Hegseth "We Will Fiinish This War" /Lt Col Daniel Davis & Scott Horton

We will finish this war, that is Secretary of War, Pete Hickseth said earlier this morning

from the podium in the Pentagon, where he was laying out all the reasons why we are killing

everybody, taking names on our way to victory.

He promised that he would tell all the surviving family members of our troops who have died

in combat that this is for you and we will not stop and they told me he said, don't stop

until you finish the job.

And I said, we won't, we will finish this.

I'm not sure he should have said that.

In fact, I am sure he should definitely not have said that because whatever he's thinking

it ain't happening on the ground and that's where we live here on this show.

We talk about what's true, not just what people say and we're going to take a look at

what's really going on and some of the disjointed comments that are coming from other people

and how there is no relation to reality.

And there's probably nobody, nobody better to talk about there that I can think of and

brother Scott Horton, back on the show, heading to have you out on the while, Scott is

the founder of the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, which features

long form courses from Scott and his colleagues.

He is also the author of several books, the latest of which is provoked.

I highly recommend that one because it is just absolutely chock full information and

dead true.

And he also hosts the Scott Horton show, which you can find on YouTube.

Scott, welcome back to the show.

I can be here.

Thank you.

Well, let's just get right into it here because Higgseth says, you know what, we know what's

more important.

I mean, our whole thing in this channel here is we are unantimidated and uncompromised

to bring the truth, right?

That's what we live.

Well, it turns out, according to Higgseth, he is too.

He's all about the truth.

Why are we hoping Israel prosecutes more if they're going to pursue their own objectives?

We hold the cards.

We have objectives.

Those objectives are clear.

We have allies pursuing objectives as well.

And the truth speaks for itself.

I mean, President Trump was very clear about that.

Iran, his weaponized energy for decades, Israel clearly sent a warning and Potus has made

it clear, very clear.

Iran knows when you hit Carg Island and you hit military capabilities on Carg Island,

which is the only thing we hit, we can hold anything at issue, anything.

The United States military controls the fate of that country.

Yeah, but do we control, I mean, we'll just start off with his truth that everybody

knows that Iran has been weaponizing energy for decades.

What say you, Scott?

Well, I was going to ask you what you thought he meant by that, sir.

I honestly don't know.

I mean, obviously America's had sanctions against them, preventing them from selling their

oil.

So you think about parallel accusations like Dick Cheney ranting against Vladimir Putin

and charging Ukraine the market price for gas instead of giving them the special discount

previously or something.

You could see how there, you know, this does affect Ukraine's budget, this kind of thing,

right?

There's a little bit of gangsterism going on there, for sure.

But what did Iran do as far as extorting people with their hydrocarbons?

I don't know exactly what he's referring to there, but I think it goes to the overall

kind of narrative that.

What Mr. Davis, Colonel Davis, they call us the great Satan and they chant debt to America

and so they are completely and totally incorrigible and there's just nothing that we can do.

When it's so easy to just put the exact same facts in another context like, for example,

we're number one Donald Trump, the emperor of the planet earth has nothing to fear from

any Ayatollah.

And so he could actually just go over there and make a deal, right?

Send his people over there he certainly could have.

It's obviously much more difficult now.

But I ain't afraid to know Ayatollah in the kind of, you know, Nixon can go to China.

Only Nixon can go to China.

Only Reagan can deal with Gorbachev and sign these nuclear treaties in this kind of thing.

Well, only Trump could make peace with the Ayatollah and there's no reason he has to have

this kind of policy at all.

Same thing.

You saw him in his first term the way he was willing to meet with Kim Jong Un.

Nobody thought, well, I mean, the stupid liberal TV media tried to attack him like this, but

no decent person thought that, oh, he's selling us out to North Korea or anything like that.

In America's interest to neutralize the tension between these two nuclear powers, ours and

theirs.

So that, you know, obviously ought to be the basis of the entire Trumpian foreign policy

of this term.

And he's thrown it all away for Zionism.

It's really a shame.

It really is.

And getting back to his truth issue here about how the Iranians were weaponizing hydrocarbons.

I mean, let's just jump to back to the first term here.

This is from January 15, 2019, Trump administration still might let Iran export oil.

And this was going on the State Department's envoy to Iran is declining to say whether

Washington will force buyers, oil buyers to cut off purchases from Iranian crude later

this year.

And we ended up doing that.

We took it down to something close to zero and basically it was just a trickle after

that.

So one might wonder if you're actually considering reality, who was actually putting

pressure on the human weaponizing energy, don't think it was Iran.

But see, that's what he's counting on people not looking.

He's counting on people not doing any research and just taking him at his word and saying,

yeah, well, you know what?

I mean, if they were doing that, it was right for us to go into war.

What do you think about this twisting effects or just making them up out of whole cloth

to justify this war of choice?

Yeah.

I mean, unfortunately, sometimes even just decent people start rationalizing and coming

up with their own explanations of what must be the brilliant for DHS move behind it

all, that kind of thing.

But they're just bluffing.

This is about greater Israel.

This is about them not wanting to have another medium rank power in the region to balance

against theirs.

And so to matter of destroying them one by one, as much as they can, especially breaking

Tehran's alliance with Hezbollah, that was the Iraq war idiotically was supposed to

achieve that.

That didn't work.

Support for the caliphate did achieve that, but in the Obama turn, it blew up into the

caliphate in a way, you know, the Islamic State thing that was too much they had to reverse

that again.

But now they succeeded in helping Al-Qaeda sec the Damascus as of, you know, the end of

2024.

And what people need to understand about that, how could America support Al-Qaeda there?

Why is Trump squirting perfume on this guy and flirting with him in the Oval Office?

Like, what is behind this whole thing?

It's because Al-Qaeda hates Hezbollah and has bought his Israel's enemy.

That's their problem.

It's the Shiite militia in southern Lebanon.

So you have America.

This is one of those cases where it couldn't be more obvious the stark difference between

Israel's interests and America's and America takes Israel's side against itself.

