Episode 5152: Tensions Rise In Iran And Cutting Of Oil To The CCP; Live From Athens
Episode 5152: Tensions Rise in Iran and Cutting Oil to China—Professor Mersheimer warns of Hormuz retaliation, while Matt Boyle reveals U.S. carrier groups and Aegis cruisers deployed for potential sustained bombing, targeting Iran’s leadership, Republican Guard, and ballistic missiles. Dr. Thayer highlights $80–$90 oil price risks if Strait of Hormuz or Qatar’s gas fields are hit, diverting Indo-Pacific resources. Kurt Mills questions Israeli independence without U.S. support, warns of Trump’s domestic backlash if war drags on like Iraq, and critiques the Pottery Barn rule amid skepticism over regime-change plans. Economic instability and populist pushback could undermine Trump’s reelection strategy, despite his leverage in Greece-China energy deals and April trip to Beijing. [Automatically generated summary]
On one hand, I say this war can't happen because we can't achieve our goals by striking Iran.
And furthermore, you have to take into account what Iran can do in retaliation.
You were just talking about the Straits of Hormuz and what the consequences would be if that one heated up.
And of course, the Iranians are going to launch ballistic missiles at Israel as well.
So it's hard to see why it makes sense to start this war from a purely strategic point of view.
But then it looks like Trump has boxed himself in.
And furthermore, the Israelis appear to be putting enormous pressure on him to go to war against Iran.
And, you know, can he disobey his masters?
I don't think so.
So that pushes me in the other direction.
So I feel one day war is inevitable because of pressure from the Israelis.
And the next day, I think it's not going to happen because I can't tell a story as to how a war leads to some sort of happy ending for all the parties.
Obviously, the guy's been dead right on Ukraine the entire time.
Matt Boyle now joins us from Greece, another Tinderbox of this part of the broader region.
Matt, overnight, Axios came out with a, and we had Captain Finel on here yesterday go through a detailed presentation, kind of an NSC type briefing of all the assets pouring into the region.
Axios this morning reports that this is much farther advanced strategically in the planning in the White House than people understand.
You're in the region right now.
The event you had with Kimberly Guilford was great yesterday.
She's our great ambassador.
I don't know what's more beautiful, Matt, is that your smiling visage of Matt Boyle, the national political editor of Breitbart, or the Acropolis at sundown in the background, sir?
Yeah, well, I mean, the Greeks are totally hooking it up here for me.
We've got the Acropolis back behind me, which is pretty impressive to see.
It's been quite a, this is my second trip here.
Really exciting.
To your point about what may or may not be looming with regard to Iran and the president's eventual decision making there.
Everyone here is talking about that, right?
Like, so I've been having a series of discussions with folks in the media in Athens, as well as political defense business leaders, both inside and outside government, since I've arrived a little over a day ago.
And everybody expects something to happen from President Trump.
Exactly what, nobody really seems to know yet.
And I don't think anybody knows except President Trump.
Ultimately, the president will make a decision.
I think that there are several things that the president is keeping in mind as he makes any kind of a decision with regard to Iran.
And the first and most important thing, if you remember, Steve, last time we talked, is the polling data that shows that support for taking out the regime in Iran significantly drops when you start talking about even one American casualty.
So I think the president, you know, if you look at the two major military successes so far, and I'm talking about major ones, there have been a lot of minor ones as well, like taking out the terrorists and stuff.
But I'm talking about the major ones.
The strike in Iran, taking out the nuclear program last year, and at the beginning of this year, the capture of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.
What is the constant in both of those cases?
Very short operation, no American lives at risk, clearly defined policy, outcome, and goal that was in the American interest and achieved quickly and without paying for America.
So I think that those are the things that the president is considering as he's working in his operations.
The Axios piece was very detailed, and this came from administration people, and they talked specifically about the difficulty of the target sets, different than the 12-day war, different, because this is just not going after nukes and not ballistic missiles.
They're talking about a several-week bombing campaign that's pretty detailed and pretty well planned.
