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Hey, everybody Tom Woods here. It's episode
2742 of the Tom Woods show Brandon Weichert is here fresh off his appearance with Tucker Carlson
We'll see we'll see which program gives him the bigger bump in his career
But he is Nat sec guy on emerald TV and a fantastic
Twitter follow I was just telling him that I feel like I owe him something
You know, I get all everybody's Twitter account is free to be viewed
But I look at this and I say I should probably be paying for this
What is your your Twitter is it's um, what's the brand and we the brand and we the brand and okay
Yeah, so so great to have you know
I'm so you know again
It's like when you see somebody at a funeral and you say I'm sorry
We have to meet under these circumstances
Same thing here you and I are meeting for the first time and I'm sorry. It's under these circumstances, but
I've listened to what you've had to say and I've been reading what you've been writing and
I I just have a bunch of questions that you know, I think some of them
Nobody really has an answer to but nevertheless, you know
You are capable of making at least an educated guess on some of these questions
So we have this Iran conflict as JD Vance now calls it awkwardly
It's yeah, it's not a war war
Yeah, the president keeps calling it a war, but then what they don't want to call it over nobody knows what to say
I mean this it's all crazy, but but well, I mean, I want to start off actually
Kind of at the end if I may kind of at the finish line to ask
Now that this has taken place and there was some question about whether Trump was gonna do this because
With Trump you're dealing with a guy who can change his mind on a dime can change the way
He looks at the world on a dime. It can depend sometimes on the last person. He talked to so it could have gone either way
If for example when he bombed Iran in June of last year that could have become a much bigger conflict
He even teased the term regime change at that time and nobody exactly knew what was gonna go on
So maybe this wasn't gonna happen
But but now it has and I guess what I'm curious about is
What are the possible off ramps here?
Because I I think it's harder to find them that it might have been for other conflicts
So the that's a great question the Tucker interview aired
I think last Wednesday and I said at that point he had maybe 48 hours to take the golden off ramp and
He may still try to end the war
Unilaterally now and I know that I know that at some point this week
he's gonna be addressing the the American people but
Ultimately the enemy gets a vote and as you know from my my Twitter and what I was saying on Tucker
The Iranians are not defeated the Iranian regime is not I mean it's damaged
But they they might not want to stop the fighting now because they think they've made the American Colossus bleed and in many
Respects they have they've certainly made the Israelis bleed and they've gone after very in a very
Methodical and efficient manner the Iranians have gone after the underpinning of
America's presence in the region which people always assume is Israel
but in many respects it's the oil producing Arab states and what the Iranians have done is
systematically damaged and in some cases
Destroyed the Arab economy to the point that I don't believe many of these Arab states will be fully rebuilt
If ever for many many years to come they've lost these oil production capabilities Qatar is completely shut down now
Indefinitely, and that's not even talking about the damage from the Strait of Hormuz closure
So in my opinion the off ramp there is no off ramp anymore
Trump might just jump in the hole and say I'm done and
We can pray for that because that would still be preferable in my opinion that this thing
Continuing up the escalation ladder, but the Iranians do not necessarily now want it to stop and
Certainly, and this is the crazy part given how much damage has been done to Israel the Israelis don't want it to stop and
Trump even said either today or yesterday
I think it was in Axios one of the big publications reported this that Trump apparently said that he basically would love to end the
War at any time, but he has to work alongside the Israeli government to get basically their approval
Yeah, so there you go. You know where there's no golden off ramp anymore. We're in this thing for the long haul
It's gonna be a long haul to
Not to mention if he were I mean you just implied it with what you said
But if he were to declare let's say he took that back because Trump has a way of saying the opposite one day
What he said that he's very mercurial so yeah, and he could say I never said that the United States makes its own decision
He may he could just say that tomorrow, but even if he does say that obviously Israel will not be happy if the US stops
In what it would view as prematurely now what would prematurely be for Israel? It has to be before the installation of an absolutely a
compliant regime and
Obviously that would take it would be in a far far more vast undertaking than I think Trump was
Yeah, and this is why they're talking about ground troops now
This is why you know which foot with the topography of Iran. How is that possible? I know well
And I think it's key to understand I said this I think I said this in the Tucker interview
But I've said it in subsequent interviews the United States does not have the force structure to actually conduct
An invasion on the level that it did in 2003
We have allowed that capability to diminish and I'm not saying that we should do a ground invasion
But even if you know under the best circumstances we wanted to do that
We're not gonna be able to there's no amount of build-up that we could participate in to ensure that we would have on the order of
several hundred thousands of troops unless there's a draft which I thought interestingly the administration is
Now not shooting down when that was brought up to Caroline Levitt now
I don't know that's just because she's ignorant or it's because there's some other discussion occurring
Behind the scenes about this war, but the only way you're gonna change the regime in Iran is if you get boots on the ground
That's a bloody mess. That's Vietnam redux. That's Vietnam in the deserts in the mountains. That's basically what you're getting
And it's gonna end very badly for the United States
Even if we could constitute an actual invasion force
What's probably gonna happen is it'll be a redux of Afghanistan and in fact you're seeing the 82nd Airborne now being mobilized. I
Suspect they're going to do things like take try to take Carg Island. I would just remind your audience
