BREAKING: IRAN HITS SHIPS, YEMEN ATTACKS SAUDI, U.S. CONSULATE IN UAE SHUT - w/ Malcolm Nance

Why are you? Why do we even bother having this show?

Because, because, because now Yemen even decided to join the game. Like, literally, Yemen since 2022, they haven't attacked Saudi, and now they attacked Saudi.

Bro, I did a whole hour this morning on that. They jumped in both feet. They were like, "Malcolm's show has just started. Let's light [ __ ] up." I, I didn't even get to the regular Strait of Hormuz fighting update for almost 45 minutes as the Yemenis and the Saudis were trading blows. And now, of course, this afternoon, the Yemenis start talking. So, for everybody who doesn't know, uh, we, you know, you think you're coming here because Iran and the United States right now are attacking each other. Uh, that's not why we're here. I'm here to tell you a new dimension of this war is really starting.

The Yemeni delegation that had gone to Iran for the funeral of, uh, of the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the other people that were killed in the Israeli attacks were flying back to Tehran. I believe it was on an Iranian airliner, right? It might have been, uh, that Mahan Air, uh, airlines that they do, that budget airline that is now Iran's national airline. And they were landing in Sana'a, Yemen, which is the, the, the, well, technically it was the capital, but now it's under Houthi control. Uh, and those are the Iranian-backed rebels. Saudi Arabia had a combat air patrol over that airport. And as they were about on approach and about to land, the Saudi Air Force bombed the runway in order for them to turn away and not land at Sana'a International Airport. And of course, they turned and they did a landing in Hodeidah, which is a very small airport deep in Houthi country, right? Right. Hodeidah is a major port also. This, the Yemenis, uh, often come out of, the Yemeni pirates and the Yemeni attackers often come out of, and they landed in Hodeidah. And, you know, they were diverted by bombs. And there's video where the news media that was waiting there for their arrival wake up and they're like, fighter jets and boom, boom, bombs start exploding all over the runway. This was not a particularly well-planned, secret operation, if that's what it was intended to do.

But it does, Mario, show us something very interesting. There is, and and you and I have talked about over the various months about these particular influences that are happening. The, like, the, the treaty between Israel and Lebanon and the United States, in which the Lebanese army was supposed to move into the south near Nabatieh and take positions between the, or between, or around the Israelis and the, and then we find out, as it was easily predicted. I predicted this months ago, that the Americans are saying they're going to send ground troops to southern Lebanon to partner up with the Lebanese army, and there will be this Lebanese-American-Israeli alliance against Hezbollah. And then, out of nowhere, we see the Syrian People's Party, the Syrian Peace Party, come out of nowhere a couple of months ago and announce they want Syria to invade Lebanon to attack Hezbollah, of which Prime Minister Golani, former member of ISIS, former member of al-Qaeda, now an Italian suit-wearing guy, says that he won't attack Hezbollah. But then, boom, out of nowhere, Jordanian armored vehicles start showing up everywhere. Right. Saudi military equipment starts showing up everywhere. And all this talk that the United States and Turkey are pushing Golani to invade Lebanon to fight Hezbollah. So, same thing in Iraq. Same thing where we see the United States allowing Bahrain to use multiple rocket launch systems against Iran. There is forming a coalition of proxies by the United States. And unlike Iran, these guys aren't co-religionists. They're real proxies.

But out of nowhere, Yemen starts getting big shoes. Like, South Yemen, right? The recognized government of Yemen and Aden are starting to get big shoes to take on Houthis who beat their ass resoundingly, right? The Houthis beat the Saudi army, the Emirati army, the joint force that was sent into Yemen to take down the Houthis. And these hillbillies, 'cause Houthis are literally hillbillies, right? They live in the mountains, uh, there. They're a Shia Islamic, technically, sort of a cult of personality, uh, who have all this, uh, equipment from Iran. Suddenly now we've got the Saudis being goaded, apparently by the United States, to support the government of Yemen and make sure that these people either couldn't come back from Iran, or, you know, I don't know whether they thought there were IRGC people on board. But now the Yemenis are like, "Whoa." And this was their statement: "Saudi Arabia is carrying out attacks against us at the request of the United States." And I believe their statement until this evening was, "There will be a response." And the response has come. Yemen is bombarding Saudi Arabia with ballistic missiles right now. In the last two hours, they said ballistic missiles were fired at the King, I believe it was the King Khalid military base. There may be drones in route. Yemen has good capability. They bombard Israel. They bombarded Israel on the regular. And, you know, they weren't getting through, but they had the capacity. Now you're seeing a restart of the Saudi-Yemen Houthi war. As if we didn't need any of this. And now the Houthis have announced they're closing the Bab el-Mandeb. They announced it.

I missed that one.

Well, a lot of stuff's happening in the last couple of hours. Now, we haven't seen a video of the spokesman of the Houthis officially saying that, but word on the street here is that the Houthis are going to close the Bab el-Mandeb. Actually, I'll get you my source.

Why do you think, why do you think the Saudis struck the, the, the runway? What was, what's the point there for the Saudis? Is that a preparation for a war in Yemen to get control of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait?

