Robert Barnes: BREAKING: Trump Threatens to Bomb Iran's Critical Infrastructure Over Hormuz Attacks

[00:00:04]Hi everybody. Today's Wednesday, July 22nd, 20126 and our dear friend Robert Barnes is here with us. Welcome back, Robert.

[00:00:13]>> Glad to be here.

[00:00:15]>> And let me start with Donald Trump latest tweet or his post on true social.

[00:00:20]said, "From this point forward, anytime the Islamic Republic of Iran shoots at a ship in this form, whether it be by missile, rocket, drone, or any other device or weapon, the United States will bomb and destroy one bridge or power plant, including those located next to or in the capital city of Tehran. Thank you for attention, for your attention."

[00:00:44]Here is the tone that is coming out which could be part of that because of this situation in the straight of foremost together with the new escalation in the Red Sea, the new blockade that Yemen put on Saudi Arabia and where are we headed Robert? You see what's going on right now?

[00:01:04]>> Yeah, you know the I end up doing a deep dive into Iranian public opinion that [clears throat] had been published prior to this conflict escalating in in late February.

[00:01:14]And because I was curious that where Iran is going to go is going to dictate effectively the efficacy of Trump's strategy and at what point he has to exit rather than escalate. And Trump still operates on the illusion and delusion that he can through coercive threats economic and kinetic get what he wants anywhere in the world. Even though China smacked him around. uh he had to abandon his entire trade policy with China because China exercised its rare earth monopoly in ways that he couldn't counter kept pretending he could pretending he could [clears throat] came reality that he couldn't and he had to ultimately capitulate the the to the same to a certain degree with Russia thought he could exercise oh well we'll send in tomahawks we'll do this we'll do that all Russia did was escalate it conflict with Ukraine he failed to deliver on his anchorage promises of a peace deal on on his own terms that he had proposed and then rugpulled it like he's rugpulled the Iranian negotiations repeatedly and he continues to operate in this space that well if I push a little harder they'll fold and a big part of the premise for that is the belief that the Iranian government that the uh Islamic Republic of Iran is deeply unpopular with large numbers of people in Iran with large numbers of military and economic people with some degree of economic influence and military influence and police influence and that you've got this sort of cadre at the top uh that is corruptly operating in its own self-interest but that could not withstand enough economic or political pressure from the mass public that would then infiltrate into their police forces, their military forces and their political infrastructure. The problem is that has always been a lie. And but and by the CIA know knows it's alive because the main organization propagandizing this false information about the Iranian public opinion was created by the CIA.

[00:03:13]This group called Gammon uh that you know everything about it says I saw is like this screams CIA cutout. You suddenly a think tank shows up out of nowhere founded by two professors that almost nobody's heard of that are suddenly doing polling of Iran when they've never done polling anywhere any place at any time. They never pull any other country. They never test their polling by saying, "Here's what's going to happen in an election, for example."

[00:03:38]That's how pollsters prove their bonafidees. The accuracy of the art and science that goes into public opinion surveys where you're trying to talk to a thousand people and thereby project the opinions of a 100 million. the uh and so the and the CIA itself internally a a friend of mine pollster Richard Barers uh People's Pundit Daily was talking to a senator and a senator was going through the various fake polling organizations that are out there at the beginning of 2025 and trying to get some corrections on that thinking about it from a domestic and a USA perspective.

[00:04:09]Well, one of the main highlighted post polling groups was Gamut. The CIA itself had flagged it and said, "By the way, only use this for external propaganda.

[00:04:17]It's all complete garbage. Don't use it for internal analysis. The as and as we've seen the intelligence community has come out and said none of this is going to change Iran strategy. None of this is none of these coercive tactics or techniques are going to work. You deep you do University of Maryland a dozen years doing detailed polling of of the Iranian public using the most well- reggarded polling techniques available to them combined with poll the polling by Gallup polling by Reuters polling by the Washington Institute for the Near East polling by the Pew Foundation all US-based pollsters what you would find is that the Iranian public is more hardline than the past Ayatollah was. By October of 2025, the Iranian public opinion had shifted from six to one saying Islam prohibits developing an atomic bomb to a majority saying no, Islam doesn't prohibit developing an atomic bomb. You know, the the number of people willing to concede on giving up allied relationships with Hezbollah or the Hoodis uh or with the Shia militias or with the Shia population anywhere in the world was in the low single digits, 2 to 3%. The number of people in Iran who have ever wanted to overthrow the Islamic Republic has peaked around 20%.

[00:05:28]It's now around four or 5%. It is in the low low single digits. And this has accelerated and escalated since the conflict that if you understood the Shia mentality of sacrifice and the Persian deep pride in their culture and their history. I was reading a Persian poet that said, you know, I am present, I am past, I am the future, my presence will last. You know that gives an idea of the Persian mindset that all of these course of techniques and tactics have backfired and they continue to backfire. They make the US position worse and worse and worse in the Iranian public opinion that the memorand of understanding was truly controversial within Iran. If you had seen and studied this data that was confirmed by people like Sulaman Ahmed and others that were Max Blumenthal and others that were on the ground in Iran, it wasn't a coincidence they had the biggest public rally in the history of man for a single event in the support of the funeral of the Ayatollah and his people forget in the West four-year-old granddaughter that we murdered the but also uh it represented the broadening consensus within the Iranian public that they had been too soft that they had been too diplomatic that they had been too easy, that they they in October of 2025, not only did they want Iran to develop a nuclear bomb, even though the Ayatollah and his fatwa was still in existence at that time, majority of the Iranian public, but at the same time, and not wanting to back off on anything else, they said by 6 to1 margins, if Iran sovereignty is violated at all, there should be an immediate kinetic response, not a diplomatic response, because they were given those two options. And that used to be close back in the but the the the JCPOA the US never delivering on that. Then the escalating I you know then there was all the assassinations the the attacks on their ally Hezbollah with the decapitation strikes. Then the October 2024 strikes. Uh Obama and Trump never delivering on the JCPOA promises. While Iran did, we did not. That's been the relationship. Iran keeps its promises.