This was a quote-unquote strategy
Not created by the Chet the Pentagon the chairman of the Joint Chiefs a staff
This was a strategy created by Lindsey Graham who I am sure
Divined it while he was polishing Netanyahu shoes
So, you know, this is the Carg Island strategy where they're gonna take this this island off the coast of Iran
Which is probably the epicenter of their energy production and refining
Capability, but that's a bloody mess waiting to happen and then also, you know
They could replicate the Afghanistan 2001 strategy by deploying large numbers of special forces and CIA
paramilitaries into Iran to link up with organized groups like the Mujahideen E. Kalk M. E. K
To basically use them and to force multiply off of them in order to you know
Drive into Tehran, but I just want your audience to understand something the United States military was adamantly opposed to
The recent Israeli airstrike on North Tehran that took out the massive oil refining complex there
That basically created a toxic plume over Tehran and the reason they were opposed to this in the Pentagon and the Israelis
Flipped them the bird and said we're doing it anyway
great ally stuff there guys, but the reason was because
the
The US understood this would damage the protests remember
This was the whole thing is Trump wanted to use these anti-regime protesters
Well, they're certainly not gonna have any friends in Tehran today
And in fact what you're noticing is in Persia the Persian community in Tehran is rallying now around the regime
Because Trump is now floating this concept of cantonization
For for Iran, you know, if we can't replace the regime we can at least break Iran into four or five or six
Smaller countries. Well, the Persians don't want to hear that this is a thousands of years old, you know
Culture and country they're not gonna be okay with you know foreigners coming in and breaking them up any more than the Russians would have been
Okay with during the you know, 1990s and early 2000s
You know this this
Point you just made about people in Iran today. I mean obviously there are there are substantial numbers of people
Who will rally to the Islamic Republic at the same time?
There are plenty of modernizers who are repelled by it
Well, the diaspora of Iranians around the world at least if I'm sorry to be judging them based on tiktok videos
But that's all I got to go on Brandon and there's a lot of them. I
Keep seeing now. I don't know if that's this is because some of them are
Israeli slash Jewish with some
History in Iran or what it is, but they're super enthusiastic about what's been going on and it's like
either you are coming at this from some kind of a
Zionist perspective and you and you view the US and and Israel
Very favorably or you have not been paying attention to the way the United States deals with countries in the Middle East
I mean you really think that this was to make things better. I mean what what's happened in Syria?
You think people in Syria are doing really well under the the present regime there
I mean you know the Islamists are doing well there. Exactly. So yeah, what is this?
Where is the naivete coming on the part?
I kind of thought people in the Middle East or with roots in the Middle East would be more informed than Americans would be and yet
I listen to these these Iranians so-called making these videos and it's like they're dumber than Americans
Yeah, a lot of them have not been to Iran ever a lot of them are like born and raised in America and a lot of them
maybe their parents
You know live there for a period of time, but ultimately they
They don't represent the majority opinion
I mean look remember the the Shah was overthrown in a popular revolt and people need to remember that and
I'm no fan of the regime in Iran
I think that they are a supporter of terrorism and I do think that they are not our friend
But ultimately the regime at least initially was put into power on the back of a very popular wave
Whereas the Shah who I thought okay
He did serve American interest, but he clearly was not popular. He clearly was not
You know the the the popular leader that people wanted to claim him to be and a lot of these people these ex-patriots
Are themselves?
monarchists a lot of these people are themselves monarchists and they are basically
Carrying the water of the monarchy that is wildly unpopular to this day the Shah's I think his son is
basically a
you know lobbyist in northern Virginia and
Ultimately, that's who the British and the Israelis really want to see take power and
Even the CIA is saying that's not gonna work because the monarchy is not popular
But a lot of these ex-patriots are
Monarchists that hard because their parents were
And their family members were and they lost all their possessions
But that doesn't represent the majority opinion in Iran and I think that you're witnessing
The fact that there hasn't been a popular revolt
You know this would protest but a lot of that we're finding out was generated by CIA and Assad
And these sort of non-governmental organizations again sort of like what happened in Ukraine in 2014 and sort of like what we were
Trying to do in 2012 in Russia
So this is not necessarily organic and not reflective of the majority opinion of Iranians
I might be putting you on the spot with this question because I don't know how much anybody
Really knows but what do your instincts tell you about the claim that the regime
Murdered 30,000 protesters, you know, I I have no idea that you know so much coming out of the Iran
I mean look, let's just be honest the regime there is not great
They lie about stuff too and they do bad things all the time
We all do as you know in terms of our government, so this is not like anybody's hands are clean in this thing
I mean I could believe it it doesn't really matter ultimately the bottom line is I mean
It's terrible if it happened the way they say it happened, but but ultimately the bottom line is this
The Iranian government
Doesn't care about their people the way that we think that they would they just want to stay in power
And they have secured that power base and now we are actually helping them
Secure it because what we're doing is we're putting a big target on any potential rival to the regime
Their internal security identifies them during these protests take them out
weakens the resistance and then also when we bomb and we do these horrific attacks on schools on
You know oil refineries that completely that set the streets on fire as if it's Dresden
What that does is it tells the Iranian people we can't trust the Americans
Why would we want to rely this regime may be bad?