No. No. I think the, I think this really stinks of a Donald Trump-Marco Rubio conversation with the Saudis that, "What you can't do is, you can't allow these leadership, the leadership of the Houthi to return from Iran. So why don't you do something?" And I'm sorry, Mario. All right, I've been doing this almost 40 years. I love a good fight, right? I've been in combat with the Iranians. I've been in combat with the Iraqis. I've been in combat all over the Middle East. This is one of those times where bombs will not help you. Bombs will not help the situation, right? You can outmaneuver them politically, you can outmaneuver them through intelligence, uh, activities. But this campaign to bring in the, the, uh, Lebanese army, the Syrian army, the, you know, government of Yemen, recognized government of Yemen, and then the Saudis to bombard that, to turn that aircraft around. Or maybe they wanted them to go to Hodeidah. I don't know. But all I know is this: They kicked the hornet's nest today. They've kicked the hornet's nest because, and this is why I spent 45 minutes discussing it on my podcast, first hour, because I know what's going on in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran is attacking the United States. The United ships. The United States is attacking Iran right now. Iran is attacking ships in other countries right now. That's been happening for the last four, for the last four or five days. Over the last 10 days, this has happened five cycles. It's going to continue. We're not. The war is back on. The Iranians today said Zarif, the foreign minister, said, "Hormuz is finished." Now, of course, they're still planning on getting that $300 billion, and they got 12 of the $24 billion returned to them, and they know the Americans are going to break here eventually.

But what's happening when Yemen ups the stakes dramatically? If tomorrow the Yemenis go, "Hey, um, we're just going to ballistic missile all of the ships in Saudi's port of Yanbu, where the pipeline has been bringing fuel, uh, oil from Eilat and the Persian Gulf, all the way across Saudi Arabia, almost 55 million barrels per day." And they decide, "Hey, why don't we just start lobbing anti-ship missiles into that harbor, ballistic missiles at the pumping station?" And they go straight to war with Saudi Arabia. But I see that they did something rather restrained, which was to attack the airbase that the Saudi fighters flew out of to, um, to that attack Yemen, right? King, I think it was the King Fahd Air Base. But man, this could get very spicy very quickly. And if you think, I mean, if they start attacking Saudi Arabia in Yanbu, uh, that those are all the tankers that are coming down through the Suez Canal, cutting right over to Saudi Arabia, picking up oil, going right back through the Suez Canal to Europe. And they cut off the Bab el-Mandeb waterway. That means all container traffic, all traffic that was going to Asia, finished. Right. You're going to have to go all the way around Africa, adding two weeks of fuel, ex-high fuel bills, high expenses, port visits, insurance to your, your system. So the Yemenis and the Iranians acting in concert, closing off the Strait of Hormuz, closing off the Bab el-Mandeb, that's going to close a lot more than 20% of the world's energy. Now we're going to probably go up to 30, 35% of the world's energy. And if they attack the Saudi pipeline at Yanbu, the end, the terminus in Yanbu, where they start attacking all those tankers that are there. Saudis, by the way, even have offshore bunkering. That's ships, supertankers that they fill with oil and they stay in the port just to, uh, prepare to sell that oil. And those ships, when given orders, will go out to places and sell them, right? And Saudi Arabia has great oil, light, sweet crude. Everybody loves that oil. So, man, this is a different game going on right now. And Trump is, and then now we've been talking about this, what, 11 minutes, just about Yemen. Strait to Hormuz. United States, Iran are now trading shots at each other. The fighting continues tonight.

Yeah. I'm just thinking what else is happening.

What else is happening? I don't even want to go through my history.

So, let's go, let's go to what happened yesterday. Um, the strikes on Saudi by Iran. So, they've added a new Gulf country. There's none left. They've attacked all Gulf countries in the last few days, including the UAE. Limited attacks on the UAE and Saudi, but they were targeted. And what message do you think the Iranians are sending? It's pretty obvious one. Hey, we're going to drag the entire Gulf. Even though we're talking to them, even though they might be giving us concessions, there's diplomatic bridges being built. We will drag them into the SWAT if you keep escalating. I'm guessing that's the message.

Tiny steps, incremental tiny steps, right? Um, by the way, actually, it was your show that I learned four days ago that the United States attacked Duqm, right? In Oman, while they were having talks about about sharing traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. Well, today, in order to blind the Americans, the, the Iranians attacked the, uh, the Omani surface radar station of the Omani Coast Guard at Musandam, on the Musandam Peninsula. This now blinds Oman to the tanker traffic and surface ships that are now going back and forth. And I suspect that the Iranians believe that the United States was giving real-time, or even a copy of the data link, right? Which I doubt, right? That the United States has better capa- has its own capability. But they have blinded the Omanis today. And then they attacked another facility further down in Oman. And the Omanis are, are talking to the Iranians in order to reap that $80 billion a year that they would get in fees. But tactically, the Iranians, they couldn't go to the Omanis and say, "Hey, shut off those surface search radars along the peninsula. We don't want the Americans to be watching what you're watching. You might be reporting it, but the Americans know how to intercept you, right? Know how to intercept your radar data links. And you're essentially acting as a radar for the United States. Or you're doing it, you're not telling us, but we're going to guarantee that. We're going to attack that facility." And they supposedly attacked that facility several hours ago. Uh, by the way, it was Press TV of, uh, the Houthi Press TV that said, "A senior Houthi official announces, quote, 'The Bab el-Mandeb will also be closed like the Strait of Hormuz. Oil prices will rise to $200 per barrel.'" Uh, I'm waiting for an official statement from the Houthis. You know, the guy in his chocolate chip camouflage uniform will come out and make some, "Ah, we, the, we, the AND ALLAH, we will CLOSE THE BABEL MANDAB from the Zionist and the American aggressors." When that one comes out, it's official. But we're going to start seeing if small boats start taking to the water, if anti-ship missiles, anti-ship ballistic missiles are fired at vessels, ships are set on fire. That's the only, that's the proof in the pudding. But man, it could get very hot very quickly. Oh, by the way, when they attacked Duqm, Oman, in four days ago, one little thing that you didn't notice was the US special operations, uh, supposedly covert merchant ship, the Ocean Trader. Ocean Trader, which is an amphibious ship. That's, by the way, just for the audience, that's that's the plane that landed after the after the main airport was struck in Yemen. The plane landed, diverted to another airport, in the Hodeidah airport, which has never, Hodeidah's never been used for, hasn't been used for years, if I'm not mistaken. I could be wrong, but anyway, diverted to Hodeidah airport, and that's where it landed.

