, when he came in, they brought him into the fanciest room.
And he refers to this same thing again, in this interview.
They brought him into this big fancy room, the tank at the Pentagon or somewhere else.
I'm not exactly sure, but the room with the most fancy screens and flashing buttons and stuff.
And they said to him, Iran, Iran, Iran, look on the map.
He talked about this.
Look on the map of Iran is here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
And every conflict going on, Iran is there too.
And all this kind of thing.
And Trump just does not have the intellect or the background to stand up to this assault from these guys.
And they completely won him over on this.
And so where any educated person should just scoff and say, you know, staying in Syria keeps Iran from having a nuclear weapon.
And you're the guy who's trying to kick them out of the NPT.
You're the guy who had a double plus extra super lucky happy wish deal on top of the NPT and safeguards agreement to lock their nuclear program down.
And you're the one who broke the deal.
So, but the thing is, is he really believes this garbage more than just he's a malevolent, dishonest force, like I think would be a more direct statement about somebody like George W. Bush, who, as dumb as he was, he knew what the truth was about this stuff, mostly, I think.
I don't want to get into a long digression about this.
But I would say that the reality surrounding Donald Trump is a bit of both.
That I think he genuinely does believe that Iran is problematic in terms of its nuclear policy.
But that is overwhelmingly, of course, a product of his political interests in that he depends on or believes that he has to depend on Sheldon Adelson's money for sort of making sure that he has the coffers full when he wants to run for reelection.
And no question that his choice of Bolton as national security adviser was extremely heavily influenced by Sheldon Adelson being behind him.
I think I've said on your show that when Bolton called in at a crucial moment in Trump's decision making on the JCPOA, on exactly what to say about it, it was from Sheldon Adelson's residence in Las Vegas.
And he got the president's ear immediately.
And Trump essentially put into his speech precisely what Bolton wanted him to say about getting out.
So this is just by way of saying that I think it's a mix of his inclinations personally and his political interests that are so powerfully engaged behind the anti-Iran policy.
And that really is problematic.
But on the other hand, he obviously is not getting the information that he has to have in order to see any alternative to what he's doing.
And that's, you know, Rand Paul is our best bet to have to talk to him and say, Mr. President, look, you're not aware of the following facts, but you have to understand A, B, C and D. And this is the way out of this situation.
Yeah, well, Rand Paul ain't got the stones.
Well, you know, I think that that's the closest thing we have for the foreseeable future.
Now that may change.
Bolton may be out.
At the moment, at least, that's our best bet.
Well, and it's true that all along, Trump has been the worst on Iran.
You know, he's had decent things to say, at least, about getting out of Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia.
Horrible on Yemen, the very worst one right now.
But on Iran, it's always hawking it up.
It's pretty apparent that he doesn't really want to have a war.
But then again, he's doing, you know, like Clinton dealing with Milosevic or something, where he's giving an ultimatum that they're never going to give in to, you know.
And knowingly so, or at least a very sloppy practice of the art of the deal here, where America withdraws from the deal, puts on all these harsh sanctions, and says, now give me an even better deal than before, which gives the Ayatollah essentially no way out other than, what, blowing his own brains out or something?
Give me a break.
He's never going to give in to that.
We absolutely have to find a way to get the reality of the background of this whole Iran nuclear negotiations, and indeed the background of the Iran nuclear program in general, to the White House.
I don't know how that can be done, but that is absolutely a vital necessity.
Yeah, you know, it'd be nice if Trump at least read Pat Buchanan, but nah.
Because Pat's really good on this stuff, because Pat knows Gordon Prather.
So Pat, he really knows the deal about all the deals.
Anyway, man, what was I going to ask you next?
Elaborate, if you could, a little bit more about the bombings of these ships, because right as we're going on here, I have Fox News running on mute in the background, and the Pentagon is saying that they have concluded that the Revolutionary Guard Corps was behind the attack.
The attacks, whatever happened to these ships?
I had not seen that specific wording.