But they're ours and they're gonna rally around the flag so whether they killed and and ultimately that should actually
If that is true that they killed that many people in response to political upheaval
That should have caused people around Trump to sit Trump down and say this regime is not gonna care about public opinion
You can't just start a war expecting they're gonna be overthrown
Because they haven't been and they're clearly very proficient and staying in power. I
Feel free to disagree if I mean, you know, I'm open to whatever you want to do
No, but I think I have no basis to judge it either except I
You know, I I just I keep getting fed BS stories that justify intervention
That's the thing and this is just like in Iraq
You know your audience probably if they followed me know that at one time
I was
Unthinkingly part of the neo-conservative side of the party. I think like Tucker was my story is very similar to Tucker
Obviously not on that level, but you know, I just was sort of hey
I'm a Republican everybody's you know on the Republican side. We're pro-Iraq war and okay
Let's just and you realize very quickly studying it and living it that oh my god
They were they just straight up live
They just straight up lied and they didn't care and there was no punishment for the people who got us into a really
Disastrous war that we're still paying for and you're seeing the same people in some cases
Certainly the same kinds of policies and lies being propagated today about this war
Which is why every American who cares about America first must oppose this war
It isn't about being pro-Iranian regime at all
It's about being protecting our troops and protecting our standing in the world and
Protecting our interests abroad because this does not run in our interests at what as I'll add at all rather
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Have a guy I wouldn't call him a friend
We disagree very very intensely on foreign policy, but we have some agreement on other things and he was saying to me
privately that he is convinced
That quote America's enemies are in some way behind the various anti-war
Movements or but as you know if you can even call it that they're so pathetic in the US right now
But yeah, he was convinced and I and I couldn't understand. I thought if I were China
Which I don't necessarily go for China is necessarily
An American enemy doesn't have to be but that's another conversation. Yeah, if I were China, I would say this is fantastic
Yeah, that's what they're saying. Let this thing go on and drain these people as long as possible
So that's exactly what they're saying. That's exactly that's why you know
I do a lot of sort of stuff with you know other networks on the right and they're very
Zionist and they they this is a common refrain you hear from all the usual suspects that well
This is a heavy blow to China. Well, I sat down
I don't know if you saw I posted it on Twitter about three or four days ago
I sat down for half an hour with Brendan O'Reilly who is an actual China scholar and an intelligence analyst wrote a great book
Everybody's wrong about China and then my buddy Dan Collins who to this day runs high-end rare earth mineral factories in China
So he is you know, I had two scholar
Practitioners who sat and they speak the language and they live for decades in China
And they both told me that the Chinese are eating this up that yes, it's gonna pinch
Yeah, because you know 14 to 16 percent of their oil is coming from Iran
But the Chinese began to change that profile around knowing that we were going in
They're purchasing more oil from Russia before Saudi went offline and Qatar went offline
They they soaked up a lot of oil over the last several months from those resources
so they've been hardening themselves and preparing for this and
Remember China right now has a massive industrial base
No problem churning out weapons and systems that could conceivably be used to fight the United States if a war between us ever did
Break out they have what's known as surge capacity on a level that we haven't seen in this country
Since World War two in terms of the industrial might and oh by the way the Chinese hold all the cards and rare earth
Minerals and we've been blowing through all of our standoff munitions
Going back to Ukraine. We've been doing this and we're not replacing them at a at a necessary level because the industrial base here is so
Sclerotic the Chinese can just say hey you blew through all of your tomahawks that you need to possibly fight us
We consider rare earth dual use and we're gonna deny you access to those
So you'll never be able to replenish those stockpiles again
And then there's a capability taken out of uncle Sam's
Pocket and never to be seen again while the Chinese continue, you know enhancing their own capabilities relative to ours
So if anything the Iran war is a massive win and by the way
Their ships are really the only ships right now passing through the Strait of Hormuz their container ships full of all the oil and whatnot
So China's still getting oil by the way, that's another story. That's not being reported China's still receiving Middle East oil
We're not I
Say we I should say the West I should because obviously we have other but but the West is not Europe is hit hardest here
All right, so that that was exactly the way I was thinking about it that I
Mean every major kind of the Russians obviously would like to see the more the US is
Expending resources on this the less it can expend them on Ukraine or Taiwan or whatever the case may be
so and if I can just quickly inject here and we can just want to inject here because I
Made a speech in 2017 at the Institute of World Politics my alma mater in Washington DC
It was not very well received
But the title was Russia is the only beneficiary of an Iran war and what I was getting at was
The the funding mechanism for the war machine in Russia is predominantly their their oil market
Well when the oil spikes when oil prices spike globally and remain high
The Russians are able to generate a lot of money. I think Tommy was something like
1762% increase
In profits in the last week for these Russian firms because of the global price of oil spiking because of this war
So the Iran war is benefiting the Russian the Russian economy
Which is now spending that excess money on continuing the war in Ukraine and and even if it did do
Short-term damage to China. What is the Trump slogan right now short-term pain long-term gain?