You can look at that runway. See all that, that dust coming up? That tells you that it's not an act.

Yeah, it gives you. Exactly.

Still got steps.

Exactly. It's got one left from the '90s. And then if you, if you...

There it is, man. Air. This was an Iranian airliner.

And, uh, this is some of the aircraft that the United States was asked to leave so that Iran could fly around its diplomats to negotiate a settlement. And, uh, here they are being greeted, greeted like, you know, heroes as they...

Yeah. And the men are yelling, "Death to Israel."

"Death to America." "Death."

Exactly. Hotel. I've seen this before. They got their wives. They had their, their wives there. I guess they went on shopping trips to, to Tehran. That being said...

I'll show while you're speaking, and we'll show the audience as well, the strikes on the main airport. But you were saying...

Yeah. Well, we were saying that the United States right now is striking. Uh, there's reports of explosions in Bandar Abbas and, of course, Chabahar. And I'm waiting to hear that Jask was hit, Sirri was hit, Qeshm Island was hit. Maybe they'll hit Henam Island just for a difference. Abu Musa will be hit, right? Bandar Lengeh...

That's the main. That's the main. By the way, in Yemen, struck as well. That was one of the...

Saudi Air Force. Look at that. You see that precision, uh, bombs onto the runway. So, the runway is fouled. That aircraft could not land and was diverted. But, you know what? I, I have to tell you something. There's something very dramatic about that. This is where I, I believe Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump had a hand in it. They could have just flown F-15s over there, all right? Or Mirage, or whatever they, they operate, F-16s, and they could have just intercepted the aircraft, wiggled their wings and said, "Divert to Hodeidah, right?" No, they did this dramatic, in front of all the news crews that were waiting there for them, including Al Jazeera, and bombarded the runway right in front of them. Why bomb? Because that's another, that's a completely escalatory step. It's an Iranian airliner. They would have diverted, right? They would, the pilot, you know, obviously he had no problem landing at, uh, Hodeidah, even though Hodeidah was a, you know, relatively derelict airfield. But, uh, the Saudis chose to ratchet this up. And I think this is where Donald Trump goes, "Yeah, right." He does his YMCA dance getting off over the fact that they bombed.

Malcolm, before we talk about the pulse by Trump about the new fee, the new blockade, and the new fee that the US is now charging in the straits, the New York Times just reported Trump formally notified. It came about 20 minutes ago. I just saw it now. Trump formally notified Congress that fighting has resumed in Iran. No [ __ ]. In a letter sent to congressional leaders on Friday and obtained by the New York Times on Monday, the president wrote, which is today, the president wrote that American forces engaged in defensive strikes against targets within Iran on July 7th. The notification against Stokes the fight between Capitol Hill and the White House over the president's authority to continue waging war in Iran without congressional approval. Both chambers have already voted to direct the president to end the war or seek approval to continue it. But the White House continues to argue that Trump is acting within its consti- within his constitutional authority as commander-in-chief. And obviously today, we have the, um, the new blockade, which is kind of the last thing missing before all closes of the Strait of Hormuz have been breached, the Strait of Hormuz, and the new guardians of the Strait of Hormuz, Malcolm, and that is...

The US. One thing I can't take. Okay, I'm gonna tell you something. First off, Trump is not acting in his authority as commander-in-chief. The only authority he has as commander-in-chief to institute defensive operations is a declaration of war. Trump is acting within his authority of a congressional authorization on the use of force that they authorized the president in 1972 with the War Powers Act to carry out military operations once notifying Congress for 60 days. By acknowledging that these activities starting on June 7th, I'm sorry, July 7th, means that his clock started ticking 60 days from July 7th. The United States is now considered in a new war. A new phase. He will see it as a new phase of the war. But by law, here, this is a new war. Uh, you know, I mean, he keeps saying maybe he wants to end this one so that he can say that he ended another war, right? But according to the, he has a 60-day clock. Right now, he's notified Congress from July 7th, so September 7th, he had better wrap this up, or Congress, of course, can restrict his war powers. Now, what he's done is he has put a, essentially push the clock back for Congress on all of these bills that were coming forward where now losing Mitch McConnell, losing, um, Lindsey Graham. He absolutely would fail at getting a war authorization from the, the Senate because several of those senators, Republicans, are absolutely against him. And there are people that he just screwed over, right? Like John Cornyn. I mean, they're not going to vote for him for nothing. So, by essentially restarting the war, and the key question is, what cool ass name does he think, does Pete Hegseth think that he's going to have, right? Is it going to be like, you know, you know, "Forever Ass Kicking"? Because this now, as a new operation, has to have a new operational authorization by the president of the United States, which means new ribbons, y'all.

