Iran War Deep Dive: Former Intel Officer Reveals What’s REALLY Happening | 3/11/26

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Politics without the soap opera with unfiltered constitutional conservative truth.

The conservative review with Daniel Horowitz.

And welcome back fellow American patriots and Minimans standing at the ready to fight

anew for the issues that matter today on this Wednesday, March 11th here at CR podcast,

your host Daniel Horowitz back here today to discuss the war in Iran.

We've waited about a week and a half to assess things.

And I think there's enough going on where we could assess where our things headed.

Will we finally thread the needle of winning a war with minimal casualties, minimal hardware

lost?

After all, we do have a trillion dollar military for a reason where it will enhance rather

than diminish our deterrent against China.

Get our stupid bases finally out of there, leave it to Israel to patrol the area, do what

they want.

We don't need to help them.

We don't need to obviously hamstring them.

But will this finally enable us to keep the shipping lanes open permanently?

Get rid of the menace of the Middle East.

And then focus on the threats here at home, then in our hemisphere, and obviously the Indo-Pacific.

That is I think the needle we all want to thread.

Is Trump capable of that?

Does even plan on doing that?

So we're going to have a special guest, Michael Preigent coming up in just a moment, expert

on all things Middle East and we'll get his perspective.

I'll kind of push him hard, he's a supporter of the war.

We'll see.

Let me know what you guys think Daniel Horowitz at StartMail.com is the email you could

like and subscribe.

Horowitz show at YouTube as well as our sub-stack, liberating truths.

So I just want to start off with a couple of news stories from today before focusing

the rest of the show on Iran because really in general, I do support deterring and breaking

our enemy stuff, but provided that it's a holistic picture and we're not doing contradictory

things that negate it both in the Middle East with other policies, but most importantly

here at home.

The bottom line is we face an existential threat, a twin threat from domestic terrorism

of Antifa, a lot of white, you know, American-born crazies now.

There's a record number of them as well as jihadists in the Muslim Brotherhood and the

Islamization of America.

And if this administration is not going to use its tenure to deal with those threats now,

we're at least in power red states to deal with them for the future.

When Democrats come in, we're going to face the ultimate anarcho tyranny of Democrats

prosecuting and persecuting us while they're brown short Antifa and Islamists run loose

in the streets.

Now, you just take Bucks County, Pennsylvania, suburban Philadelphia, really ex-servant

in Philadelphia, and just in the matter of a few days, we had these two Islamic terrorists

born in America from Middle Eastern, you know, a Turkish Afghan immigrants.

And then now Jesse Elks, an Antifa militant who killed Corporal Tim O'Connor, a police

officer who pulled him over in a routine traffic stop and he went on the rampage and killed

him yesterday.

This is all in one county in America.

This embodies the fact that we have a lost control over, again, this is not just New

York City in Chicago.

This is not just Northern Virginia, which is terrible.

You have this Bangladeshi Virginia legislator who sponsored the bill there that they just

passed to Ben Kamen, uh, Kamen firearms.

So folks, we have that.

We also have White House deputy chief of staff James Blair saying he wants to stop emphasizing

nasty portations.

Okay, so they want to move away from that.

And again, a mere balot, one of the two guys from Bucks County that went to New York and

through the IED into the crowd, he told cops, according to police reports, that he wanted

to perpetrate a larger attack than the Boston bombing.

He actually said it was only three deaths.

He wanted more.

He also allegedly said in a statement NYPD, quote, this isn't a religion that just stands

when people talk about the blessed name of the prophet.

We take action, we take action.

If I didn't do it, someone else would come and do it and you know what?

He is right.

Thank you, a mere balot for your, uh, candor because this is what we've let in in the thousands

in the hundreds of thousands to the point where now we have even American born ones in

the tens of thousands that knew of no other country grew up in a nice area in America, not

even just urban cesspools.

And this is what they believe.

So what are we going to do about it?

What are we going to do about this sharia influence, the muzzle brotherhood influence,

the mouse set every block, the immigration stuff.

What is the plan to quantify this?

What is the plan to deal with it in DOJ?

What is the plan from red state attorneys general to deal with this again, the twin threats

of the Islamization of America and Antifa symbiotically, by the way, working together.

You know, so earlier this week, the US designated the Sudanese muzzle brotherhood.

But again, the biggest one is the one at home.

And obviously, Syria, Qatar, Turkey is left out.

So this is really where we get this inconsistency that I think is giving a lot of people pause.

So I just wanted to get that out before we had an opportunity to delve into Iran and

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So folks, I'd hate to speak on behalf of you, but I think I am echoing the sentiments

of a lot of traditional conservatives that have long been concerned with our foreign policy,

the failure of our military engagements for quite some time.

But at the same time, we're not isolationists.

We're certainly not part of this growing wing of Islamic apologists.

We want to see Iran degraded and neutralized.

We want our shipping lanes opened and we want justice for the 45 plus years of Iran humiliating

us at the same time.

We recognize that we are depleted, our military has been depleted, our stockpiles depleted.

We're in debt and it's causing inflation.

It's going to cost more money.

We don't want to get sucked into a long engagement, obviously, that's universal.

We want to save our resolve and hardware for the Indo-Pacific and China.

And just in general, we want to see most of the Middle East in our rearview mirror and

obviously, to focus on our threats here at home, which many of us are concerned.

Some of us on the traditional right are concerned that the Trump administration has been failing

us domestically, domestic policy, and also even security-wise, as it relates to domestic

policy, hasn't been aggressive on codifying some of these orders on Islamic immigration,

the Muslim Brotherhood stuff, as we just mentioned, was weak sauce.

And Antifa, we're not seeing DOJ go after them.

So a lot of us are kind of like, man, why now do we really need to be doing this?

We want our soldiers to succeed.

We want Iran neutralized, but could we really trust that this is going to work for us?

It's also a little bit tough for the president himself.

It's hard to know his motivations.

He's good on some parts of foreign policy, but then it's a little bit too close for comfort

with Qatar, with Turkey's Erdogan, with Jalani and Syria.

We're kind of continuing the Lebanese Armed Forces business, and then this obsession with

this Gaza rebuilding Gaza business where, no, I mean, we don't want any of that.

