What Happens In Hormuz Next Will Shock Everyone | Col. Douglas Macgregor

I think you've got to go back and understand two things. This business about the nuclear weapon is nonsense. As I said before, they don't have it. No one has ever said they did except poor Mr. Netanyahu and his friends. And I think that's just thrown out as kind of a red herring to attract attention. Oh, we got to stop them from having a nuclear weap. Everybody says that's great. Not a good idea, especially since they don't have one. Secondly, I the Israelis now and justifiably are very worried about the ballistic missile arsenal that Iranians control. We think they may have a quarter of a million missiles of various types and kinds. That's a lot of missiles. That's a lot more missiles than we can build in a year. It's more missiles that I think we've got to throw at them. So, that's a great concern. The point is though, if you're an Iranian and you're facing two nuclear armed powers and you discover that what people are really worried about is your arsenal of missiles, why would you give them up? Because they're a deterrent. And right now, it's the missiles that are keeping Iran in the fight. Take them away. Iran is naked. So that's designed to be something the Iranians can never agree to. And then the other condition that's very important to them as well, you can't cannot continue to have allies and partners of the region. In other words, you've got to distance yourself from all the other Shiites that live in the Muslim Arab world or for that matter anywhere. Well, they can't do that. I mean, that's like asking a Christian nation not to associate with any other nations that might be Christian or saying to a Buddhist country, you can't talk or work with any other Buddhists. It's not going to happen. So I think these conditions were really designed to be refused so that we could justify this air and missile campaign against Iran. So I think that's the easiest way to look at it. Now where are we and what else is involved? Well, I don't think people carefully sat down and figured out just what the risks were of entering into a campaign like this. You know, if you go through history, you'll find one of the biggest problems is that people tend to make assumptions and the assumptions are frequently evidence-free. In other words, they don't stack up against the evidence. You know, one of my favorites, of course, is Hitler who was warned by the general staff and most of his senior generals, don't invade the Soviet Union. And he said, well, look at this intelligence assessment. It says that the Soviets were beaten badly in Finland. They have fewer forces than we anticipate. They're not well trained. Morale is terrible. They'll fall apart. And the German general said, "No, we don't believe that. I don't believe that intelligence assessment. That doesn't hold up to history." Because the Germans knew the Russians, especially the Prussian Germans, and they knew the Russians were always tough fighters. And the notion that somehow another they were now weak and couldn't put up any resistance was ridiculous. I think the phrase that Hitler used was, "I'm convinced it'll fall like a house of cards." Well, that was nonsense. Everybody told him that that had any brains that knew anything told him, "Don't do it." Well, he did it anyway because his ultimate assessment was evidence-free. He said, "Well, if we don't attack them now, they will eventually attack us." Well, if that's the case, that's fine. It's better to be attacked than to be the aggressor of the war. But he didn't see it that way. And right now one of the arguments that's being made by President Trump and his administration is well if we hadn't done this they would have attacked us first. No evidence absolutely none whatsoever. In fact Moscow and Beijing had been very clear to Tyrron repeatedly saying whatever you do do not preempt. Let's not give up the advantage that you have from being the victim because you will be a victim that let them attack you first. Then you are justified in whatever you need to do to preserve your country. So, they were not going to attack us. It's just these are just bold-faced lies. But what I think you're seeing is the absence of any thorough planning. I think we've already had lots of evidence for that provided by leakage from the Pentagon where people speaking on behalf of senior officers have said, "Well, we don't have enough firepower on hand. We may not have enough missiles." You know the Chinese build 1,000 rocket motors for cruise missiles only every day. We build 100 missiles a month. Think about that. The Chinese are backing Iran and they are not going to allow Iran to go under. They're supplying them with whatever they need. Now, that's not just because China draws 50% of its oil and petroleum products from Iran. It's also because they figure, well, if the United States gets away with this, they'll turn on others. And we've got to draw a line somewhere and stop the rogue nation called America under this man Trump from attacking anywhere whenever he wants to do so. So, I think right now you've got to look at this and say this is not carefully thought out. This is not objectively assessed. And what you're hearing come out of the administration, frankly, is a lot of hot air. Oh, we've already established air