Forever Ass Kicking. And here's the, you know, Mario, we talk about this. I know. I, I wipe my face like, you know, out of exasperation. I learned that from the Muslims, right? When they, when they, they pray to God and the last thing they do is they wash their face,

in exasperation, right? And that their prayers will be seen and their, their body will be cleansed.

Um, I have a question for the White House. What exactly is your strategy here? I ask that almost on every show. They're talking now, and I don't know who in the administration, but I'm sure it's been going for a while. Now that Lindsey Graham is dead, Trump's biggest cheerleader is gone. And the only cheerleaders there now are Marco Rubio, uh, and Jonathan, and Bibi. I'm sorry, Bibi Netanyahu. Jonathan was his brother. Um, Bibi Netanyahu. They're like, "Rah!" But I told you, there is clearly a Middle East-wide regional campaign to excite forces to take on Iran and their proxies. Even up in Erbil, Iraq, right? We're seeing Kurdish forces, not the two big groups, right? Not the two big groups, but smaller forces. I think they are getting those weapons now. You know, we're seeing attacks are, are occurring in the Kurdish part of Iran.

So, I got Iraq, I got Syria, I got southern Lebanon, I got Yemen.

Right. And all these American proxies who, can I be honest with you? I don't care how much air power we give them. They can't take land. They're going to get their asses kicked. So, this is, you know, if they go, "Hey, Malcolm, you Middle East desk, what's your assessment of all this?" It's like, y'all should stop right now. All right. Whatever the [ __ ] whoever over there at the clandestine service came up with this [ __ ] thing because you directed it, or over at Defense Intelligence, or over at, you know, the National Security Council. Let's fire up our own proxies and start fighting them against Iran. Israel got its ass kicked by Iran for, for 10 years. 10 years. The Lebanese army is just, go give them equipment and put the US army with them. You're gonna get dead soldiers, and Hezbollah is going to get new US army vehicles and weapons and equipment. If the Syrians attack, you could see Shia Syrians, Shia Iraqis overthrow that government because that government's being held up with paper clips and and guys who were just tired of war. Or the resurgence of ISIS could come down and start doing to you what they did to Bashar al-Assad and the Russians, right? And then the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces, right? Hashd al-Sha'abi, they could just mobilize and go up into [ __ ] Kurdistan, and you have a full-scale Iraqi-Kurdish war going on. Or easier, they overthrow the government of Iraq and they just kill those guys, and a Shia pro-Iran government takes power. And then you, next thing you see is, you know, Muqtada al-Sadr, or maybe not him, or the Iraqi Shia declaring themselves the Iraqi Shia Republic of Iraq. And then you have an internal civil war happen there with the 5 million Sunnis in the west, and then you have the Kurds in the north. Whoever is doing this [ __ ] ass story thinks they're [ __ ] Lawrence of Arabia and that this is the, you know, the conference where, you know, they're going to carve up the new forces of the Middle East and carve away Iran's forces. Not going to happen.

Yeah. Well, I'm going to make, make it even more exciting, or stupidly exciting, for you. So, Trump, Trump just on Fox News now is calling for Iranians again to rise up. Quote, "Our country wants to help you, and we want to see it all work out. We have people ready, willing, and able, but they have to know what you want." There it is. But they have to know what you want to do.

And that's up to you very much. And God bless. That's the [ __ ] clandestine service. He just dropped the dime that the CIA and the Israelis are in country and that they're [ __ ] going to help them. We have people that are in there to help you. Good god. They got to start a...

You just announced that the, the war is going to continue. So he said, "I..." Interviewer asks, "Can you or the American military or the Israeli military get to what's left of their third string and their fourth string and their fifth string? You know, you know where they are. Can you kill them?" What a stupid [ __ ] question by the interviewer from Fox News. Trump replies.

He, Trump replies, "Yeah, I do, but we don't want to talk about that. But, uh, we certainly are watching. Yeah, I know a lot about that subject. I know a lot, but I don't think it's appropriate to talk about it right now. But we will. We will. I think I mean, like an example, we're going to hit them very hard tonight, and we're going to hit them hard tomorrow, and there's not a damn thing they could do about it. They have nothing. They have, they have nothing going other than they have a big mouth."

Says the guy who has nothing going but a big mouth.

And he says, "Well, I think they're a little kooky. I think they, they're all, we knocked out their first regime. We then knocked out the second regime. We took out 25% of this regime. But they're wired a little bit differently. We had a deal yesterday, and it was like going to be 100%, and then all of a sudden they got a phone call, and they all ran out of the room. These people are these people are crazy. We have, we had a deal where we won everything, but they basically break the deals. You know, they make deals, and to them, deals are made to be broken. They are extremely unreliable people. And frankly, if they ever have a nuclear weapon, they'd use it within one day, for [ __ ] sake. Like, it's just, we put that with the blockade, and now the guardian of the Strait of Hormuz charging 20% fee, which is the US announcing a 20% fee for ships. So, Iranian ships are not allowed through the Strait of Hormuz, and non-Iranian ships have to pay a 20% fee, which I think the markets are ignoring this claim.