What I had seen was that when Pompeo went to Iraq, it coincided with a report that security officials believe, that was the term used in the Reuters report, I believe, security officials believe that Iran was behind the operation, although there's no evidence that they played any operational role.
They gave the go-ahead, they gave the approval to somebody, they don't even know who, but somebody, to go ahead with it.
That was the line that was taken a little more than, what, a week ago now.
OK, well, yeah, I mean, this was supposedly breaking on Fox News today, that they were concluding this.
I'm actually looking at the Fox website right now, and I don't see it.
Yeah, but this is the shadiest kind of exercise in talking about intelligence that one can imagine.
It's about three or four steps removed from any genuine intelligence, obviously.
And we're talking about, what, just a couple of homemade bombs that did not even penetrate the hull of two oil tankers, something along this line, is that what it is?
Well, it penetrated, it made a hole, but not enough.
OK, I saw one of them just had a big dent, right, or not?
OK, I can't say how deeply it penetrated.
Yeah, maybe it was just a dent, possibly just a dent.
Or maybe we're thinking of two different pictures, but I'm pretty sure I saw one that was just a dent.
The story about this is it was a limpet mine, which was used by, not in its original form, limpet mine was a World War II era mine that was used to sink German ships by the British.
British intelligence invented it.
It was essentially a small, relatively small mine that was attached by a magnet to a ship to sink it.
And limpet mines are supposed to be able to sink very substantial ships, obviously, that's the way it was invented.
And then the CIA, according to Charlie Wilson's war, the CIA modified them so that the Mujahideen could attach them to Soviet tanks in Afghanistan to blow them up.
But in any case, you know, anybody who wanted to blow up a ship with a limpet mine would be able to do it.
No problem.
Not that difficult.
And so clearly, whatever was done to that ship, it was not with the intention of sinking it or even causing enough damage to risk the sinking of it.
It was done to just make a point for the purpose of publicity and politics.
Yeah, well, it makes sense.
So you think then it was just done by the UAE or the Saudis rather than, say, some al-Qaeda guys trying to pick a fight between the US and Iran?
Well, you know, let's think about who has the greatest capability for covert operations such as this in the Middle East.
Take a guess.
US.
Well, US has the capability.
And then there's another country.
The Israelis.
The Israelis are well known for their naval commandos in recent decades, and they are the ones who have been behind most of the activity surrounding this narrative, haven't they?
This is the point that I would make at this point, at least.
Yeah, so go ahead and talk all about that, the meetings with the Israelis and really the Israeli origin of this whole story, right?
Yeah, I think we have to go back to the beginning on this.
So that's what, three, four weeks ago?
Well, no, the beginning really is December 2017, when then-National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster met with the Israeli National Security Advisor Ben Shabbat in the White House.
And both sides had their full national security teams, the intelligence, foreign affairs, and military, or Pentagon, as the case may be.
And they agreed, after two full days of secret meetings, to a joint strategy for dealing with Iran, for opposing Iran.
And I don't want to take this- And even a joint working group, whatever that means, right?
To form a joint working group.
And that working group would have four separate missions, four separate groups or four separate questions to be continued to put under, having a discussion to come up with details.
The fourth of which was, without having the exact wording in front of me, to come up with, to work on scenarios for escalation of conflict with Iran in the Middle East regionally.
So in other words, it would cover Syria, it would cover anything that had to do with Iran, of course, anything that Iran had anything to do with.
And it would presumably mean that there would be plans for dealing with various scenarios that involved counteractions that the United States would take in conjunction with Israel against Iran.
So from my point of view, that's a very clear link to the whole sequence of events that have occurred since then.
Now, to just leap forward, that working group has, just to lay the full groundwork, the story of that agreement, that secret agreement in December 2017 was written by Barak Ravid, the leading national security correspondent, arguably in Israel.
Now working for Channel 13, a major television outlet in Israel.
Before that, he worked for Haaretz, and now writes as well for Vox Newswire.