At the same time, President Trump's in a negotiation and he wants to see results.
And he's a master negotiator.
He's brought in all the possible leverage he could have with this military because they're flooding.
You know, you're going to have two carrier battle groups there.
Captain Finnell talked about the possibility of maybe a third carrier battle group, the Bush, that would be available.
So when Mershheimer says that President Trump's boxed in, do you buy that?
Or do you think this is a master negotiation strategy to try to get what he wants to achieve and maybe force him to cut off the oil to the Chinese Communist Party to bring down the regime economically?
Well, I mean, first off, I don't think President Trump has ever boxed in when it comes to negotiations.
And he's more powerful than he's ever been in his entire political career here in his second term, especially as he enters his second year ahead of the State Union address a week from today, right?
Like, so the fact is, is that I think you are going to see I don't know exactly what's going to happen, right?
So I don't want to predict the future.
But what I will say is that the president always has leverage.
And this president in particular is a master negotiator, right?
Like, I mean, we've seen it with trade deals, with peace deals, with economic deals.
You know, one of the things I talked with Ambassador Guilfoyle about here in Athens last night is in her first 100 days as U.S. Ambassador to Greece, right?
She was a little delayed in getting here because one of the beauties of democracy, and we've got the birthplace of it here right behind me.
One of the beauties of democracy is that our United States Senate has all sorts of finicky procedures.
But anyway, so she's been here a little more than 100 days now, finally got through the delays in the United States Senate, and they got her confirmed.
What has she done?
Major energy deals, right?
Like, so they just signed a huge deal with Chevron to do offshore drilling and exploration for LNG off the coast of Greece, right?
I mean, who would have thought that's possible, right?
The Europeans, you know, are basically doing drill, baby, drill.
That's the thing I keep hearing from everybody, right?
Everybody here is walking around talking about drill, baby, drill.
Who would have thought that in Greece or anywhere in Europe a few years ago?
But what you're seeing is that these folks are siding with President Trump.
But again, so what I'm saying is that everything's a negotiation with President Trump.
Everything's about creating more leverage.
Everything's about interconnected with everything else.
And so to your point about, you know, cutting off the Chinese Communist Party, it's worth noting the president has a planned trip there coming up in April, right?
Like, so in the ultimate negotiation is with China, right, about the future of that.
So in all of these other trade deals are about creating leverage for that.
And, you know, the India trade deal is all about Russia and Ukraine and cutting off India from buying Russian energy.
So all of these things are interconnected.
The president has more leverage than he's ever had his entire political career, his entire life and business.
I think that he has more power and control than ever.
All the carrier battle groups, it looks like, are heading to the North Arabian Sea.
But you can't forget the Eastern Mediterranean where Greece and Turkey are.
At the very beginning, in this discussion, the Netanyahu said, okay, look, if you guys aren't prepared to go, let us go.
We'll do it.
But we will need some defensive support.
In the first 48 hours of the 12-day war, we shipped, I think, sailed two or three Aegis-class cruisers to the Eastern Mediterranean right off of Greece to act as air defense.
Is the concern in the region that everybody's looking at the North Arabian Sea and hitting Iran, but a conflict that could go from the Persian Gulf and the because the Iranians, if they're hit, are just are going to try to hit back.
They're going to try to hit the gas fields in Qatar.
They're going to try to hit the Saudis.
Is there any concern that this could metastasize?
Because you're essentially sitting on a Tinderbox between the Greeks and the Turks who hate each other's guts, sir.
Yeah, well, first off, I will say you hear a little bit less of Turkey talk here since on this trip as compared with my last one.
And I think that's because President Trump has effectively handled Erdogan.
And, you know, he says nice things about him, but doesn't actually give him anything, right?
Like they keep wanting the same things dating back to 2019 and they haven't gotten it, right?
Like, so it is what it is with that.
But more particularly, to your point about if there is some kind of a war with Iran or some kind of a military action, I literally just left an interview where another journalist asked me the same question, and they are concerned about it here because of how close it is, right?