But if you go in the Iran traffic separation scheme, you only pay a 1.5% fee.

Yeah, but there's, but they're blockaded right now. No, any ship, the only blockade goes back to the previous regime, which means you must be bringing cargo from an Iranian port. All the other ships in the Gulf could go through the Iranian traffic separation scheme and pay 1.5%. Or America's 20% carrying fee. Mario, I'm sorry. This is [ __ ] madness. I kid you not. If I, I, I always fantasize that, you know, I'm on like the Joint Staff, right? As an old Navy grizzled Navy chief with my coffee cup in my hand. And, you know, my symbol is anchors, right? Anchors with a star above them. And we have this saying called "Throwing Down Your Anchors," or "Dropping Your Anchors," which means you are putting yourself in an immovable position, and you don't give a [ __ ] what it does to your career, but you're going to say what you think. And I would have go thrown my [ __ ] anchors on the floor and go, "Secretary of War, are you? Let me get the professional intelligence term out of your [ __ ] mind. Do you understand? You're committing us to full-scale [ __ ] WAR WITH IRAN. YOU GOT YOUR WE- WHAT DIDN'T WE DO in the first 40 DAYS, PEOPLE? THE [ __ ] I MEAN, REALLY, I DON'T UNDERSTAND IT BECAUSE there is no plan. There's no strategy. All right. I'm not a colonel like Colonel Agalar who will sit there and maintain his professional me. My job was to talk like this with my hand ready to slap you. All right. And say and inject [ __ ] reality. And there is no one injecting reality into this scenario here. The only injection he's gonna get, right, as we call it on my podcast, my Black Men's Spy podcast, "Spectacular Penetrations," is when somebody gets shot down, or the Iranians go full court press and they sink a US warship or attack a US warship and start killing Americans. Because according to Donald Trump now, full-scale war has resumed starting tonight. And apparently, nobody, everybody's sitting there going, "He's listening to Fox News General [ __ ] Keane who's talking about landing troops at Forever War." You're going to own the Strait of Hormuz. When I was 26 years old, and I'm a [ __ ] slap-happy grandpappy right now, we did an assessment of how to take the Strait of Hormuz. It required 6,000 Marines in the 1980s when they didn't have anti-ship missiles, and we only had to worry about [ __ ] artillery. Now they've got hundreds upon hundreds of anti-ship missiles, surface-to-air missiles. Helicopters landing there, or Ospreys landing there, are going to get shot down live on [ __ ] YouTube or on TikTok, and you're gonna have to explain why there are dead Marines everywhere. Take the land. Anybody can take land. Holding land is the problem that you have here, right? It's their land.

And if they will mobilize everyone to fight you...

Malcolm, we've talked about how...

Here.

We've talked about how they're targeting the same places again and again. And my question was, targets are ineffective. And did you...

They struck yesterday in the daytime, and you and I had a, I, I did, we talk about this yesterday? They struck in the daytime yesterday, and that's a big intelligence indicator that their attacks at night using thermal imaging, right? Does not allow them, it puts them in a six to eight-hour battle, um, damage assessment where they can't determine whether it was good or not. So by attacking in the daytime, they could strike, the aircraft could orbit, and they could go down and say, "Yeah, that strike was good." Or, "We need to restrike that tunnel entrance. We need to do that." But lots of guns down there, right? They shot, you know, they said they shot down a drone two days ago, you know, and they also use suicide boats, right? For the first time, the United States sent a flotilla of small suicide boats in. That was just for, for cool points because what can a [ __ ] suicide boat do? Um, that a flight deck of over 80 F-18 Hornets carrying, you know, up to, you know, 30 pieces of, of, of JDAMs couldn't do? It's just cool guy points. "Oh, we did this cool thing." The [ __ ] Ukrainian army has been doing this for four years. Five years, going on five years, right? And it's another, what is it? Another goddamn investment, another toy that you want to see if it works. You blew up a pier. So long as there is sand on the beach, they can launch boats.

So what are we doing here, people?

Is it still, um, is it possible that this is no longer just to degrade their capabilities, Iran's capabilities to control or close the Strait of Hormuz? Is it possible that this has become more of a clearing operation for a potential ground operation to capture Hormuz? Or is that still highly unlikely?

Well, the technical term is a "shaping operation."

And I'm sure some, your, I'm sure some of your other guests have talked about this before. Uh, that is, it's a shaping operation. Yeah, sure. All combat operations are a shaping operation. You want to do a couple of things. Degrade the enemy's capacity to defeat you. Degrade the enemy's capacity to observe you, right? Get inside their OODA loop, right? Observe. When the enemy observes you, when the enemy orients its forces against you, when the enemy, uh, makes a decision to attack you, and when the enemy takes action, you want to get inside that, and you want to stop their observation, hence they're hitting their radars. You want to stop their ability to orient themselves. You start sinking their small boats so that they can't come out of harbor. You want to stop their ability to decision-make. You start hitting command and control posts. You want to stop their action, which is you kill anything that's moving out in the waters or out near the waters, right? Or on to air defense systems that's moving in there. Yes. You want to get in there and you want to shape that operation so that they can't, they're blind. They can't hear. They can't communicate. They can't command and control. And then the next thing that you do is a fade of complete, right? The Americans are coming. But, bro, when you've set your operational pattern of attack to where Iran, over the last 100, let me check my web, uh, 139 days, you know, every day of this war, I've been writing down everything that happened. Um, they know. They go, "Hassan, what time is it?" "It's 1:00 a.m." He goes, "You know that carrier strike wing must be refueling over the ship right now. They're a little late. Maybe one of the catapults went down. I don't know. But come on, guys, I got a date." You know, they know when we're coming. They know from where we're coming. They know from which, which capacity they're bringing. Bro, they have been hit with everything America has. Exactly.