And so all of his stories are available at Vox.
He's written at least four stories, I'm pretty sure I have all of them now, that have dealt with the original agreement and further evidence or further details about that and subsequent meetings that have taken place where the Israelis and the Americans, beginning with, I believe the next one was in mid-year of 2018, after Bolton became national security advisor, and he's continued to provide details of things that have been agreed to by the two sides.
And then that leads then to the story that he wrote in mid-April of 2019, in which he, I'm sorry, it was not written in mid-April, it was written in early May, about a meeting in mid-April between Bolton and Ben Shabbat and their respective teams, in which they agreed to essentially, they talked about, I should say, a set of scenarios that the Mossad presented to the meeting about potential ways in which Iran could threaten American and allied interests in the region.
So you put that together with the original agreement about the scenarios that they would jointly address in future working group meetings, and you see the origins of the whole initiative that Bolton and Pompeo put together for this month.
And it's very clear that their intelligence, their so-called credible intelligence, is not real intelligence at all, as I point out in my story, but rather a reflection of the speculation that they got from Mossad.
And of course, the Israelis came up with specific photographs of these fishing dhows where they showed they were being loaded with some rockets or some missiles, and that was used to say, see here, we have the goods here, and that's what we're basing these scenarios on.
But of course, those photographs of fishing dhows don't prove anything, and as I point out in my article, a reasonable assumption or reasonable interpretation of what was going on there was that the Iranians were taking some missiles to islands that they own, that have already military bases on them, where they could have missiles that they could use to respond to any threat from the United States, any attack by the United States.
They would be in a better position to retaliate with their missiles on these islands.
But the idea that they would use fishing dhows to threaten U.S. boats, which is what was put out as part of the propaganda line of the Bolton folks, is ludicrous, because A, there's no known technology that the Iranians have to fire these missiles from fishing boats, and B, there's no testing that's ever been done to anybody's knowledge, which they would have to do in order to devise something, to know how to use it, and C, it makes no sense strategically because they already have the anti-ship missiles on land, and if these missiles were to be taken to the islands that they own, where they have bases, they could better protect them than they could in a fishing dhow, which would be easily spotted and targeted by U.S. bombs.
Correct me if I'm wrong, too, that if you trace the story all the way back, they say, well, they see one container on one of these ships that they think is the kind of container that would have a missile in it, in pieces.
Well, you know, we don't know what they actually had.
There was one story that claimed that there were pictures taken of these ports, but this is easily the kind of thing that word of mouth from one photo turns into many photos.
It's very likely you're right.
But it was the Israelis who said that they saw this going on.
That's right, that they took photographs, yeah.
They may well have photographs.
I wouldn't doubt that.
That's very possible.
And there are other photographs that have come up in conjunction with this larger story, which I won't go into.
So, yeah, the Israelis are very active in taking photos that they turn over to the Americans and get them to do things as a result of their photographs on the basis of, you know, speculative interpretations, right?
Of course, yeah.
As long as it fits with the narrative, it's all good.
Exactly.
Well, and so, you know, it's really amazing, too, the way, you know, the warnings of Gulf of Tonkins and Iraq War IIs and this kind of thing.
There's still old reliable Barbara Starr at CNN and the rest of her compatriots, you know, in TV land mostly and in the Post and the Times where it counts the most, where it doesn't matter how ridiculous this stuff is.
It doesn't matter that it's John Bolton saying it.
They just go right along with the thing.
I was reading a piece of newspaper, Armbruster or something like that, about how Barbara Starr interviewed the British two-star Lieutenant General who debunked the intelligence about the threat of Iraqi militias and how she was just incredulous.
She couldn't believe it and asked him again, wait, are you sure?
Because that's what I heard.
Yeah.
I had that quote in my story and it came from the floor to General Ghika and after he debunked the whole line that there was additional, there was a higher chance of some sort of a threat to U.S. bases or U.S. forces in Iraq, she popped up and said, well, how can you say that?