[00:07:25]The US does not. Uh and then seeing all the regime change operations and its effect in Syria and Libya, in Iraq, and to a certain degree in Lebanon, and then in Gaza, uh the Iranian public has been getting more hardline, more hardline, more hardline. And you could understand that would be manifested through their political infrastructure. Reality is the current Iranian president would probably lose if he ran for re-election right now because he tried to do a deal. So once you understand that you know the Iranian mindset mentality uh you know rooted in that Shia sense of sacrifice and Persian pride the that there is no desire to overthrow their government that the main emotional impetus to their nation is revenge at the moment not consiliation not uh res not resolution and that that's the uh that provides some limitations on what the Iranian leadership can even do and that this new class of leadership is much more hardline than the people that we murdered and that is in line with the Iranian public opinion and the zeitgeist of that public opinion. the you know there's been talk Max Blumenthal did a good interview with someone that's an Iranian professor at the University of Tyrron who really did a good analysis of how Iran would react and respond pointed out that sooner or later he believes implicitly by the nature of his answers that the religious leader the new supreme leader would say it's okay to develop nuclear weapons for deterrent purposes not for aggressive use purposes but for deterrent and self-defense purposes uh and that the Iran has never lacked the technical knowhow to develop nuclear weapons it's lacked the will to develop nuclear weapons because of the religious uh uh declaration against it uh that they've proven and going all the way back to refusing to do bio or chemical weapons in the 1980s while it was being used against them uh in the 1980s in the Iran Iraq war. So you aggregate this Iran is not going to capitulate. Iran's not going to fold. If Trump does what that does, the Trump keeps pretending he controls the escalatory ladder in lie of actually committing mass genocide, Israeli style mass genocide on the Persian population that would lead to Trump's impeachment, removal, and uh imprisonment for life if he were to even try to do it. the in lie of that Iran controls the escalatory ladder. That has been clear by from any geopolitical analyst around but especially when you realize the Iranian public restrains the ability for them to achieve even a diplomatic option. What Vance got done was really quite extraordinary given that the Iranian public didn't want it and then since Trump rugpulled it now it's going to be to me near impossible to get that back.

[00:10:07]So the only options for the US are exit or escalation. And if we escalate, Iran will will escalate even more. Escalate.

[00:10:14]Why is Israel sitting out right now?

[00:10:15]It's because they've seen all the radars taken out. They've seen all the air bases taken out. They understand they're not in a position to defend themselves.

[00:10:22]I mean, they had to cry uncle after the 12-day war in the summer of 2025, a war they started because they couldn't withstand the Iranian counterattacks.

[00:10:30]They're definitely not going to be able to handle the new wave of Iranian attacks that are enabled by Chinese technology that allow their weapons to be ridiculously precise. Uh more precise in many regards than our weapons have definitely been during this conflict.

[00:10:43]And so Trump just deludes himself into coercive pressure will work when it will backfire. And even though it's backfired for six months and if anybody, you know, and we took some heat at the beginning, Larry Johnson and I and some others for saying Trump's not operating within a sane decision-making process. his executive filter is diminished. This isn't old Trump. This is a King Lear Trump. Uh I don't know if there's any better evidence of it than what he just did in re-entering this war and continuing to threaten and continuing to increase escalatory meaning he convinced NBS to go back in and take out go in and you know prick the hoodies. Well, look at that. That backfired on the Saudis and the world because all of a sudden their oil is off offline because now that part of the straight is that straight is closed. So the uh it's it's idiocy compounding idiocy and the only question is does King Leer take us off the cliff before somebody takes pulls him back and it's not going to come from his cabinet of cowards. It's only can come I get criticism by the you know supporting Vice President Vance. If you people have seen the publications out there the he's the only restraining factor in this. So you can think whatever you want about Vance, dislike Vance all you want. He's been the only restraining factor for six months. He is quite literally our only hope that Trump doesn't take the whole world off an economic cliff.

[00:11:54]>> Yeah. Yeah. I think the case of Robert, the case of Yemen is so important right now. And do you think that Donald Trump would somehow get back to bombing Yemen again? Because yesterday he said he's not going to he doesn't have any sort of problem with Yemen. But as you mentioned, he supported the you know Saudi attack on Yemen. He said that Axis reported that.

[00:12:20]>> Yep.

[00:12:21]>> So how how do you see the situation between Yemen and Saudi Arabia is somehow tricky the whole >> he thinks in his mind that he can let let things unleash that will be coercive pressure without having accountability or responsibility for it. So you know let let the Saudis fight the Yemenes.

