Armenian News Network - Groong: Week In Review Podcast

Scott Horton - Why Are We at War with Iran? | Ep 523, Mar 20, 2026

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0:00 | 54:05

Conversations on Groong - March 20, 2026

Topics
  - Why this war began
  - U.S. fallout and political costs
  - Paths to wider regional escalation

Guest: Scott Horton

Hosts: 
  - Hovik Manucharyan
  - Asbed Bedrossian

Episode 523 | Recorded: March 20, 2026

SHOW NOTES: https://podcasts.groong.org/523

#IranWar #ScottHorton #USIsrael #MiddleEastWar #Geopolitics


Subscribe and follow us everywhere you are: linktr.ee/groong

Asbed (00:00:04):

Hello and welcome to this Conversations on Groong episode.

Asbed (00:00:07):

Today we're speaking with Scott Horton,

Asbed (00:00:09):

author, radio host,

Asbed (00:00:10):

and editorial director of Antiwar.com and executive director of the Libertarian

Asbed (00:00:16):

Institute.

Asbed (00:00:17):

Scott is also the author of two recent books,

Asbed (00:00:20):

Enough Already in 2021,

Asbed (00:00:22):

and more recently,

Asbed (00:00:23):

Provoked, in 2024.

Hovik (00:00:27):

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All right, thanks for your help, and on with the show.

Asbed (00:01:22):

Scott Horton, welcome back to The Groong Podcast.

Hovik (00:01:25):

Welcome, Scott.

Scott (00:01:26):

Happy to be here.

Scott (00:01:27):

Thank you.

Hovik (00:01:28):

Folks,

Hovik (00:01:29):

I want to remind our listeners that this episode will probably be published around

Hovik (00:01:33):

March 20th or 21st,

Hovik (00:01:35):

and we're recording it on March 19.

Hovik (00:01:37):

As you know, March 20th is the beginning of Persian New Year.

Hovik (00:01:43):

So to all those celebrating,

Hovik (00:01:45):

especially our friends in Iran right now who are facing a lot of hardship,

Hovik (00:01:51):

We wish you and your loved ones peace, health, and a year of renewal.

Hovik (00:01:55):

There's a lot of pain going around, but we hope that all this craziness ends soon.

Hovik (00:02:04):

So, Nowruz Mubarak.

Hovik (00:02:06):

Happy Nowruz.

Asbed (00:02:07):

Stay strong.

Asbed (00:02:09):

Well, Scott, here we are on the 20th day of this unprovoked U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

Asbed (00:02:14):

And despite claims of hitting over 15,000 targets, the Iranian regime remains in place.

Asbed (00:02:20):

Perhaps it's even more hardened and entrenched.

Asbed (00:02:23):

And so far, the U.S.

Asbed (00:02:24):

and Israel have focused on airstrikes, and Iran has retaliated by targeting regional U.S.

Asbed (00:02:30):

military bases and some energy infrastructures.

Asbed (00:02:33):

You know, we're still watching the limits of this air campaign.

Asbed (00:02:37):

It doesn't seem to be achieving the original stated goals of regime change.

Asbed (00:02:42):

And we're now sort of faced with the prospect of a ground invasion or quagmire in Iran.

Asbed (00:02:48):

Why are we in this war?

Scott (00:02:53):

Look, I mean, the long and the short of it is that this policy comes from the Israelis.

Scott (00:03:02):

You know,

Scott (00:03:03):

as you guys probably understand this stuff a lot better than I do,

Scott (00:03:06):

and I should really be interviewing you guys maybe next week.

Scott (00:03:10):

But...

Scott (00:03:12):

You know,

Scott (00:03:13):

to vastly oversimplify it,

Scott (00:03:17):

America's empire in the Middle East is the Sunni kingdoms and plus Turkey and

Scott (00:03:24):

Israel,

Scott (00:03:25):

right? And so on the other side of that is the so-called Shiite crescent or the axis of

Scott (00:03:30):

resistance,

Scott (00:03:31):

which is Tehran,

Scott (00:03:33):

Baghdad was Damascus and Hezbollah,

Scott (00:03:37):

and then a little bit of the Houthis down there,

Scott (00:03:39):

Ansar Allah in Yemen,

Scott (00:03:41):

of course.

Scott (00:03:42):

And so the thing is,

Scott (00:03:44):

from the Israelis' point of view,

Scott (00:03:46):

is the worst thing in the world is Hezbollah.

Scott (00:03:48):

Hezbollah backed by Iran, by way of Syria.

Scott (00:03:52):

And so this is their overriding security concern.

Scott (00:03:56):

And yet...

Scott (00:03:58):

That's different from America's overriding security concern.

Scott (00:04:02):

If you wanted to presume that the purpose of the national government is actually

Scott (00:04:06):

protecting the lives and property and liberty and interests of the American people,

Scott (00:04:11):

well,

Scott (00:04:12):

the people who threaten us are the Bin Ladenites.

Scott (00:04:15):

And they're not Iran's guys.

Scott (00:04:18):

They are typically American,

Scott (00:04:20):

British,

Scott (00:04:21):

and Saudi-backed mercenaries that work for us and also sometimes attack the United

Scott (00:04:29):

States and our interests and kill our people too.

Scott (00:04:32):

and I know everybody thinks that's all false flag stuff I don't I think you know

Scott (00:04:36):

it's Frankenstein monster blowback type thing but anyway that's who slaughters

Scott (00:04:41):

Americans civilians here in the united states and American soldiers in Iraq war,

Scott (00:04:47):

you know 4000 out of the 4500 that died in Iraq war died fighting the Sunni

Scott (00:04:51):

insurgency that the vanguard of which was al-Qaeda in Iraq which later became known

Scott (00:04:57):

as the islamic state in Iraq and the islamic state in Iraq and Syria that's

Scott (00:05:02):

the Zarkawi faction who really were the worst of the civilian and American soldier

Scott (00:05:09):

butchering fighters on the Sunni side in the Iraq war.

Scott (00:05:15):

Those are the guys who the American people need to look out for, Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Scott (00:05:21):

That's the ones who got our number.

Scott (00:05:23):

And so there's a struggle, right?

Scott (00:05:25):

This is why the Israelis have to try so hard to push all their public relations

Scott (00:05:30):

about how,

Scott (00:05:31):

you know what the problem is,

Scott (00:05:32):

radical Islam,

Scott (00:05:33):

so that you can't tell the difference between who rules which capital city and what

Scott (00:05:37):

difference it makes over there,

Scott (00:05:38):

right?

Scott (00:05:39):

They wanna overly simplify the thing.

Scott (00:05:42):

So that, yeah, our enemies are your enemies, et cetera.

Scott (00:05:45):

And then you're supposed to not get the joke that,

Scott (00:05:48):

well,

Scott (00:05:49):

wait a minute, why are your enemies our enemies?

Scott (00:05:51):

And I'll end this answer with an anecdote that's something that's old, but I just learned it.

Scott (00:05:57):

And you guys are probably familiar with the New York Times article.

Scott (00:06:01):

It's got the date September 12th,

Scott (00:06:03):

2001, but it was obviously written that night for publication in the next day's issue

Scott (00:06:07):

there.

Scott (00:06:09):

A New York Times reporter called up Benjamin Netanyahu and asked him,

Scott (00:06:12):

what do you think that this attack means for America's relationship with Israel?

Scott (00:06:18):

And Netanyahu said, it's very good.

Scott (00:06:22):

I mean, hey, not very good.

Scott (00:06:24):

You know what I mean?

Scott (00:06:25):

Just that,

Scott (00:06:26):

you know, we'll be closer now as you realize your enemies are the same as ours,

Scott (00:06:29):

et cetera,

Scott (00:06:30):

et cetera, like that,

Scott (00:06:31):

right? But here's something that I only just learned.

Scott (00:06:33):

And I learned this from a leftist commentator named Jon Schwarz.

Scott (00:06:37):

He's a good guy dating back to the Iraq war years, tiny revolution blogger.

Scott (00:06:42):

And I'm gonna have to find this footnote myself,

Scott (00:06:45):

but you could start there on his Twitter feed,

Scott (00:06:46):

Jon Schwarz with no T in Schwarz.

Scott (00:06:50):

And the quote is from that reporter that called Netanyahu that day, wrote a memoir.

Scott (00:06:59):

And in the book, there's a quote of Netanyahu that's not in the New York Times story.

Scott (00:07:04):

That's part of his answer.

Scott (00:07:06):

And you know what he says?

Scott (00:07:08):

He muses to her.

Scott (00:07:10):

Will the American people blame us for this?

Scott (00:07:15):

No, I don't think they will.

Scott (00:07:17):

I think that they'll understand that we just have a common enemy here.

Scott (00:07:21):

Now, he wasn't talking about all this conspiracy crap about Mossad agents planting bombs

Scott (00:07:26):

in the towers and all of this stuff.

