Transcription
Oh my. First of all, it's astonishing to me that people think the war with Iran is over. I do not. I encourage people in Dubai to think twice about their future. I don't think the fighting with Iran is over by any means. I think the Iranians would like it to end. I think President Trump would like it to end, but it's not over. You just had this massive missile assault by the Iranians against Israel in retaliation for Israeli attacks in northern Lebanon. So why would anybody assume then that the larger region is safe from any future war? I don't understand that. So that first point is the war with Iran is not over.
Oh, I will absolutely with all due respect to this minister in Israel. He's talking as though Iran is inevitably going to fall and become the victim of Israeli and American military power. I don't see any evidence for that. So first of all, let's get something straight. Iran is strong. It's more powerful today militarily and I would argue politically than it was at the beginning of the war. It's not going to go under for reasons of economics by any means. It's got powerful allies in the form of China and Russia and others. So, let's just keep that in mind as a backdrop to the discussion about Turkey.
The minister in Israel of science and technology is correct. I made these points in 2013 on the anniversary of the 73 war in Israel. I told an Israeli audience almost verbatim what he said and people thought I was crazy. Oh no, that will never happen. That's an impossibility. And Turkey has always been the principal and most serious threat to the existence of the Israeli state, not Iran. The Israelis have unnecessarily provoked this war with Iran. Iran did not have to be at war with Israel. Israel could have made peace with the Shiites and the so-called Axis resistance a long time ago. That opportunity is missed. So his larger statement about the Turks is correct. All you have to do is ask the key question. Who has dominated the Middle East over the last thousand years for most of that period? Either Turks or Persians. I don't know how many times I've spoken with Turks and Iranians and they both have said to me, "Oh, everything that you see in terms of architecture that people call Islamic, it's Turkish." They call Islamic architecture, it's not. It's Iranian. The Arabs are sideline, marginalized. We are the true Islamic States. You can hear these things in casual conversation anytime you want. These are the two major powers.
Now the question is not whether Israel should worry. They should worry. They have every reason to worry because now both powers, both of them are unambiguously anti-Israeli. There's no question about it. They now have the two most powerful nation states in the region, generally speaking, aligned against them.
Now, President Trump has recently dangled various things in front of Mr. Erdogan because from the beginning, he has tried to keep Erdogan out of the fight. and he would like to drive a wedge between Iran and Turkey. There's no question about it. And he recently brought up this nonsensical idea of let's invite the head chopping brigade from Syria, the Sunni Islamists who were part of ISIS, and send them to kill Hezbollah. Well, normally the Israelis would celebrate something like that because the Israelis love it when Muslims kill each other and they'll do everything they can to induce it. But there's a problem. You're introducing a Turkish subordinate element right into Lebanon. The Turks are sitting up there just behind the border watching everything that's happening in Lebanon, in Syria, in Iran, in Azerban, and they are preparing to do something. In other words, they are preparing to intervene at some point because the much larger issue for the Turks is Kurdistan and the Kurds. And if there's one thing the Iranians and the Turks can both agree upon, they don't want Kurdistan. And what have we and the Israelis been doing? Bending over backwards to essentially cultivate Kurdish opposition to Iran and Turkey.
Now, this headshopping brigade that President Trump thinks he wants to send up there and he says, "Well, Mr. Erdogan's my friend. We get along really well." This is asinine talk that has no place in international relations. There is no friendship in international relations. There are only interests. What is Turkey's interests? The Israeli description of the Turks is correct. He described their interests. Syria is viewed by the Turks as a Turkish province. So is northern Iraq. Northern Iraq is viewed as a Turkish area. Turkish generals have pointed to cities like Herbiel and told American general officers during the long pointless stupid self-defeating occupation of Iraq. Herbiel is a Turkish city. Kirk is a Turkish city. Let there be no doubt about it. And who controlled most of the Arabian Peninsula until quite recently in the history of the region? The Ottomans. There's no doubt about it. We know that these are real ambitions, real aspirations. And the Turks are disgusted with the failure of the Arab states to present real resistance to Israel. And they're chafing at the idea that Iran has supplanted them as the leaders of Islam, as the champions of the Islamic world against Israel.