Basically, our government takes Israel's side against our country and would support

a bin Ladenite regime as long as it's against a Shiite one.

So and, you know, a huge part of the problem here, Danny, with all of this is that Trump

really doesn't know that much about it.

So like when he had General Flynn telling him that, listen, sir, we sure don't like Hezbollah,

but we really don't like Al-Qaeda.

We should stop backing Al-Qaeda in Syria.

Trump said, that makes a lot of sense to me, right?

And Mike Flynn, everybody knows, absolutely hates the Ayatollah in Iran, but his position

was, that doesn't mean I want to back Osama's guys in Syria for God's sake.

Let's just hit Tehran then, you know what I mean?

That kind of thing.

But when he spoke reason to Trump, Trump said, that sounds great.

But if he doesn't have somebody who's good on this stuff, walking him through it, he's

not watching your show.

And, you know, Charlie Kirk, apparently, was in constant contact with him, showing him

anti-war type fare and was a real restraining influence on him and he's gone.

And I don't know what's all behind that.

I tend to be a minimalist about those kinds of things, but at least, you know, as soon

as Tulsi Gabbard ever contradicted him, he said, listen, I don't want to hear from you,

lady, if you don't want to say what I want you to say.

And so I, and when you hear Trump himself regurgitate some of the propaganda where you could

tell he's not lying, he just doesn't know anything, but he's repeating just what he

knows from Fox News.

He's not really, and if he has his staff really briefing him on this stuff, they're not

emphasizing, well, here's the real truth, sir, or anything, you know what I mean?

So I, basically, he's going off of what Lindsey Graham and Mark Levin are telling him, what

Netanyahu's telling him, which, great example, probably the most crucial example of all, right,

is if you hit them, they will fall.

Everyone hates them.

Their regime is completely fragile and ready to go because of the menal liatoli, you

kill him and everything will fall apart.

And you know, just timble, tumble over.

Yeah.

And so like in January, remember, they had the protests and apparently like 3,000 people

were killed maybe for something and that includes the cops and armed groups that were fighting

them in the streets and all of this.

The propaganda was that 30 to even 50 or 80,000 people were mastered in the street.

Now obviously the first part of that was to draw outrage and get people to support the

war.

Oh my goodness, these people are terrible.

It's like the end fall campaign in the 1980s or whatever, Saddam Hussein versus the

Kurds, some horrible thing like that to to amp people up.

But here's the thing about that is if you believe that, then there's a whole other kind

of implication built into that, which is that the regime had to kill 50,000 protesters

in the streets to keep them from overthrowing the regime.

And they only then with the people, the mass of people must have been hundreds and hundreds

and hundreds of thousands of people trying to overthrow the government.

And after they killed like 30 or 50,000 of them, the rest of them finally went home.

Went in fact, no, it was much smaller than that.

There's no reason to think.

And in fact, what it was was really armed groups on the ground, not just protesters,

just like we saw in Kazakhstan in January of 2020.

Oh, there's a big protest movement over the price of fuel goes up or something.

And then all of a sudden, there's armed teams, guys, sack and police stations and airports.

And seizing control of things or trying to is the same kind of organized effort here.

But it helped to sow this illusion almost certainly in Trump's mind that, yeah,

apparently, the whole city of Tehran would have overthrown this guy if,

you know, they had not resorted to such absolute mass violence that in your imagination

is supposed to replicate like the battle of the psalm in World War One or something.

And what does that tell you about what's going on on the internal side of the Trump inner

circle I'm talking about, not just in the administration, but on his inner circle,

when it has subsequently been leaked that there was an NIC intelligence estimate that basically

said everything that has happened would happen. So he somebody told him ahead of time that that

would be the case. And one wonders if that was Joe Kent. I don't have any knowledge about whether

that's related to his resignation later on. But somebody was telling Trump that what did happen

would as opposed to what you're describing there. So what does that tell you about the inner fights

inside his inner circle? Yeah, I wish I could be a fly on the wall and the thing. I think a lot

of us do right who's allowed by the chief of staff to have access to the president and tell him what

and listen, you know, there are a lot of people who really like Trump and really don't want to change

their opinion about that and all that. That's fine. I'm not asking anybody to move anywhere on this.

But there's a lot of kind of the idea that, you know, what's the poor guy going to do when he

Israeli's drag him into war or whatever the reality is is he's the boss. And if he had a standing

order to his chief of staff that said, listen, when you have medium rank people who are really

disgruntled about the way of the policy here, let them come talk to me. I want to hear from them.

You know what I mean? I want to, whatever, get me a team arrivals in here to contradict each

other, check him balance in front of the boss. And I think he does not encourage that at all,

right? Like all indications are is he wants to be told that he already thinks and he wants to be

told, yeah, that's right, boss. That's what we say too. And whatever. And, you know, I didn't see

the whole thing with Gabbard, yes, I'm sorry, I've been very busy, but I did see a clip on another

show I was on. They played a clip for me. And where Gabbard is saying that essentially, she

stands by the truth. No, they weren't making nuclear weapons. She didn't think that they were

preparing an attack against us. But then the Democrat on the committee is trying to force

her to use the phrase it was not imminent so that she's saying that Trump is a liar. And she's

saying, well, look, but that's not my job, right? My job is to tell them all these facts. The

imminent part of it is got to be his opinion. I don't get to tell him whether it's really imminent

or not. Now that's a little bit weasel words, kind of language there. But in a sense, that's also

very true, right? He didn't ask her whether she thinks this is a good enough reason to start a war.

There's no reason the world to think that he would ask for that. And it's probably true that

she told him, no, sir, I don't think that they're making nukes. But then again, hey, that's

a matter of opinion. The Israeli's matter of opinion on this whole time has been for them to have

a nuclear program at all is essentially a nascent nuclear weapons program. Same difference to them.