[00:12:40]Let let the Kurds fight the Iranians on the ground. uh the you know the let the uh uh Syrians uh in the in the uh and aid the Lebanese military to try to take out Hezbollah that he he convinces himself of that kind of proxy warfare uh will will prevail when everybody knows what's going on and what's happening in the region and so the the the there's two major limitations I should say three limitations on Trump one if you understand Iranian public opinion that there'll never be regime change there that the hardline movement is where the Iranian public is then you know that capitulation will never happen and that means his his goal of conquering or capitulation that or the capitulation part of prong of his strategy will never happen then the only question is can he conquer and the because to him right now compromise not an option it's either conquer or capitulation the the reality is we have economic hard limits military hard limits and political hard limits that are going to restrain them I see people saying uh they're going to you know send in ground troops to Iran Iran would love that because you know they would demonstrate their capacity in that in that arena that would humiliate the president even further. My view is vice president Vance believes there's no chance of meaningful ground troops of any kind. Uh and I think that's the case because as Larry Johnson has explained repeatedly, we don't have the and others we don't have the logistics to do that.

[00:14:01]We don't have the manpower to do that.

[00:14:03]So the I mean could we do and if you were going to do a secret mission to take over an island, would you broadcast it for three months in a row? I don't think so. So I don't think that's happening. We don't even have the manpower there at the time right now to do it. You can't rule out it completely because Trump is part nuts. Um but the but the Pentagon has pushed back on this repeatedly and been like nope nope nope nope. And like his latest threat is just a war crime threat. The if if you do anything to any particular ship trying to for commercial transit, we're going to take out one of your uh necessary things for for humanity to function.

[00:14:40]that I mean they've been trying to beg Trump to quit quit posting and quit answering questions on it because he digs himself deeper and he puts military personnel at legal risk and exposure by saying hey I'm going to commit a war crime okay now you as a military person cannot follow that order because that is an illegal order and you as a duty uh under US law you cannot follow an illegal order of a war crime by the president of the United States doesn't matter if he's the president of the United States you can't follow it he doesn't have that degree of immunity and impunity uh in terms to order such a thing. And so the that's our war crime laws have passed that into Congress. We imposed it on the world through the Nermberg code after World War II with the US created the Nermberg code, created those set of principles. So well, we're not in a position to abandon them now. And so given that uh can he conquer? Well, he's not going to take out their military capabilities. He's not going to take out their ability to build missiles and their ability to launch them. their ability to build drones and their ability to launch them, their ability to have the, you know, the underwater drones, the the various go fast boats, uh, the the, you know, the almost torpedoes in terms of the onwater drones that they have, the you aggregate the weaponry. Can we prevent them from making it? No. Can we prevent them from launching it? No. That means we can't conquer, we can't control the straight.

[00:15:54]Can we convince all the insurers and all the shipping companies and all the shipping crews to go in there without any worry or fear? No. That's gone. Uh, that ain't coming back. And so con we can't control the strait. We can't get regime change in Iran. We can't uh diminish their military capacity. In fact, we can't even control their nuclear capacity. The reality is if they really want to develop nuclear weapons, they will be able to develop nuclear weapons and they likely will do it rather faster than a lot of people think. And they may even get aid from surprising places like Pakistan, North Korea or China or Russia or some combination thereof. If those countries come to the conclusion, Trump is so nuts, we need to help Iran to put this to put this to bed. Because part of the reason Iran signed the memorandum of understanding wasn't because of public demand. Public demand was to not sign it. Rather, it was instead to satisfy Russia, China, and the global south to, you know, soften the economic blow of the strike being closed. The now that they blame the US for that in the global south, Russia and China, there's no longer as much pressure on Iran to do so. So, he cannot get them to capitulate. he will not be able to conquer them. Uh and that doesn't even get into so that's just the military limitations. Now let's get into the economic and political limitations on Trump economically. As Trump himself acknowledged and admitted just several weeks ago, we are now at the cliff. We were at the cliff four weeks ago by his own admission. We got this straight open. So that gave some some cushion and now we're approaching by mid August that cliff all over again which is they're even pretending they can go deeper into the strategic reserves and they really can't. They want to gamble on whether or not they can go below certain levels in those salt caverns and hope that it doesn't severely damage the uh everything that's there in those caverns in the future. Uh that's the kind of game they're playing. They wouldn't be playing that game if they if there was no problems with oil and gas supply. We went from 13 million barrels offline to closer to 20 million barrels offline when you include now the Saudis being blocked. Now, the Saudis can get that out through the other part of the Red Sea, but that delays delivery by 45 days or so on average and increases the cost.

[00:17:55]China is now back in the buying the oil and gas. And then, of course, it doesn't even deal with the refinery issue. The crack spreads when you know, you crack a barrel of oil, you get gasoline and diesel from it. That the the the price disparity between it and the paper price that's on the futures markets for oil is getting bigger and bigger and bigger because our refining capacity globally has massively shrunk. And we're making this worse by uh by the by by basically greenlighting and enabling Ukraine to to hit Russian diesel and Russian gas. Uh sort of making the problem worse at the same time. Uh the by a delusional King Leer president that just King Lear but much more dangerous because he's got his you know finger on the on a lot of military buttons. But economically two weeks 3 weeks we can't go further. We that's a real economic limitation on the president. And then the political one midterms are coming up. The he cannot afford to get crushed. He can lose the house and the senate. He can't afford to get crushed in it. Why? Because the if he doesn't have margins with a house member or senator that he can, you know, he can buy off to to not vote certain ways. The investigations will be wholesale and full scale into all of the various corruption schemes the president's been running as well as the fact that this war was an unconstitutional war, an illegal war, uh, and and an immoral war. And the background facts will shock a lot of people when they start coming out in honest thorough investigations because many of Trump's uh sickopantic staff will immediately burn Vance will be the last loyalist. You know, the the one the the number one critic of this war will be the last guy to to actually betray to play Brutus. The rest Marco Rubio can't wait to play Brutus. Uh the all that crowd Ratcliffe, he can't wait to play Brutus. They're not going to sacrifice their futures or careers for Trump.