Just focus on America, but we want to be strong and deter enemies abroad.

I think that is where most conservatives are.

I must say also my first reaction is Israel at a great cost to them.

They were doing this for free.

We obviously always helped in the background logistically, but they did it for free last

June.

And the Trump administration sort of pulled them off.

So now we're back, but now we're involved.

So I don't know why not just let Israel do it for free.

So you have a lot of inconsistencies.

The question is, are we finally going to thread the needle in a way where we're going to

get the job done, but in a way that is enduring and durable, that real lines are focused from

this bipartisan failure of the Middle East, constantly propping up Israel's enemies, but

then giving Israel weapons and aid to combat them and then holding them back when they're

a little bit too successful in defending themselves once attacked and rinse and repeat.

Are we finally going to just let them lose so we could exit again, being pro-Israel is

not about subserving our agenda to Israel is quite the opposite.

It's about us focusing on our needs.

Let them do what they want there.

Get our stupid bases out of there from being sitting ducks.

Are we going to do this?

What are the objectives?

What do we stand politically and militarily there?

I can't think of a better person to bring on than Michael Prejent, our next guest.

He's a former army intel officer with over a three decades of experience working on security,

terrorism, counterinsurgency.

He lived it all.

He was in Iraq during first desert storm and then the second Iraq war and then he was a company

commander in Afghanistan in 2002.

He worked at DIA.

He also served with the Kurdish pushmergera in northern Iraq, which is going to loom very

large in this conflict as well.

Really covers all the bases.

Hey, Michael, I've been meaning to get you on for so long.

Welcome to the blaze and thank you for joining us.

Thanks for having me, Daniel.

Appreciate it.

All right.

So you heard my perspective.

I think a lot of traditional conservatives that are a little bit leery of the Republican

foreign policy guys they've seen until now.

But they're certainly not where Tucker and these guys are based on a week and a half

of the war.

What would you say our objectives are and should be and how close are we to achieving

them?

Thanks.

First of all, I'd like to say that those that are worried about this war come from a sincere

baseline.

They've seen they've seen failure in Iraq.

You know, I spent five years in Iraq, but I was there during the full 20 year campaign

in some capacity, whether being a civilian or in uniform.

And we basically handed Iraq to Iran.

And in Afghanistan, I was a company commander.

I worked at Afghanistan through the 20 years also.

And we basically handed that back to the Taliban.

So I understand the skepticism.

I have the same skepticism.

I don't want to see prolonged war.

But what we're seeing now is what we're good at, right?

We're seeing our technology and our intelligence to degrade and enemies military capabilities.

So that is happening.

The ballistic missiles, the drone factories, the nuclear program, the nuclear sites, the

disclosed ones and the undisclosed ones are being targeted.

When it comes to this campaign so far, the president said something yesterday that I understand

how the Middle East listens to the president.

The president said, you know, we're being very successful and this could end soon.

But that means is we've degraded the military, but we are not going to push the Iranian people

into a regime change operation.

We're not going to make the mistakes of Iran and Afghanistan again.

We're not going to deploy hundreds of thousands of US troops to push the people towards a goal

that they may or may not want to achieve.

You know, and the hardest part of war, like I said, this is the, this is what we're good

at, this first phase, this first 10 days.

It's striking me.

The hardest part of war is when the enemy takes off the uniform and blends into the civilian

population and then shoots at you from a crowd and you respond.

And then the next headline is, look, you've killed civilians, you know, that's the hardest

part of war when the enemy takes off their clothes and goes into the civilian population.

That's why Iraq lasted 20 years.

That's why Afghanistan lasted 20 years.

So I understand the skepticism.

I am there as well, but you cannot, in my estimate, in my estimation, say that attacking a

dedicated enemy of the US in the Islamic Republic of Iran, using an ally who's been fighting

all of the terrorist organizations that we have designated for killing Americans, that being

Israel, cannot criticize this action so far.

And you have to look at every terrorist organization that Iran supports has been degraded.

Some even decimated leaderships, leadership targeted.

It would be the equivalent of this campaign so far to your American audience, what we've

done in Iran would be the equivalent of taking out the Pentagon, taking out the White

House, taking out, you know, bunkers where our, you know, executives would go, and basically

decimating the leadership of every American division down to the battalion commander.

And that's huge because you have a 10,000-man division, you take out the headquarters,

take out the brigade commanders, take out all those elements, and it leaves guys like

me at the battalion level saying, what do we do, man, we don't have any leadership?

Where do we go?

And that's what you're seeing right now happening in Iran.

You're seeing members of the Iraq, of correction of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Islamic

Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Some people starting to break ranks because their leaders have been killed in the besiege,

which is the most important entity to go after if you want the people to push back against

this regime.

And that's the ununiform civilian clothes wearing people that go around beating people and

disappearing people off the streets for listening to music, for not wearing a hijab, meaning

not covering your hair, and for being a political dissident or being gay or whatever.

So targeting the besiege is important.

But as the president starts using this language that we are meeting our military objectives

ahead of schedule, you know, this is the time for the people to show some sort of spark

that they're willing to do something about the regime.

If they do not, you off ramp and say mission accomplished.

In a way that mission accomplished means military degraded, we met our objectives, and we have

basically made Iran a problem that our allies in the region can handle now because they're

not as big as they were.

An enemy in the region where their people could topple this regime because they're not

as strong anymore.

So that's where we're at right now.

That's my take.

So one thing that to me is very important and this dates back to our principle since

Madison, since the founding is that we need to keep shipping lanes open.

So obviously, you're going to have the disruption during the war, but we've had this disruption

on and off because the Iranians control it.

They were able to attack some tie vessels.

Three vessels were attacked in the streets today.

What do we need to do at a minimum?

Again, putting regime change aside, which we should not be on the hook for.

I don't think we have the stomach for.

We don't want it.

I mean, not that we don't want it, but we don't want to have to be responsible for that.

So you said, look, we could just break their hardware, defang them as a threat to our

strategic interest.

So at a core, shouldn't that include making sure that the streets are free?

And how do we achieve that objective?

Is it their navy that needs to be destroyed?