I mean, are you saying that all this intelligence we've been getting is wrong?
Exactly what I'm saying.
Which is just unimaginable because I can't remember a time that the U.S. government had ever lied to Barbara Starr before.
You know, I was even thinking actually when I was reading that that you could actually write a book about things that Barbara Starr got wrong and then you could even have an introduction about what a nice lady she is and how you see the reason that she's wrong all the time and she lies virtually 100% of the time.
It wouldn't be hard.
I mean, you could fill up 300 pages worth in no time, I bet.
And I was about to say that, you know, the fact that we're beginning to see signs of resistance on the part of some people in the media who are getting it from the Pentagon as we were just talking about some moments ago does not mean that there aren't people in the major networks and some of the print media as well.
So you like supporting anti-war radio hosts.
That makes sense.
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All right.
Now, so on the flip side of this thing, the Ayatollah, he means us no harm at all, Gareth?
He means us no harm if we attack.
But otherwise, absolutely not.
He's not going to harm us.
So, all right.
But I can see that the United States of America is in America.
But what about the Ayatollah is trying to take over the whole region and kill all our allies and friends if we don't stop him?
Yeah, right.
Because I heard that from Barbra Starr, too.
I know you've heard that.
I have, too.
You know, we do have a fundamental problem here that needs a lot of work to take apart the narrative that has been put together so carefully, not carefully, that's not the right word, but so assiduously over the past decade or so, that Iran has extended its tentacles into large parts of most of the Middle East, that they are malign actors, that everything they do is an effort to gain control.
And, of course, you know, as well as I do, you know much better than anyone else that I'm going to be interviewed by, that this is not only untrue, but it is exactly the, it's a way of covering up the unpalatable truth, historically, that it has been U.S. decisions and U.S. recklessness over this past 15 years that has essentially created not just the opportunities, but the dynamics that are inherent in the politics of Iraq, of Yemen, of Syria, and of Libya, that has created this, the destabilization of the region, which Iran has certainly taken advantage of, but has done so under circumstances which no self-respecting set of leaders in any country of any consequence could have afforded not to respond to, is the way I would put it.
And so I think that is the counter-narrative that must be worked on much more than has been done thus far.
And I intend to do more on it myself.
Yeah, you know, I don't know if it's really not, but essentially in every interview I say the same thing.
That Bush essentially, accidentally, but then with purpose, you know, took the side of Iran's friends in the El Salvador option and the Iraqi constitution and purple-fingered elections and all this was in favor, not just of the Shia, but Iran's best friends among the Shia, the Supreme Islamic Council and the Dawa Party, and that then he regretted it.
And that all of American policy ever since then has been built for that essentially by backing the Sunnis and backing them so far as to back Al-Qaeda as long as they're trying to check Iranian influence, which is only always counterproductive see Syria and Iraq war three, which America, and this is actually an important question.
I could turn my whole rant into the form of a question here, but isn't it the case right now?
This is disrupted to the narrative, but it's also just its own important point.
Isn't it the case right now that U.S. special operations forces and I guess CIA and whoever are essentially embedded with these Shiite militias in Iraq war three and a half in Western Iraq right now?
The very same guys they wish they hadn't fought Iraq war two for are the same guys that they fought Iraq war three for to drive ISIS back out of Western Iraq after the back them in Syria policy blew up in America's face so badly.
And so, but that's still going on to this day, right?
That's who we're fighting with is the Iraqi army and their auxiliaries, which is these other, essentially, these breakoffs of the Baata Brigade from back in Iraq war two.
Yeah, it's the PMU, what they've called the PMU in Iraq, which is the collection of essentially Shia militia, which have been fighting Islamic State with the support of and in conjunction with the Operation Inherent Resolve, which General Ghika was representing in that now famous briefing.
And the fact that he took the position that he did pooh-poohing the idea that there was any new threat from Iran or Iran-backed militias is just another indicator that, indeed, they are still working with the PMU.
They regard, I would say, it's fair to say, they regard most of the Shia militias that they are working with as reliable allies.
