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