One needs to be destroyed to keep the shipping lanes opened at least for a few years, you

know?

Well, there will needs to be destroyed.

So we have to remember that in any time the regime wanted concessions from the West,

they would ramp up attacks in the state of her moves.

And they would say, only we can turn down the heat.

Only we can stop our guys from doing this.

So basically, they ramped up violence and targeting ships in the state of her moves

for concessions.

And they got concessions from the Obama administration.

They received concessions from the Biden administration.

They have not received concessions from the Trump administration.

They either term.

So what do we do?

The minds, people are worried about the minds, right?

But if they put the minds out there, guess what?

They could hit Russian tankers.

They could hit Chinese tankers.

They're unguided, floating explosives that don't, you know, avoid Chinese tankers or

Russian tankers.

The United States can keep the straight of her moves open.

I saw a navy admiral, Stavitis say that we can't, which surprised me as a military

guy to hear a naval commander say we can't do something that he would have said we can

do if he was under the Obama administration.

So I don't like politicized military, former generals taking political, you know, but taking

the political side of an issue, basically seeing our military can't do something.

And that's not me cheerleading.

I just know the capabilities.

So what can you run do?

They can you launch missiles so the shed drones cannot take out tankers.

They can cause explosions, they can kill people, they can, they can, they can look good for

the media and they can raise insurance prices, right?

But what can tankers or anti-ship missiles?

So those are the things that are being attacked, those are the things that were being attacked

day one because we don't want our naval assets to be worried about that threat.

So shutting down the straight of her moves, you know, the argument is we shouldn't escalate

because they'll do that.

So they're always going to threaten to do that because that's who they are.

So you negate that capability.

The shed drone is always going to be a nuisance, but you can simply do what the Ukrainians

are doing and put heavy machine guns on these tankers, listen for the lawnmower and shoot

it down.

That's what it is.

We've taken away their ability to do swarm attacks at this point.

The swarm attack for the shed 136 drone takes about one hour to two hour to set up an individual

drone 10 to 20 minutes, right?

But again, you need that command and control.

You need that brigade commander, that division command to say, hey guys, let's set up a drone

attack at this time tomorrow.

These are your targets.

We're going to hit these tankers.

That intel is not there right now.

It's all visual.

It's a guy with binoculars looking at a flag or somebody looking at a transponder.

So shut off your transponders and hug Chinese vessels.

Shut off your transponders and hug Russian vessels.

The US Navy, I heard a silly argument that the carrier group can't go into the street

of Ramos.

The carrier group doesn't need to go into the street of Ramos.

We have other assets that can do these things.

I've heard the arguments, we can't go to war with a country that has 90 million people.

Our military won't win.

I'm like, you never fight the population, you fight the insurgency.

So there are things like that.

But again, people that are maybe listening right now saying this guy didn't know what he's

talking about.

You don't understand your baseline.

We don't want forever wars.

We don't want to continue to lose these wars and sacrifice US blood and treasure.

I'm with you.

But this right now is not that.

This is the degradation of a state sponsor of terror that has been killing Americans for

47 years.

I'm an expert witness in terrorism cases.

I go to US District Court and argue that Iran is responsible for the deaths of American

soldiers and civilians and these theaters in the Middle East.

And the evidence is there.

The linkage is there.

This is a real enemy.

The threat here in the United States is real because they've set up, I didn't want to

say it.

People I think I said Israel is real and they've set up a brand where any crazy can conduct

an attack here, a lone wolf, and the regime will take credit for it.

So there are a lot of things the regime can do when people say it's not an existential

threat.

It keeps killing Americans because we project force.

We are in these places.

But to your question about the basis or you're arguing about basing in the Middle East, we

need a seriously look at what basis we were able to use during this operation.

And if we weren't able to use all you did, we don't need all you did.

If we weren't able to use the basis in Iraq, we don't need the basis in Iraq.

We can't use intellect.

We shouldn't have it there.

And the reason I say that is these countries, these allies and name only do not let us

use these bases when we're actually going after adversaries.

Shea militias have attacked American positions in Iraq and Jordan and Syria.

From Iraq, we weren't able to use the bases in Iraq to go after these militias.

We weren't able to use the bases in Iraq and Qatar to defend Israel from Iran's ballistic

missiles and drone attacks.

We weren't able to use the bases this time around.

Those allies like Qatar, specifically Qatar, that acts as a pass through for everything

Iran wants to fund.

From Hamas, to the Houthis, to Hezbollah, this country that base should go away.

I don't care about a 10-year lease.

They have disqualified themselves from being a true ally based on their actions, post-October

7th, and their actions before October 7th, they'll allow that operation to happen in

the first place.

Iraq is a satellite country for the Islamic Republic of Iran.

There is so much mobilization inside of Iraq right now from Peshmerga forces and Sunni

forces, not against Iran, but against Baghdad.

So we're likely to see Baghdad tested, like it's never been tested before, and they've

shown us that they are not an ally of the United States, meaning the government in Baghdad,

they are a puppet of the regime.

And there is no country more worried about the regime being displaced by its own population

than Baghdad and Doha.

Those two countries are the most worried about the regime falling.

If Iran goes away, guess who the next state sponsor of terror is going to be?

The spotlight is going to move towards Qatar, and that little country spends so much money

to stay off the stage, to stay out of that spotlight.

And that's the country we'll be focused on after this operation.

What did Qatar do?

And this is my concern that my hope is that this is a holistic and systemic realignment

in policy, because let's get back to the basis point, because I think that's a really

important point.

My first observation of the war was Israel both last time and this time to my knowledge

has not lost a single soldier or airman in the campaign, yet right away, we took casualties

exclusively because we had bases as sitting ducks.

And what bothers me is that this ties into the geopolitical problem we're having on

the right in America now too, that a lot of people like, well, Israel is drawing us into

war or, you know, we have to restrain them because of our assets.

But it's circular logic because we all say on the right that we want to exit the theater

and have less of a focus, but we leave our bases perkeriously surrounded and also to

a certain extent, these embassies, expensive billion dollar embassies that we protect, bad

dead parts of Iraq, parts of Syria, and then obviously we have Kuwait, we have, we have

certainly sent come in in Qatar, and it's like, well, you're saying if we don't have offensive

capabilities when we need them, so then they're just sitting ducks defensively.