And so I'm sorry to repeat myself for people watching on different interviews. But if you go

back to 2002, the National Intelligence Estimate said, Saddam would never use chemical weapons against

the United States unless maybe we invaded the country, he might use them to protect the capital

city, something like that. But give them to Al-Qaeda to attack the United States. No, that was the

official position of the intelligence community, which presumably Connolly's a rice, at least summarized

it for the boss or something, right? And then what did George W. Bush say? He said, yeah, well, I

disagree with that. I actually think that they might give it to Al-Qaeda, and that's a risk

I'm not willing to take. I don't have, he's not bound by their opinion of what his opinion about

these facts is supposed to be. So now that also is a great way to diffuse responsibility, right? It's

not Tulsi's fault when she could be up there railing and saying actually the president's full of it.

None of this, none of his justifications are true, and I quit too, and she's not doing that.

So don't get me wrong, I'm not apologize for that, but I'm saying in the context of the thing,

that's the way he gets to hide behind, and why, right? It's because ever since Harry Truman,

they've completely thrown out Article 1, Section 8, clause 11, where only the Congress can declare war,

and not authorize the president to start a war, not this completely false reading of the war powers

resolution 1973 that says that somehow the president can start a war for free for 60 days,

which is not what it says says in the country for 60 days, and even when we've been attacked,

he still has to come to Congress for authorization within that 60 days to continue on as what it

actually says, and people always, you know, twist that around, and then they make it where it is

up to the president, essentially his win. As he said, Danny, he goes, you know, maybe we just do this

out of habit. We don't even need oil. Maybe we do it for just for Israel. Yeah, and you know,

I guess I will quibble just a wee bit on part of the justification part, because whether

something is an a threat or an imminent threat is the operative thing, because the claim in

President Trump and in the headset and Rubio and all these people are going out and saying that

there was an imminent threat. We had to do this, or we would be struck with cough, biggest purveyor of

this. They were two weeks from a nuclear bomb, Lindsey Graham, two weeks from a nuclear bomb,

and yet in that section with Tulsi, or at least I don't know if it's the same one you were talking

about. But they said, was it obliterated in 2025? Yes. Did they have any effort to rebuild it?

No. So there were no facilities, whatever they think could have a bomb. That is correct.

Then was there an imminent threat? Because by definition, it's impossible. It's a physical

impossibility. And yet then she said, well, that's his interpretation. There's no interpretation.

If there's no capacity, you can't manufacture one. But, and this gets back to something you said

a second ago, I think maybe somebody else did have an interest, whether there was a nuclear

program or not, and you're just using that as justification. So that's where I would quibble just

to weave it. Yeah. Well, no, I mean, of course, I agree with you, other than except that the

president can just move the goalpost to wherever he wants and say, look, I just think at the

ocratic regime that supports his ball and has rockets and a nuclear program is bad. See, I

think that he is 100% agree. It is absolutely the president's decision. He can twist it around. He

can reinterpret whatever. But the director of national intelligence is obligated to say,

here is my assessment. And we, there's no imminent threat because they don't have it. And then you

can say, well, I think they might get it. Fine, that's your prerogative. You have the authority

and the responsibility. But to, but to claim that that wasn't, that wasn't talked to him,

or you didn't tell him that. That's, that's the, an issue. But then I want to get back to what

you said a second ago, because you keep saying this a couple of times now that it's the, this is not

our need. We didn't need this war. But it was an Israeli decision, which was, by the way,

side about Joe Kent as part of his resignation. He said that's exactly what happened. That the

Israeli side pushed him into it. That the American media was complicit, pushed him in that direction.

And at this morning's press conference with Pete Hickseth, he was asked about that question about

whether it was the Israeli's objectives or ours. And watch how he deflects that. And then

instead of just leaving it there, he's going to go ahead and take an opportunity to trash our European

allies at the same time. The world, the Middle East, our ungrateful allies in Europe, even segments

of our own press should be saying one thing to President Trump. Thank you. Thank you for the

courage to stop this terror state from holding the world hostage with missiles while building or

attempting to build a nuclear bomb. Thank you for doing the work of the free world.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This this harkens back to the, the, the, the, um,

the load of mirrors, the Linsky visited into the White House in February of last year,

where Jaydey Vance jumped along and said, you didn't even say thank you to President Trump in

here. And now here's Hickseth saying all of our European allies, yes you should all be saying,

thank you for doing all this stuff. Are you thankful, Scott?

No, I mean, the hubris here reminds me more than anything of the W bus years.

Oh boy, you know, there's a book by Jacob Hilburn about the Neo conservatives called they knew they

were right. And but it wasn't just the Neocons, which is a tiny little sect of cooks, but also

everyone under their influence and that echo chamber and the consensus that they built at that time.

Remember, they didn't just get us into that war. They kept us in that war the whole time.

Any time anybody said, boy, this isn't going well. He said, you want to cut and run.

You're sacrificing the guys who already died in vain if you stop now and just the level of kind

of Bill O'Reilly is just absolute force hockey that would shove down people's throws to force

the consensus to keep them in this thing. And based on those kind of certainties, you know,

we're we're we know what we're doing here and how dare you even doubt us. In fact, as long as I'm

written this, it's important to me, I don't know, this spell at least in the major media and the

overall consensus that W. Bush and his men were the most competent administrators in the history

of war parties, launching wars and doing things was not broken until August of 2005. After the

safely after the reelection, it was when Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans and the National Guard

was nowhere to be seen because they were in a rock and same for the neighboring states too.

And then it just went on day after day after day and eventually Anderson Cooper was crying live

on TV. More than a thousand people died and that there are no helicopters. Nobody's coming.

George W. Bush apparently did not say to whoever get in there and do some. Just nothing's

happening and people just their spirit just finally broke. Actually, this guy is an idiot.

This is none of this makes sense at all and and this word never made any sense and all that.