superiority. This will be over in a few days. Really? Then the next day or two, they said, "Well, this might last 4 weeks or less, but they're going to lose no matter what. Pretty soon they'll be talking about 6 weeks, maybe seven." The problem that we have is that the only thing Iran has to do is survive to win. What do we have to do? We have to destroy the country and conquer it. I don't think that's going to happen. Then finally, you have the economic blowback. What's happening right now? What's the price of oil? What's happening to those economies that are desperately dependent upon oil? You know, 72% of Japan's oil comes from the Persian Gulf. 65% is what comes to South Korea. China 50. Now, China has large petroleum reserves. They've been storing up ostensibly in response to what they think is going to happen and has happened. But South Korea and Japan are in a lot of trouble. Did we talk to our allies in Seoul and Tokyo about the consequences of our actions and consult them? Not a chance. You know what about India? 50% of its petroleum comes from the Persian Gulf and they don't have any reserves right now. Their ceramics industry, everything that that depends upon petroleum is probably got five or six days of production left and then we'll have to shut down. Tire production, everything you can think of. Automobile production and export. All of these industries are now suffering. The various financial outlets are telling us that we are now sliding into a global recession. This is what our decision to go to war with Iran has produced. And what's the justification? All this nonsense that's not true about a nuclear weapon. And since when was it in our interest to destroy Iran, a nation of 93 million? What is Iran? Some sort of dangerous state that's about to invade America? Not on your life. Nothing could be further from the truth. And the Iranians have done what you would expect them to do. They've responded by destroying everything with our name on it in the region. In the first 24 hours, they destroyed 27 of our bases in the Persian Gulf region. They actually launched most of the unmanned aerial vehicles. We call them drones and a number of very important radars. We probably lost three or four billion dollars in the first 24 to 36 hours in terms of radars that we've established over there, including those in Israel. They've destroyed the Patriot and THAD batteries that they could find. I think right now we've got a real problem on our hands because the Iranians are firing missiles that travel at 4,000 mph. That's over Mach 5. That's a hypersonic missile. We can't shoot them down. I don't know how many they've used, but I know they've got an awful lot. And there's nothing right now that we've got that can stop them. And what we're trying to do is use satellite surveillance and fly around the countryside looking for these things. That's not working out very well. So, you know, on the whole, I think this is a very illthoughtout, ill-conceived, selfdefeating operation. Let me ask you, this is what's always bothered me about the Iran subject. As far as I know, the best numbers I've been able to get, Iran has a GDP of somewhere around 385 billion, which is a little over a third of just our military budget. Okay? Their defense budget is 23 billion. Ours is a trillion or a thousand billion to 23 billion. How do they manage to be a, you know, to the extent that they're a threat to us while we're attacking them in the region, how do they manage to put up any kind of a resistance against, you know, a force that outspends them by so many orders of magnitude? Well, like Richard Nixon, I'm glad you asked that question. Okay. The Iranians are demonstrating pretty conclusively that to defend their country and their interests, they don't really need a navy. They don't even need an air force. What they have is an army on the ground consisting of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the standing Iranian army and certain other supporting militias that are protecting this vast arsenal of maybe a quarter of a million missiles. They have built underground facilities over the last 20 years and these underground facilities stretch for miles. They have 31 identified command and controlled nodes where the nodes themselves are responsible for some unknown number of missile facilities that can fire missiles for days, for weeks that are based underground. They can fire missiles from the desert. When you look at where the missile comes out of the desert, you try to figure out from where it was launched, you can't. It blends in so perfectly with the desert terrain or the mountain terrain, mountainous terrain. So, they put all of their money into these missiles and we're discovering that America's supposed deterrent capability is completely irrelevant. They're flying right through early warning networks associated with air and missile defense and they're doing enormous damage at very low cost. I mean, how much does an F-15 cost? How many do several how much does a B2 bomber cost versus how many missiles and how many unmanned aerial vehicles or drones can you build that you can't stop at the other end? I mean, the tradeoff is not good. You know, this is the problem with a Patriot missile and the THAAD missiles, these J GMT's and so forth. All these anti-missile missiles