By the way, Israel's homeland is there and they don't have that problem that we have.

Right.

So then why don't we just get it out of there so that when Israel needs to, from a strategic

standpoint, shoot at the hornet's nest, we don't have our neck right at the hornet's

nest.

You know, the Biden administration allowed Iran to use those bases basically holding us hostage.

Me, the Biden administration, every time there was an Israeli strike on his beloved positions

or homospositions or the Houthis, the first thing the Biden administration came out and

said was, we don't want to escalate with Iran, we don't want to go with, to war with

Iran.

And when they fired at American bases and they killed, there were upwards of 270 attacks

during the Biden administration from Iranian proxies in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan, our bases

that are in those areas.

And our strategy was to shoot down the arrows and not the archers.

So we're hitting the archers now, but we cannot let our bases become, you know, hostages

to our foreign policy, meaning our enemies have leverage when it comes to this.

We'll hit an American base.

And to your point about sitting ducks, we can defend our bases in these countries from

ballistic missiles.

But we haven't put the simple things in place to defend them against drones.

Now, your audience should know that these drones, the Ukrainians basically put a heavy

machine gun in the back of a vehicle.

They have some people that are forward that hear the drone coming and then give it the

trajectory, give the trajectory to the machine gun nest in the back of that truck.

And you listen for the lawnmower sound and you shoot it down.

That's it.

You're not used.

You talked about cost ratios of war and, you know, the impacts, you're not used expensive

weapons to take out inexpensive threats.

And we're dealing with that.

We've seen our allies use a patchies now to shoot down the drones.

The UAE is doing that.

We just don't have enough.

Again, it's using those bases, right?

Can we use the base in Iraq to launch a patchies to shoot down drones?

Can we use the bases and all you did in these other places?

And you hear these weak leaders that need the regime to survive so the spotlight doesn't

shift to them inside of the Middle East, specifically Qatar.

And then you see Erdogan take a position.

He's a NATO ally who has taken a pro-Iran position and anti-Israel position.

And we're not able to use that base.

So I think at the end of this, we have leverage.

Put in a U.S. base in a country so give the United States leverage.

It should not give our country leverage that benefits our enemies.

And that's what we're seeing here.

So I'm a huge fan of debasing in those areas because those bases were there for logistical

support for the Iraq theater and the Afghanistan theater.

We are not in prolonged wars in the Middle East anymore.

We need to do the over-horizon strategy that the Obama administration put in place just

to cover their asses, excuse my language, in Afghanistan.

But we have an intel capability with Israel.

We have an ally with Israel.

We can base out of Israel.

We could base out of other countries that are begging us to come in.

I mean Bahrain being one of them.

We have a naval fleet there, but we can base there.

But we need to move that base out of Qatar, move that base out of Iraq.

And we need to start punishing Baghdad for being so close to Tehran and punishing Doha

for being the bar and star wars.

So let's every terrorist come in and plan the next operation over a drink.

Can you talk a little bit about Iraq and al-Sudani and his regime there?

We've seen this throughout successive administrations.

Is it this desire to emotionally hold on to the fake notion that somehow we won in Iraq

and we just don't want to admit that we basically fought for an enemy, that we're just treating

them like an ally?

And do you see any change in the Trump administrations policy forthcoming?

I do, I do.

But let me talk about Iraq for a second, right?

We have such a low bar of success for Iraq.

So let's keep the oil flowing.

Let's keep a government that we kind of feel like we can put pressure on, even though we

know that they're beholden to Tehran.

And let's keep up this notion of keeping ISIS from coming back.

I mean, ISIS has become the best scapegoat for U.S. foreign policy.

When it comes to Jolani and Syria, former al-Qaeda leader who now put on the sports code and

adapted the Hamas playbook, and now we have, you got to understand, your audience needs

to know, I've said in the room, for five years inside of Iraq and watch very capable leaders

believe that somehow they were able to convince the Iraqi sitting across from them or the

terrorists sitting across from them, or the tribal shakes sitting across from them, that

they have come to the U.S. position.

It is embarrassing how much we want to be light, and we confuse the politeness of the

Middle East culture in that they're going to nod and say, yes, I agree.

This is very difficult.

We just need more money, more time.

They're going to confuse that with changing somebody's mind.

And that somehow Jihad doesn't or didn't exist before ISIS.

You know, let that escape, that they're the whole thing.

It's like, I love it.

Every time something happens domestically, we had these two clowns from Bucks County that

tried to blow up the crowd in the hen, and ISIS attacked.

No, it was kind of like more from their local Muslim brotherhood mosque and leader there

where they grew up with.

It's decentralized Jihad.

That's endemic of Islam.

And so we side with one over the other.

In this refereeing Islamic civil war stuff, that's really, like I always say, you know,

we didn't have forever wars.

We didn't lose wars.

We didn't have wars.

We had social relations.

We won.

We won.

Yeah, we had social work in a combat zone, which is the worst of all refereeing Islamic

civil wars.

Getting back to the streets of Hormuz, I'm not a military guy, but to me, what we likely

do best is in the water, because you're not dealing with people and culture and populations,

you create a kill zone that anything bad that comes in there, we blow up.

Don't, you know, we have a trillion dollar annual military budget.

If we can't do that, then why do we have it?

Right.

Let me just close up on what I was going to say about Jalani in Syria.

Oh, yeah.

His guys killed Americans, those three American soldiers, yet he blamed it on ISIS.

So we hit targets in the desert that may or may not have existed.

So ISIS has become the new, hey, Jalani is not as bad as ISIS.

It's that comparative thing.

So talking about Soudani in Iraq, Soudani is not as bad as Maliki.

Well, Soudani is Maliki's guy, and Soudani is Tehran's guy.

We continue to fall for this, well, he's not as bad as the other guy.

Remember the argument Brett McGurk used to make back in the Iran deal, the JCPOA talks.

You know, do you want any Iran that supports terrorism, or do you want to

run this support terrorism with a nuclear weapon?