Other than the cool guys' suicide boats. Dude, we blew up a pier with a [ __ ] remote-controlled suicide boat, bros. They got suicide remote-controlled torpedoes. They have human-guided suicide boats. They have remote-guided USVs. Also, they have anti-ship missiles. And at some point, if Trump keeps escalating, if we, we're way beyond, we are now back into Robert Pape's escalation ladder where we've gone from the cycle of stupid, we're off that now. We're going to keep that up in terms of combat arms. But the cycle of stupid has stepped up each time, one new layer on Robert Pape's escalation ladder. We are going back to full-scale war. The problem is, what are you going to do? What are you going to do about it? Right? We're going to blow things up. We're going to start blasting things. Trump has given, he has a, I don't give a [ __ ] about the American people. I don't give a [ __ ] about the MAGA base not wanting wars. I don't give a [ __ ] about Democrats and senators and congressmen who are against this. I'm gonna do this because it makes me feel good. I'm gonna do this because in my negotiations, um, I, I cannot allow them to do things without consequences, even if it hurts me and my negotiating position. And more than anything, I think he was offended that they were getting money out of this thing. So hence today, the kooky idea that he talked about the guardian angel of the straits. Are you [ __ ] me? Okay. And now he, not only thinks that America is this like overwhelming avenging angel. I want to call attention to an operation the United States did for almost 10 years called Operation Southern Watch, where for 10 years, flying out of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and Jordan, we flew fighter jets over southern Iraq to make sure Saddam Hussein didn't bring any aircraft gun positions south of those. And every time they did, they brought in a truck, they brought in an AAA unit. We struck them. And over 10 years, we struck 1,000, I believe it's 1,100-ish, 105 is the number that comes to my head, targets over 10 years. But for 10 effing years, the US Air Force lived over southern Iraq. And then when that wasn't enough, we decided to do that for northern Iraq. And we created Operation Northern Watch. And flying out of Turkey and Jordan and these other places for 10 years. People, we had a war where all we did was bomb, and no [ __ ] effect. The only effect that happened is when we invaded Iraq and went through all of that and took it down. And then what did we do? We created ISIS, al-Qaeda in Iraq, the former regime loyalists, and Salafist Sunnis. We put ourselves in a 10-year suicide war that led to the capturing of most of Iraq and Syria, half of Iraq and Syria by the Islamic State. What the absolute [ __ ]? These people do not think about secondary effects, tertiary effects, quaternary effects. They don't think about anything other than looking cool. Now.

I didn't ask you as well, talking about tertiary, secondary effects, Malcolm, but I didn't ask you as well about the statement by Mushtaq calling for the, for the, for for people around the world to avenge the death of the supreme leader, saying that it is a, I don't know what that means. And then the head of the Supreme National Council said the same thing yesterday, they're going to avenge the death of Ali Khamenei. And then obviously, Trump is really worried. Even this morning, talked about him potentially being killed and how dangerous it is to be the president. New York Times report of him changing his aircraft. So, he seems genuinely worried they could target him. Channel 12, you know, Israeli media claiming that there was a plot or discussions at least to maybe target Trump in Turkey. Again, that's Israeli media. I just take it with a massive grain of salt. But, you know, I've had two of my guests, including Professor Pape earlier today, he was saying that it's a concern not for now, but for years, even decades, that eventually someone, maybe even the IRGC, or someone within the IRGC, or just a lone wolf, avenging the death of Ali Khamenei. And they gave the example of that journalist that the fatwa Ali Khamenei gave, the fatwa he's talking for his name, they got stabbed.

Salman Rushdie. Yeah, they got stabbed. Exactly.

And he got stabbed. But look, it took them how many years? Two decades to get Salman Rushdie. And Salman Rushdie was a Muslim, right? And this was about a book where he sort of, how can I put it? I, I read Satanic Verses and he...

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Years ago, when it first came out. Um...

How, how bad was it against the religion? How, uh...