Scott (00:07:28):

It was just that he knew for a fact that this is why Al-Qaeda targets the United

Scott (00:07:33):

States is because of Israeli induced policies in the Gulf.

Scott (00:07:38):

Seriously, the dual containment policy of staying in Saudi Arabia was very much at Israeli

Scott (00:07:42):

behest.

Scott (00:07:43):

And of course, Israel's wars against the Palestinians and against the Lebanese.

Scott (00:07:47):

And this had been the ongoing litany of al-Qaeda's complaints against the United

Scott (00:07:52):

States,

Scott (00:07:53):

their recruitment shtick,

Scott (00:07:54):

their propaganda that they use to recruit their suicide bombers to attack us with.

Scott (00:07:58):

He knew that good and well.

Scott (00:08:00):

And so he couldn't help but muse out loud as like a hypothetical thing.

Scott (00:08:04):

Will the American people blame Israel for getting them into this mess?

Scott (00:08:07):

And then essentially, right,

Scott (00:08:08):

he had to bet that, nah,

Scott (00:08:09):

they don't know the first thing about that.

Scott (00:08:11):

And so it'll be fine.

Scott (00:08:12):

I'll just tell them that's right.

Scott (00:08:14):

See,

Scott (00:08:15):

we are your allies and auxiliaries in this civilizational war against Islam that's

Scott (00:08:22):

coming for you and all of this.

Scott (00:08:24):

And they just turned everything upside down.

Scott (00:08:26):

And that was 25 years of war ago.

Scott (00:08:29):

And now here we are in a brand new one again at their interest.

Scott (00:08:32):

And I'm sorry, by the way, let me let me add this and I swear I'll shut up.

Scott (00:08:36):

Iraq War II was very much meant to spite the Iranians.

Scott (00:08:39):

They wanted to put the Iraqi supermajority Shiite Arabs in power,

Scott (00:08:43):

but then they thought that they would pwn them,

Scott (00:08:46):

that they would be able to tell them what to do,

Scott (00:08:48):

that somehow the Ayatollah Sistani would fall under the spell of either the

Scott (00:08:52):

Hashemite kingdom in Jordan or at least Ahmed Chalabi,

Scott (00:08:56):

the liar who sold the neocons all this mess in the first place,

Scott (00:09:00):

and that by controlling the religious clergy in Najaf,

Scott (00:09:05):

they would tell Hezbollah to stop being friends with Iran.

Scott (00:09:08):

And then the people of Iraq would be so liberated that would put all this pressure on Iran.

Scott (00:09:12):

As David Wormser wrote, a liberated Iraq would be a nightmare for Iran.

Scott (00:09:18):

So this was the thinking behind Iraq War II was,

Scott (00:09:22):

You know, we don't want to go to Tehran.

Scott (00:09:23):

Come on, guys, be reasonable.

Scott (00:09:25):

But we could go to Baghdad and that will screw the Iranians.

Scott (00:09:28):

But that's not what happened, of course.

Scott (00:09:29):

Instead,

Scott (00:09:30):

what happened was the Iranians got their best guys in power,

Scott (00:09:34):

the Dawa Party, the Supreme Islamic Council.

Scott (00:09:36):

This is part of...

Scott (00:09:38):

Joe Kent, by the way, explains this in his Tucker Carlson interview as well,

Scott (00:09:41):

that they empowered the supermajority Iraqi Shiites.

Scott (00:09:44):

But then, of course, they're very close to Iran, closer to Iran than they'll ever be to us.

Scott (00:09:49):

Told Bush to get out.

Scott (00:09:50):

Our only real base is they're up in Kurdistan with tiny little bases after Iraq War Three.

Scott (00:09:55):

But then this is why.

Scott (00:09:57):

in the Obama years, that America backed al-Qaeda in Syria in order to spite Assad.

Scott (00:10:02):

Now, they wanted to drive Assad out of power,

Scott (00:10:04):

but what happened instead was al-Qaeda in Iraq in Syria ended up bleeding back into

Scott (00:10:10):

Western Iraq.

Scott (00:10:11):

Instead of going west to Damascus, they went east to Mosul and to Crete and Fallujah, right?

Scott (00:10:17):

And so they created the Islamic State Caliphate with this guy Baghdadi up there,

Scott (00:10:21):

like bin Laden himself on the...

Scott (00:10:24):

on the um balcony declaring himself the caliph Ibrahim divinely ordained ruler of

Scott (00:10:31):

the islamic state and so then America had to go back to war remember Iraq war three

Scott (00:10:37):

against the caliphate put us directly on the side of the Iranians again putting

Scott (00:10:43):

backing their best friends in power in Iraq.

Scott (00:10:46):

And in fact, in the case of the liberation of the town of Tikrit from ISIS,

Scott (00:10:50):

you literally had the Iranian,

Scott (00:10:52):

literally,

Scott (00:10:54):

not only figuratively,

Scott (00:10:55):

but literally you had the Iranian Quds Force leading Iraqi militias on the ground

Scott (00:11:00):

with American air power,

Scott (00:11:01):

protecting them in the sky.

Scott (00:11:03):

And so they repeated what they wish they hadn't done in Iraq War Two,

Scott (00:11:07):

in Iraq War Three,

Scott (00:11:08):

because the caliphate that they built to spite the Shiites and the Iranian led

Scott (00:11:12):

Shiites had blown up so badly that then they couldn't let that stand.

Scott (00:11:16):

So they had to go back and do the same thing again.

Scott (00:11:19):

So you can see why.

Scott (00:11:21):

Under all the Israelis' bad advice,

Scott (00:11:24):

that America kept doing all these things that ended up empowering Iran and their

Scott (00:11:29):

Hezbollah-ish alliance throughout the region,

Scott (00:11:32):

right? Giving them Baghdad and then fighting two wars for them and all these things.

Scott (00:11:36):

So...

Scott (00:11:37):

When October 7th happened, they decided that's it.

Scott (00:11:40):

We're going to do what they call the seven front war hit,

Scott (00:11:43):

you know,

Scott (00:11:44):

Hamas as hard as they can in Gaza,

Scott (00:11:45):

hit Hezbollah as hard as they can in Lebanon and see if they can get America to go

Scott (00:11:50):

all the way for the big prize and go to Tehran.

Scott (00:11:53):

And they knew that,

Scott (00:11:55):

or they were betting, I think that once they get the war started,

Scott (00:11:58):

that America will have to continue to escalate until they follow through and

Scott (00:12:01):

finally do kill that regime one way or the other.

Asbed (00:12:04):

But Scott,

Asbed (00:12:05):

when you say that this war was essentially instigated by Israel,

Asbed (00:12:08):

still, when the United States got involved,

Asbed (00:12:10):

was it because of a convergence of our interests?

Asbed (00:12:13):

Or are they following completely divergent goals?

Asbed (00:12:17):

Because I've certainly heard that as the United States is looking down this

Asbed (00:12:22):

century,

Asbed (00:12:23):

they're also thinking about China,

Asbed (00:12:25):

subduing China into a junior superpower role and stuff like that.

Asbed (00:12:29):

Where's the United States interest in all this?

Scott (00:12:32):

Okay, well, on that particular question, go back to 1991.

Scott (00:12:36):

In fact, September 11th, 1991.

Scott (00:12:38):

No, no, no, sorry.

Scott (00:12:41):

September 11th,

Scott (00:12:42):

1990,

Scott (00:12:43):

after the invasion of Kuwait,

Scott (00:12:45):

during Operation Desert Shield and the buildup for Iraq War I,

Scott (00:12:50):

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney testified to Congress about the importance of the

Scott (00:12:54):

Strait of Hormuz and Gulf oil and the choke point there.

Scott (00:12:57):

Not that America is dependent on that oil, but our enemies and our allies in Asia are.

Scott (00:13:03):

And so that's very important that America control that choke point.

Scott (00:13:06):

But then...

Scott (00:13:07):

He's not saying we had to do regime change in Tehran to achieve that.

Scott (00:13:11):

All we need to do is have a position of dominance throughout the Gulf.

Scott (00:13:15):

And,

Scott (00:13:16):

you know, and at that point,

Scott (00:13:17):

the Soviet Union still stood and the Carter Doctrine was,

Scott (00:13:19):

don't you dare invade Iran's Soviet Union or it'll be nuclear war with us.

Scott (00:13:24):

Even though we hate the Iranians, still, we're not going to let you Reds dominate the Gulf.

Scott (00:13:29):

So that was the Carter Doctrine of supremacy there.

Scott (00:13:31):

And then

Scott (00:13:33):

As you guys know,

Scott (00:13:34):

even if let's say Bin Ladinites,

Scott (00:13:36):

like,

Scott (00:13:37):

and I don't mean CIA backed ones,

Scott (00:13:38):

but like truly America hating Bin Ladenites took over the whole Gulf and kicked

Scott (00:13:43):

every American potentate out of there.

Scott (00:13:45):

Well, America's Navy could still sink or even just arrest, right?

Scott (00:13:49):

Pull over and seize any boat on the high seas that they feel like.