Now, why am I saying all these things? First, I'm trying to get the point across that Turkey's membership in NATO is nice but irrelevant. Turkey's real foundations, its cultural heritage, everything is in the Middle East and Central Asia. They are looking to the future in the Middle East and Central Asia. They're not looking at Europe at all. So, we could just forget all this NATO nonsense. Secondly, the Turks are not fools. The last thing they want is a war with Russia. So, they're cultivating good relations with the Russians. And the Russians want good relations with the Turks. After all, they've only fought about 300 wars. The two of them have figured out there's nothing good about war between them. So Turkey is now the 600 pound gorilla in the corner. And here's Mr. Trump trying to put some crazy scheme together that he thinks is going to help his friends in Israel. The Israelis have looked at him and said, "You're inviting the Turks into northern Lebanon. Have you lost your mind?" The Iranians are sitting there looking at us and shaking their heads, saying, "What a bunch of fools these Americans are. They don't understand the region. They don't understand the people in it. They don't understand the interests. The Persians or the Iranians are correct. We don't know what the hell we're doing. That should be obvious. All you have to do is listen to these incoherent statements that come out of Trump, switch channels, go to Lucern, and listen to another set of incoherent statements from Vice President Vance. There is no strategy. Nobody knows what he's doing. Nobody knows what he's trying to achieve. All he knows right now in the White House is I got to help Israel.
Taiwan now knows that President Trump has approved a $700 million sale of General Electric jet engines for use by the Turks in their new fighter, the Khan. So they have a new fighter that they want to complete building, but they need jet engines they can't produce domestically. President Trump has now approved that. There's no doubt in my mind that President Trump is hoping that he can produce this outcome. And of course, he's also got some Israelis that he's known off and on for years who've always said, "Let's pit these people against each other. The more they fight each other, the better." So, there's some of that in the background. But what he doesn't understand is the larger picture which was painted by the Israeli Minister of Science and Technology. I think if I were Mr. Erdogan, I would take the $700 million sale and put those new jet engines into my jets. I think I would say whatever is required to persuade President Trump to give me F-35s or access to the technology, but I don't think I'd do anything. I would just take the money and run if I were Mr. Erdogan. And then Trump is going to sit there and say, "Well, what happened? I don't understand this." Just like with the Coods, this is all nonsense. This is postponing the inevitable. There's only one way to end this mess that we've created and that is for us to unilaterally disengage. That's why I wrote the piece on the Substack and I said, "You just got to get out."
President Trump knows he's got a mess on his hands. He's not happy about it. He was smart enough to make the point when somebody said, "Well, why are you signing this in Versailles? That really doesn't help you." He said, "Look, we have got to open the Strait of Hormuz." Correct. If we don't do that, the world could slide into a global depression. Correct. So, he understands that, but he's under duress. Mario, he is not an independent agent. He still has to report back to Mr. Netanyahu. And I'm sure that JD Vance is periodically talking to Mr. Netanyahu as well. And from the Israeli standpoint, the best thing that could happen to Lucern is to have a point 08 or 0.9 or whatever it is, a massive earthquake and swallow Lousern and everybody in it and go away because any agreement between the United States and Iran that ends the fighting is viewed as an existential threat to Israel. Israel wants to destroy Iran. We are the instrument of destruction. It's our job to go back in there and finish it. Everything the Israelis do is designed to induce us to do that. So, how do you square this particular circle? You can't. And President Trump is trying to manipulate things he can't. He thinks he can, but he cannot. He doesn't have that level of control and influence. So, he's thrown caution to the wind and he's going to try and buy Turkish support for the short-term goal that he thinks he has of helping Israel in Lebanon. Good luck.
Oh, absolutely. I think that there are numerous people inside who know we've got to get out. And what are you going to do now? You've already demonstrated that your military establishment, which is the greatest military in the world, has been defeated by the Iranians. Not because the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines did anything wrong. It's because it's the wrong instrument for the war. No, this goes back to what I tried to say in the article. If that four-star general, General Kaine was worth a damn. As soon as he was shown Iran, he would have brought in a map and said, "Let's look at Iran, Mr. President. Iran is a natural fortress. It's as large as Western Europe. There are 93 million people in it, maybe more. You have deserts in the south that are virtually impassable. And seizing control of a city on the southern end of Iran is of no value. Everything that's critical in Iran is to the north. The north is surrounded by mountains. There's no easy way to get in there. The question is, what do you bomb? You want to bomb them into subjugation. You want to bomb them until they submit to Israeli demands. Okay, what do we bomb? Show me the targets that are going to make the Iranians change their minds and suddenly submit to Israel. That should never have happened. This whole thing should never have occurred. Somebody said, "This is nuts. Forget it. Negotiate. Talk. This can't be done." That didn't happen. Instead, General Kaine, an airman who believes in air power first and always will win, said, "Sir, we can bomb them and we can hit all these targets and they'll eventually give up. Just got to keep bombing, bombing, bombing." And then you had the Secretary of War, Heg, says, "Sir, we got a bomb for Israel." And then you had the CIA director. He said, "We got a bomb for Israel. We bomb them. They'll fail. They'll fall apart. They'll lose. And we'll decapitate them. Their population will rise up. And okay, here we are. It's all crap. Okay? If he's serious, he fires all these people. Get rid of them. They gave you bad advice, Mr. President. Throw them out. Bring in a new crew. Start over. Has that happened yet? No. Until something like that happens, what's going to change? Not much.