Like, you don't have to pick those, so you can then gate both of those.

And that's what this operation is about.

When it comes to the straight of her moves, yes, we can do those things.

But we are, for the first time, in my military experience since 9-11, being asked

by a population in the Middle East to come in to help us kill this regime.

We didn't get that in Iraq.

Nobody was asking us to come in to kill Soudani.

We didn't get that in Afghanistan.

We just went in and did it because of 9-11.

And, you know, I was part of both of those campaigns.

And everyone knows that the soldier at the ground level that's on the ground is trying

to win, trying to do everything they can to win.

We've been trained to win.

It's the politicians that waver.

It's the public that wavers.

And in this case, we've had 10 days of successful operations inside of Iran.

The straight of her moves has not been closed.

People are turning off the transponders and moving through the straight.

You can watch the videos.

But it's being threatened to be closed.

But the only way they can close it is if they put Russian and Chinese tankers at risk

with these mines.

They can't shut it down unless they use mines.

So-

Do they have a navy left?

No, they don't have a navy left.

But the navy is the easy target, right?

The navy is the visible target.

You expect the straight to be shut down by the navy.

They can't fly a helicopter onto a tanker anymore without it being shut down.

They can't use their gunboats to approach these tankers without them being destroyed.

They can launch missiles.

They can launch drones.

That's the threat.

Using mines puts allies at risk, Russia and China.

Iran can't risk that.

China said, open the straits, Russia said, keep the straight open.

They put pressure on the regime.

The whole thing, just all of this coming back together, we are very successful until our

leaders waver, meaning military operations.

We did the same thing in Iraq that we're doing now in Iran for the first 10 days.

Same thing.

Destroyed everything.

Same thing in Afghanistan, training camps, leaders, targeted them, pushed them into Pakistan,

pushed them into Torbora, pushed them into these places.

We're good at this.

We're not good at the next phase.

So that's my question to you, because what you said resembles an eerie disquiet for a lot

of us that, you know, we just want to focus domestically of so many issues.

We remember the success of Iraqi campaigns, certainly, you know, one, two A teams are in

Green Beret, you know, winning in Afghanistan, but then that next phase.

So describe to me that fork in the road that we're approaching again, that will determine

whether we repeat those mistakes or avoid them.

Commanders have decision points.

What do we need to see on the ground, Israeli and American?

What do we need to see on the ground that tells us the people are ready to go after the

regime?

Well, we have a force in the North, the Iranian Kurds that say, we're not doing anything

until you provide air cover for us, until you basically make it a no fly zone.

So we need to see that first before we do anything.

And we would have to expand that to Northern Iraq to protect our Kurdish allies there.

And then this caveat, our Kurdish allies don't trust us anymore, because we've abandoned

them in Iraq, we've abandoned them in Syria, and they're telling the Iranian Kurds, watch

out for these Americans.

Now, there's a window where you can trust us.

It's about a one to two year window where you can trust us after that will abandon you.

So take advantage of that window.

But again, this begs the question, can democracies win wars, right?

You have to win when you have political capital, you have to go in heavy.

The president has that window right now, but our country ebbs and flows every two to

four years, we change out leaders, we have election cycles, and the military campaign always

suffers.

I use an analogy of the Patriots, you know, the Patriot football team and the Washington

residents at the time, right?

One, one coach developed a playbook, kept Tom Brady there, cultivated a team that knew

how to win.

The other coach and the dance nighter who ran the residents changed out the team every

year.

That's what the U.S. did.

We changed out the team every year, hoping for a Super Bowl when the enemy developed

a long playbook with consistent players that knew what we were going to do because they

had seen us succeed and fail and they knew what signs to look for.

So we now know from those mistakes, we can't do this again in Iran unless the people signal

we're ready.

And part of that means nobody talks about this.

I don't know why this is taboo.

You have to arm the hell out of the insurgency.

You have to give them weapons to go after the besiege.

You have to open up logistical supply routes in northern Iraq.

You have to secure those areas, bring in weapons, intel, logistical support, medical support

so that it can be sustained.

And people don't want to talk about that.

It's just taboo.

It's crazy that people don't want to talk about what we're supposed to do.

Isn't the reason that do we have the money and weapons stockpiles to sustain that?

And this is different from what we started talking about.

All right, break their stuff and leave for this.

Here's the problem.

We could do it.

I understand what you're saying.

It's not the same as Iraq where we come in, heavy handed with a bunch of brigades of

our troops, but don't we kind of own it in the sense I'm not expressing Colin Powell's

strategy breaking you own it's a great line, but he was a bad general because he could

have advice.

Yes, questions.

But what I'm saying is we're on the hook.

We feel like we're on the hook to defend them.

They are very vulcanized.

Inevitably, you are going to have Islamic elements that are going to be attacking then.

And then we just don't have the resolve the time, the focus, the weapons, the money.

And then we have China looming.

In other words, my question to you is, what does an end look like?

Let me rephrase it.

What does an end look like that shows that we could get in pretty quick, fight heroically

militarily and efficiently and successfully in a way that China looks at it and they're

like, holy heck, these guys got their mojo back versus bogging us down, whether even

if it's not for gays of our soldiers, but depleting us, kind of what we're doing in

Ukraine for a while, to the point that they know they can make a run at Taiwan because

we just don't have the hardware to deal with them.

So China already feels that way, wow, look what they're doing.

So this isn't the signal to Russia.

What if Trump gave this capability to the Ukraine?

What would this war in Ukraine look like, meaning US might, right?

China sees the same thing.

What I would say to people about, you know, are we depleting our stockpiles as we're

a capitalist society?

I'm in Washington DC, you have many contracting companies are right now trying to get contracts

to expedite, backfilling all those munitions, understand some systems take about 30 days

to build, but those are the launchers, not the missiles.

The UAE's already doing that, Israel's already doing that and I'm not worried about stockpile.

What I do know about China is that one in three of their systems actually work and most

countries will buy three of them to make one work, cannibalizing the other two to make

the one work.

And what Russian China now know, based on the example in Iran, is their air defense systems

are no match for the Israeli Air Force or the US Air Force.

And that's their top line stuff, right?