[00:19:40]They'll immediately stab him right in the back like John Dean against with Richard Nixon. And what does that mean?

[00:19:46]That means uh impeachment that means potentially the first president ever removed from the presidency of the United States. And that's that's the risk he faces politically. So the political risk at economic risk and the military risk not even dealing by the way the military side with the fact that we don't have the weapons and we can't restock them because our military supply chain is so slow and because the rare earth that China has, they're not allowing us to use for very for these very military weapons. That's why the Patriot 3 folks are talking about creating like a fake halfass version of a Patriot 3 because they can't get the rare earth to make the real one. So all of those and this has now been confirmed. I know Larry took a lot of heat for pointing this out very early on that we're not in a position to use a lot of these munitions that will run low very quickly. Well, now you don't have to take Larry's word for it. You can find in the front pages of the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. So the militarily he Trump has hard limits to being able to continue to escalate this for very long.

[00:20:36]Politically, he's got hard limits and his ability to escalate for very long.

[00:20:39]Economically, he's got the the hard limits. And the only question is when does he come to reality that he will never be able to conquer the Persians and he will never get capitulation from the Persians. Until and unless he wakes ups to that reality, it will probably be when he runs up against these hard limits that he finally folds.

[00:20:54]>> Yeah. When it comes to the midterm elections, it seems that he's going to receive a lot of pressure. One of the reasons is that the new report, I don't know if you saw that PDX said, is talking about $37.5 billion were used, the cost of the war so far, but it was CBS News reported that this is not even close to what was spent so far. This this is the new reality. I think if the midterm elections goes, you know, against Donald Trump and the outcome goes against Donald Trump, these are coming to the surface and not that the casualties, you know, the people who were killed, injured, and because they're report, they're not reporting even, you know, we had the congressman coming out and saying they're not getting the intelligence. They're not getting any sort of information, reliable information from the Trump administration. And these are going to hit back. All these issues going to hit back at him and at some point they're going to reveal they're going to they're going to, you know, they're going to come to the surface. I don't know if he's preparing for that moment while he's trying to continue the war. By the by the way, looking at the face of the world, Robert, do you see this war coming to an end anytime soon? I see this war going to the next year maybe. I don't know. What is your perception of that? I think but for our hard limits I would say yes it could be a forever war.

[00:22:20]The problem is our hard limits that you know when we don't have weapons we don't have weapons. When we have bases we can't protect and we have no launching pads for launching assaults and attacks and we don't have the manpower for ground operations. There's not much we can do militarily. We can wish all we want. We can wish cast all we want.

[00:22:37]We're not in a position to do a ground invasion. are not in a position to do even small ground incursions or special ops that we could sustain or protect those troops without public humiliation of hostages or casualties for the whole world to witness. Uh we're not in a position to continue to bomb them. We're not in a position for very long. Uh the unless we want to be so dangerously we're already critically low on a wide range of essential munitions for doing anything other than you know B1 bombers or uh the or trying to fly in. Do we want another one of those? another [clears throat] pilot down, another Blackhawk down. Does Trump want to be Jimmy Carter part two? Does he want to be Bill Clinton, you know, with Blackhawk down in Somalia? Uh, I know that terrifies him. So, I think that the the limits of our military capability uh make it very unlikely that this kinetic conflict continues at this level or any higher level for any extended time period. Now, what you could have is the blockade for an extended time period and economic sanctions for an extended time period. The problem with that is that hurts us more than it hurts Iran. Iran went through this and you know back in the early teens, then again in 2019, and then again in 2019, and then again during COVID in 2020 where they were producing far less than they're producing now. They've stockpiled their cash up. They got about a six-month cushion uh by what they were able to get out. So people were critical of Iran signing theou saying, "Oh, this helped the US restock." The US ain't in a position to restock. It takes us years to restock. Iran was able to restock.

[00:24:05]Iran was able to get a bunch of its oil out and a bunch of cash in the door unsanctioned for for about better part of a month. Was able to restock on their missiles and their drones and able and to reopen their various facilities that had been successfully hit during the conflict. They able to get uh Chinese technology to help enhance their the precision accuracy of various of their weaponry. So the uh China benefited far more from theou break than we did. Uh we we only got out like a third of the available oil and energy cargo through this the straight while Iran got almost everything out that it needed out and the cash in the door. Uh and I suspect some money was transferred to by the Amiradis and the Qataris uh through on our behalf just us pretending no money was shifted when I I there's a reason the Amiradis didn't get hit for a while.

[00:24:56]Let's put it that way. And is it because the Iranians suddenly decided they love the Amiratis or the Amiradis decid they love the Iranians. So I just don't think we militarily can do it. Then you have the economic problem. So like you can do the blockade but how but can we withstand 20% of the world's oil and gas and fertilizer and helium supply being offline? In the helium case it's more like half. In the ura case for fertilizer it's more like half. Can we afford that? I don't think we can. the you know contrary to conventional wisdom the US is not a next net net exporter of of heavy crude uh number one that's problem number one uh problem number two is almost all of the US refining capacity is designed for medium and heavy crude so we make our gas and diesel and jet fuel from medium and heavy crude and we don't produce much medium and heavy crude we're a net importer of medium and heavy crude and the the strategic reserves are emptying worldwide throughout this conflict. So that there's a limits to being able to use that to restock the supply. So I don't see how economically we can survive it.