Scott (00:13:53):

Nobody doubts the power of the American Navy.

Scott (00:13:56):

It is the global Navy.

Scott (00:13:57):

There is no other one.

Scott (00:13:58):

And we're allied with all the other powerful navies in the world other than China and Russia.

Scott (00:14:03):

But still, it's a lot.

Scott (00:14:05):

And so just like the Iranians are proving in the Gulf,

Scott (00:14:09):

they don't have to hit you just at the Strait of Hormuz.

Scott (00:14:11):

They can hit you anywhere in the Gulf.

Scott (00:14:12):

And that's enough to shut the whole thing down or essentially force every boat

Scott (00:14:18):

captain to follow their commands.

Scott (00:14:20):

What else are they going to do?

Scott (00:14:22):

Same thing on the high seas.

Scott (00:14:24):

If an American aircraft carrier,

Scott (00:14:26):

you know, puts the red siren on the roof and pulls you over,

Scott (00:14:29):

you're cooked.

Scott (00:14:30):

What are you going to do?

Scott (00:14:31):

Get away?

Scott (00:14:32):

So America can cut off China from exported,

Scott (00:14:36):

you know, oil parts,

Scott (00:14:37):

pardon me,

Scott (00:14:38):

imported oil from the sea.

Scott (00:14:40):

at any time that they wish in the event of a crisis,

Scott (00:14:42):

a real war with Iran,

Scott (00:14:44):

that's a snap of a fingers.

Scott (00:14:45):

Point is that doesn't really matter that much anymore because since Joe Biden gave

Scott (00:14:49):

the,

Scott (00:14:50):

this is Sparta kick in the chest to Putin and kicked him right out of Europe.

Scott (00:14:54):

I mean,

Scott (00:14:55):

yeah, he turned to Asia and has doubled and tripled down on his hydrocarbon exports,

Scott (00:15:01):

gas and oil to China.

Scott (00:15:04):

And then I actually didn't know this, but learned recently, I was surprised to find out.

Scott (00:15:08):

That China actually has far more domestic oil resources than I thought.

Scott (00:15:12):

They're like the fifth biggest producer in the world or something.

Scott (00:15:14):

I did not realize that.

Scott (00:15:15):

And of course, they have plenty of coal and nuclear and whatever they want.

Asbed (00:15:18):

They do have a lot of oil reserves.

Asbed (00:15:20):

It's just that their consumption level is so high that they still need to import a lot.

Scott (00:15:26):

Sure. But so, oh, I'm sorry.

Scott (00:15:27):

Then to answer your broader question.

Scott (00:15:30):

I think it's a bunch of essentially like Israeli propaganda and or just American

Scott (00:15:37):

kind of coping mechanism where people try to rationalize why we're doing this.

Scott (00:15:42):

You know,

Scott (00:15:43):

in fact,

Scott (00:15:44):

it's funny, you hear the exact same phrase now,

Scott (00:15:46):

exact same phrase now that they said in 2002.

Scott (00:15:49):

I mean,

Scott (00:15:50):

they mean, meaning the public people would just say kind of repeating from TV or maybe just

Scott (00:15:55):

rationalizing themselves.

Scott (00:15:57):

well, they must have secret information that we don't know about, right?

Scott (00:16:00):

Which is like a nice,

Scott (00:16:01):

it's like a being polite at your friend's mom's house that like,

Scott (00:16:05):

well,

Scott (00:16:06):

I disagree with you,

Scott (00:16:07):

but you probably know more about this than me or what?

Scott (00:16:10):

Because like, what are you going to say?

Scott (00:16:11):

In other words, every excuse they gave you so far, even you're not buying it.

Scott (00:16:17):

You know what I mean?

Scott (00:16:18):

Regular John Q guy on the barstool thinks, well, you know, the chemical weapons.

Asbed (00:16:22):

I don't know who buys that since the whole WMD business.

Scott (00:16:24):

Yeah.

Scott (00:16:25):

So then same thing here where they go,

Scott (00:16:26):

well,

Scott (00:16:28):

if it's not like secret information about Iran's nuclear weapons program that they

Scott (00:16:33):

must know that they're not telling us,

Scott (00:16:34):

then it's long term kind of underground secret geopolitical interests must be about

Scott (00:16:44):

China, because what else could it be?

Scott (00:16:46):

Must be about China.

Scott (00:16:47):

Right. When again,

Scott (00:16:49):

This whole question was resolved by Dick Cheney 35 years ago when he was the defense secretary.

Scott (00:16:55):

Does is America going to continue the Carter Doctrine on into the new century?

Scott (00:16:59):

You're gee damn right.

Scott (00:17:01):

We are.

Scott (00:17:02):

You know, yes.

Scott (00:17:04):

And here we are still.

Scott (00:17:05):

So there's not we never needed a regime change in Tehran for that.

Scott (00:17:10):

We just needed for.

Scott (00:17:13):

you know, our compliant regimes to persist along the Southeast coast.

Scott (00:17:18):

And for that matter, a couple of aircraft carriers to sail up and down for the most part.

Hovik (00:17:23):

Yeah. Scott, you mentioned Israel a few times,

Hovik (00:17:25):

and I want to take us back to the clean break report from 1996,

Hovik (00:17:31):

where much of one of these plans are spelled out or,

Hovik (00:17:36):

you know,

Hovik (00:17:37):

highlighted at a higher level of,

Hovik (00:17:40):

And I also want to put an emphasis on Syria as a key case.

Hovik (00:17:45):

So after more than a decade of sanctions and support for armed Islamist groups,

Hovik (00:17:52):

the Assad government was finally overthrown.

Hovik (00:17:56):

Now, that campaign involves not only the US and Israel, but also Turkey and others.

Hovik (00:18:04):

And today,

Hovik (00:18:05):

the Jolani regime is effectively under Ankara's influence,

Hovik (00:18:12):

while parts of Syria remain under Israeli occupation.

Hovik (00:18:15):

But what's interesting is that while Turkey

Hovik (00:18:17):

presents itself as as a force for peace you know if you look at the map of how the

Hovik (00:18:27):

Israeli aircraft you know fly to bomb Iran they go right over Syria so that to me

Hovik (00:18:34):

tells its own story so I wanted to ask you would this war with Iran be even

Hovik (00:18:38):

possible without the destruction of Syria

Scott (00:18:42):

Oh, that's interesting.

Scott (00:18:43):

In other words,

Scott (00:18:44):

would they have been able to go ahead and launch the ward now if Assad and his guys

Scott (00:18:48):

were still there?

Scott (00:18:50):

I'm not really sure that all the dominoes had to fall in which order.

Scott (00:18:57):

I would say that it's just the reality of the thing.

Scott (00:19:02):

Everything's coming up Likud here, right?

Scott (00:19:06):

They did not destroy, of course, but they severely hurt Hamas in Gaza.

Scott (00:19:12):

Um,

Scott (00:19:13):

apparently they did not set Hezbollah back as far as they thought they had,

Scott (00:19:17):

but they did kill their charismatic leader and,

Scott (00:19:20):

you know,

Scott (00:19:21):

destroy a lot of missiles and kill a lot of middle managers and so forth.

Scott (00:19:25):

Although obviously the group itself is designed to withstand that kind of thing.

Scott (00:19:31):

And then, yeah,

Scott (00:19:32):

the overthrow of the Ba'athist regime and,

Scott (00:19:35):

you know, the Alawite-led Ba'athist regime in Syria is a huge blow to that whole Iranian arc

Scott (00:19:43):

of power, as David Wormser called it,

Scott (00:19:45):

in the clean break and all of that.

Scott (00:19:47):

So I think...

Scott (00:19:50):

That's why they're going for Tehran now.

Scott (00:19:52):

This is really the neocon doctrine of the W.

Scott (00:19:55):

Bush years where,

Scott (00:19:56):

like in National Review,

Scott (00:19:57):

Michael Ledeen would write over and over again,

Scott (00:19:58):

faster,

Scott (00:19:59):

please,

Scott (00:20:00):

faster, please. We have to go after the terror masters in Tehran.

Scott (00:20:04):

Again, they like to conflate.

Scott (00:20:06):

You know,

Scott (00:20:07):

radical Islam,

Scott (00:20:08):

fundamentalist this and that,

Scott (00:20:10):

so that you forget who's wearing the shirts and who's wearing the skins and the

Scott (00:20:13):

game out there.

Scott (00:20:15):

You know, in fact,

Scott (00:20:16):

in the there's this really important article from 2007 by Seymour Hersh called The

Scott (00:20:20):

Redirection.

Scott (00:20:21):

It was about how essentially they realized that they had empowered Iran in Iraq so badly.

Scott (00:20:27):

Now, what the hell are we going to do about it?

Scott (00:20:29):

So they had to tell the Saudi king and the prime minister of Israel and everybody

Scott (00:20:32):

else that like,

Scott (00:20:33):

look, we're going to try to figure this out and do everything we can.