are very expensive. They cost millions of dollars to produce. Then you throw in X number of drones and each one is what a few thousand up to perhaps half a million. And these things prove almost impossible to stop. And if even if you stop some of them, the majority or those that are the most lethal get through in any case. Remember, they launched in the first 24 hours one drone that flew 1,100 mi to strike a British air base on Cyprus. And they were able to put that British air strip out of business. If you put the air strip out of business, you can't fly in and out. What good is the base? They've done that all over the Persian Gulf. And it's very frustrating because it works. So, do the Iranians really need a navy? Do they really need an air force or do they just need lots of missiles and drones? I think they have built something that was very coste effective and it's doing enormous damage to us. You know, on the damage thing, of course, you know, for non-military people, it's all kind of vague when you name some of the the bases and what they've hit there. They the United States has lost six soldiers. And although, you know, that's tragic. I don't want to make diminish that. When you see the US doing all this damage and only having lost six people so far, it almost seems like this overwhelming victory. But what like what are we not seeing? What are civilians not seeing in some I guess the capability of the US to make war in that region that has been lost that might not come out in the casualty numbers? >> Yeah. No, that's a good question. First of all, I think we sustained far more casualties than we are admitting. And what you need to understand is that in every major war, we've lied. What we've done is we've slow rolled telling people the true picture. During World War I, we fought for 110 days. And during 110 days, we had 318,000 casualties, of which 110,000 men were killed. But we didn't hasten to release that information. And we would wait and wait and wait because we wanted to soften the blow on the public because most Americans had not wanted to go to war with Germany and AustriaHungary anyway. And so when we started losing heavily in terms of casualties on the battlefield, we said, "Well, let's not tell everybody everything right away." During World War II, we did similar things, particularly in Europe. During the Battle of the Bulge, in the first 24 hours, we had 25,000 American soldiers surrender to the Germans. We didn't tell everybody that at the time. Why would you? I mean, it was a catastrophe. And during the Battle of the Bulge, just within the small area of the Bulge where we fought in Belgium, we had 110,000 casualties. The Germans only had 68,000. Now when you broaden that, you end up with 200,000 casualties stretching across France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany where we were fighting, and the Germans add another perhaps 25,000 casualties. Well, what's the point? The Germans took remarkably few casualties against us despite the fact that we had overwhelming air superiority and they had no air support whatsoever. So what did we do? We didn't tell the truth. We lied. We said that we inflicted 200,000 casualties on the Germans and said that we had less than 70,000 casualties ourselves. What I'm trying to get across to you is you're not going to get the truth. Not right now. You may get it down the line. And everyone is very reluctant to release it. Now that may change if they manage to hit something at sea. But as I said to a lot of people before this began, regardless of how good your missiles are, if it's a long traveling range, in other words, if you got to launch a missile 800 or 1,000 miles to reach a ship, even if it's hypersonic, it is moving at 4,000 m milesPH, that ship is going to maneuver and move from the time that you launch the missile until it actually impacts. So your chances of hitting even a large target like the aircraft carrier if it's far enough away are actually small. And I think that for that reason they've tended to look more carefully at what they can destroy that doesn't move or is on the ground. Now if you're dumb enough to close the range with the missiles. President Trump announced that he was going to send American warships to escort tankers through the straits of Hormuz. Well, if we do that, we'll lose them all because those ships are sitting ducks when they come through the straits of Hormuz. That's easy. Doesn't take any trouble at all. And that's something the Iranians can handle very effectively. That right now there are 3,200 plus ships that can't get into or out of the Persian Gulf. I mean, this is catastrophic from an economic standpoint and we can't do anything about it. Then President Trump announced that he would cover that is the United States, we the American people would cover the insurance costs for ships that wanted to go through the Straits of Hormuz. Well, I don't think that's going to happen. And I don't think the United States Navy, the admirals I know, would politely tell the president of the United States that he should consider, you know, taking a vacation, but absolutely don't give us dumb orders that we're going to put us in harm's way and absolutely make it a certainty that we lose capital ships. The Navy has pulled back. The Navy's a thousand miles away from