We have to worry about hypersonic missiles, we have to worry about, you know, the last

ditch effort of a regime about to collapse, what will it do?

You know, the Putin narrative, what would Putin do if he felt like he had no way out?

You know, we have to be concerned about that and we have to look at things like that.

But I'm not worried about supply chains because we don't have to depend on China to build

our missiles and rockets and anything we need.

I do like the US might that has been projected, I like the capability, I like the decision-making.

This is very unpopular here in America, right?

Yep, this is like 23% approval or 20% to 30% approval.

And the president said, I don't care, this is the right thing to do.

I agree with that.

This is a country behind every war that we've had to include the Ukraine-Russia war that

we're part of, Iran has somehow been part of that, whether providing lethal aid to

a terrorist group, Al-Qaeda and Shia militias in Iraq, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the

Kani Network in Afghanistan, or providing drones to Russia to kill civilians in the

Ukraine.

Iran has been a destabilizing state sponsor of terror and a dedicated enemy of the United

States for 47 years.

The people of that country aren't necessarily pro-US, they're just anti-regime.

So whatever happens in Iran needs to have an Iranian face, we need to back it.

But what people should know here is the Iranian people aren't protesting that Israel is

killing their oppressive leaders, they're cheerleading it, they're doing that-

So they are, but are you a little bit surprised that we haven't seen a more robust effort

to overthrow in certain regions, at least far from Tehran to overthrow the government

or is it still too premature?

It's still early because like to date, they took out a besiege base in Western Iran.

And the besiege, again, the ununiformed, you know, IRGC guys that go out and basically

make people disappear, they're the ones that are going to be putting down protests.

The IRGC will be putting down the protests as well, they'll be wearing civilian clothes,

but we're seeing a breaking in the ranks and those things.

There are schisms, there are opportunities to exploit, but we need to be ready to do

it, just like the strike on the Supreme Leader.

There was intel that said, now is the time, the defense minister is there, the head of

the IRGC is there, strike.

And within minutes of receiving the intel that there was a go, the Supreme Leader was

killed.

All those military leaders were killed within minutes of receiving that intel.

We need to have that same strategy when we see windows of opportunity on the ground to

establish something, to build some sort of momentum.

And there is an opportunity to do that.

There's this video going around where the regime is out in public and look at this crowd,

where no match for you, you know, you're no match for us.

Look at our resolve, it's because even the regime knows Israel and the United States

is not going to bomb a gathering and daytime.

Well, Republican senators don't know that, by the way, they were out there peddling this

lie that somehow we targeted this girl school in Iran when, in fact, we hit an IRGC facility

a hundred meters away, it is shocking to me that they would go for this and this is

one of the concerns that they're going to Gaza the war by promoting this civilian nonsense

and buying into it.

And we already have certain voices on the right that prime the public in Gaza for this.

So I think that's something we probably have to watch out for.

You know, I look at sources, I'm a former intelligence officer, we develop sources and we look

at source credibility and when you look at this strike, you know, all of the information

is coming from the regime.

All the videos coming from the regime, the body count is coming from the regime.

There's been nothing to verify that number.

Now, if this was a target that we thought was an IRGC headquarters based on Intel and

we haven't adjusted it, it turned into a school, you know, that's one thing.

But to use a video of a munition that looks like a Tomahawk, but could be something else

because Iran has something equivalent.

I think the president made a mistake by saying Iran has Tomahawk's also.

I think it's a civilian mistake.

I think it's a civilian mistake.

Tomahawk to him may be a send them for cruise missile or missile with fence, you know,

but civilians make those mistakes.

If he was a military guy, he never would have said that.

But it's a civilian mistake.

Now, but to show a video of something hitting a hundred meters away and it didn't look

like a T-lamp, right?

It didn't look like an explosion from a Tomahawk.

It looked like an IRGC, you know, copy of something that hit that school.

Now, if we hit it, if we indeed thought it was an IRGC compound, then that's why we hit it.

We didn't hit it because it was a school.

We didn't hit it to kill children.

Then the regime knows that.

That's why they can gather in public like that big masses like it's an MTV spring break crowd

and say, look, look how strong we are.

So, look how much you trust that the United States and Israel won't attack you.

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So, I want to get to when we want to culminate this into an outcome that is sustainable.

I've seen you, you've been talking about this debatification.

One of the big mistakes in Iraq was to try to completely eradicate the existing regime

and anyone who was competent who worked in it.

And then that's how you got this chaos and insurgency.

Right.

There's a middle ground solution where, you know, because on the one hand, you could strike

a maneuver, break their stuff, just leave it.

They're intact and we kind of mose along every few years.

This is a little bit of a theory in Israel.

What they sometimes have to do, whether it's Gaza or Lebanon or whatever.

And then on the other end of this spectrum where there's some sort of whether it's the

the son of the former Shah or someone we bring in and then we feel like we're on the

hook for and there's constant insurgencies against him.

Is there a path to taking competent voices within the IRGC and sort of saying, hey, buddy,

you see the fist?

You know what we can do to you?

Do you want to live a nice life, build your country?

You can do it.

Here are red lines and go have that.

And we sort of stay in the periphery.

Is that an option here?

Yes, so just real quick for the debatification thing, you know, we basically pushed every

capable military leader into the insurgency by saying, you're all bad and we can't work

with any of you while the agency was saying, no, we know who we can work within this,

within Saddam's military because we've been working with them ahead of the operation.

Same things happening here in Iran.

There are members, we need to, you know, people within the IRGC that we need to work with.

But the Iranian people need to vet them, not us.

We are not very good at vetting, as I said earlier, we'll sit across from somebody hoping

to be liked, misinterpreted a nod or I understand comment as somehow changing that person's

mind.

It needs to be people in Iran that vet those leaders.

Here's my biggest concern.

Is that somehow you get a Lebanon situation where you have the IRGC acting as his

bala and Lebanese government that basically differs to his bala and his bala penetration.

And then we start funding what would be the Lebanese armed forces inside of Iran, the

Iranian armed forces, and they do nothing but allow that technology to go to the IRGC.