I want to talk about the target set because you did great analysis on the 12-day war and then the total obliteration campaign, the expeditionary force of the bombers from Nebraska and the Navy Tomahawk missiles.
Also in the strike, the magnificent strike of special forces from the 82nd Airborne in Venezuela.
This is quite different.
They're talking now, Axios, the leak, and it came from the administration, a minimum of a several week intense bombing campaign, sir.
We got about a minute.
We're going to hold you through, but your thoughts.
I would make two points here just before the break, Steve.
One, Matt's right that Trump's not boxed in.
And Trump is a master negotiator, and nothing is determinative yet.
But it does look that we are not just inching, but we're really taking some, we're galloping towards conflict with Iran.
That target set could be limited or it could be a major attack option.
It's looking like a major attack option against the leadership, against the Republican Guard, against other military targets, and the ballistic missiles, of course, which are at this point Iran's principal mechanism of retaliation.
Ballistic missiles more so than the modest aircraft assets that they have.
So it does look like we're galloping towards a major attack option against Iran at this time.
Jim Rickard is going to be with us tomorrow, one of the best geopolitical thinkers around, Rickardswarroom.com.
You go there, there's a landing page, and you get access to strategic intelligence, his newsletter that the C-suites that would be chairman of the board and CEOs read every month.
You get access to it.
It's based upon this set of analysis he calls predictive analytics.
It's one of the reasons it's been so accurate.
He's such a legendary figure.
Like I said, we're going to try a game up tomorrow morning.
Rickettswarroom.com, go there right now.
Rickettswarroom.com is a landing page.
Get access to strategic intelligence.
And he'll throw in a book he wrote that's quite brilliant about fiat currency and artificial intelligence.
What is it?
Money GPT.
You cannot miss it.
Jim Rukert, it's one of the best.
Dr. Thayer, it's the middle of the night.
We're going to get you and we're going to stream your talks and panels.
You're there with Harnwell.
We couldn't be prouder that you're taking the war room and taking it to an Australian audience.
Closing thoughts on this.
Kurt Mills is on deck.
You've kind of called this from the beginning.
You got an airbridge now.
You got massive naval assets coming in.
Leaks from the White House saying that the planning for this and for a sustained long attack is much more developed than people have thought.
They're signaling that this is going to be a major attack that's useful for diplomacy, as I said, and that would certainly be useful if conflict erupts.
My thoughts are these: that closing thoughts are these: not determinative.
President Trump can alter course if he chooses to.
Secondly, major attack options are going to be sustained, and that's going to involve a very difficult target set going after individuals and going after even ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, which the Iranians have and will likely be, along with terrorism, their principal means of retaliation against the Gulf shakedoms and U.S. allies and perhaps the U.S. itself.
Finally, these assets are precious.
So all the assets that are going into this area have a high opportunity cost.
They're not around Japan.
They're not around Taiwan.
They're not around the Philippines.
Even as Chinese Communist Party's aggression continues against our allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere.
So China's military buildup and its aggression continues, and the assets that are in the Middle East can't be used to serve conventional deterrent or other missions in the Indo-Pacific.
So very important to keep that in mind.
If there is going to be a war, it's likely going to be one which is sustained.
And of course, every war takes its own course, right?
Once you start it, as Klaus Witz warned, of course, warfare is not predictable.
It will have its own pathway.
So very important to keep these points in mind as we move towards obviously great security competition with Iran.
Well, Brad Thayer at X and Bradley Thayer at Getter and Truth.
And thank you very much, Steve, for streaming.
We have a lot of great Australians here who are working with us to solve really to cut the Gordian knot of Western politics, which is how can the people of Western countries be heard?
How is it that you can change path and really bring about popular change, whether it's in Ireland or in Texas or in Australia?
We sent two of our biggest hammers, Dr. Bradley Thayer and our own Ben Harnwell from our international division in Rome.
So thank you, sir.
Thank you for being out there.
It's great.
Look forward to streaming all the panels and speeches and get you guys back on.
Fantastic.
Kurt Mills.
The leak overnight to Axios and others.