Iran. Down in the Indian Ocean or even up in the Mediterranean, they've pulled hundreds of miles back. And if we have to reload right now, we can't use any of the facilities that we used to because they've been destroyed. We've got to fall back on Indian ports or Diego Garcia or into Europe, go back to Greece or even further. So this is a logistical nightmare for us. That logistical problem is not a big one for the Iranians because they are already there. They have shorter supply lines. They have more things in storage. They have redundancy in terms of missiles and launchers and equipment. I'm not saying that this is a walk in the park for the Iranians. It absolutely isn't because they have trouble with our air power. There's no doubt about it. Our air power is superb. But they've still we've still lost some aircraft and we don't always tell the truth about that. We don't like to reveal what works or what doesn't work against our aircraft. So I imagine that's something else we'll find out about more later. But my point is that right now the only thing Iran has to do, Tom, is survive. That's it. If they can last out 6 weeks, 8 weeks, 10 weeks, they win. We are the ones that have put ourselves in a position of having to demonstrate unambiguously to the world, we really are the greatest power. and we going we're going to have to reduce Iran to dust and destroy it and conquer it. Now, somebody's brought up the ground troops. I'm sure you've seen that. Heg says that we hadn't ruled out ground troops. Well, we don't have very many ground troops. Today's army is a shadow of the army that I was in. It's a fraction in size and capability of what it was 30 years ago. What are we going to send? Where would you put them? How did they get there? Well, for the most part, they're going to have to fly in or sail in. And if you sail in or fly into places in close proximity to Iran, you're going to be destroyed because they have precisiong guided missiles and unmanned systems that will find you and kill you. We didn't have to face that in 1990 or 91. It's now a reality. So, I wouldn't expect anything other than special operations forces to go into that country. And even special operations forces who go in are going to be in a very high-risisk position. And normally we're pretty careful about using special operations because it's a very capable force, but on the other hand, it's very fragile. They they have to live on what they carry with them and someone has to come and find them and get them out and they have to be protected from above. All these things are difficult. So I don't see that happening. cutting through the pretense that this is in the US interests at all and just getting to Israel. What would success for Israel look like if Yeah. At the end of all this when it's time to stop fighting? What are they hoping for here? >> Well, I think they'd be very happy if we destroyed Iran for them. And now quite recently, former prime minister. >> But would that benefit them if Iran's destroyed? I can't imagine like a John F. Kennedy or even a Mitt Romney character is going to lead it after that. It's probably going to be a lot more radical, a lot more radical Islamist, wouldn't it be? If >> Well, if you if you reduce Iran to ruins and you reduce the population to total poverty, I think that would satisfy the Israelis. I think that would be very attractive to them. And Naftali Bennett spoke recently and Mr. Netanyahu followed up a few days later and said that Iran is a problem, but we have a potential enemy that's even more dangerous called Turkey or Turkey. So, I suppose once we've successfully destroyed Iran, they'll probably want us to destroy the Turks. I don't think it's going to happen. And I don't think we're going to destroy Iran because I don't think we can. The other thing is that presupposes that Iran stops firing missiles at Israel. Well, that didn't happen during the 12-day war. I don't see any evidence that it's going to happen now. So, the real question is, what does Israel do when the missiles just don't stop, they continue. And how much damage can Israel sustain? We don't know how many people are left in Israel, but it's probably not 6 million. It's probably closer to five. a lot of people have left and will they come back? Do people want to live in that country in the aftermath of this war? Whatever happens, those are questions that have yet to be answered. There's something else that worries me because it it smacks of desperation. I think people are bluffing when they talk about the use of US ground forces, although I see evidence that they're trying to pull troops out of Europe right now to potentially use in the region. how and what I don't know. Anything is possible with this administration though and I don't see any evidence for any senior officers telling them no. So I think we can't rule it out. But in the meantime, we've got the CIA working closely with Mossad and I assume MI6 from London to build up a Kurdish force in northern Iraq and in eastern and northern Syria that could invade northwest Iran. another proxy force. Now, I don't think it'll work very well because the Turks are not going to allow that to happen because the notion of a Kurdish state emerging in the aftermath of an Iranian defeat is something that they regard as an existential threat to