I'm sure they view it the same way
I'm sure they view it the same way and I'm sure the Chinese don't don't actually think that's going to that's going to
Effect them the way Trump does remember China is the world's primary and you know, it's it's the world's sweatshop
It's the world's labor shop. It's the highest. It's a high-end tech dynamo
They are basically the leading exporter of goods to the global south, which is where all the developing markets are Tom
So remember when we started the blessed trade war?
And guess what happened the Chinese? Yeah, they felt again
They felt a pinch but all they did was shift over to global south because ultimately
Their exposure to US markets was not as significant as America's exposure to key Chinese markets
So when we initiated the trade war it had massive amounts of blowback on our soybean farmers on our high-tech sector
Etc. Whereas the Chinese they got burned a little bit, but they just moved they repositioned themselves because they are the key
exporter
Too many of these developing economies in the global south and that's exactly how it's going to play out from here
On out on a variety of issues
Well, I'm well, let's talk about what what the goals of this
Operation are and I'm avoiding the word
Call it a war all the time. It's funny. There's no war war. It's right war war. There's so many euphemisms that I can use
I mean, it's like an episode of Veep. I mean, you know
Exactly and and the thing is it's like
They all know that we know it's a war, you know, like so it's all a charade
I'm reminded of the social needs in quote, right? You know, they know we're lying
Yeah, I mean, that's the level of
Absurdity that we've reached it. I mean not even look
I was I ended up being very critical of the George W. Bush team, but not even George
I mean at least George W. Bush had the courtesy to lie about the cause for war
We didn't even get a discussion about this thing. It was just one day Trump woke up like the Mad King and said we're going to war and
You know, but we can't call it a war
You know, but that's what it is. It's it is and and it's leading
I think I think we're in the beginning. I think we're in World War three
That's what I think because if there's no off-ramp and everybody keeps getting involved in this thing
It's like an insuperable wound. It keeps getting gangrene and the infection is spreading to the whole bloodstream
I think that's where we are right now
You have the British talking about sending their dilapidated aircraft carrier. The French are supposedly sending their carrier
This to me is a world war. This is not even just a regional war anymore
And it was kicked off by the Mad King in the White House right now
Well, we're dealing with a country of I guess 90 million
96 million. Yeah, all right, roughly this apparently the square footage of Western Europe
Yeah, that's not the same thing as Venezuela where you go in you take out the one guy
Then you don't really do a whole lot about the regime other than the one guy, right?
And you can unilaterally declare that the whole thing's over now. Yes, what are they? What's Venezuela gonna do?
Right not so obvious that this could be done
So well, there's also the logistics chain is very different for operation like this in in in Persia
than it is in Venezuela and
Culturally and I'm not putting down the Venezuelan culture
But let's just face it the Venezuelans are not as fanatical as as the cadre. That's leading
The Islamic Republic of Iran. They're just not I mean there is a their ideology is a very key factor here and
You know, I was told that Kamani
Kamani had stopped worrying about his safety at toward the end there and was getting sloppy basically with his personal security and
The reason he was staying above ground war was because he was telling his people his team
Listen, I'm old and you know, if it's God's will to take me then that's time and I'm prepared to
That doesn't bother me at all and that's the mentality of the people you're dealing with at that upper echelon
That's not the same mentality that dominated Maduro's regime, which was basically a gangster state
You know, just give him a cut of the action and they're happy
That's not who you're dealing with in Iran. These guys are believers and on some level
They're okay with dying in a way that the Venezuelan certainly are not
Yeah, I think there is there is something about the West that makes it
Incapable of understanding. Well, we're materialist that heart and and this is the problem. This is the problem
Is that we we don't and we have this weird thing where there's a group of people the Christian Zionists
Who clearly are more than materialists? Yeah, but they're they're
Their belief is heretical if you know anything about Christianity. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Anyway, we don't have to get it
I mean, I don't know how far you I've done that on this show already. Yeah. Yeah, okay
I mean, it's it's clearly heretical and it is it's so you have a small group of people who believe in this heretical ideology
Leading us, but you have the entire West is is post-Christian. It's a pagan
We've gone back to paganism and so it's all materialism and it's all short-sighted
You don't have that in in Iran today Iran is a it's an Islamic culture and and the leadership
It is a theocracy and they are willing to die for their beliefs and they're going to try to take out as many unbelievers
Uh and heretics as they can which is precisely what they're doing
This is a this is so rhetorical. I'm gonna I'm gonna rephrase it. So it's not merely rhetorical
The goals of this operation
There are are notoriously
shifting
Yeah, shifting unclear
Um
Mission creep from from but also from one administration official to the other
It's like the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing with telephone. Yeah, it is. So yeah
What's the best you're able to put together for
Because I want to have the let's try to propose what the best case scenario is that it's it's not
Uh, that they have in mind something that does not actually involve
Years and years and years of a slog that they have something finite in mind
And they're aiming at accomplishing it. What would that be?