But it was like you weren't even allowed to think that or say that. Otherwise, you had this is where

it was coined Charles Krautham or the Neoconservative coined the phrase. You have Bush, derangement,

syndrome. You just hate Bush. Not that anyone could have any reason to hate Bush. Just you start out

with hating them and then you come up with reasons to that was the dominant narrative until finally

Hurricane Katrina began to break it and then of course, it only benefited the Democrats. Not

that that helped us at all. But it's this is the same kind of spirit with which you know,

a shrinking core of of Trumpian dead enders are, you know, basing their kind of arguments on

is just even though after a few weeks of this, it looks nothing like it was supposed to.

Don't worry. Trust the plan. Double down. Short term pain for long term gain. I heard him say that

17 times on Fox News. So that's the deal and they must have secret information that we don't know

about that justifies why they're doing this. Well, back in 79 and it's funny. Scott, I got I got

something on that day. Gary, we're going to go a little out of order here because it's perfectly

aligned with what you just said. That same spirit is very much alive and well today. Last night

on Lori Ingram, she had Stephen Miller on there and she was asking him ahead just right before

this clip starts. She says, Hey, this whole thing about the Strait of Hormuz. I mean, it's been

20 days now. Why have we not broken through? Why is this taken so long? Watch his answer.

Why has this taken so long? Well, I would look at the exact opposite, which is how was this

happened so fast? So you're talking about what would normally be considered a monster even years

to achieve these military objectives instead have been achieved in a matter of days because under

the leadership of President Trump, and then of course with Secretary Hexas, the Department of War,

we are not fighting a politically correct battle. The hands of our warriors are not tied and getting

up and going after the objective and going after the objective ruthlessly because this is war

and in a war, you have to fight totally. And so we've seen the leadership of this regime has

been completely decapitated and obliterated. Okay, so I almost if we had time, I would have pulled

up Mike Johnson from about a week ago, emphatically saying this was not a war. Now here's Stephen

Miller emphatically saying it is a war. So make some sense out of that. But he starts off by saying

it would normally have taken months or years to accomplish all that we have so far. Wait a minute,

she just said the Strait is still closed. So you haven't done anything. You've killed a number of

people, but the regime is very much still in power. They've replaced the year they've moved on.

You've assassinated some others. So far, you haven't done anything except blow up a lot of antiquated

planes and antiquated boats, but they still have the full power over the Strait of Hormuz. What

do you make of that? Well, you're right. This was a very apropos. The previous segment there

reminds me of a cross between Ari Fleischer and Baghdad Bob there. Anyway, right? That's a good

idea. Yeah. And look, it's a catastrophe. I mean, they made the biggest deal about this

Strait. And then the Iranians reached out and blew up a couple of oil tankers up near Iraq and

Kuwait to underline the point that straight nothing. The entire Gulf is called the Persian Gulf

because it's their entire coastline. And they will pwn it. And there's nothing that we can do

about it. So, you know, who cares about this Strait? It could be any mile up there, any boat that

they want to hold hostage. And, and, you know, Dan, I'm sure that when people go back through the

archives, you know, I know for my part, and I'm sure on your show, me interviewing you and vice

versa about this, why not to do this? I mean, I've been talking about this. I've known about this

since I really started my main show on a daily basis in January of 2007 that the chiefs told W

Bush, we'll do the surge in Iraq, okay? But we don't want to go to Iran. And the reason why was

because we won't have escalation dominance. Yes, we can whoop them eventually. Everybody knows

that. However, it will be only at severe cost. And at that time, we had 50,000 guys in Afghanistan,

150,000 probably in Iraq. But plus still, Army and Air Force bases in Kuwait, Air Force in Qatar,

Navy in Bahrain, and plus whatever, Army and Air Force in Saudi Arabia, UAE, and I didn't know

Oman, but I guess I could have guessed. And then plus, as I would always put it trillions or

gazillions of dollars worth of economic targets, all up and down the South East or

pardon me, Southwestern side of that Persian Gulf, all of which is at risk. And everybody knows

that, yeah, we have really great interceptors, but it's simply a matter of all you. And so we'll be

able to shoot down a lot of their stuff, but they will be able to hit our bases if we push them

that far. That's the risk for Trump to say, oh, I had no idea that they could do that.

Means either he's lying or people were really shining him on it like, well, sir, you said you

didn't want to know what they might be able to do. So I'm not telling you, you know, it's hard

to imagine that anyone could look at that map and think and because, right, like this is just

common knowledge, just total like amateur knowledge. Iran has lots and lots and lots of

medium-range missiles, right? Everyone knows that exactly how many exactly how well deployed,

exactly how well targetable, et cetera, et cetera. I don't know, but can they just pour missiles

onto our base in Kuwait until some get through? Yes. And then so let me actually interview you for

sec here, sir, and ask you, can you give us a good battle damage assessment? I know there's been a

few reports in the New York Times. I hate the New York Times, but there's been a lot of others too.

Like apparently they've hit virtually all of America's military bases from

earball in Iraqi Kurdistan all the way to Oman and the gates of the Gulf, correct?

Yeah, the total of 17 bases and sites, according to published reports, have been struck to one

level or another. Some have just been utterly devastated. I don't know that they've been physically

wiped off the map per se, but you don't have to. It's been degraded enough that it has to

causes to have to withdraw many of our troops away from there to get them out of the region,

as well as our ships to move them out of the range. Some of the longer range missiles that

the Iranians have. So they've been very effective at limiting our power. And we you may have seen

we lost an F-35 today. First one that was entering over Iranian airspace. So I guess that's not

exactly as shut down as we claim. And we've also lost a number of MQ-9 reefers, MQ-9 drones. So

this is still not the the slam dunk that Pete Hex said that's trying to tell us it is.

Yeah. And wasn't another world's greatest expert on this technology. I know people like to

argue in the comments section about it and whatever, but the critical reporting has been for 15,

20 years and more now that the F-35 is a turkey. There were some problems with the F-22. They

seem to have resolved them and everybody swears it's a great airframe, etc., etc. What do I know?

But the F-35 has been a piece of junk the whole time and it just is as everybody always puts it.

It's trying to be the ultimate supercar that can do anything and then it can't do anything very well.