Scott (00:20:36):

And since we can't reverse the entire sectarian war in Iraq and give the capital

Scott (00:20:40):

city back to the Sunni Arabs,

Scott (00:20:42):

well,

Scott (00:20:43):

we can still take out Assad in Damascus.

Scott (00:20:45):

And that was,

Scott (00:20:46):

you know, when they pivoted to there,

Scott (00:20:47):

it was,

Scott (00:20:48):

again, like to overcorrect from the flaw of Iraq War II.

Scott (00:20:52):

And you're correct when you say that.

Scott (00:20:54):

The thinking behind of Rock War II,

Scott (00:20:56):

I was sort of paraphrasing it earlier,

Scott (00:20:57):

but I didn't really explain that the thinking behind all that is delineated in this

Scott (00:21:03):

policy paper by a lackey of Richard Perle,

Scott (00:21:07):

a guy named David Wormser,

Scott (00:21:09):

and he's the principal author of the thing.

Scott (00:21:11):

And there are three pieces, really.

Scott (00:21:13):

It's a clean break, a new strategy for securing the realm, coping with crumbling states, a U.S.

Scott (00:21:20):

and Israeli balance of power strategy for the Levant or something like that.

Scott (00:21:26):

And then Tyranny's Ally is a short monograph of a book.

Scott (00:21:29):

It's got a forward by Richard Perle, and then the main thing is by Wormser.

Scott (00:21:33):

And it's essentially the same thing over and over again.

Scott (00:21:35):

It's saying, again, Israel's problem is Iran backs Hezbollah by way of Syria.

Scott (00:21:41):

Now, I think

Scott (00:21:46):

Well, there's so many different directions to go here.

Scott (00:21:48):

First of all,

Scott (00:21:49):

what it says in the thing is the solution to this is to overthrow Saddam in

Scott (00:21:55):

Baghdad.

Scott (00:21:56):

Now, anyone listen to this and just think that doesn't make any sense.

Scott (00:21:59):

He's a secular Sunni Arab sitting on a minority dictatorship that basically

Scott (00:22:04):

requires foreign assistance to keep it in power.

Scott (00:22:07):

He's like a perfect sock puppet for the empire if we were to have one.

Scott (00:22:11):

And why get rid of him and put in a majority Shiite authority there?

Scott (00:22:17):

And again, the thinking was,

Scott (00:22:18):

as they had been promised by the Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi,

Scott (00:22:22):

that the Hashemite king of Jordan would tell,

Scott (00:22:25):

he would just command the allegiance of all these Shiites and they would do what he

Scott (00:22:28):

said, which is completely false and stupid and wrong.

Scott (00:22:31):

But that was what they believed.

Scott (00:22:32):

And that was the kind of advice that this was the consensus among Paul Wolfowitz

Scott (00:22:36):

and Scooter Libby and all of the neoconservatives in the W.

Scott (00:22:39):

Bush government that told W.

Scott (00:22:41):

Bush, you want to go to Baghdad?

Scott (00:22:43):

Good idea.

Scott (00:22:44):

This is going to really be great.

Scott (00:22:45):

We gamed it all out, boss.

Scott (00:22:47):

Trust us.

Scott (00:22:48):

And these were the guys who got us into the war.

Hovik (00:22:50):

So, Scott,

Hovik (00:22:51):

yeah, I mean, that part I understand well,

Hovik (00:22:54):

and there was a direction to support Israel's supremacy,

Hovik (00:22:59):

but I was more interested in Turkey's role in all this because...

Hovik (00:23:05):

at least for what happened in Syria, Turkey was by many accounts a big

Hovik (00:23:12):

time collaborator. Nowadays I think some Israeli analysts, or some people in Israel

Hovik (00:23:18):

speak about Turkey as the next Iran once we get once they get done with Iran do you

Hovik (00:23:24):

really see Turkey as an enemy or potential competitor for Israel or are they

Hovik (00:23:28):

actually collaborators in all of this because at least to me that's what it seems

Scott (00:23:33):

like yeah

Scott (00:23:35):

Well, look,

Scott (00:23:36):

I, first of all,

Scott (00:23:37):

I got to tell you, this stuff gets very complicated and you can have grudges over things that to me

Scott (00:23:41):

would not seem like they make strategic sense for people to change their position

Scott (00:23:45):

on stuff.

Scott (00:23:46):

So for example,

Scott (00:23:47):

I'm just totally making this up,

Scott (00:23:49):

but like when the Israel,

Scott (00:23:50):

not this part,

Scott (00:23:51):

when the Israelis seize a bunch of territory in Southwestern Syria,

Scott (00:23:55):

maybe that really pisses off Erdogan and then he does something and that causes a

Scott (00:23:59):

chain of of grudges back and forth that actually caused relations to deteriorate

Scott (00:24:05):

I'm not saying I know that but i'm saying that can happen and I really don't have

Scott (00:24:08):

good enough x-ray eyes on that to see exactly how that is I can tell you for

Scott (00:24:13):

absolute certainty as I know you're already aware but I can

Scott (00:24:16):

reaffirm and explain to your audience that when the Obama regime kicked off the

Scott (00:24:21):

dirty war in Syria in 2011,

Scott (00:24:23):

the Turks and the Israelis were aiding and abetting that all along.

Scott (00:24:28):

And in fact,

Scott (00:24:29):

you know, I would argue that it was really the Zionist led war party in America that really

Scott (00:24:34):

pushed Obama to do that in the first place.

Scott (00:24:36):

on behalf of Israel um more of the flea wagon the dog there but then you know Saudi

Scott (00:24:42):

and Qatari and uh turkey also got in on it to a great degree and backed all of these

Scott (00:24:48):

Bin Ladenite militias from you know the outright al-Qaeda in Iraq in Syria Javad

Scott (00:24:53):

al-Nusra led by

Scott (00:24:56):

Abu Muhammad al-Jolani,

Scott (00:24:57):

now known as al-Shara,

Scott (00:24:59):

the president of Syria,

Scott (00:25:00):

but then Jaish al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham and a hundred others basically vying to be

Scott (00:25:07):

the Islamic State Caliphate themselves until basically the Iraqi-dominated faction

Scott (00:25:13):

of that group, as I had described before,

Scott (00:25:15):

went ahead and broke off all of eastern Syria and western Iraq and created their

Scott (00:25:20):

caliphate and caused Iraq War III and all of that.

Scott (00:25:24):

but it was there's no question i mean for those of us who were against it at the

Scott (00:25:29):

time and in paying attention and all of that it was at least equivalent to the w

Scott (00:25:36):

bush years in terms of the slowest motionist most absolutely horrific like 8k

Scott (00:25:42):

quality train wreck in front of all of our eyes that like how can you do this they

Scott (00:25:48):

got so married

Scott (00:25:49):

And,

Scott (00:25:50):

you know, a lot of them were lying,

Scott (00:25:51):

but a lot of them were just so stupidly sincere where they just swore that somehow

Scott (00:25:57):

their slogan that we're backing the moderate rebels was somehow true when there was

Scott (00:26:02):

no moderate rebels other than the guys that the extremists sent to collect the guns

Scott (00:26:06):

and the money.

Scott (00:26:07):

And there was no question from the very beginning the thing was led by the bin Ladenites.

Scott (00:26:11):

And and it was predicted.

Scott (00:26:13):

including by me and many others in 2013 and 14,

Scott (00:26:17):

that they are going to invade Western Iraq and try to create that Islamic state

Scott (00:26:23):

that they named their group after that they wish to see in the world.

Scott (00:26:27):

And then, in fact, guys, I have to tell you that when when the Islamic State sacked Mosul,

Scott (00:26:36):

Right around then, I thought, oh, you see what's gonna happen?

Scott (00:26:40):

Erdogan is gonna roll his troops right in and be like,

Scott (00:26:44):

you know, Mosul really did belong to Turkey all along,

Scott (00:26:47):

and he's using ISIS,

Scott (00:26:49):

which in fact, by the way,

Scott (00:26:50):

I should have stipulated this.

Scott (00:26:53):

if you go back to those years,

Scott (00:26:54):

2012,

Scott (00:26:56):

13,

Scott (00:27:02):

14,

Scott (00:26:56):

during all of that,

Scott (00:26:57):

it was,

Scott (00:26:58):

you'd have different countries backing different suicide bomber groups and

Scott (00:27:02):

whatever. And most of the support for the Islamic State, after they broke off from the Jelani group,

Scott (00:27:09):

at least, and probably before that, was coming from the Turks.

Scott (00:27:12):

And,

Scott (00:27:13):

you know, there was like a former CIA officer on my show who told me that he was in Ankara

Scott (00:27:17):

and there are ISIS fundraisers on the streets everywhere.

Scott (00:27:20):

Of course, this is where every jihadi in the world who went there to fight went through Turkey

Scott (00:27:24):

to get there and all this.

Scott (00:27:26):

And I remember thinking,

Scott (00:27:28):

Well, what's he waiting for?