It wasn't bad against the religion. Tell you the truth, more than anything. I mean, the whole book starts with a conversation of an Air India bombing that had taken by an aircraft that had flown from, I believe it was Toronto, Canada, was flying towards, uh, towards Europe on an Air India flight, and a bomb that was placed on board it blew this aircraft in half heading when it was north of the Irish Sea. All of us in the counterterrorism world know this incident, right? The Air India bombing. And the story starts with several passengers falling, right? They're all Pakistani, or there's Indian Muslims, and they're falling and having a discussion about what happened, right? And this whole thing is, is that there's sort of a redefinition or reinvention and a critical discussion at points of Islam. But these people who, by that fatwa, it was like any conversation against Islam is your death, right? Back in the olden days. That's not what's going on here. All right. Trump is a wartime commander. He is the head of the chain of command for the United States. He is a, not just a leader, he is a combat. He is a combat decision-maker. When he raises his finger, things blow up. Ali Khamenei, he was also in that role as the supreme leader of Iran, and he was also a decision-maker in the wartime process. Um, combat leaders in the military of other nations that you're in war with are legitimate targets according to the Geneva Convention. So I find it considering that he authorized the Israelis to drop dozens of, you know, ballistic bomb missiles, right, air-launched ballistic missiles into the combat, the residences and command posts, killing man, woman, child, servant, leadership, you know, car washer, uh, that he has a problem with the Iranians talking about killing him. Dude, you killed Soleimani's father, wife, and daughter. Right? I mean, it would be the equivalent of somebody bombing Mar-a-Lago, killing every person that was there, servers, waitresses, and killing his children and his wife.

And the religious leader. And the religious leader. Remember, we killed the religious leader, leader...

Of Shia Islam. So now...

Example I can compare it to, like the Pope.

Trump is going to Trump's going down by, you know, he's going to go down Lindsey Graham style, right? A, a severe aortic dissection by too much patriotic hamburgers. Uh, you know, life is going to take care of him, right? Allah has his own plan. And, uh, but it won't be happening at the hands of a Shia Muslim. Iran doesn't play that game, right? Yeah. They did acts of terrorism in Argentina and other parts. Yes, there were, you know, plots that were discussed about killing individuals, you know, John Bolton, things like that. But they're enjoying dominating the entire Arabian Peninsula, Persian Gulf, and North Indian Ocean. They're, they're holding, you know, I had someone say this today, Malcolm, how does cutting off 20% of the oil to the world affect us? It doesn't affect our gas prices. If I choke you and I cut off 20% of the oxygen of the blood flow to your brain, after a few minutes, you're going to start getting woozy. And then at some point, the flow going through is not going to be enough to keep you conscious. Then you're going to fall out. But if I keep doing that, you're going to wake, and I then I let it up, you're going to wake up brain dead or brain with brain damage. So what the Iranians are doing is they are enjoying the leverage that they have right now. They're not going to ruin this. Yeah. Raise the red banner of revenge. Yes. Say the words, "You're going to re-avenge your father, your wife, and your daughter and and others in the IRGC." But the real practicality of this is he's going to get paid in the end of this, and he will. Iran will now determine the flow of oil out of the Strait of Hormuz and off the Arabian Peninsula. And now that he's bought, maybe that maybe it's full-time Yemen attack day. If the United States starts hitting Tehran tonight, I'm going to tell you this is going to be bad. All right. And that's it. That's that's for me. Tehran is the indication.

Is power plants, oil fields, and bridges, infrastructure, right? Which is...

That means we cross. But that means we're gone. We're at a worse position than the full-blown war than the peak of the war. If he starts hitting the energy infrastructure...

Tehran will be, Tehran will be like at the peak of the war. This is...

All I'm saying to you is this: I hope you're in a villa in Dubai. I hope you're on a first floor. Okay. I hope you can get to Carrefour and start stocking up on water and your, your treats.

Hey guys, can you book me a flight?

Get that DoorDash. Um...

Malcolm, my team is asking, you have a place at your place? You got a room? Yeah, Malcolm's good. Malcolm, I'll go to Malcolm.

I got, I got plenty of rooms up in upstate New York with a, with a secure skiff and a weapons locker and everything. I'll be safe if there's ever, if [ __ ] hits the fan, if the world's coming to an end, I'm coming to your place, man.

It's luxury though. It's like a, it's like a shooting reserve, you know. But all stories aside, all joking aside, um, we could be going back to full-scale retaliatory war as well. Look, I got to tell you something. And Bahrain may have made a bad choice allowing those HIMARS rocket launchers to fire from their terrain. Um, Iran says that they destroyed HIMARS launchers and they c-what they called them rocket pods on Buwayan Island with loitering drone munitions. Now, I got to tell you all something. I never thought for the audience. Buwayan, Buwayan Island is Kuwait,

north of Kuwait City. And HIMARS is the missile to missile, missiles that were that were fired from Kuwait and...

Bahrain missile, missile, surface-to-surface missiles that were fired from Kuwait and Bahrain.

And they fire the precision strike rockets, you know. But the Iranians are claiming that. I'm going to tell y'all something. I spent an enormous amount of time in the military. I spent an enormous amount of time there in the region prior to this war. We never lied. We never lied. We never misled. We never misheled information. Now, there is a full-scale policy of lying. Lie to everyone about our cap-about our strikes and our capacity. The Iranians, enemy, generally know what you've done, right? They generally know. They got spies. They don't have spies. They have allies. They have people who just find it fun to watch your hangers burning, right? And you're there lying. Remember, they lied about, and I'm using the word lie specifically. They knew we lost a KC-1, you know, a, uh, an E-3 Sentry aircraft at King Abdullah Air Base. The thing was literally blown in half, and they were like, "There was minor damage to aircraft in the vicinity." Really? Why did we have to have some yokel go down the flight line and show a completely burned-out hulk of a, you know, three-quarters of a billion dollar aircraft? Why? The enemy knows it. It plays better if you work with your allies and you don't lie to your nation. You can leave information off and say, "Hey, listen. Things are happening. It's too dynamic. We can't talk about it right now." We get lies. I mean, straight up. "Oh, that didn't happen to us." Next thing you know, you got burning aircraft. "Oh, we didn't get hit anywhere." Oh, yeah. An MQ-9 Triton drone has been shot down. And that's three-quarters of a billion dollars. You know, we've lost 25 Reaper drones by my last count. Might be 26. The Iranians are claiming...