And so they claim that it's stealthy but it's really not stealthy and it's not fast and it can't

climb and it can't turn and you can't fly it in the rain and you have to keep the fuel and the

very special different fuel tank because you can't keep it out in the sun and just every other

the helmet doesn't work and the radar doesn't work and that this and that and whatever. And as

critics have pointed out old-fashioned long-wave radar and especially with modern microchips running it

can shoot these things down, can get a lock on them. There is no real stealth. It's essentially

public relations and now look at this. They shot this down with what? The best they got would be

SM-400 from the Russians, right? Do we even know that that was what it was?

We don't we don't have any knowledge yet. We don't know exactly all the St.

Compass said it was shot down over Iranian airspace and then it landed in some friendly location

which they have not yet talked about. I can't tell you, man. I know YouTube. I cannot tell you how

many times I heard Listen Horton the F-35 doesn't have to be fast and it doesn't have to be able to

climb or fight because the F-35 will never have to fight because it's so good. It can kill everyone

from so far away that no one can ever come anywhere near. I swear it's no less than a hundred

times I've been told that every year. And now here you go. Well, wrong. And speaking of wrong,

there's a really nice segue here. Back to Higgs's comment that he was trashing some of our allies.

Apparently that's an intentional plan here. I don't know if we're trying to shame our European

allies into doing something for us or I don't know. Maybe we just lost our mind but that's

continuing on. It wasn't just President Trump who trashed him in some of his true socials.

He's trying to get him to come and send their ships to get the straight of Hormuz.

Apparently not really. That's not how you open the straight is just running ships down the lane.

I could show you something else on that in a second. But here is Jack Keen trying to reinforce

what President Trump is saying and apparently Secretary Higgs said.

These social democracy countries that have been running the European countries for so many years now.

They focused on entitlement programs. They had open borders like we had for a number of years.

And they've had them for actually longer than that. They have serious issues as a result of it.

They absolutely decapitated their defense budgets, the pay for these entitlement programs over

a course of decades. And then we show up with Russia. What did Russia look at? He sees vulnerabilities.

He sees American weak leadership. He doesn't see the European standing up here and he takes

advantage of the situation and invades Ukraine. The reality is the Europeans have started to get

the message. Donald Trump, number one, Putin, number two. And they are beginning to rebuild

these defenses. It will take some time to do it. Is it frustrating that the attitude when Trump

asks for help and they stiff him here? You bet you it is.

I mean, let's just start with that last part first. I'm going to hit a couple things in there.

But the audacity and the arrogance that says, hey, I started award choice here that I didn't need

to start. That you guys asked me not to start by the way. We'll throw that in there. But then when

we did anyway, you're not sitting in your ships over here to be sunk and sent to the bottom of the

Persian Gulf, even though we ask you to. What's going on? That's basically what he's saying there.

When he's starting off with that, with versus just deriding and insulting them all about how they

their version of democracy and social welfare and whatever they want to do over there,

having they run their country, he's like trashing all of that and then saying, get over here in

Doffers because we ask you to. So you bet on that. What do you say? It's so strange. I'm not sure I

really understand why they're doing that. They're not sailing their ships through there. They already

said because they could take them out. And so it doesn't seem to me like they reasonably expect

for any other country to come and open a straight for the American Navy. And then Trump even

in a tweet a few days ago, his true social account even said that you know, had on the list of

countries he was asking to come and help was China. You know, the people trying to rationalize this

work. Well, this isn't even really about Iran and Israel and greater Zionism and whatever. No,

no, no, this is all about America's strategy against the Chinese. That's how W Bush called it.

But like, no, Trump is going China help. But what are they supposed to do? What are they?

What's he even talking about? Is this something that they had a meeting about where Rubio said,

yeah, Mr. President, what we need to do is guilt and shame the other countries in the world

and to come and abailing us out. And it just looks like a massive portrayal of weakness.

I mean, obviously, I don't think that there is much they can do about it other than somehow

su for peace and try to figure out a way to negotiate an end of this conflict.

You know, I prefer just coming right home, but trying to find a way to resolve it would be one thing.

But I put together a coalition with China and England and whoever to come in. I mean,

the whole thing is completely crazy. And so I quite honestly don't even know. If it's just public

relations, I still don't understand to what end. And just like with Jack Keane, the author of

two massive failed escalations, the so-called surges in Iraq and Afghanistan. David Petraeus is

daddy there who got everything wrong, his entire at least post-career. I don't know what a failure

he was actually in uniform. But ever since he was on TV and in the think tanks telling people

what to do, he's been nothing but an absolute catastrophe and probably a hell of an arm salesman as

well. But what he expects to do by saying, yeah, you're all a bunch of nanny state limousine liberal

weaklings turn over your navy to us to use. I don't even know. I mean, honestly, the guy's

intellectually lazy. I don't know if that even represents a real agenda of any kind or he was

just trying to think of something to say on TV, you know. Well, he certainly did. And I couldn't

figure it out. That's why I was hoping you'd be able to explain it to me because I couldn't see

any rhyme or reason. Oftentimes I disagree strongly with stuff that Jack Keane says, but at least

I understand what he's trying to do here, though, I just don't get it unless that was just kind

of a meltdown moment. He was supposed to try and shame him into coming, but then I don't know,

reveal his secret hatred for the way the Europeans run their show. I don't know. But what I do know

is going back to Secretary Hicksett. He was asked again about, I guess, right before this question

starts here, he's going to ask, he was asked about, this looks like you're doing a lot of stuff

for Israel, but he says, no, no, no, isn't about Israel. It's about America first.

This is not those wars. President Trump knows better. Epic theory is different. It's laser-focused,

it's decisive. Our objectives, given directly from our America first president, remain exactly

what they were on day one. Destroy missiles, launchers, and Iran's defense industrial base so they

cannot rebuild, destroy their navy, and Iran never gets a nuclear weapon. Our objectives.