[00:26:00]Again, Trump himself acknowledged just a month ago saying why he had to do theou in the first place. And then you got as you noted the political risk he is he is bleeding out politically. So there was a taco index developed by the Deutsche Bank which said when the 10ear goes over 4.5 when his approval ratings get into the low 40s and into the 30s and when the economic issue at at stake and that can vary but in this case it's the price of gas at the pump and the price of diesel at the pump. Well, if you look at it it's screaming it's screaming worse than it did at any time during the conflict. The 10ear is over 4.5%.

[00:26:36]Trump's approval rating is in the low30s in many surveys and the his gas is over four bucks uh you know up 50% or up 33% 35% from where it was at the gallon and in particularly bad by the way in key swing states in places like Wisconsin and places like Michigan and places like Ohio and places like Iowa that's where it's screaming the most at the pump and then diesel is over five bucks and diesel goes into our agriculture diesel is a critical input to make food in America which is already farmers are already suffering and struggling. And then uh on top of that, it's the key to shipping. So our our distribution throughout the country of essential goods and products, it has diesel priced into it. And either the price goes up at the Walmarts and the Costos and the rest, or the price goes down because nobody can afford to buy it at all, which is even worse problem. So I don't see how polit and what does that mean?

[00:27:28]That means losing the house by big margins, losing the senate by big margins, losing governorships in state legislatores and king states right on the eve of redistricting in 2030. That will shape the future house uh of representatives. So you aggregate that politically he's got hard limits.

[00:27:43]Economically he's got hard limits.

[00:27:45]Militarily he's got hard limits. I do not see how he is capable of sustaining this kinetic conflict after August to be blunt.

[00:27:54]>> Yeah. Do you you mentioned how the battleground is somehow changing when there were times that Iran tried to hit more Bahrain and right now they're mostly focused on Kuwait. You look at at least 70% of these targets are in Kuwait. Iran is hitting targets there.

[00:28:12]You see the war is getting to Jordan and hitting the targets in Jordan, which is of particular importance because the United States moved all these weapons to Jordan somehow feeling that they're going to be safer in that in in those bases in Jordan. But it's not going to, you know, Iran the way Iran is attacking and firing back, it shows that they need they need to do something about what's going on. There are some reports before coming to this live we've seen that the United States somehow you know moving the weapons even out of those bases that were hit by Iran in Jordan. This is how the battleground is so fluid as we talk and I don't know do you see the moment that Iran would finally hit Israel because the United States finally would have to move these weapons to Israel and that would be again the war coming back.

[00:29:08]the same sort of war we have. If that's the case, it's going to be before the midterm or after or how do you see the the the desperation on the battlefield?

[00:29:19]>> Well, I think that basically our hard limits is why you're seeing Trump escalate now. In other words, Trump and the escalation in the rhetoric especially uh and then sometimes but sporadically kinetically is that we're not going to be in a position four months from now to do much more than we're doing right now. that where the the to replace most of the key munitions that we need, especially to do standoff attacks. In other words, attacks that don't require our planes to go over uh Iranian territory and be subject to uh possibly going down from air defense uh from Iranian air defenses that that standoff munitions is at critical lows.

[00:29:55]That's problem on our offensive weaponry. And then what is critical to that offensive weaponry as you mentioned is all these bases and that means we need to protect those bases. In order to protect those bases, we either need to destroy Iran's ability to launch Iran's ability to make such missiles uh and drones or need to have very effective interceptors. And people like Dr. Postal at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has long argued that our military-industrial complex has just flat out lied about the true capacity of our interceptors anyway. And the and even if they are effective, doesn't matter. We're running at critical lows.

[00:30:33]uh you know on sonar 21 Larry Johnson's site he went through just how critically low these are and by the way this was predicted by people dying Larry Johnson Brandon Weir a wide range of people Brandon Weir was going to be in the Trump administration but for his uh you know Israel skepticism and that kept him out Israel lobby blocked him out but the range of those people Joe Kent etc have pointed out the limits that we just have military limits on what we can do so if we can't protect our bases in Jordan uh the how are we going to do it otherwise And you see Israel, Israel's eager to stay out of this at the moment. Why? Why is it a war they wanted to have started?

[00:31:08]They wanted to have continued. They wanted theou undermined. Why are they uh afraid to go back into conflict with Iran while pretending it's because, you know, they're so tough and the US can't, you know, the US is going to limit them.

[00:31:21]They're they're not going to go back in.

[00:31:22]No, it's very simple. They can't defend and protect themselves. And they know they can't defend and protect themselves. And they're watching these Iranian weapons improve improve improve.

[00:31:30]Now, part of that was because Iran used its lowest quality stock at the beginning of the conflict in order to exhaust all the interceptors and to to figure out exactly where their defenses were present in the in the Gulf. Uh, and they were waiting to take out all the bases, the debasification and taking out all the radar and early detection systems. But, uh, I think what Iran is waiting for is for Israel to take the bait and attack first. They they they want the green light that this is I mean they already have a green light because we're effectively using Israeli bases to attack while pretending we're not. Um so that would be sufficient for them to hit at least those ba at least those locations that our military is operating out of out of Israel. But it looks like but from what Solomon Ahmed who was just in Iran said was that the they want Israel to attack first that they're eager and ready to hit back and hit hard and hit Israel harder than they've ever been hit before. And the uh and so that raises lots of issues uh for the US strategy uh because I mean and Israel is as you know people like Alistair Cook and others have been detailing uh is is suffering a lot of internal dis discontent and dissent. One of the untold stories about this is for years now, Israel has been suddenly losing net population, particularly the kind of people that they want present. In other words, they're losing high-end intellectual talent and economic contributors and they're not replacing them with comparable people uh of that c and that is weakening their society and their economy. the internal disscent is growing as they see what a disaster BB's strategies have been for the Israel opinion of Israel and the US but also around the world and just for their security and stability. Can can BB really withstand 30 more days of Israelis hiding out in shelters? When Iran gets hit, they don't hide out in shelters. I mean, they keep walking down the street because they're Persians.