So it looks good on paper and you'll have people in DC say, hey, Mike, we're building

this is the phrase I hate the most, Daniel, from State Department and people that I talk

to, Mike, you don't understand, we're building institutions to counter Iranian influence.

And I always say, no, you're building institutions that have been co-opted by Iranian proxies or

by IRGC operatives.

We suck at this, Daniel, because if you look at the State Department expert or the military

person saying that, they've been in the role for six months or a year and then they move

onto another assignment.

They're an expert decision maker for a year without anything before that, preparing

them for the role, and they make decisions.

And the next person comes in, gets their baseline of knowledge, and they continue that process.

The only experts on the Iraq war and Afghanistan and our failures in these forever wars are

not in the government, are not in the military anymore.

We're out here warning people about the failures, we're Cassandra's trying to get people

to listen to our warnings so that we don't make the same mistakes.

And Israel doesn't care about Cassandra's, it's just like, we're going to go do it.

My biggest concern is the President says, okay, we're done, Israel you're done too.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

And I hope that you will say, no, we're not done, we're going to continue to go do this.

So you're getting to what really bothers me the most, that this entire issue is framed

as America first or Israel dragging us into war.

When in fact, it's the Wilsonian, Clintonian Obama Biden interventionism to sort of fund

both sides of everything in the Middle East, the L.A.F. stuff, the Jalani stuff, the Baghdad

stuff.

That is what's hamstringing Israel.

My point is, and even Netanyahu has been, according to media reports, indicating he wants

to get off of reliance on the US, build their own weapons systems, just let them do what

they need to do, get our stupid sitting duck hostage bases out of there.

And then stop propping up Israel's enemies and restraining them, but then we have a need

to bail them out and help them too, because we just screwed them.

So this is where I want to take this discussion and finally, just to end it at a political

level, we discuss strategically.

But politically, my biggest concern with this, which is why I've generally opposed these

sorts of engagements the last couple of years, just because we're never consistent about

it.

So if the administration is going to continue supporting Qatar, supporting Erdogan, supporting

Jalani, keeping up this myth of the L.A.F., which the Trump administration, while I agree

with a lot of what they did in the first term, was good.

That was a weakness there with the L.A.F. that I think led to October 7th, along with what

obviously the Biden administration did.

And we're always holding them back, pull out a Lebanon, pull out a Syria, don't protect

the Christians and the jurus there, because we want to have this myth that Jalani is bringing

peace to the region.

Now, how it is the ROI worth it to our military, if we're going to go and resort to that

mend?

The military is not making those decisions.

So, I mean, they have no, the ROI is forced on them by politicians.

The one thing I'll say about Jalani real quick, if he actually reformed, he'd be dead.

The only threat can be from ISIS, because if he actually isn't a terrorist anymore, his

own guys would kill.

And so, that's something I know from dealing with insurgents, is that if you are who you

say you are, you're probably dead within six months, or dead within a month, killed by

your own guys.

But going back to the bigger question, politicians, you know, I know people that have gone to

met with Jalani and Kalam al-Shara and say, no, no, he's great, you should hear him talk

about ISIS.

ISIS is easy.

You hand ISIS to the United States, it's like a fictional thing out there, it exists,

but it's like a five man sell out in the desert versus a guy who is backed by Erdogan,

who has his eyes on Baghdad, has his eyes on building a Sunni coalition to take Baghdad

back and put it into the Sunni, you know, I don't know if we call it Sunni orbit or Sunni

caliphate at this moment, but his guys want to go to Israel.

They don't care about Baghdad, they want to go straight to Israel.

And so you have, when I see somebody, and I hear hope being used, as a military guy,

we never say hope at all, hope is a strategy, right?

Hope is not a strategy.

Hope is for your family, your friends, and your football team, not for an enemy.

You never hope an enemy is going to not be a terrorist anymore or going to stop.

And when it comes to, you know, October 7th, we talked about that.

The first thing the Biden administration did after October 7th when it came to Jake Sullivan

and Anthony Blinken was saying, Iran had nothing to do with it.

Iran had nothing to do with it.

The $10 billion we gave to Qatar to hold to make $10 billion inside of Tehran fungible

to be used for terrorism had nothing to do with October 7th.

Israel, you can defend yourself, but also you should have a ceasefire now.

Don't attack his blah, even though they're launching rockets.

Israel held out for the most part, killed a bunch of people, but could have done so much

more.

And BB was criticized for it.

And then when Trump came in, the first mistake the Trump administration made was sending

Whitcoff out there.

Because when Trump said on day one, every hostage needs to be released, I truly believe

Hamas believed that.

I believe Tehran believed that.

But then you send out this guy, this real estate dealmaker, who I have zero respect for because

he squandered the political capital that Trump had in the Middle East.

He squandered the idea that Trump meant what he said by having this guy who comes in

wants to be liked, comments on the chandeliers, Iranians in the Russians called him the comic.

He's always making jokes and trying to be liked.

This is not a serious guy, but the best thing that Whitcoff ever said was that the Iranian

set across the room and said we have enough whistle material for 11 nuclear weapons.

And he came back and set it out loud.

So good on him for that, finally catching up to what the rest of us know, a year and a

half into the Trump administration.

But if you want to have an effective foreign policy, you need to put Rubio out there.

You need to put, you know, other people out there, you don't put Jerry Kushner, who got

a billion dollars from the Qataris, Steve Whitcoff, who got $626 million from the Qataris.

This is why Michael, a lot of my listeners are kind of very, very upset about that.

And really, they should be, they should be upset.

They don't know how to take this because it's hard to support something and engagement like this.

If you know, it goes into a sack full of holes that a lot of this, a lot of the policies,

well, okay, we kind of agree with that.

But then there's a lot of grift.

How much of this is business dealings and it's this inconsistency.

So it creates this false perception that's either you focus on America or we have to fight for

Israel and the Kurds.

But there's actually a third option.

We don't implement policies and support entities that are holding back Israel and the Kurds

and screwing the Kurds and actually just let it play out.

And now there's, Israel was dealing with Syria is not a country.

Okay, it's not a country and never really was.

We don't need to hold it together nor should we.

And they were holding together the Jerusalem area.

It was, that's their decision and it doesn't affect us.