Yeah. Okay. Fine. That's those are your objectives. Other than destroying the visible navy right

now, and by the way, let's just be clear on this. There has been all consent comments released a ton

of videos of the destruction of a bunch of their ships that were seen. In fact, we had a video of

their commander who sit there and just did dyes, grabbed one ship after another. Some of these

big service combatants like World War II kind of thing, the big ships knocked them all out.

They're just sitting at harbor. Most of them were just sitting on the pier. Obviously,

they knew they were going to get. There's no way they could protect them. It's not like they

were out doing naval missions. They were just sitting there and we blew them up, or we sank that one

coming back unarmed from an experiment with the Indians, I believe it was.

And so that's what we say there. Well, and then we blown up the visible air force. And there's

been some, not a whole lot of pictures of us blowing up stuff. I was showing one in a minute. You

had some of these big, you know, tanker aircraft or transport aircrafts. Again, just sitting

out on the tarmac. There's not much they could do about them. That's not what that's out their

power, though. Their power instead of having an air force, which they didn't, they knew they couldn't

compete with us. They had the missile force, which very much can compete. And their navy is still

primarily underground. That's the vast majority of it is their fast boats and their drone boats

and their submarines, all of which have not been brought into effect yet to only limited degrees

in the Persian Gulf to sink some of these boats you were talking about to say that we're still

very valid. You've killed a lot of people, but you haven't decapitated the government per se.

That's what's important to understand. So so far, and this idea that they can never have a nuclear

bomb, okay? They still have 400 and something kilograms of reprocess nuclear material. God only

knows where that is. I would imagine it's probably been dispersed into multiple places around,

so they don't have a single point of failure. You don't have that. So as if I can see these

objectives, he just talked about here. Virtually none of them, none of them have been achieved. We're

day 20 right now. We're running low very low on interceptor missiles. We're running low on the

Tomahawk, on the standoff missiles. Apparently we have plenty of jasmine and several others,

but we're getting critically low on these things. And we're no closer to achieving our objectives

than we were before Scott. And that straight is fully in control of them. There's a reason why we're

begging the navies of all these countries to come over because ours and aren't even going to attempt

it. And you saw what happened when Laura tried to ask Stephen Miller, why is this not happening?

At least she was asking the question. He just didn't answer it. But what does that tell you about the

state of play when we're that confident in our objectives, but we're no closer to achieving them,

then we were on day one. Well, listen, I think basically, I mean, there's a lot of ways to go with

this, but essentially, my first thought is like in the case of Afghanistan, where I don't care

if you call it a victory, just go. And unfortunately, that was a problem because they did call it a

victory, which meant we can go because everything's fine. And that was not the proper basis to plan

that withdrawal, of course, right? Everything fell apart all around the withdrawal. So it's very bad.

But when he says that, you know, he left out regime change, he left out a compliant friendly

puppet government with a new ruler chosen by Donald Trump and unconditional surrender and all this

stuff. So I'll take that as him climbing down 11 rungs and just say, yes, good. As he just said,

we already won. So let's stop now. That's it. Figure out a way to just back out of there. And

it's in Iran and everybody else's interest to reopen that straight. And the whole thing should have

never been done. It would be at the very best from the war parties point of view. The best

accomplishment you could say is that they mowed the lawn a little bit. No, they did not get rid of

the mullah's regime because how could they? But they did bomb a lot of missile launchers and a lot

of missiles and a lot of ships and they can claim a lot of credit and Secretary of War Pete can

get up there and do a bunch of pushups and stuff. And then you know, we did it everyone and then

try to figure out a way, get some intermediaries in there to negotiate some kind of medium-term

status quo. And I know that you and other great experts have pointed out that it's in the

Iranians interest to keep fighting and fighting here, even if Trump wants to back out to really

drive the point home that we should not have messed with them. I would hope that cooler heads could

prevail if Trump's really willing to quit and they ought to find a way to back down too.

Their point has been made. As you already said, they hit all these bases. They're hitting all

these refineries. I don't know if this confirmed, but I think it was credibly reported before we

went on here that they hit oil refinery in Haifa, Israel today. So, you know, let's everybody just

quit. Peace without victory to paraphrase the ever-loved Woodrow Wilson. Yeah, I would like to see

that happen, but as you point out, there is a problem there. And that's here's a foreign minister,

Abbas Arakshi. He's saying, we don't believe in a ceasefire. We believe in an end to the war

on all fronts, but we're ready to listen as long as the proposals meet Iran's conditions.

And see, from their perspective, they're like, look, this has been going on and you can really start.

I mean, it's a lot of places you could start, but I think the best place to look at this, put it in

a concise way, is Trump's assassination? Well, actually, no, back up. Our withdrawal from the

JCPOA in 2018, Trump's assassination of a salimony in 2020. And then this ramp up here were Israel

blew up their embassy in Syria. Then when they assassinated the leader of Hamas inside Tehran during

the President's inauguration, and then, of course, the 12-day war. And then now this one. So, you

take that all that together and they say, there is no point in negotiating with you. You will never

keep your word. We tried to show you, there's a pain presses here, but now that we have been just

decimated with all kinds of serious hits, but we're still viable. And the only way we can remain

viable is if the pain for you goes a lot worse. And I think that they have every incentive to

drag this out further because they can suffer. And they're going to, and I think that they're

willing to go even more suffering, both in from bombs themselves and from the loss of revenue and

the problems that could cause at home. Because, and this is my perception, they calculate that Trump

can't suffer like that. And that if they drug this out another two or three months, the oil price

would continue to go up to unsustainable levels. And then Trump is going to be in a world of

hurt. It will cost you at home domestically. And I think that the pain has to be a lot worse on

us before they would give in to that. That's what I think. Yeah, but see, here's the thing that,

well, it's unfortunate that they started off by killing the old guy because it only put younger,

more radical people in charge. And if anyone was to caution conservatism here, it would have been

him probably to say, like, listen, guys, we got our licks and could be worse. And try to call

the thing off because the reality is that, and I'm not saying we're here yet, okay? But

you know, as the guys in the neighborhood would say, Trump is loco. You know, you don't, if you're

the leader of Iran, you don't want to make him really emotional and upset because, for example,

hundreds and hundreds of sailors died when an American ship sank out there in the Indian ocean.