[00:33:24]It'd be no surprise people understood who they are. But unfortunately, many in the West and the US do not. the uh but I don't but Israel is not in a position to me to wage a very extended conflict. And so if we keep escalating and we use Israeli bases to do it, we subject them to all kinds of vulnerability and susceptibility. The uh and then maybe they really unleash Hezbollah in ways the Hezbollah has not been unleashed.

[00:33:47]Maybe they really unleash hoot the hoodies in ways the hoodies have not been unleashed. Um so the escalatory risk uh again in lie of nuclear war, the escalatory uh latter favors Iran. they can withstand more pain and they can inflict more pain than we can withstand.

[00:34:03]And as long as that's the case, we can't continue with this conflict. We can't extend this conflict. Not kinetically at least. And that's where all the people that are either worried about it or or cheering it on. I don't hear a logistic reality check coming in. This isn't Afghanistan. This isn't Iraq. We're not in a position to continue this. We're not in a position to maintain this. And and Iran knows it. That's why they're being very patient, very deliberate.

[00:34:27]They know the longer this goes on, the more we squeal before they do.

[00:34:33]>> What do you make of the meeting between Donald Trump and Lebanese President Joseph own as if we assume that the main objective would be what was mentioned in theou between Israel and Lebanon which is disarmament of Hezbollah. This reminds me of the same failed policy in Gaza and in the same case they're they're following in Lebanon. And by the way, they're trying to do with the government in Iraq as well. The Iraqi government somehow cooperate and they say, you know, those people who are armed, you know, part of the acts of resistance, but they have to disarm while they don't have the capacity, they don't have the power to do it internally. the government in Iraq, the government in Lebanon, and Israel couldn't do it to Hamas. They destroyed everything. Hamas is not was not a professional force.

[00:35:28]They did they they but they couldn't disarm Hamas. And just imagine how can these people can go against, you know, the these acts of resistance in Iraq or in Lebanon with the case of Hezbollah, which is a professional sort of army or or militants. How what is your understanding of that and how is that going to because you have to understand that after at the end of the day you have to be more pragmatic practical but we don't see that sort of sign with the Trump administration and but I don't know how much of what has been mentioned in theou is really in their mind or is achievable in their mind >> the uh what it appears Trump is doing is going along with sort of the old neocon, neoliberal, American empire, deep state priorities that still think the Middle East is one big chessboard and they still think that Iran uh has very little true support within its own country uh and within these other they think Hezbollah is a terroristic gang that's oppressing its own Shia population. They think the Shia militias in Iraq are terroristic operations pro solely propped up by uh Iranian money. They confess through project. I call it confession through projection. You take you listen to Rubio. He'll usually when he's describing Iran, he's describing the US, you know, propping up weak proxies that don't really have public legitimacy, that don't really have the uh sort of emotional uh passionate support necessary to make the organizations effective. That's why we go through one after the other after the other after the other of proxy support.

[00:37:12]They're unsustainable organizations and entities. Typically, they're filled with grifters uh who don't really care about the cause they're purportedly propagating. And we pretend that's true of Iran when it's not. Hezbollah arose not by Iran, but by the authentic uh uh objections of the Shia population to the Israeli invasion and US attacks in the early 1980s. The if there was honest elections in Lebanon, the Shia would likely win all the elections.

[00:37:42]So uh the Hezbollah is there. The reason why decapitation strikes have no effect on them is because they're there because of mass public demand that they be there. The the uh the Shia populations of Lebanon, Iraq, uh Bahrain, Pakistan have had massive approval and support of the Islamic Republic of Iran since its founding. by every western public opinion legitimate survey, not one that's not funded by the NE and the US A people. I put up an article on Substack, so you can look up the links yourself and see all of the data going back uh almost 40 years and the that this is they legitimately support Shia protection and support in their regions.

[00:38:26]And what we're gambling with is what happens if we put things in motion that Hezbollah takes over Lebanon? What happens if we put things in motion that the Shia take over Iraq, which would be the most logical thing given their current demographics in that country?

[00:38:39]What if we put things in motion so that they overthrow the Sunni oligarchy and monarchy in Bahrain? The you go back to the history of Persia, they dominated many of those sections on the other side of the Gulf. The not only that, look at the religious denomination of say eastern Saudi Arabia where all a lot of their oil and gas fields are. you're going to discover it's not a lot of Sunni Muslims that dominate many of those regions. What happens if Iran decides to be the so-called imperial power we pretend they are? Uh then they they could dominate they could dominate the Middle East in a whole new different direction. What if the Saudis were to lose a lot of that oil and gas in in the eastern part of their country? What then? So the uh so you know this is gambling uh at high risk levels and we've got to be blunt about it. It's gambling with retards. Uh we got people that don't know what they're doing, haven't thought this through, believe in illusions and delusions, don't want to hear criticisms. This been confirmed by the Washington Post and others. What Larry I and some others have been talking about for months now is Trump doesn't want to hear negative opinions, doesn't want to hear counter statement criticisms. Vance is the only one because he's the elected vice president and thus Trump can't fire him. Uh that the that ever gets through to Trump at all. Everybody else whispers whatever, you know, worm tongues in into his ear.