The best case scenario is oil prices remain high over the next several weeks, which
Makes trump get skittish
and he can't
I well, um
I believe the market is manipulated because some of the responses to what we're seeing is not tethered to reality
But that's another story for another time
But basically trump will not be able to use the power of his office to keep the economy from looking bad on paper
Which is what he cares about fundamentally
He cares about that more than anything because he thinks that's a measure of his success
And his chances well or his party's chances for staying in power
So if the prices of oil like I believe will remain relatively high
And americans are going to be screaming over that and rightly so
Um, that might force him to just say i've gotten the ayatollah. I've degraded the missile capability
I've degraded the drone capability. I've killed a lot of irgc top echelon guys. I'm good. I'm done
Let's call it a day
We're going to come home and and and he's probably not going to be able to reconstitute and that's a good thing
We're not going to be able to reconstitute our our facilities in bahrain
Or in some of these arab states because they're never going to want to see us again after this
Yeah, um, but ultimately that to me is the best case scenario, which of course isn't an optimal scenario because
The iranians might say hey, we're just getting started buddy
Uh, you know israel may say the same thing
Well, israel is the real wild card and I think it's very predictable what they're going to do
I think we're moving toward nuclear weapons use
Uh from israel because it is it is very dire on the ground in israel. They just killed
I believe benjamin netanyahu's brother in a in a missile attack
Um, I know they're saying it was a car accident, but okay, you know, whatever
Um, but you know, they targeted the largest underground bunker for the israeli government and
successfully destroyed it
Nobody's seen benjamin netanyahu as far as I can tell I don't know where he is
And that starts making me think could he be dead could he be injured and they're covering it up
So israel is in a very bad way right now
And it's getting worse every day with every iteration of this fight
And so my concern is that nuclear weapons come on the table at that point, but that's the secondary topic here
Let's just focus on the objectives
Um, I just I'm going to go off of what the president said because at the end of the day
Our battlefield commanders are not listening even to pete hexeth
They're listening to what the commander-in-chief has consistently said. It's very clear. His objective is regime change
His objective is denuclearization. His objective is getting you see how many objectives there are now
This is becoming highly complex. His objective is I want to get rid of all the ballistic missiles
His objective is I want to get rid of the iranian navy. What is the objective of the iranian regime?
To survive
Just to hang on they don't have to do anything other than that
So long as the islamic republic of iran remains the the leader
Of the the iranian country they win
And so far they're winning that doesn't matter how many sorties we fly
It doesn't matter how many underground facilities we bomb
We will never know if we got them all and as long as there's one of those facilities around
They have clearly demonstrated a capability under degraded conditions
To continue to effectively fight they are combat effective in a way
I know for a fact the pentagon was not anticipating this far into the war
So, you know, what what is our what does our mission set look like?
I just said those are the objectives. You could say, okay, we got rid of the iranian navy
But there's some debate on that too. That's probably our biggest success so far
Okay, we degraded the ballistic missile capability
But if you saw the new york times at the beginning of the week or i'm sorry at the end of the week
Last week on friday, uh, there was a closed briefing in congress in which the us intelligence agencies said
At least 50 of those ballistic missiles tom remain operational
That's after 3 000 sorties in counting. They remain operational. Uh, the nuclear weapons, uh, you know, who knows who knows about the nukes
We know that they weren't obliterated
But we also know that the iranians were very easily convinced to get rid of them which indicates to me
You know during the negotiations which indicates to me that they were never really very serious about really mass producing these weapons
Because they knew they had the ballistic missile wild card
That was there that was their key thing and they're using it deftly and then again regime change
Well regime change is not just getting rid of one leader and replacing it with the leader from the same group
Like we did in venezuela. That's really not regime change. That's regime
Constability or survival with a different face
So what we've seen in iran is I think as of today the son of the the ayatollah kimani
I think is much above I think was his name
He took power and he might have been injured now in an Israeli attack. That's a rumor that's going around
Who knows if that's true? But the point is that's still the islamic republic of iran
So the number one objective the president has consistently stated regime change it ain't happening after all of this
It ain't happening
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I don't know if that answered your question. No, it's a no, it's a good
It's a good but I I'm thinking of myself that since I have you I want to ask a question that I've always wanted to hear
I think I kind of know the answer
But I wonder if there are other people who wonder the same thing
We always hear in this situation that air power is not enough like if you if you have ambitions like
It seems like the u.s regime has then air power is just not going to do it and yet absolutely
But yet to a layman it would certainly seem like
Bombs coming from the sky 24 hours a day
Seems like that should shake things up a bit. What is it that's so is considered to be so inadequate about air power alone?