Another one. Yeah, they claimed another one now. But just so... But Malcolm, um, I know we need to wrap, but just...

There's something that Trump has, um, just mentioned. So, one thing that has not, as far as I know, throughout this entire war, Pickaxe Mountain was not targeted. Um, and this is where Iran is, is suspected to have their enriched uranium, most of it stored.

Um, Trump has just threatened. Uh, he said, "Absolutely, they don't have it, because we have a where Pickaxe is a possible target for a nice big fat shot right in the front door." He just made that threat now on Fox.

"See, I can tell you what he's thinking. Okay, first off, the [ __ ] were you doing the first 40 days? What were you doing last June? You mean you didn't hit those [ __ ] front doors? You know what he's talking? Someone's going, 'You need to drop the MOAB, right? Mother of all bombs, which is a 30,000 lb bomb. It's made of uh, it's made of old World War II battleship barrels. But to drop it, it has to go off in a C130, which is a very low and slow aircraft, right? And then it's got to go out the rear ramp and it comes down on a drogue parachute and it, you know, it has uh, it's not a, it's called MOAB because it stands for massive ordinance aerial bomb, right? And it, you know, it has a predetonator, you know, it's like the old Vietnam War daisy cutters, but all it's going to do is make a spectacular explosion and will likely not do anything. You think these [ __ ] don't have excavators and dump trucks? That's how you defeat whatever you, you go blow, blow the cave entrance up. You've just made it secure from a [ __ ] raid by the airborne and the Rangers. I'm now worried that somebody's going to get in his head and say, 'Hey, we got to go drop for special forces in there. We got to go take that mountain, dig into it, put [ __ ] 5 kiloton nuke down it.'"

"Right. That old line from Aliens, let's nuke it from space. Yeah. Yeah."

"Right. That is starting to, if, if he's doing this stupid [ __ ], then, you know, people are telling him that there are people that are telling him, hey, you know, Steven Miller, all these other guys, General Keefe, these guys were on Fox News, Sean Hannity, and not Sean Hannity, but you know, some of these other ones, Jesse Waters going, 'Let's give it to him good.' Now, what the [ __ ] were we doing the first 40 days if we weren't giving it to him good? There you are. Come on up. Not very steerable. And if you miss, all you do is shake the mountain. But it's a mountain. Okay. It'll register."

"And the only way, and the only, the only way to drop this is from a C130. Yeah."

"See that sliding ramp? No US aircraft because it's got to be in a bay. Right. We don't, the B-52 can't carry it. The B2 can't carry it. They can carry the GBU57 massive ordinance penetrator, the MOPS. Right. There you go. That thing could go down. You know what? You'll be seeing that thing, the thermal image of that low and slow aircraft. And yeah, we did penetrate Iran with these special operations MQ, you know, uh, MC130s and and and we do that. That's what we do. Those things go in there. But there's an element of risk. And don't tell me that everybody doesn't know now. Everybody in Iran will be like this, ready to pew, pew, pew as you come by. I don't know what we're doing here, Mario. I don't know."

"No, it's insane. I thought, remember, we, we started, me and you started getting a bit optimistic, thinking pragmatic minds would prevail."

"Suckers."

"Oh, man. I can't believe we're back to. I still, I still, I'm still hoping that this is all just trying to, trying to, to get Iran to blink, trying to get them to concede on controlling the shadow, almost charging a fee. I'm hoping that's the case. But they're talking about charging 20% fee when the."

"That's talking [ __ ]. That's, that's just talking. Even the market didn't take it seriously."

"It's Trump trying to get them to negotiate. These are unnegotiable people. They're not. They, they'll just sit. They will."

"You don't think they'll concede on the? Any kidding me? On the fee. Just on the fee. They fought a war for 10 years with Iraq where they lost almost a million people between the two countries. What are you, what are we doing that's going to harm them? They put 10-year-olds in battle with keys around their necks and passages to heaven on their heads. That's [ __ ] total war. So all they're going to do is say, 'Listen, we got two weapons on our side. Two weapons. Time. All right. And patience.'"

"Yeah. The tea. The cup of tea. The famous Malcolm cup of tea."

"Not mine."

"They'll probably be watching. They'll probably be, well, having their cup of tea and watching you impersonate them and laughing."

"One of these days they're going to make a Lego video."

"Exactly. You got to be on there. You got to be on there."

"It's going to be. Listen to this [ __ ]."

"Thanks for the analysis."

"Defense. All right, man. Take care. We'll talk to you soon."

"Bye."

"Take care. All right, guys. Uh, we'll be live again. I've got the interview with Malcolm Nance in two hours, but between now and then, or even after that interview, there'll probably be escalation. Trump said there's been reports that the US is planning, I think Trump said it on Fox News, he's planning to attack Iran tonight and tomorrow. Iran will obviously retaliate. So, we'll be here to cover that live. Um, but otherwise, we'll see you in a couple hours with Larry Johnson. Bye."