[00:39:57]And while, you know, Lady Lindsey Graham is no longer along around to keep those lies up at the most effective level, people like Hegath, they're willing to go before Congress and, as you point out, lie about the cost of the war.

[00:40:08]Everybody knows it's over 100 billion in hard cash. Doesn't include all the indirect cost, which is going to be in the trillions when this thing is done.

[00:40:14]But just the direct out-ofpocket cost of the weaponry that we have lost and the bases that have been damaged and destroyed the and he knows he's lying about it. They wouldn't be asking for such a huge budget increase if he wasn't lying about it. So, uh you you you aggregate those together and the the biggest risk is still the same. When can Trump be sane? And even if Trump is insane, when does just the hard realities of military limits, economic limits, and political limits set in anyway? And there's a reason why he capitulated uh several weeks ago in doing the memorandum of understanding in the first place. The main reason was Vance was able to get that through uh in the negotiation stage, but he was able to Trump just looked at the reality.

[00:40:58]Kinetically, we can't win this.

[00:40:59]Economically, we can't win this.

[00:41:00]Politically, we can't win this. And the risk for him is off the charts and the reward too small to be worth it. But then Trump goes back to delusional Donald. And when he's in that state of mind, he convinces himself the good thing will happen and the bad thing won't. That he has leverage that ultimately Iran that he will either conquer or Iran will capitulate. And these other games of hey, let let's get the Iranian Iraqi regime to crush the Shia militias. Let's get in Iraq and let's get the Kurds to invade northern Iraq where the Kurds in in northern Iraq to invade Iran where the Kurds in Iran want nothing to do with that invasion at all. uh the so and many of the practical and sane Kurds want nothing to do with it in in northern Iraq. You've got US militaries trying to stockpile in Kuwait to at least give the impression that they're going to go seize the islands.

[00:41:48]That's why Kuwait's getting hammered and hammered and hammered. Uh all of these are very fragile Gulf monarchies. Like regime change can come much easier to Bahrain than it ever could to uh to Iran, much easier to Iraq than it ever could to Iran, much easier to Lebanon than it ever could to Iran. And then what happens if the Syria regime collapses? You know, King Head Chopper, uh, you know, suffers the blowback from a Lebanese Hezbollah search that they haven't thought this through at all.

[00:42:17]It's have it's let's let this Nimwit mediocre proxy that we've uh propped up this corrupt person Venezuela style that we've put in power whether it's Lebanon or Iraq and pretend they have the actual manpower the actual willpower amongst their own military officials uh the actual means to disarm the Iraqi Shia uh militias to disarm Hezbollah. It's delusional. In fact, it invites a counter that would completely extend and expand Shia power throughout the Middle East and really run us the heck out of there. Uh so it it shows the degree of delusional thinking in the White House.

[00:42:56]You have something you haven't seen since World War I, the buildup to World War I. If you knew the Citadels of Power, they believed ridiculous and preposterous things. And what happened at the end? four of the six greatest uh civilizations or governing systems uh that had existed for as long as six centuries disappeared in five years.

[00:43:17]That's what we're at the r we're at the risk of putting the US empire completely on fire. Personally, I don't mind that.

[00:43:23]I would just like to avoid nuclear apocalypse or economic disaster in the interim.

[00:43:29]Isn't that amazing that Donald Trump one of his agenda was to you know empower dollar and right now whatever he's doing with a new resolution about the sanctions that Lindsey Graham was working on together with Blumenthal and right now Donald Trump wants to add Iran to that sanctions you know that regime of sanctions that they want to put on Russia right now Iran and Russia all together they're going to get more sanctions. I don't know when it comes to Iran. I look at the situation the Iranian economy. I don't know what sector of Iranian economy was not sanctioned before. There is there's sanctions everywhere on Iranian economy on Russia the same way by by the way look at the five years of the war. We're getting to the five years of the war in Ukraine and they hit each and every part of the Russian economy. I don't know what are they getting out of this and who's who's advocating for that and I what I see every time you look at the Fox News Keith Kellock is there when it comes to the war in Ukraine it's all about Ukraine is losing and Ukraine is winning Russia is losing losing big now when it comes to the war with Iran it says yeah we have to put troops on the ground and they're going to win they're going to win big and they don't care about what people are talking about the guy is they're just selling more wars and Donald Trump is somehow cooperating with these new regime of sanctions on the countries. What is that, Robert? Do you think that with the case of the, you know, these two wars that are happening, are they going to get somehow to the point that no, we're not getting anywhere with these policies?

[00:45:16]>> Well, I mean, Trump, you can just go to Trump himself. This is a few weeks ago.

[00:45:20]He acknowledged that this was Iranian money that we were holding and that we can't we have no legal basis to keep holding it. So at some point it's got to go back to them. And on sanctions, he said sanctions backfire. sanctions hurt the US because it the the the the railroad tracks, if you will, of the global financial system that are American in origin, whether it's the use of the dollar, the use of the Swift uh system for banking and finance, the other components of American finance and trade, the more we politically weaponize it, the more we weaken our own global economic power, the more we undermine our own economic US financial system. He acknowledged this himself just several weeks ago. Uh so when you get sober Trump, you get sane Trump. But the when you get delusionally drunk Trump, you all of a sudden all of it disappears and he's listen to the neoliberals and the neocons whispering utter gibberish in his ears that we have complete power.