Well, I would argue it doesn't take into account human will
Um, ultimately war is a human endeavor no matter how we try to sterilize it
No matter how we try to condition it, you know for the public
So that's more palatable or how many ai systems very flawed ai systems as it turns out
We use to try to mitigate the human factor in war. It is inherently a human act
and it is uh
If you are waging war and I should say it's also an extension to quote claus woods
It's an extension of politics through other means
So if you're trying to regime change rather than just degrade
So if we if our goal is just to degrade we've already done it. They've degraded
Maybe for two years maybe for 10 years. They we've degraded them. Okay
But if the goal is we want never again to never again to worry about
Uh, the regime it's nuclear weapons. It's ballistic missiles. Uh, well, you need to have ground power for that
Um, and I would just remind your audience in the entirety of the vietnam war
And I posted this on my twitter the other day the entirety of the vietnam war the u.s air force flew
5.29 million
Sorties against north and south vietnam cambodia and and laos and that was with hunting
You know, what was it 100,000 or several hundred thousand troops on the ground for 10 years and we still lost that war
So not only does air power alone not win a war of regime change
It's not even guaranteed that a fully stacked military like what we had in vietnam
Can achieve that
Against a hardened enemy who's committed to cause the north vietnamese war. I believe the iranians are
well, what about
what we're what we're hearing or maybe more to the point what we're not hearing in
I guess are we getting real damage reports from the us and israel?
And are you entirely convinced by these damage reports? Do you think it's worse than they're saying?
Again, i'm putting you on the spot because are you saying battle damage in terms of what we're receiving
Or what we're dishing out. Oh, well in terms of what we're receiving and i think they're lying through their teeth
I think they're lying through their in fact in fact the pentagons been caught lying on several occasions about the damage to the bases
So you had these um third party private satellite imaging firms
I think maxer or one of them that basically released the imagery of the fifth fleet headquarters at bahrain
Which is really the most important facility for the us navy in the region
It is the hub of all of our activity in the region and we spent a lot of money on it
And it's it looks like gaza. It's completely flattened and moonscape
Pete Hegseth or one of his minions said the other day. Oh, no, no, it was just damage
And it's like no it's flattened
It's gone and the Bahrainis are not going to let us come back anytime soon to rebuild it and reuse it
No matter how much money we throw I shouldn't say that
Probably don't matter how much money we throw at them given the amount of damage Bahrain has specifically received
And Bahrain is the most permissive of the arab countries in terms of the middle eastern countries because they're technically shiites
And there's a whole other thing there, but they're the one of the more permissive
regimes in the arab world
In that golf world, which is why we based so much there and why the british before us based
So much in Bahrain and we've lost that that facility it is gone
So the the us is routinely and and some of that is operational security
I don't want to you know say it's all all bad because they're just
But I think a lot of it is being lied about because of the political optics because it's a non-war war
And if we start having all these images and we start admitting true casualty numbers, which I hate to say
I don't believe the casualty numbers for a second
If we start admitting that, you know, then suddenly the president has a very big
Big problem on his hands politically this to me
Tom reminds me of the worst excesses and more of the covet era and remember trump crapped the bed during that whole thing as well
And to me though his worst instincts on on this are coming out
As president and you're seeing it play out in real time only this time
It's not just a virus that we're dealing with it's it's nuclear weapons that are probably going to be used soon
well, I I don't like to
Bend over backwards at this point to give trump the benefit of the doubt and say well
He was dragged against his will into this at some point
You have to say he must have wanted this on some level or at the very least
Given the choices that he thought he realistically had he went for this
I think the the analogy with covet is apt in that
Fauci was obviously anticipating a long campaign
Trump wasn't
Trump said, well, I I hope this will all be over by Easter
Now it started in March Easter was in April and Fauci was was saying to now hold on a minute
This is going to go along to trump hadn't counted on that
So likewise, even though I don't say oh this was against trump's will or he he had to really be dragged into it
I I do think there are indications that he thought it would be a lot faster than it's turned out to be
he did no he did in fact, um, I was told that
He was operating off of what netanyahu told him, which of course is always a terrible idea because netanyahu's an inveterate liar
Um, it has a vested interest in the situation. Absolutely. You've got to balance him with somebody else and by the way
I'm sorry to cut you off, but he's talked so he's talked so much
To other Middle Eastern countries. I was I was wondering are any of them saying to him look
What we get that you have a huge Zionist presence in the uh
In the u.s. And your political system and we understand that you know, whether you agree with that or not
You have to deal with it
But you need to know the facts on the ground. I was hoping somebody sat him down and talked to him like that
So, uh, so here's what I know happened
And this is when bannon started bringing me on his show to talk about it because he knew that I had the story
Politico has confirmed this by the way since I reported it on january 15th trump was ready to initiate bombardment
Of iran and it was the muhammad bin salman and the qatari
Amir and erdogan of turkey who basically called him in the middle of the night and said if you do this
You will not be able to use our airspace and furthermore
We will not use our air defenses to stop any incoming iranian missiles and drones that would be fired at the bases
U.s. Bases and at israel and trump backed down
In fact in fact at the end there netanyahu called them and said we're not ready to go yet
Just hold off
But but that is what dissuaded and again there was another time three weeks after that. So in the early part of february
Where the trump trump wanted to go again?