There are a few that they have some concerns about.
They're watching them closely, but they are not prepared to denounce them or to say that they are carrying out plans to attack the Americans or anything of that sort.
And so I think in substance, your comment is pretty close to accurate.
Yeah.
I mean, and so in a sense, in a very different sense, it is true that the Iranians' friends have their bayonets at our guys' back.
Like, you know, the Jedi and the clones ready for Order 66 the moment America attacks Iran.
Just as I remember Seymour Hersh quoting Pentagon officials back in 2005.
He said, if we attack Iran, we will blow up like a candle.
You know, he said, one of the quotes in there was the Ayatollah Khamenei could send his forces and they could take Basra with one imam and a sound truck.
You know, in other words, a guy and a loudspeaker saying, yep, well, we're here now.
And in the event of war, that doesn't mean the Iraqi Shia are totally the cat's paws and agents of Iran.
If America attacked Iran, our guys embedded with the Shia in Iraq, even now, in 2019, we're having this conversation, we'd be in a mess of trouble.
And so they're exploiting the truth of that in a way to try to turn it around and make it sound like that's what they're gearing up for is just to stab us in the back when it's still, as I said, a defensive posture.
But yeah.
Exactly.
And by the way, just a historical footnote to that point.
In 2007, when Dick Cheney famously, and not very many people are aware of this, Dick Cheney, you know, advanced this notion or this proposal within the leadership organs of the national security state of the Bush, George W. Bush administration, the idea that the United States should take advantage of an incident in Iraq where U.S. servicemen are killed and can be blamed on the Iranians because they're Shiite militia buddies in Iraq and they're trying to get to the bottom of this issue and they're trying to get to the bottom of this issue and that's why the Shiite militia buddies were responsible.
And the Pentagon sat on it because, and they made the argument very explicitly, that the result would be that U.S. would be vulnerable to attacks by the militias in Iraq that they would not be able to escape retribution and that would be an extremely harsh penalty to pay for trying to get to the bottom of this issue and that's why the Pentagon sat on it because they would not be able to escape retribution for trying to attack Iran.
Yeah.
Well even then they talk about, I'm sure you saw Kurt Mill's piece in The National Interest I talked to him about it on the show where these guys are telling him well what we're envisioning is something like Operation Desert Fox where, which Bill Clinton named after Erwin Rommel the Nazi servant of Adolf Hitler in the World War there but anyway which was just Iraq that couldn't possibly hit back at the time there in 1998 incidentally on the day the house was to begin debating the full house was to begin debating the articles of impeachment against him I'm sure had nothing to do with that and but anyway and that's what it would be like if we attack Iran and then the presumption is tell me how firmly you want to stand on this that if we start bombing here they're a threat that we have to defend ourselves from at the same time though if we attack them they'll sit there and take it rather than really get bloody you know who who makes that makes that argument quite explicitly Netanyahu and his his friends in Israel that that was precisely the position that was being taken by Netanyahu and by the Israeli lobby people during the period back in 2009 when the the hardliners in the Israeli lobby the people who really wanted to bomb Iran very badly were going were going on I don't know if it was on Fox News but in the in the right wing press saying now is the time for us to hit Iran and their argument was the same one that Netanyahu would would later make and that that the Iranians would not dare to to attack U.S. assets in the Middle East because the United States would then have the excuse for completing the job on Iran in Iran well then part of your reporting then 12 years ago was the Pentagon theory of escalation dominance and that they don't want to fight Iran and that you know so confident that Mike Tyson's dictum that you can have a plan until you get punched in the mouth and then everything changes that that doesn't count only then do they want to do this and I mean we're talking about 2007 they were blaming all of their failures in Iraq on Iran at that point even though the Pentagon believed that the Iranians had escalation dominance in the Middle East and that was certainly that America did not at least exactly well now and famously my first interview of you in January 2007 was about your article called no we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry if we do we're not going to attack Iran right now don't worry