Scott (00:27:29):

He sent his shock trooper,

Scott (00:27:32):

suicide bomber,

Scott (00:27:33):

useless idiot,

Scott (00:27:35):

you know, bin Laden night,

Scott (00:27:36):

Arabs to do his dirty work for him.

Scott (00:27:39):

Now I would have thought,

Scott (00:27:40):

and I don't mean that Arabs like my point of view,

Scott (00:27:42):

but I mean his,

Scott (00:27:44):

that like these guys are like,

Scott (00:27:46):

you know, expendable.

Scott (00:27:47):

Now he's going to march the Turkish army right in there and sack Mosul.

Scott (00:27:52):

And there's your caliphate.

Scott (00:27:54):

Caliphate's based in...

Scott (00:27:56):

In Turkey, not in in in Raqqa.

Scott (00:28:00):

Right.

Scott (00:28:01):

But that didn't happen.

Scott (00:28:02):

And I honestly don't know why.

Scott (00:28:04):

In fact, I think if it had, maybe Obama wouldn't have even launched Iraq War three.

Scott (00:28:10):

You know what I mean?

Scott (00:28:11):

He might have just said, well, I guess let's let Turkey have it.

Asbed (00:28:14):

I don't know.

Asbed (00:28:15):

You know, Turkey is.

Asbed (00:28:16):

MIT,

Asbed (00:28:17):

their intelligence service,

Asbed (00:28:18):

as an uncanny way of standing up these mercenary Islamic armies and doing their

Asbed (00:28:24):

bidding. We saw that in the Artsakh war in Nagorno-Karabakh against Armenians and such.

Asbed (00:28:30):

And,

Asbed (00:28:31):

you know, I'll tell you,

Asbed (00:28:32):

Hovig asked a question about whether Israel and Turkey are friends or foes,

Asbed (00:28:39):

they're frenemies.

Asbed (00:28:40):

Here's my barometer.

Asbed (00:28:41):

I always look what's going on with the Baku, Ceyhan,

Asbed (00:28:44):

Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil, 40% of Israel's energy flows through that and that's untouched.

Asbed (00:28:52):

If it's untouched,

Asbed (00:28:53):

it doesn't matter what Erdogan is saying or what they're doing,

Asbed (00:28:56):

you know,

Asbed (00:28:57):

as long as the energy is flowing,

Asbed (00:28:59):

they're friends.

Asbed (00:29:00):

Scott,

Asbed (00:29:01):

I want to shift gears just a little bit because I want to slightly pivot towards

Asbed (00:29:05):

the domestic scene in the United States,

Asbed (00:29:07):

because now we're reaching,

Asbed (00:29:09):

as I mentioned,

Asbed (00:29:10):

the limits of "clean" air power in Iran.

Asbed (00:29:13):

And there's all this talk about,

Asbed (00:29:15):

you know,

Asbed (00:29:16):

finding a way to have a ground offensive on Iran to force it to break apart.

Asbed (00:29:21):

And of course,

Asbed (00:29:22):

as we look for proxies,

Asbed (00:29:23):

as we being Trump looking for proxies,

Asbed (00:29:26):

he has tried to recruit the Iranian Kurds and the Iraqi Kurds,

Asbed (00:29:30):

but no takers.

Asbed (00:29:31):

It seems like they've wisened up a little bit from history that they're just getting used.

Asbed (00:29:35):

The last situation was in Syria.

Asbed (00:29:37):

The Syrian Kurds were dumped.

Asbed (00:29:39):

I mean, so far.

Asbed (00:29:40):

No takers so far.

Hovik (00:29:42):

So far. So no takers so far.

Asbed (00:29:44):

And on the naval front, Trump tried to recruit NATO and Europe and also even China.

Asbed (00:29:50):

No takers. Nobody wants to be involved in Trump's war against Iran.

Asbed (00:29:56):

Could the U.S.

Asbed (00:29:58):

actually consider a ground invasion in Iran with U.S.

Asbed (00:30:01):

troops?

Asbed (00:30:02):

We've heard that there are 2,000 Marines on the way there because this is going to

Asbed (00:30:07):

put us in a quagmire.

Asbed (00:30:08):

I mean, it's going to become Vietnam if we do this.

Asbed (00:30:12):

Do you think this is possible?

Scott (00:30:16):

Well, okay.

Scott (00:30:17):

I really hope not.

Scott (00:30:18):

So here's to break it down a little bit what's at issue so far.

Scott (00:30:23):

No one is talking about...

Scott (00:30:25):

parachuting in the entire 75th Ranger Regimen to sack Tehran and force a regime

Scott (00:30:33):

change,

Scott (00:30:34):

kill any last Shiite cleric who dares to call himself supreme leader of anything

Scott (00:30:39):

until they just stop doing that.

Scott (00:30:42):

Nobody's saying that.

Scott (00:30:43):

It's insane.

Scott (00:30:44):

And they don't think that.

Scott (00:30:45):

But here's what they are talking about potentially doing.

Scott (00:30:49):

One is sending in maybe the 75th Rangers or the 82nd Airborne and or other special

Scott (00:30:57):

operations forces and air power to try to seize the nuclear facility at Isfahan,

Scott (00:31:04):

where there's an adjacent facility,

Scott (00:31:06):

I believe it's right there,

Scott (00:31:07):

called Pickaxe Mountain,

Scott (00:31:08):

where they think they're hiding their enriched uranium gas in canisters there and

Scott (00:31:14):

that they want to seize that stockpile.

Scott (00:31:17):

Now to do that, I mean, the whole thing, I can picture it like a Hollywood movie, right?

Scott (00:31:20):

You guys can too.

Scott (00:31:22):

Send in all the special forces guys,

Scott (00:31:23):

like the highest tier seals and Delta and whoever in the middle.

Scott (00:31:27):

And then you send in the second tier Rangers and Green Berets and whoever to secure the outside.

Scott (00:31:33):

And then you send in all the A-10s to machine gun with their Vulcan cannons,

Scott (00:31:38):

any of them terrible Persians who come and try to stop.

Scott (00:31:41):

But how that might work in real life,

Scott (00:31:46):

uh would be anybody's bet and i would think that it would be completely crazy i

Scott (00:31:50):

mean just you know what i already thought of this before an actual expert said this

Scott (00:31:57):

somewhere and i forget who but like it's the obvious thing that you guys are

Scott (00:32:00):

probably thinking too what are they gonna do man they're gonna drop in bulldozers

Scott (00:32:05):

They're going to bring in like massive land moving equipment and they're going to

Scott (00:32:09):

buy themselves how much time?

Asbed (00:32:11):

And it's a massive country.

Asbed (00:32:13):

It's not Venezuela here.

Asbed (00:32:14):

No, of course not.

Asbed (00:32:16):

And the shoreline that you can just, you know, come up to and drop off a bunch of Marines.

Scott (00:32:23):

Yeah, exactly right. How do you get them in there?

Scott (00:32:25):

And how do you get them out of there?

Scott (00:32:27):

And how long is this thing going to take?

Scott (00:32:29):

You could see the whole thing being no, no, no, totally cost.

Scott (00:32:32):

It sounds like a suicide mission if it was attempted.

Scott (00:32:36):

Then the other proposal is that they'll try to do some kind of amphibious landing

Scott (00:32:40):

in the Gulf in order to stave off Iranian fire to reopen the gates of Hormuz.

Scott (00:32:45):

But guys, I mean, as soon as they started saying that, you guys saw it.

Scott (00:32:49):

They set two American...

Scott (00:32:51):

Fuel tankers on fire up near Kuwait and in near Iraq,

Scott (00:32:56):

just to point out that,

Scott (00:32:57):

like, it doesn't have to be the straight dum-dums.

Scott (00:32:59):

The whole Persian Gulf is up for grabs.

Scott (00:33:03):

They can reach out and touch whatever they want.

Scott (00:33:05):

And so...

Scott (00:33:09):

Anyway,

Scott (00:33:10):

the stupidity of that,

Scott (00:33:11):

just the way that they have set this whole thing up is really something there.

Scott (00:33:15):

But look,

Scott (00:33:16):

I think,

Scott (00:33:17):

again,

Scott (00:33:18):

anyone who's just a total amateur at this would find their own suspicions or

Scott (00:33:23):

concerns being...

Scott (00:33:25):

confirmed by real experts talking about this, that like, well, no.

Scott (00:33:29):

See, if you put a bunch of Marines on Kharg Island or you put a bunch of Marines right

Scott (00:33:34):

there on the Iranian coast adjacent the Strait of Hormuz,

Scott (00:33:37):

then what's going to happen is they're all going to get artilleried and or rocketed

Scott (00:33:41):

to death by guys in the mountains above them on their landing zone.