It was mutually beneficial for the Syrian Kurds and for the Israelis to have that arrangement.

We should not be pressuring them to get out of there their own buffer.

Why does that, why does that harm us if anything it helps us or at least it's neutral.

So my final question to you is, do you think some of these inconsistencies once they

decided to pull the trigger on Iran will go away or are we going to continue to see a lot of this?

What I like is that the UAE is matching what Qatar has been giving to the

Trump administration, so as Saudi Arabia.

So in a way, I've heard this argument.

I think it's a good strategy is, hey, give Trump money too said,

it kind of diminishes Qatar's ability to whisper in his ear.

But what's your favorite artist, your favorite band, Daniel?

Oh god.

This is relevant.

This is relevant.

My favorite band.

Your favorite album of all time.

You know, I'm too young to be saying this, but the Beatles.

Okay, the Beatles, right?

I wouldn't say that Trump is, you know, Trump is like an album that the Beatles could actually produce.

But on that record, there's probably three tracks you don't like, right?

Oh yeah.

And then other Beatles fans would like those three tracks and maybe not like three tracks that you like.

That's how I see Trump.

Trump is an artist, a record.

I like three or four songs on the album.

So I can call it my favorite album in terms of my favorite administration.

I like things about it with the other seven songs.

Those things that your audience has troubles with.

That's the issue is you can like this.

You have to weigh them differently.

You have to weigh them differently.

I think the America first mega crowd should be pissed off about Qatar.

Go after Trump on taking money from that country.

A state sponsor of terror.

Everything that you talked about, every decision made to hold Israel back.

Qatar was somehow involved.

And that was a negotiated outcome of a Qatari mediation.

Yep.

Get them the hell out of there.

They are not an ally.

They are the divorce attorney that trying to get the best settlement for our adversaries.

Magga should be pissed about that.

They should be upset.

If you don't want to go to forever wars,

think about the two countries that funded those forever wars,

meaning they funded our adversaries.

It was Qatar and it was Iran.

Now people say, what about Saudi Arabia?

I know enough about Saudi Arabia that when they give somebody money,

it's like, in Shah Law, you'll do the right thing.

They just throw it up in the air hoping that for a positive outcome.

The Qataris are strategic.

The regime in Tehran is strategic.

Qatar is the pass through.

It's a bank for the regime.

It's a small little country governed by 350,000 people that have a slave economy.

And if you like Trump and don't like forever wars,

then you need to be loud on Qatar.

Get that country out of his ear because they're whispering in this ear.

They tell, I believe the reason we were successful on day one of Epic Fury

is because Qatar told the regime, we're good.

We've got them to back off.

We're going to have continued nuclear conversation.

That's your right, the relationship that you helped them.

That's funny why you run attack Qatar because like,

you sons of bitches, you're supposed to be acting on our behalf

and you let this bastard attack as even though you've been paying them off.

That's that's probably part of it.

No, and I think that's a great place to end.

This is a perfect opportunity.

If we thread the needle strategically also politically

to finally socially distance from from the Qataris and have a reset

because now Qatar is caught without without a benefactor

and and they're isolated.

But this is the thing we have to finally be consistent about it.

Let everyone know we're done with the jihad.

But not in the sense that we're going to sit and get in on the ground

or whatever.

We're going to pick friends.

We're going to pick enemies.

We're going to look out for our prerogatives.

We're going to break your stuff if we need.

If not, have a good day and see the fact that they know

they could buy us off to restrain Israel

that in itself is the problem.

We only need to give Israel stuff because we freaking give the Lebanese

and we give Turkey and we give Egypt and we give Saudi Arabia

and we and and and Qatar and all this stuff.

Oh, and then Israel take down that checkpoint.

Israel pull out of here.

If you just stopped all of that will Sony and crap.

Is your actually buys it?

Yeah, the Middle East would reset.

Yeah, the one thing I would say is there's probably a lot of listeners

saying what about the homeland?

What about all these people that buy and let in?

What about all these, you know, look at the attack in New York City.

As a former intel guy, I had the luxury of looking at threats

way over there and now I see them here.

And we're not ready for that.

So a lot of a lot of this crowd should be talking to Trump about,

hey, listen, we see you going after these Latino gangs

and Mr. Teen and these other groups.

You need to focus on that violent, unwed military-aged male

Muslim that's in the ranks of those protests that is one degree away from violence

or in the case of this New York City

Mandani event, already demonstrating that they're ready to kill.

We need to focus on that.

That is, that is a big deal also, but we can do both, right?

We can focus on that country.

And again, all of those protests since October 7th across Europe and the United States

were somehow funded by a Contari entity.

It always, yeah, it always gets back to that.

And if you don't like foreign influence, again,

I never understood why foreign Islamic influences

is somehow okay, but again, this is the inconsistencies.

Michael, this went by way too fast.

We got to have you back again.

Absolutely.

Again, at MP Prejent on Twitter.

Thanks for joining us.

We'll see you soon.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Take care.

So again, folks, that was Michael Prejent.

He kind of, he lived it all.

So interesting perspective.

I wanted to give you guys his perspective.

You could tell in my voice the contrast to yesterday's show

where I was just spitting nails.

I knew exactly what I wanted.

Here, I'm just, I'm a little bit confused.

I'm not confused.

I think I know what I believe.

It's tough because in a vacuum, obviously,

I want this to succeed.

In a vacuum, I support doing it in a vacuum.

But it's part of a broader context.

Again, if we're going to suck on the Muslim Brotherhood at home,

we're going to suck on Antifa at home.

We're going to continue to be in debt.

So we can't even afford this hardware,

even if it's a quick, successful war.

And then everything else we do in the Middle East

is contradictory and we keep our bases there.

So then no.

I mean, then the ROI is not there.

Even though they are a threat and have been a threat.

But again, it's, you've got to weigh it all.

So we can only pray that God puts in Trump's brain

some degree of consistency and that we could,

now that we're already in it, that our soldiers are protected,

that there's not a single other casualty.

And we achieve the objectives and focus on every one of our domestic objectives.

We'll get back to that domestic policy tomorrow.

Until then, God bless y'all.

And thank you for listening.