Or whatever, you know, when they hit our bases, as we talked about in the Gulf, they didn't wipe

out the barracks. Most of them had been evacuated anyway, but they were pinpoint strikes on radar

dishes and things like this. So yes, I didn't wait and all that was bad. But they weren't going

for like total war against us to do everything they could to kill our servicemen, even the officers.

You know what I mean? So because look, they're up against a thermonuclear superpower.

So how do you fight that cautiously? You know, they want to push their luck and make their point.

That's fine. And you know, Trump doesn't have to use, wouldn't have to use nukes at all. But

those B-52s, and again, I guess they can shoot down F-35. They're forced going to get cautious.

But ultimately, if they're willing to commit their Air Force and are determined to get air

dominance over that country and use B-52s to carpet bomb in the North Vietnamese style, you know,

Nixon over North Vietnam and just carpet bomb Tehran, they could do that as just ultimate, you know,

do what I say politics. Trump could be driven to that level of violence and potentially even the

use of atomic bombs, although I'm not saying that. I don't think that. But

not yet. From their point of view, they know that they can only win so bad. You know what I mean?

Right. And the question is how much pain can they inflict as a result of that? Will that bring

them to or will that wipe out our defensive already? We are significantly weakened as a nation because

of the extraordinary amount of our pack three missiles our interceptors have been expended here

and in Ukraine and in Israel before that. The total amount, when you actually track over the

number of years, how many we have funded. So we know pretty much how many total inventory that

has been made from our pack three missiles, the most modern air defense missiles, and now how

many have been used and it is a dwindling number and it is not something you can replace except for

in a number of years. And as long as we go on this, I mean, it's not inconceivable that we could

get to virtually nothing or have to pull out the older pack twos and some of these other things which

are even less effective. And it can be a real problem. So the question is, who's got the more

political will? Are the Iranians willing to say, yeah, you want to send your B-52s over? Send them

over. The North Vietnamese like you manage it. That didn't bring them to their nays. They want

the North Koreans who were bombed just as bad. Almost every city was bombed into oblivion. Pyongyang

allegedly had two buildings left standing at the end. They never capitulated. And so there's

ever a reason to think that they wouldn't either. Add gauze to the strip. Of course, it looks

like Nagasaki actually hit it, etc. So if that's what Trump is thinking, I mean, he could exhaust

himself. And that's just not a good place to be. And then the question is, how long can we endure

the economic pain? Iran doesn't have to do anything for that. That stuff that's going to happen

because of our actions here. And I don't know the answer to any of these. I just know that these

are plays that they could make. And it's bad for all of us, whichever way it goes, unless we use

your sample there or your prospect of just let's all figure this out and get it over with.

Because I think that could exist. It would be a lot harder now than it was before. And even then

I think the Iranians are going to say, well, I ain't going to do it quickly. We're not going to

make it easy on you. But we'll get there. Because if we don't, there's a lot more pain to go around.

Yeah. We know they really cast this dive back in June when Trump essentially adopted Netanyahu's

definition of their nuclear program being essentially equivalent to them having a nuclear weapons

program that they're making a bomb right now that we can't tolerate them having an enrichment

program whatsoever. And once he called that bluff, yes, he did set them back by a lot. But

not by so much that they can never enrich again. They've mastered the fuel cycle. They know how to

do it. They can do it again more. And so then the only thing holding them at bay there is the

threat that he'll just keep bombing them and bombing them and bombing them. The only way that they're

going to not have a nuclear program is if we really change the regime. But if you kill the

Ayatollah, they're just going to name another one. If you kill the ruling council, they're just going

to name another one. What are you going to do? Drop in the 82nd airborne and somehow shoot every

last Shiite cleric who might claim authority in the government or some kind of thing. There's no

way to sack the capital city, right? There's no way to finish how this plays out in a way that

makes any sense. And so even though they did severely set back the program, what they really did

was, you know, like in standby me, they threw their hat over the fence so that now they got to go.

And now they have to keep going and going and doubling and tripling down. They don't know how to

solve it. When, of course, the situation before June was that they were bluffing. Look, man,

we were saying, if you make a nuke, if you start to try to make a nuke, we'll attack you before

you're done. And they were saying, look, we're not making a nuke. So don't attack us. But if you do

attack us, we might make a nuke. So that was the perfect standoff just leading at that. That had

lasted since 2006 and nothing had changed. People cry on and on all these crocodile tears about

60% and they only reached up to 60% so that they could negotiate it away. That's about to get back

into the deal. That's all it was was a bargaining chip. Why didn't they keep going to 90%? Why

did they go ahead and make a warhead? Because they weren't trying to do that. What they were trying

to do was say, Hey, look how far we've gotten in our enrichment. We sure could go up to weapons

grade. Couldn't we? You wouldn't want us to break out toward a nuke. Would you? That was all that

they were doing when the whole point was to get us back to the table. Otherwise, they could have

just kicked the inspectors out and said, ratio and tried to go ahead and make a simple gun type nuke.

And look at this. This is from 2021 when they first started doing the 60% is really important to

point out here. This is on April 13th. Iran announced its intention to enrich up to 60%

U-235. This was characterized by Iran as a response to sabotage of its vast underground

enrichment cascades in the tents two days before the move comes against the backdrop of sensitive

negotiations happening in Vienna aimed at rescuing the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA. And then let's see,

I think I have one of these other ones up here, which you can't see on my screen at the minute,

but one by the let's see. No, let me let me give that to you. Let me share that with you too,

because that is equally important because it really is relevant to what we're talking about here

about how this is even going to be resolved. And that is, this is also, I believe, from 2021,

where it was talking about what the arms control association said. Listen, this was all about,

to see if I have that highlighted for minister at that time said in a December 9th speech,

that the nuclear deal known as the JCPOA is becoming useless. The United States and Iran are not

currently on a path to return to the deal. He said, but Iran would consider restoring the

cord if it serves our interests. So they were signaling even back then, this was actually in February

2024. So they were trying to negotiate the thing away even as recently as that. And they said

that nearly every time. So the claim that now is being said that they were racing to the bomb

is incredibly reduced or ignored and rejected by the record that anyone can go and see if they

want to. And they've been saying this forever. So now then we're in the pickle we are by our choice

and we have made a bad situation far worse. Yep. And you know, the reality was that the IAEA

had a safeguards agreement with the Iranians. They routinely verified the non-diversion of

nuclear material. They had repeatedly disavowed nuclear weapons and we had the ability to make sure

under the JCPOA. And they were willing to get back into it. It was simply a bluff. And it's also

true that when Trump did bomb Natons in Fort O and Isfahan last June, he did a lot of damage.