them. And the Iranians and the Turks have already cooperated on the intelligence level to make sure that sort of thing doesn't happen. But the fact that we're now openly discussing it suggests to me that maybe this air campaign is not going as well as everybody says it is. Yeah. I just can't believe the Kurds would again trust Washington. It seems like like that's the one constant throughout all of these Middle East wars is somehow or other they promise make a whole bunch of promises to the Kurds and then break them. Is there a way out of this that you could foresee where Washington says, you know what, there there's nothing more we can do here. Is there a way for them to get out of it that's politically acceptable to them? That's a good question, Tom, and I don't have an easy answer. I my concern is this does drag on. The global financial and economic situation grows much worse. Nations are demanding an end to this. So that it's not just a question of are we going to give up on the complete and utter destruction of Iran as much as it is we can't keep up this business much longer because our problems here at home financially and economically are growing. The world is suffering badly from our actions. So we have to find a different way. So somebody may make something up to help justify it. There's something else though that I'm concerned about and that is that I think people may finally decide that Mr. Trump shouldn't be president and there is the 25th amendment and depending upon the situation around the world and the situation here at home the cabinet may decide he needs to go. That's how bad it could get. I don't think that they would wait for impeachment. I think they all know that what's coming in the fall is probably devastating to the Republicans. The only thing I would tell Americans is that I haven't seen a great deal of difference between Republicans and Democrats. The only thing that Trump at least made an effort to do that he promised was to secure the border. It's better than it was. It's not perfect. And he set out to impose law and order. He set out to deport the illegals and enforce federal law. But he seems to have gotten cold sheet on that score. To me, those things are much more important to the American people than anything happening overseas. And I wouldn't have bothered with any of this until I was certain that I had law and order at home and federal law was enforced and respected. But other than that, what's the difference? The other thing is, if you go back to George W. Bush. I remember him sitting across from John McCain who was running against him in the primary and they were agreeing that our intervention in the Balkans against the Serbs in Kosovo had been a mistake which I thought was interesting. I agree with them and said no we that was a mistake. We don't want to do that. What happened then afterwards? You know, we had the intervention not just in Afghanistan, but we waged war in Iraq and the rest is history. Obama said he wasn't going to do anything like that. This was a big mistake. And what did he do? He destroyed Libya and ensured that we got chaos in North Africa. That is still an open sore. It's not healed by any stretch of the imagination. I guess my fear is that Americans should simply finally walk away from this whole thing and demand someone who is actually going to do what they say. That hasn't happened yet. Americans seem to think that, you know, well, he promises no more forever wars. He promises no more interventions. I'll vote for him. He promises a better life. He promises to arrest the fall in our standard of living. He promises a better economy and so forth. promises are cheap. They're hot air. What's happened? People need to look at this. I think I think our institutions of governments of government are now legitimacy crisis anyway. Very few people believe much of anything they hear anymore. Unfortunately, too many people still listen to the mainstream news. You're never going to get the truth from that crowd. They're all bought and paid for by the same people that own Congress and the White House. Yeah. And I don't know what more the American voter can do. I guess you know ultimately the public is responsible because the choices you have in a general election are a function of the people that you nominated in your primary processes and etc etc. But it seems darn difficult to I mean there's no doubt that Trump was elected for to do something different than Bush and Obama and Clinton before him and the other Bush before him. So if if Trump just ended up falling in line with the permanent Washington establishment, I do what do you do? I mean, is there an electoral solution that's going to make any difference at all at this point? I don't think there is. And that's my point to Americans. You know, you [clears throat] have the Democrats. What really separates Democrats from Republicans? Well, more Democrats than Republicans are opposed to the enforcement of law. In other words, they just assume suspend the rule of law. They're the ones who release large numbers of criminals into the country, release them from prison, and so forth. They're they're promising to take more wealth away from the people that create it and redistribute it to the people that don't. Otherwise, the Republicans, they say they're going to do a lot