Scott (00:33:46):

I mean, this is some World War II level D-Day style invasion type

Scott (00:33:51):

thing that would be necessary to accomplish these goals and I'm not I don't think

Scott (00:33:56):

for a moment that anybody's really contemplating that I mean you might just have I

Asbed (00:34:01):

hope not but I'm trying to understand what is the domestic implication, I mean

Asbed (00:34:05):

what does this mean for Trump at home, he didn't bring anyone along. Even George W

Asbed (00:34:11):

Bush went to the people to say we need to do this, it was all lies, but that's a

Asbed (00:34:15):

different story.

Asbed (00:34:17):

Trump didn't go to Congress, didn't come to the American people.

Asbed (00:34:20):

He just did this.

Asbed (00:34:21):

And even today, he has no plans to justify this war.

Asbed (00:34:25):

So if this ground invasion were to happen,

Asbed (00:34:28):

I mean,

Asbed (00:34:32):

eventually,

Asbed (00:34:33):

I'm going to come back to Joe Kent also.

Asbed (00:34:35):

His MAGA base seems to be splintering a little bit.

Asbed (00:34:39):

What are you seeing happen on the domestic front to the current administration?

Scott (00:34:44):

Yeah.

Scott (00:34:45):

Well,

Scott (00:34:48):

I think obviously the Fox news audience like over 50 and whatever,

Scott (00:34:55):

maybe even older than that, not just Gen X-ers but the baby boomers really

Scott (00:35:01):

older than us X-ers, they're buying this stuff but I think probably too bad we

Hovik (00:35:07):

can't put them on a plane and send them to Iran. I'm not just kidding yeah see how

Scott (00:35:10):

they like it I could think of a few hosts... yeah I could think of a few Fox News

Scott (00:35:14):

hosts I would just use them as the payload and drop them over Tehran, but...

Scott (00:35:20):

I think, well...

Asbed (00:35:21):

One of them is defense secretary now.

Scott (00:35:23):

Yeah, they've been telling the same lies for so long.

Scott (00:35:27):

I think people are just, I think they're over.

Scott (00:35:30):

And look, there's every reason to believe.

Scott (00:35:34):

that if they drop a bunch of Marines in there or a bunch of 82nd Airborne in there,

Scott (00:35:39):

that those guys could get very killed.

Scott (00:35:42):

And that if that happens, what's gonna be the reaction?

Scott (00:35:45):

Trump's gonna get emotional and double down,

Scott (00:35:47):

triple down,

Scott (00:35:48):

or he's gonna realize that,

Scott (00:35:50):

boy, are people mad and have to back down.

Scott (00:35:53):

I mean, after all, Trump does understand that Iran is three times the size of Iraq.

Scott (00:36:00):

three, maybe four with three times.

Scott (00:36:04):

I think it's four or three times the population and two big mountain ranges.

Scott (00:36:08):

And it's just no, man.

Asbed (00:36:10):

It's again, it'd be like a World War Two type effort to do it for Americans, just for sizing.

Asbed (00:36:17):

It's over twice the size of Texas, I think.

Scott (00:36:19):

Yes, two and a half Texases.

Scott (00:36:21):

And I'm from Texas and I'm telling you, it's huge, man.

Scott (00:36:25):

Honestly, picture your map of North America in your head, okay?

Scott (00:36:29):

From Austin, Texas, which is more or less in the center, okay?

Scott (00:36:32):

A little bit to the east, but more or less the center of Texas.

Scott (00:36:36):

From there to El Paso in West Texas is halfway to the Pacific Ocean.

Scott (00:36:41):

That's the entire,

Scott (00:36:43):

from the center of Texas to the west of Texas is the entire distance across New

Scott (00:36:47):

Mexico,

Scott (00:36:48):

Arizona, and all of California till you get to the water.

Scott (00:36:51):

Okay, that's how big that is for anybody who can't make the adjustment in your head.

Scott (00:36:55):

It's humongous.

Scott (00:36:57):

Anyone who's ever driven it across Texas could verify.

Scott (00:37:01):

So that's a great way to measure it.

Scott (00:37:04):

It's absolute, and in all of these years of the war party pushing this hype, nobody said,

Scott (00:37:11):

We ought to do like W.

Scott (00:37:12):

Bush in 03 and roll our entire ground army in there and sack the Capitol and seize

Scott (00:37:19):

it and own it and regime change it and

Scott (00:37:22):

quote unquote, de-Ba'ath-ify it and create, build a whole new nation and all this crap.

Scott (00:37:26):

No one ever said that.

Scott (00:37:27):

They just said murder the Ayatollah and then the people will rise up and be free

Scott (00:37:31):

and blah, blah,

Scott (00:37:32):

blah kind of thing.

Scott (00:37:33):

In other words,

Scott (00:37:34):

encouraging the American regime to just bite the bullet and get it started and hope

Scott (00:37:38):

for the best, which seems to be exactly what happened here,

Scott (00:37:41):

right? He got all this contrary advice and he decided, nah, you know what?

Scott (00:37:45):

Netanyahu promises it'll be easy.

Scott (00:37:48):

And you know what too?

Scott (00:37:50):

Um,

Scott (00:37:52):

There was all this hype about the Iranian regime wiping out 30 to even 50 or 80,000

Scott (00:37:58):

protesters in January when the popular protests broke out.

Scott (00:38:03):

And obviously that was mostly intended to outrage people and soften up opinion for

Scott (00:38:09):

the war,

Scott (00:38:10):

right?

Scott (00:38:11):

To try to get us involved that look how brutal this regime is when in fact the real

Scott (00:38:15):

total is likely 3,000,

Scott (00:38:17):

maybe a little north of that.

Scott (00:38:19):

10 times less.

Scott (00:38:21):

But the thing is about that hype is that there's every reason to believe that

Scott (00:38:25):

Donald Trump bought that.

Scott (00:38:27):

If you look at all the idiots on Twitter who did.

Scott (00:38:29):

And if Donald Trump bought that, then you think about that.

Scott (00:38:32):

It's not just outrageous that they would kill so many people, right?

Scott (00:38:36):

But it tells a tale that that was necessary.

Scott (00:38:40):

that the Iranian regime had to kill something like 30,000 popular protesters before

Scott (00:38:47):

they would give up and go home.

Scott (00:38:49):

Cause otherwise they were clearly on the verge of overthrowing his regime.

Scott (00:38:53):

If you have,

Scott (00:38:54):

if you have an uprising and it takes killing 30 to 50,000 of them to get the rest

Scott (00:39:00):

to quit in like world war one style,

Scott (00:39:03):

you know,

Scott (00:39:04):

battle of the Psalms sized massacres,

Scott (00:39:08):

then boy,

Scott (00:39:09):

is that a brittle regime that's ready to fall if you just drop one 2,000 pound bomb

Scott (00:39:15):

on the Ayatollah's head.

Scott (00:39:16):

Then you'll see, and this is what Netanyahu was preaching.

Scott (00:39:19):

So all we got to do is hit them once and they'll fall right over.

Scott (00:39:22):

And of course, that was nonsense.

Asbed (00:39:24):

Yeah, Scott,

Asbed (00:39:26):

but I want to talk just a little bit more about the domestic thing,

Asbed (00:39:31):

because I was fascinated to hear about Joe Kent,

Asbed (00:39:34):

who was Trump's handpicked director of counterterrorism in this country,

Asbed (00:39:40):

reporting directly to Tulsi Gabbard.

Asbed (00:39:41):

Now,

Asbed (00:39:42):

Gabbard has been quiet,

Asbed (00:39:43):

but suddenly we have this WMD moment where Joe Kent says there was no justification

Asbed (00:39:48):

for the war.

Asbed (00:39:49):

I quit.

Asbed (00:39:50):

What does this mean?

Asbed (00:39:53):

I mean, he was an extreme right-wing person.

Asbed (00:39:56):

He came from the Charlie Kirk ranks, I think.

Asbed (00:39:58):

What does this mean for the MAGA base?

Asbed (00:40:00):

Are we seeing a splinter?

Asbed (00:40:02):

And are these people going to be able to hold on to power in November 2026?

Asbed (00:40:06):

Are they going to lose the house?

Asbed (00:40:10):

I'm really interested to hear your opinion on the domestic front.

Asbed (00:40:14):

The other day, I was musing a little bit on another show that regime change is going to be

Asbed (00:40:18):

achieved, except it's going to be in the United States and not in Iran.

Scott (00:40:22):

Yeah. Well, you know, they had elections here in Texas a couple of weeks ago.

Scott (00:40:27):

And regardless of the results on the Republican side,

Scott (00:40:31):

which was mostly sort of populist against incumbent,

Scott (00:40:34):

but more importantly,

Scott (00:40:35):

was Democratic turnout was way higher.

Scott (00:40:37):

It was mostly primary stuff.

Scott (00:40:39):

Yeah.

Scott (00:40:40):

There's way more enthusiasm on the Democratic side.

Scott (00:40:43):

Republicans are just staying home and and quitting in frustration.

Scott (00:40:47):

Seemingly morale is low.

Scott (00:40:49):

And so I think, yeah, the tide is with the opposing party now.