Obliterate actually was not much of an overstatement. I mean, if they're still intact centrifuges

down deep underground, they're fine. But there's no activity. They sealed up all the entrances.

They know they're being watched by satellite 24 hours a day there. There's nothing that they can

do really to reopen those facilities and use them. We don't know if any, you know, people are buried

alive there or uranium canisters of uranium or enriched uranium hexafluoride gas or whatever are

held down there or not. But they also blew up the conversion facility at Isfahan. And that's where

you take the semi-refined or that yellow cake from the Dave Chappelleskit. That's where you take

the yellow cake and you convert it to uranium hexafluoride gas, which is what you introduce into

the spinning cascades of centrifuges in order to separate the 235 from the 238. You get that sweet

stuff or at least a higher and higher percentage of the 235 isotope there. And then you got to convert

it back to metal again to make a fuel rod out of it or a warhead out of it or anything else

useful. And so without that conversion facility, whatever they have that's just or they can't

transmit to gas, whatever they have that's gas, they can't make a metal again or do much of anything

with it. And I think I don't know for a fact the truth of it, but it seemed highly credible.

And you may know more about this than me, but it seemed highly credible. The Omani negotiators

claim that I had told essentially was willing to climb all the way down to the very lowest

rung in the ladder essentially and say, look, we'll have no enrichment for between three and five

years. Whatever enrichment we do have will only be to 1.5% and we'll ship out our entire stock

you guys can turn not even ship it to Russia. We'll ship it to the United States and you guys

can turn it into fuel rods. And I think that that is credible because in fact, he didn't even just

step that far down the ladder. Donald Trump pushed him that far down the ladder with his bombing run

last June. It was successful as far as that goes. So this was in other words, if the Omani

negotiator is to believe there, this is as far as the Iatola could possibly capitulate without

entirely giving up enrichment altogether, and which would have been perfectly acceptable. And

I'm suspicious that that's part of the reason for the timing to start the war was they were coming

to Whitcoff saying, look, we are willing to deal. And I'm sure you know as well that Whitcoff

cited nonsense as reasons why their offers weren't good enough. He apparently thinks that there's

an enrichment facility at the Tehran Research Reactor medical isotope reactor that America built

for them. That is not a uranium enrichment facility at all. And this guy's totally confused

about the issues he was trying to negotiate there. Yeah, I'll think you would be able to try and

get along. So well, anyway, they were trying to get past his ignorance and just say, look man,

we surrender almost entirely. And then they launched the war before he could that narrative could

really, you know, take hold in the public. And she that that's why I say Whitcoff was lying

because then he's now just went out overboard every time he could get on the airwaves anyway

to lie and say, oh, well, they wouldn't even in fact, they they threatened us with this 60 to

whatever foreign 30 kilograms of nuclear, whatever, and they could make 11 bombs. And I'm like,

dude, they told you that in the context of we'll give it away. He lied about that part to make

it sound like that they were they just didn't understand anything. And of course, he knew he knew

he knew he's not stupid. He doesn't he's not detailed on some of these things. Scott, but he knew

he knew for sure what they were offered. I mean, anyone who speaks English would have understood

that. And oh, man, a foreign minister made sure everybody knew before the war had been launched.

And if there was any question, they was laid out right then. But that's not what anybody in

America or Jerusalem wanted. And so they struck quickly. So that didn't have any chance to grow

any legs, as you say. I mean, it's it's nearly impossible for it to be any other way.

Yep. Sounds right. Unfortunately.

Well, listen, we really appreciate you coming on today. We'll leave it there for the moment. And

we'll keep on watching these stuff and see where it goes here. And I have hopes. And my best

prayers are that your version of things works out in that whether it's Trump and Netanyahu and

whoever most of them call him any if he's the one that's actually in charge, whoever,

if they all say, you know what, let's all get together and we can make each other heard for a

little bit longer or whatever something. But then let's all start ramping this down. That would

be good for humanity. It would be good for the global freaking energy system and the agricultural

system, which is also a risk here because of not coming out through the Gulf. So we need to get

this stuff fixed for everybody. I hope you turn out to be right. Well, thank you very much for that.

And let me just say here at the very end of people want a deep background briefing on all this

stuff. Go to the facts about Iran.com. By all means, subscribe to my YouTube channel. But the facts

about Iran.com. I've got a deep background briefing for everybody there about the history of

America's relationship with Iran since the career is at least. So the facts about Iran.com. And thank

you, Danny. Yeah. Well, by all means, if you can, yeah, there it is right there. The facts about

Iran. Just Google it. If you don't, if you don't, you can't see the address right there.

That'll be great. That awesome, Scott. Thanks very much. And there I see the Scott Horton Academy.

Apparently, that's one of your products. Yeah. This is, you know, have these in-depth courses

on the entire terror war's not. But I've taken a couple of those videos out, particularly

pertaining to Iran for everybody to get caught up on the context here. And in fact, we're

can people they're interested in the Scott Horton Academy working to go to find out any more about

that. It's a Scott Horton Academy.com. That's not hard. Very good. There we go. We'll have it.

Scott and Horton Academy.com. Thank you very much, folks. And thank you, Scott. We'll look

forward to seeing you on the next episode of Daniel Davis deep dive.

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