of things. They kind of try, but they don't get it done. And then when you talk about presidents, every president comes along, promises to be fundamentally different from his predecessor. We discover that's a lie. We're reaching the point where something's got to give. There's no question about it. You know, I'm originally from Philadelphia, but I'm a Pennian. My first ancestor stepped off the boat in 1681, and we've been in Pennsylvania, at least until my parents, because I no longer live there ever since. All I've watched in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania is steady decay, deterioration. I was up in Rochester, New York about 15 years ago, and I was just astonished. You realize there's a reason we called New York State the Empire State. I mean, it really was. It was it was an industrial scientific industrial powerhouse. And what happened to it all? Well, we know what happened. Pennsylvania and New York are part of this sort of giant rust belt. And everybody keeps saying, "We're going to repatriate industry." Well, some industry you can repatriate. Some industry has to be new. You have to invest in new capabilities, in new production. I don't see that's really happened very much. And I think it's time for all of that to happen. It has to happen. This country has always rested on a foundation of economic prosperity. If you go back to Eisenhower, he used to say this repeatedly. Our country deserves security and prosperity. They deserve both. But you can't have both if security is number one and prosperity is number 50. And that has happened too much for too long. You can't have a nation where the people that swing all the elections and put the wrong people in office who don't give a damn about you depends on New York City or Philadelphia or Pittsburgh. Do you understand what I'm saying? This can't go on like this. Well, I it does feel like something's coming to a head. And of course, this Iran war, which has kind of been hanging over us for decades now, is underway. And perhaps that will be the push that comes to shove that says, "Okay, it's time to do something different." We'll have to see. I still hold out hope that one day Trump just declares victory and walks away from this and you know regardless of any re reality just says you know we've accomplished everything we wanted to but just seems like for all the reasons that you've stated that's not going to be so easy to do as it would be with like a Venezuela or or even some of the other countries in the Middle East. So well he treats Venezuela as this was some sort of victory. >> Yeah. Victory. What victory? You know, are we governing Venezuela? Is that his is his notion of victory? Of course not. Has anything changed down there? No. You removed the president and his wife. Well, that's wonderful. How many millions of dollars did we have to spend to buy off people to let us come into the country? I'm not saying it wasn't a brilliant military operation. I'm just telling you the truth. If you think we just flew in there and we're invisible and vulnerable and invincible, you're crazy. We paid off a lot of people, you know, but that doesn't mean the country is now behind us. It doesn't mean that we have an ally in Venezuela. And you know, this is back to the original question. You know, you're worried about drugs, all sorts of drugs, principally fentinyl, because that's killed 100,000, 200,000 of us, 300,000 of us. It's a source of tragic misfortune for our country. Most of that comes through Mexico. The human trafficking comes largely, not exclusively, but largely from Mexico. So, you attacked Venezuela. That doesn't make a lot of sense. It's back to, oh, we're going to stop Islamic terror or Islamist terror, so you're going to attack Iran. That's not your target. Now, I'm not advocating that we should attack anybody anywhere because the problems we have, you know, that's the thing. The problems we have in the United States are of our own making. We don't force people to take drugs. They want to take them. And we can't fix that overnight, but we can certainly stop access to it. But that takes stringent measures to enforce the law. So what do you do to someone who is caught as a drug dealer? You take him to a court of law. If he's found guilty, he gets the death penalty. That's how you stop it. And people, particularly on the left, will say, "Oh, no. I don't I don't want that." Well, then we should send them to live in a country where there are no laws and everybody uses drugs, you know, because that's what you're talking about. In other words, we have to deal with the problems here at home. And most of our problems stem from a failure to enforce the law. The second thing is this immigration business. We shouldn't have any immigration until we find out who's in the country. We don't even know. I I mean, the whole thing is a wreck. People out there know that. Not the people in Washington. They don't know what it's like out in Wheeling, West Virginia. Very few of them ever go there. They don't understand what's happening in Columbus, Ohio. They don't understand what's going on in southern Missouri. They don't understand what's happening in Northwest Texas. I mean, my point is the people in Washington live in their own bubble, and they spend a great deal of time ensuring that they become rich.