Scott (00:40:54):

And, you know, like I was trying to tell everybody and some of them listen that.

Scott (00:41:00):

You'd have America first or Israel instead, but you can't have it both ways.

Scott (00:41:05):

And this is clearly breaking the coalition on the Trumpian right.

Scott (00:41:09):

And after all,

Scott (00:41:12):

You know,

Scott (00:41:13):

in 2000,

Scott (00:41:14):

when W.

Scott (00:41:15):

Bush was running against Al Gore,

Scott (00:41:17):

in one of the debates,

Scott (00:41:18):

he mumbled like something,

Scott (00:41:20):

something, we should have a humble foreign policy,

Scott (00:41:22):

something,

Scott (00:41:23):

something, so our empire will actually be more effective,

Scott (00:41:25):

but we should be nice and whatever.

Scott (00:41:27):

And people were like,

Scott (00:41:28):

oh, wow,

Scott (00:41:29):

he seems to be much more peace oriented than Al Gore,

Scott (00:41:32):

you know what I mean?

Scott (00:41:34):

But Donald Trump gets up there and beats his chest like King Kong and goes,

Scott (00:41:38):

I'm the greatest peacemaker in the history of the world.

Scott (00:41:42):

I wage war against wars so that they'll never happen anymore.

Scott (00:41:46):

And then so to flip flop from that, to turn around and launch an aggressive war.

Scott (00:41:53):

When his own government and everybody knows is all at Israel's behest, he said it himself.

Scott (00:41:57):

He did it in the name of protecting Israel.

Scott (00:42:00):

Maybe he was so depressed about not getting the Nobel Prize.

Scott (00:42:04):

Maybe that was it.

Scott (00:42:05):

Or maybe he would have dropped a nuke if they'd given it to him at this point.

Asbed (00:42:09):

Who knows?

Scott (00:42:12):

But yeah, he's got hell to pay because a lot of people did really believe in that.

Scott (00:42:16):

And there were reasons why they should have known better, but still.

Scott (00:42:21):

And look, Joe Kent, they are trying desperately to smear him and attack him.

Scott (00:42:27):

They're attacking his wife.

Scott (00:42:29):

They're saying, oh, he believes in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

Scott (00:42:35):

It's just gone into character assassination mode.

Scott (00:42:37):

That's right.

Scott (00:42:38):

And...

Scott (00:42:39):

Virtually all that is going to fall on deaf ears.

Scott (00:42:41):

In other words,

Scott (00:42:42):

like the people who are most receptive to those narratives already believe that

Scott (00:42:45):

about everything that they hear that they don't like,

Scott (00:42:47):

but nobody else is going to be impressed like that.

Scott (00:42:50):

And look,

Scott (00:42:52):

I'm not speaking for them,

Scott (00:42:53):

but I just sincerely doubt that military guys across this country are really going

Scott (00:42:59):

to buy that like,

Scott (00:43:00):

Yeah,

Scott (00:43:01):

I used to respect this Joe Kent guy,

Scott (00:43:03):

but now that I found out he hates Jews,

Scott (00:43:06):

like, no,

Scott (00:43:07):

that's so stupid.

Scott (00:43:09):

He does not.

Scott (00:43:10):

And he didn't say anything like that at all.

Scott (00:43:13):

And of course, they have to completely twist his words and just make up sentiments.

Scott (00:43:18):

I saw yesterday where some of the leaders of the war party on Twitter,

Scott (00:43:22):

and maybe it was Mark Levin,

Scott (00:43:23):

are calling him a neo-Nazi guy.

Scott (00:43:25):

Yeah.

Scott (00:43:26):

You know, in a way that is its own form of Holocaust denial.

Scott (00:43:30):

Right. Where you have to trivialize the Holocaust so bad to make this guy fit into it.

Scott (00:43:36):

When in fact,

Scott (00:43:37):

he's much more like one of the American heroes who helped end the Holocaust in

Scott (00:43:41):

Europe in the Second World War than one of the guys who committed the thing.

Scott (00:43:45):

Are you kidding me?

Scott (00:43:46):

And so I think.

Scott (00:43:48):

it should piss people off.

Scott (00:43:49):

I don't like being lied to.

Scott (00:43:51):

And here they're telling the American people that this special operations forces

Scott (00:43:55):

veteran of the terror wars,

Scott (00:43:57):

who clearly is not emotional and not angry and not,

Scott (00:44:02):

you know, causing a fight was not about to be fired.

Scott (00:44:05):

Like in their anonymously spread rumors is just doing the right thing, standing on conviction.

Scott (00:44:10):

And there's nothing that he says that makes him look bad.

Scott (00:44:15):

only them paraphrasing him can serve their purpose of making,

Scott (00:44:20):

you know,

Scott (00:44:21):

somehow assassinating his character.

Scott (00:44:23):

So they have a problem to reckon with there.

Scott (00:44:27):

He speaks for a lot of people inside and outside the military on the right who

Scott (00:44:32):

just,

Scott (00:44:33):

we know better than this.

Scott (00:44:34):

And after all,

Scott (00:44:35):

you know, the neoconservatives who took W.

Scott (00:44:38):

Bush to war and represent the vanguard of the Republican War Party

Scott (00:44:42):

They're a bunch of ex-communists and ex-democrats who became conservatives because

Scott (00:44:48):

that's where the war was.

Scott (00:44:50):

So they went to be tough guy Reaganites in the face of Jane Fonda and Jimmy

Scott (00:44:56):

Carter-esque democratism.

Scott (00:44:58):

But otherwise, they're a bunch of pinkos, right?

Scott (00:45:02):

They always have been.

Scott (00:45:03):

And so...

Scott (00:45:05):

If you actually believe in conserving,

Scott (00:45:07):

for example,

Scott (00:45:08):

I don't know,

Scott (00:45:09):

the budget or the Bill of Rights or anything like the stability of our republic

Scott (00:45:16):

over the long term,

Scott (00:45:17):

then the empire is your enemy.

Scott (00:45:21):

This is all ideological agendas of one kooks and two agents of foreign powers who

Scott (00:45:27):

are using us and abusing us to achieve their ends.

Scott (00:45:30):

There's nothing conservative about that.

Scott (00:45:32):

There's no reason in the world why the population in any town that you can name in

Scott (00:45:37):

Iowa or Kansas cares whether the clergy in Najaf are telling Hezbollah to stop

Scott (00:45:43):

being friends with Iran or not.

Scott (00:45:45):

We don't care about that.

Scott (00:45:47):

David Wormser and Richard Pearl, they're Israeli agents.

Scott (00:45:51):

using and abusing the United States of America to achieve Israel's ends.

Scott (00:45:55):

And of course, failing completely.

Scott (00:45:57):

Nothing but,

Scott (00:45:58):

you know, Wile E. Coyote type stuff,

Scott (00:45:59):

blowing up bombs in their own stupid bases and all of ours,

Hovik (00:46:03):

but still.

Hovik (00:46:04):

Scott, you talk to

Hovik (00:46:06):

Many people, many smart people.

Hovik (00:46:08):

And I'm hoping that you have encountered some hidden insights that we haven't yet been able to.

Hovik (00:46:15):

But given where this is going, how do we get off this merry-go-round?

Hovik (00:46:22):

Tell us what you think might happen.

Hovik (00:46:26):

And obviously,

Hovik (00:46:27):

I think there are fears that if this goes longer than a few months,

Hovik (00:46:31):

then worldwide economy takes a hit,

Hovik (00:46:35):

a big hit.

Hovik (00:46:37):

Do you think that's a fixed boundary,

Hovik (00:46:42):

that no matter what,

Hovik (00:46:43):

they will have to finish this before then?

Hovik (00:46:45):

Or do you think actually,

Hovik (00:46:47):

like World War I,

Hovik (00:46:48):

God forbid,

Hovik (00:46:50):

there's this book about World War I called The Sleepwalkers,

Hovik (00:46:53):

where it describes how easy it was to start that war,

Hovik (00:46:58):

but how difficult it was to stop it,

Hovik (00:47:01):

despite every single party

Hovik (00:47:04):

wanting very much to stop the war.

Hovik (00:47:07):

Do you think we can find ourselves in that scenario as well?

Scott (00:47:12):

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a real threat right now,

Scott (00:47:14):

right, is if Trump says,

Scott (00:47:15):

OK, I won and declares victory that the Iranians are just going to keep firing missile

Scott (00:47:19):

after missile after missile at Israel and potentially even still at American bases

Scott (00:47:23):

in the region in order to prove the point that,

Scott (00:47:26):

like, actually,

Scott (00:47:27):

no, we're not done with our side of this thing yet.

Scott (00:47:29):

And we're going to show you that it's way too expensive to take us on in the way that you did.

Scott (00:47:35):

And, you know,

Scott (00:47:38):

I've heard a lot of analysts say that, you know what I mean?