And my understanding is and and my understanding is that the arab's again told him
No, you're not going to do it and then the navy sat him down and said sir
We really need a second carrier and that was the the impetus for bringing the ford into the metaterranean
But but then of course like a couple weeks later three weeks later that that had all changed and netanyahu said now
We're ready to go and netanyahu initiated the fight, but ultimately i want to make it clear
trump believed
Based on what netanyahu told him kill kill kimani and the whole regime collapses like a house of card
And you could run the tables on them
And so if you look at it, that's exactly what they did they killed kimani at the very beginning
Using i believe the diplomacy as a ruse which well, we'll be paying for that for many decades
Unbelievably dishonorable. Yeah, oh it will remember and i think i said this to talk or remember this is what
stimson used to say, you know to the press in the 1940s
The reason america is on the right side is because unlike the japanese
We don't use diplomacy as a ruse to initiate a surprise attack can't say that anymore guys
No, you can't you know you can't and so
We'll be paying that one down for a long time, but ultimately
Trump believed netanyahu that this would be a quick thing over and done and then once netanyahu
I mean once kimani is gone, you know, it'll there'll be some shifting and some missiles here and there
Remember they were talking about dead enders like rumsfeld was at the height of the insurgency in iraq
You know the trump minister. Oh, it's just some missile. They're just going here and there
But it's it's fine. We've got their command and control their c2
Well, that's not accurate. We we did degrade their command and control
But their their leaders are smart over the last 30 years 20 years to begin
Decentralizing command and control functions to local battlefield commanders, which is why you're still seeing despite all of the damage
We've done to their central authority
You're still seeing these these units fighting quite vociferously
against us
You could imagine if this were a i'm going to use the word war
That had enjoyed popular support unlike this one where the president got no bump
He had no polling bump from this at all
But suppose after venezuela by the way
Is that so he did not get any bump my understanding is he did not get the usual bump
He would have thought people were happy people felt good the military felt good
But my understanding is there was no significant polling bump on that
Well, if but if it had been the case that that people were real, I mean
Most Americans don't even notice the iran exists, you know, so the the over-the-top
Language about it just seems disproportionate to the average person
I don't even notice that this country's even there, you know, and I'm supposed to think yeah that my life depends on
Change over there, you know
But but if but if they did feel that way then if reports of casualties were to start coming in
You could imagine a scenario in which that makes the american public more committed to it because now they're even angrier
But if they weren't committed in the beginning beginning then now
We're losing people for again for a reason that doesn't seem adequate to me and this is why I think that they are
I think what they're doing is they're slow walking the release of of casualties
Um, I don't have any proof of that and I hope that's not the case because I would I would I really
I don't even like talking about the casualties because i'm not rooting for high american casualty numbers or anything like that
so but I just based on
The you know, I've studied multiple conflicts
Um, Ukraine being the most prominent now where literally every side in that war is lying about the number of dead
And uh, usually it's team nato. That's the worst liars about the casualty figures
So that's why i'm very concerned that that and and it's because of the political ramifications
They didn't make the case to the american people. They didn't really go to congress
The democrats are claiming the gang of aid is claiming that rubio withheld intelligence
From them, uh, right before deciding to go into iran, which if that is true
You are going to see when the democrats and I believe they will take back power in november
There is going to be such an investigatory scope
On the trump administration that there's going to be a lot of people taken down by this
I think if that's true
Yeah, unfortunately that will make the worst of the republicans dig in their heels on this crazy position
Of course that the that the president could just go to war whenever he wants to and that's what george washington would have wanted
Yeah, exactly. Well, we spared nothing. Yeah, mike davis who i'm told is an excellent attorney
And he maybe is because he can play word play so well
But he was on the same episode abandoned as i was last week and he he gave this insane
Disquisition about oh, um, you know, there's a difference in the constitution between making war and declaring war
Yeah, they all they all pull that one and it's like well, there's a reason shakespeare said first kill all the lawyers
I mean that that is insanity
That is insanity masquerading as policy and i'm understand that he's a he's an influential member of the trump team
Uh advising him on legal matters. I mean, this is this is the height of mania right here
I mean shredding the cost, you know, steve sailor once said that the uh, he said that the democrats often wear
The uh, the the the constitution like a serial killer wears the skin of their victims
I think you're gonna apply it now to a lot of the republicans as well and in power
You know, you can you can make an argument that the president acting alone
Was authorized to repel sudden attacks