No, I agree with you completely, but that doesn't mean it won't happen. The other thing is you still have people that are clinging to the notion that we're going to maintain bases in the region. And remember, President Trump is very sensitive to the argument that, well, you're surrendering, you being defeated. He doesn't like to be defeated, obviously. Well, are we going to go back in and build the bases back up again that we formerly occupied? I don't think so. We can't protect them. That's being demonstrated conclusively. So now people are saying, "Well, maybe we need bases on the Red Sea, as though those are going to end up being more easily protected than the ones on the Persian. Let's double down on the strategy that just backfired." So these stupid people are there, but remember, they're not really stupid because these people also are going to make money as a result. There's always a contractor out there who is pocketing huge quantities of cash for going places and doing things. So you've got a lot of people that have become billionaires as a result of our wars in the Middle East over the last 25 years. It's a big problem. And he's hearing all of these things. So what is he hearing from his military adviserss? His military advisers need to tell him the truth. Why did we maintain 275,000 army troops, soldiers on the ground in Germany for almost 40 years? Because it was abundantly clear that we could never get to Germany in time to fight the Russians. Because the Russians have these things called submarines. They sail up and down the Atlantic. If you try to cross the Atlantic on a ship, they're going to sink you. This was Eisenhower's argument against NATO. Don't these people understand that we can't execute another Normandy? If we try, we'll lose. We can't get there. So, the solution was, okay, if we can't get there in time, then we'll build a huge army in Germany. Well, that no longer works. Why? Because of missiles, all different kinds of missiles, tactical ballistic missiles, the ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, unmanned systems, thousands of them, as demonstrated by the Iranians that have space-based connectivity to persistent surveillance. So, if you put anything on the ground within range, they're going to be destroyed. So, today, could you put a big army into Poland or into Germany with the object of deterring Russians from attacking? No, the Russians would sit there if we went to war with them and they'd destroy everything that was on the ground before they ever moved 5 feet towards Poland. The same thing is true now in the Gulf. You want to move your bases further away. Okay, that means we build future missiles with a 1,000mi range that carry 2,000 lb warheads that'll do the same damage. None of this makes any sense.
There is only one solution. That solution is apparent and obvious. Disengage. Get out. Americans go home. Now, that's what the Americans right now in Washington don't want. But that's what Americans inside the United States want. They have no interest in this. And if you go back through the polling data for the last hundred years, Mario, nobody wanted to go into World War I. We didn't want anything to do with World War II. The only way they could get us into us was to provoke the Japanese into bombing us. and the Japanese made a huge mistake and bombed us on Sunday morning in Hawaii and the rest is history. My point is, excuse me, there's only one way out of this and that is for us to say, "Look, you got it. It's yours. We're out of here." It's now up to the international community, the regional actors, to sort out how they're going to handle the Persian Gulf. We want access. We're not going to obstruct anybody's access. We just want to do business. And if we say that to the Iranians and we get out, we're fine. We're all scott-free. Same thing's true with the Chinese. If we say we're out of this thing, we're not going to try anything with the Taiwan. All we want to really do is business in the future. Same outcome. Great. The point is we're not there yet mentally in Washington. But the American people are there psychologically and mentally right now. The gap between the two has to be closed. And what President Trump needs to understand is that if he turns around and says what I just said, we've done all we can. We're not going to do anymore. We've had it. We're leaving. Everybody on the United States side except for the people in Washington are going to cheer. He has the backing of the American people and he's going to say, "I'm going home. We're going to address the problems at home." Everybody goes, "Yay, Mr. president. Well done. Great. But nobody in Washington will like that because they've all benefited from all of these conflicts in very material terms.
I think he's under threat. Look, there are several ways this can be approached. Everybody is assuming, well, the Epstein files have something on Donald Trump. I have no idea. I've never seen the Epstein trials. I know there are thousands of people in those in the damn files. We know who some of them are. I'm sure they're very incriminating for many, many people. Whether or not Trump is in them in some sort of embarrassing way, I have no idea. So, let's set that aside for a minute and instead look at some practicalities. If you are Miriam Edison or Paul Singer or Larry Ellison or any number of what we call Zionist billionaires, the people that really constitute the backbone of the Israel lobby, the Jewish lobby and also are axe swingers and international Jewish financial power. They can turn around and say, "Well, look, Donald, we put you in the White House. You made a deal with us. We said you must destroy Iran. Okay? You haven't done that yet. Get back to work and destroy it." And he says, "Well, I've done all I can do. It's not going to work. I can't do that." Well then, Donald, if you're not going to finish the job, we're going to pull our support from