Scott (00:47:40):

I don't know that that actually is Iran's strategic doctrine,

Scott (00:47:43):

but it does seem like,

Scott (00:47:45):

for example,

Scott (00:47:46):

the Ayatollah's old policy of just barely hit them back,

Scott (00:47:49):

just enough to show we're not pacifists,

Scott (00:47:51):

but deliberately miss,

Scott (00:47:53):

announce your missiles beforehand,

Scott (00:47:54):

you know, like after Soleimani and even last June,

Scott (00:47:57):

their sort of symbolic return fire against the United States.

Asbed (00:47:59):

Face-saving responses.

Scott (00:48:01):

Yes.

Scott (00:48:02):

That's right. Well, they killed him.

Scott (00:48:03):

And then they announced that we're going to kill all the rest of you,

Scott (00:48:06):

too,

Scott (00:48:07):

which means essentially use it or lose it.

Scott (00:48:09):

Right.

Scott (00:48:10):

The same kind of nuclear doctrine that the United States has.

Scott (00:48:13):

We're totally being our government is going to be destroyed.

Scott (00:48:15):

They're going to launch every last nuke they got before they go out.

Scott (00:48:18):

Well, these guys don't have nukes, but same difference that.

Scott (00:48:22):

They're saying,

Scott (00:48:23):

you know, and this is essentially the position of all states,

Scott (00:48:26):

right,

Scott (00:48:27):

is where would the country be without us to protect you?

Scott (00:48:30):

And if that means taking their whole dang country down with them, they will.

Scott (00:48:33):

Right. And there's no reason to believe Iran is exempt from those same kind of logic.

Scott (00:48:37):

Like they're going to say,

Scott (00:48:38):

oh, we the IRGC is going to say,

Scott (00:48:40):

oh, we feel bad for getting the Iranian people in so much trouble with the superpower.

Scott (00:48:43):

Let us just go home and let them create a new government for our country or whatever.

Scott (00:48:48):

Like that's just not going to happen.

Scott (00:48:49):

Right. They're going to fight.

Scott (00:48:53):

So it does make sense then that if the conservative dead old man's policy of

Scott (00:48:59):

holding your fire and turning the other cheek is canceled,

Scott (00:49:03):

then the opposite of that is obviously not blow up the United States of America,

Scott (00:49:09):

sink our Navy and invade South Carolina.

Scott (00:49:12):

Right. But although some of us would like to see a regime change in the Senate there.

Scott (00:49:16):

Yeah.

Scott (00:49:18):

But it's not that they are a threat to us,

Scott (00:49:21):

but they're a threat to American assets and allies in the region.

Scott (00:49:24):

And they can continue to,

Scott (00:49:25):

as you indicated,

Scott (00:49:26):

hold the entire world economy hostage until just every sovereign leader screaming

Scott (00:49:31):

uncle and screaming at Donald Trump that he's got to do something to,

Scott (00:49:35):

you know, back down and and and hand them something.

Scott (00:49:39):

So I think it's just like if we're talking about the Ukraine war two,

Scott (00:49:44):

three years ago,

Scott (00:49:45):

it's like, look,

Scott (00:49:46):

you and you and me all know that this is completely stupid and crazy and it's going

Scott (00:49:50):

nowhere. And the Russians are just going to keep winning and winning and winning slowly.

Scott (00:49:54):

And they're destroying both countries.

Scott (00:49:55):

And it's just a mess.

Scott (00:49:57):

And they should stop now.

Scott (00:49:58):

And then and if you ask me, well, do you think it's going to go on past the elections?

Scott (00:50:02):

You know, man, I hope not.

Scott (00:50:03):

But then the answer is yes.

Scott (00:50:05):

and then another set of elections and then another set of elections and the things

Scott (00:50:08):

that's going on.

Scott (00:50:09):

In fact, in late 23,

Scott (00:50:11):

the Biden government started telling Politico that,

Scott (00:50:16):

well, we've got to keep the Ukraine war going at least through the elections because they

Scott (00:50:20):

were embarrassed to admit defeat before the elections.

Scott (00:50:23):

So they were going to keep the war going on for another year,

Scott (00:50:26):

which, of course,

Scott (00:50:27):

same stupid war still going on.

Scott (00:50:28):

And they're going to do it for the political reason that they can't have failed

Scott (00:50:33):

before the election.

Scott (00:50:34):

And they haven't failed until they admit they've failed.

Scott (00:50:37):

So they keep doing the same stupid thing here.

Scott (00:50:40):

So, you know, the fact, gentlemen, that they should not is no indicator that they won't.

Scott (00:50:48):

I mean, I really don't know what's going to happen.

Scott (00:50:49):

And I'm.

Scott (00:50:51):

and i'm afraid that donald trump could start actually getting emotional right if he

Scott (00:50:55):

starts really getting embarrassed some of his tweets are just insane and um you

Scott (00:51:00):

know how frustrated he can get is essentially probably you know pretty unlimited do

Asbed (00:51:08):

you think he really really understands the situation like on a personal level or

Asbed (00:51:13):

does he just react to the people around him i mean if people were actually

Scott (00:51:19):

Go ahead. I was going to say he does seem to repeat a lot of propaganda, like the 30,000 killed and stuff.

Asbed (00:51:24):

Yeah, exactly.

Scott (00:51:24):

That's what I was going to talk about.

Scott (00:51:26):

Yes, I think the people around him are basically feeding him a good, steady diet of Fox News.

Scott (00:51:30):

And that's his narrative.

Scott (00:51:31):

That's basically what he thinks he understands about it.

Scott (00:51:33):

And as I've always said about Donald Trump,

Scott (00:51:35):

that the way to understand Donald Trump is he's a Rush Limbaugh fan in a golf cart.

Scott (00:51:41):

Right.

Scott (00:51:42):

He couldn't host the Rush Limbaugh show,

Scott (00:51:43):

which was actually like the most superficial and facile type Republican Party

Scott (00:51:48):

cheerleading garbage anyway.

Scott (00:51:51):

But he's the kind of guy who's driving around in a golf cart going,

Scott (00:51:53):

yeah,

Scott (00:51:54):

that's what I think,

Scott (00:51:55):

too. Right. But he doesn't know anything about this stuff.

Scott (00:51:58):

It's the same as, you know, they sent Wyckoff and Kushner to go and negotiate the nuclear deal.

Scott (00:52:02):

And they came back and started explaining the details of what was going on there.

Scott (00:52:05):

And it was clear they didn't know what they were talking about.

Scott (00:52:07):

Wyckoff thought that the

Scott (00:52:09):

Tehran research facility,

Scott (00:52:11):

the American-built medical research facility there,

Scott (00:52:15):

had a uranium enrichment plant there that they were refusing somehow to turn off

Scott (00:52:19):

and this and that.

Scott (00:52:20):

And it's like, dude, you don't even know what you're talking about.

Scott (00:52:22):

And you're the one saying we can't have a deal because they're being intransigent.

Scott (00:52:26):

But you don't know the difference from a uranium atom and atom.

Hovik (00:52:30):

scott i i do appreciate you coming on our show again and uh we hope to have you

Hovik (00:52:36):

back again but yeah you're right that this is a very uh big mess that we're in and

Hovik (00:52:40):

i'm hoping to um in any way like you try to figure out like how to how to get out

Hovik (00:52:47):

out of this uh the sooner the better but um yeah thank you thank you very much for

Hovik (00:52:52):

coming on our podcast

Asbed (00:52:53):

Yeah.

Asbed (00:52:54):

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us, Scott.

Asbed (00:52:57):

Absolutely. Thank you both.

Scott (00:52:58):

Appreciate it.

Asbed (00:52:59):

Take care.

Asbed (00:53:00):

Okay, that's our show today.

Asbed (00:53:02):

It was recorded on March 19, 2026.

Asbed (00:53:05):

We've been talking with Mr.

Asbed (00:53:07):

Scott Horton, who's an American radio host,

Asbed (00:53:10):

author, and prominent voice in the libertarian anti-war movement.

Asbed (00:53:14):

He's the executive director of the Libertarian Institute and Antiwar.com,

Asbed (00:53:19):

as well as being the host of the Scott Horton Show.

Asbed (00:53:22):

For more information on the participants in this episode and other related links

Asbed (00:53:27):

and everything,

Asbed (00:53:28):

just go to podcasts.groong.org/episode-number.

Hovik (00:53:33):

And make sure, please, that you are subscribed to our channel.

Hovik (00:53:36):

So if you're watching this on YouTube,

Hovik (00:53:39):

click on the subscribe button and then like,

Hovik (00:53:42):

comment and share so that you can give us a little boost in terms of our reach.

Hovik (00:53:47):

It will be much appreciated.

Hovik (00:53:49):

I'm Hovik Manucharyan.

Asbed (00:53:51):

And I'm Asbed Bedrossian, still in Los Angeles.

Asbed (00:53:53):

We'll talk to you soon.

Hovik (00:53:55):

Take care.

Head Shot

Asbed Bedrossian

Co-host
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Hovik Manucharyan

Co-host
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Scott Horton

Guest

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