[00:46:18]That he who controls, you know, Kissinger, you know, you controls food, controls a country, control fuel, control a continent, control money, you control the world. Uh and since we our euro dollar is being the US dollar is being used heavily around the world, we presume that means a certain degree of power that actually doesn't because a lot of global banks have just decided to denominate debt in the form of the dollar. But that dollar 95% of the dollars in circulation around the world were never issued by the US Treasury.

[00:46:46]And people can go to Jeff Snder, Brent Johnson, some other people to understand how that works. Jeff Snider's Eur University is very useful in that capacity. But what it means is it doesn't form the power that we think it does. And instead by weaponizing access, by weaponizing storage, by we recogni weaponizing all the various tools available in the financial system, we tell the world you need to have a new financial system. You need to have a brick system to be able to transit business. You need to be able to have alternative mechanisms of storing wealth, whether it's some form of digital currency, gold back currency, or something else. that you need to get as way as far away from the US dollar as you possibly can. Now, in everyday transactions, the US dollar is likely to to dominate, but that's because it's not the US dollar issued by the Treasury.

[00:47:31]It's issued by global banks just to denominate as matter of convenience, the form of debt that they hold. But the the power that we want to leverage through this simply is increasingly not there. I mean, like we really wanted people to use the US digital currency, the new US dollar digital currency, the stable coins. uh you're going to see many more people not want to get anywhere near that because they know what it means.

[00:47:53]More importantly, they're not going to want to invest in the United States because that's where your assets can really be seized and stolen. That they're not going to want to invest in US equity markets, US Treasury markets, not want to put their cash in US investments that could be seized at any given moment. the and these sanctions packages while disguised as Russian sanctions, disguised as Iranian sanctions are in fact just Chinese sanctions. That all of these propos Who is it that's buying all the Iranian oil?

[00:48:20]It's China. The uh who is it that would be getting that's getting a lot of goods with increasingly their dominant trading partner with Russia? China. And we had to we couldn't even keep 20% tariffs on them because of their rare earth monopoly. We're going to put 500% tariffs on them. 200. This is a joke.

[00:48:38]This is a joke. Tells you what a ridiculous group of senators we had. The Stannislav Karpovnik compared it to the endday Roman Empire where yeah, you had senators, but all they were there there was to make sure they got their piece of the corrupt pie while they're chasing around their their version of interns uh the powers that be. So, yeah, I there's no way this can be done uh without it backfiring badly on us. Russia has easily withstood it. China's already told their teapot refiners and others, "We're ignoring all sanctions going forward. Don't care what the sanctions are. Do not comply with them under our law." That means they won't. So, it's a we're not going to collect any money.

[00:49:18]We're not going to actually deter anybody except the rest of the global south from being able to get these goods at an affordable price. We're going to be turning more people against us in ways that wasn't the case before. uh as Trump becomes the caricature uh the the critical caricature rather than the uh honest patron of his own campaigning for 10 plus years by becoming even dumber than Biden and even more uh uh crooked than Bill Clinton and the combination and even more wararmongering than the Bushes. So you you add that together, it's not a good combination, but it probably befits the uh incipient death of an of an empire that never should have been an empire in the first place.

[00:49:56]Yeah.

[00:49:58]Thank you so much, Robert, for being with us today. Great pleasure as always.

[00:50:03]>> Absolutely. The uh for uh the uh Oh, going to do a shout out. There are a few tickets left. People had asked the 1776 Law Center does its main fundraiser conference is next weekend. Larry Johnson's going to be there. Daniel Davis going to be there. Alexander McCor is going to be there. Alex Christopher.

[00:50:19]You can go to 1776 lawcenter.com.

[00:50:23]There are approximately six to seven tickets left. So hop on in if you want to get it. Uh and and sometime we got to get you up here to the states. Uh the uh so that'll be uh uh as long as long as Laura Loomer isn't around. Yeah, you can probably sneak in. [laughter] >> Yeah, she doesn't want anybody. No, she wants She's over in Ukraine. She's over IN UKRAINE CUZ MR. I'm a strong critic of the Ukraine war. To show you what a a complete deep state, but it gives you the example of what deep state assets are. In the old days, you had smart hot chicks as deep state assets. Now you got somebody that looks like Jigsaw from the movie Saw as as the as the deep state asset. Uh uh the quality of the empire continues to decline in real time.

[00:51:06]>> They are all connected, Robert. And you look at behind the scene, all those people who were against Russia, they were against Iran, they're against, you know, they were supporting endless wars.

[00:51:18]The same people. The same people. The same ilk. Dude, well, I don't if you saw the meme. They said, "What would be the ultimate torture for Lindsey Graham when he goes down to hell? He's surrounded by women."

[00:51:30][laughter] Because that isn't his idea of a good time. The uh so it's indeed we'll we'll see. We'll see how it goes.

[00:51:37]But the uh yeah, the 1776 lawcenter.com, it's where you get the tickets. Uh for those that can come, come on in. the uh as we uh live through crazy and insane times and just hopefully we can get on the other side of those crazy and insane times and if America quits being an empire, God bless because we were never supposed to be an empire to begin with.

[00:51:56]>> Thank you, Robert. Thank you.

[00:51:58]>> Let see you soon. Bye-bye.