But the thing is pearl harbour would have been a sudden attack
Yeah, and and even at pearl harbour franklin rosevelt went to get a declaration of war right exactly never have done that today
That's right. Well, yeah, and let's face it. I think he would have preferred to have never have done that
I think that he would have because of his you know, his penchant for um, you know executive action
But ultimately it ended up working in his favor politically because he had cover
He had cover from both parties. They gave him, you know, you go and this is what I never
You know, I always disagree I I didn't always disagree with but over years
I started thinking a lot about this and it's like actually if you're a politician
It's actually really good to go to congress and get get the the declaration not just an authorization
But get a declaration because then if something goes pear shaped, it's not all on you and your party
You can say hey, you know, and and by the way when you declare war in some cases
There's more power conferred to the presidency for a limited time
Uh, you know to fight the war but what we've done is we've done all these authorizations to use military for
And it's like well now it's in definite war. We've always been at war with east asia type of thing and
Wars piece pieces war and it's destroyed the constitutional fabric here in this country
We now have a surveillance state that will never go away. They're getting ready to upgrade it and impose
I think a chinese style credit, you know, social credit system
Palantirs behind that you got all these different, you know tech firms working with cia
So, I mean these so-called wars
Maybe they're not wars. They're just sort of endless, you know
commitments that we just never
Never divorce ourselves from and i'm worried that's that play here in iran
Last thing do you have any sense? I mean
Obviously the neocons have wanted a war with iran for a long time back since george w bush
Yeah, but they didn't get it and there were various reasons they didn't get it. I mean one there was a
Intelligence report by all the agencies in late 2007 that said they haven't got the weapons and all that
And and that was back when that was enough to actually derail something like this
But but also it was the pentagon. It was the generals who would say this would be a fool's errand
This would be supreme folly. There is no way we can do this right
But yet that doesn't seem but but I guess what I want to ask you is there a sense that the pentagon
Is is if anybody's been dragged into this against their will it's not donald trump. It's the pentagon. Do you think?
Yeah, no, I think that's true
And I think that's why you had vice emerald fred concher fall on his sword
The friday that the war
You know, basically was ordered to begin
There was a particularly contentious meeting between chairman of the joint chiefs of staff
Dan cain air force general. Who is trump's guy?
He was pulled out of retirement personally by trump. So he is trump's guy
He got into it with trump and said look all he gave him the the parade of horribles as rumsfeld would say
He gave trump the parade of horribles and trump at one point apparently
Cain kind of went like this the praise goes mr president. I don't actually think you're listening to anything
I'm saying right now
And apparently that conversation was dictated by was no note to note taken by
Cotcher who was an adjutant to cain on the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff committee
Or or their staff and he basically leaked it to roiders
and
He he was you know reduced for for doing that
But I noticed he wasn't actually fired
Because and so that that's where people are saying to me
Cain actually asked cotcher to do that and in return he basically protected cotcher on some level
Cotcher's no longer working on the chairman to join chiefs of staff
You know their staff
But he's now gone back to the navy in some other lesser capacity
But that to me indicates that yes the upper echelon of the u.s. Military was very opposed and very worried about this war
Because of mission creep, but ultimately
Look the military of today
The leadership class even under trump, which I think is better than under biden
But even they are a shadow of what they once were even 20 years ago during the iraq war
Um, and I think it shows by the fact there wasn't a mass resignation by these flag officers if you're that opposed to it
It's not your job to salute and say yes, sir
You're actually morally obligated by your oath to the office to resign and protest and you don't have to
You know be mutinous of course not but you have to you
If you think it's an unlawful order at the very or a bad idea at the very least you have to resign you have to
Yeah
No, no, right. Well, that's a whole other question. There are certain people
I would have thought might have thought about resigning
I thought kane would have because you know, he was an aerospace executive. He was very wealthy
He made a lot of money in the private sector. He was doing very well for himself
He didn't actually need to come back. It wasn't like his career required it
So and he would have landed on his feet, you know after doing that
But uh, he chose to stick around so it's it's on him and and polyanna pete and all these other ones
Yeah, no kidding. Well brandon weichert. I appreciate your time
Those of you who are on twitter slash x
I'm telling you you are not going to be unhappy if you follow and it's at we the brandon
Uh, you are not going to be unhappy you're going to be very edified and and it's going to be another example
Of how all woods improve your life. So uh brandon, thanks again. It was a great conversation. Thank you
And thank you ladies and gentlemen
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