I think part of that came from obviously the Israelis.
The writer is known to be very plugged in at the highest levels of the Israeli military intelligence services and government.
What is your thought?
Is this President Trump?
Is this another Strategic asset he's using to try to get to a negotiated end because as you said two days ago, he had you on this thing's changing every 12 hours.
So, given the fact that they're sending a message that, hey, we have been planning this for a while.
We understand that this target set is not going to be a one-night knockout like the 12-day war or Venezuela.
And we're set, if we do it, we're set to go in and we're set to essentially, let's be blunt.
This is not about the nuclear program.
At least what's been purported is not about the nuclear program.
It's not about the ballistic missile.
This is a, it looks like planning a regime change strike, sir?
So I think the first thing that you flag that has been a bit of a whiplash is an understatement.
Yesterday morning Eastern time, so as the negotiations were concluding at the end of the business day in Europe on Tuesday, the Iranian readout was quite positive on how the negotiations went.
They thought that they had a framework for continuing the talks, and the U.S. signaled that the talks would continue.
The vice president's appearance on Fox News or Fox Business at the evening Eastern time, or at least when it aired, was open to some interpretation, a bit of a Rorschach test.
Some thought that Vance's rhetoric was pretty hawkish, indicating that they had only signaled that they were going to continue the talks.
Others thought that there was more of an opening there.
Vance, the vice president, only emphasized, as the president has emphasized, that no nuclear weapon is the goal.
So if that is the goal, in my view, they will come to a deal.
If the goal is more expansive, i.e. zero enrichment, basically what it would take is 90% enrichment to get a nuclear weapon.
So if they accepted some low-level enrichment like 1.5, I think we would get a deal.
If the goal is zero enrichment or even more expansive ballistic missiles, then I think we are going to war.
And the report that Raveed, and you're right to say, the Axe US writer is extremely plugged in.
I believe he's a dual national or he's literally just an Israeli says that not only is Trump considering going to war, that it's going to be a war that is far, far, far more expansive than the operation that went on to Maduro.
And indeed, as the midnight hour approached Eastern time last night, people very plugged into it thought that there was a chance not only of a strike, a la June 2025, but a broader maneuver.
And as the day has wound out today, Wednesday, the Iranians appear prepared for that contingency.
And that battle, that ship, the Ford, appears to be a lot closer to the region that people understood even a day ago.
I want to go back over that for a second, particularly because the region, I think people in the region are not as gung-ho on this because of the ballistic missile situation.
The gas fields with Qatar, which I think some of them are jointly run with the Persians.
You got the situation with the Saudis.
And the ballistic missile, I can't see now.
If you're saying, hey, it's got to be totally about enrichment of nuclear, I just don't see how President Trump gets off this ballistic missile situation because I think it's absolutely not ICBMs, not things that would hit the United States.
A lot of people try to run around the terrifying.
These are the ballistic missiles hit Tel Aviv that did so much damage, also could hit Qatar.
And they're really concerned about the oil fields.
I've talked to people that are experts in the region.
They're saying, hey, you get into a three or four week shooting war here.
Our gas field, that massive gas field that supplies so much for Europe and others could be taken out and not be brought back up for five years.
So I don't see any situation.
Do you think that these negotiations can't include some sort of discussion of ballistic missiles?
And if you're saying the Iranians are going to say, well, heck with that, we'll just go to war.
Then I think we're on the path to a kinetic conflict, right?
But we haven't, they didn't hit Israel until we went to war there.
Anyway, it seems like from the messaging over the last 24 hours, and we had Rabbi Walecki on here yesterday.
And one thing he mentioned about the framework, he said, look, the way the Persians, as you know, they're so bureaucratic, the way they traditionally negotiate is a win for them is to have another meeting.
And so this may be going down.
And Witkoff and Kushner could be reporting back and saying, hey, they want to get to the next meeting.
There's a series of this, but are we really making any headway on the big issues?
And as you know, President Trump is a patient man, but he does have limited patience, sir.
And I mean, the pretty hawkish nuclear expert who I think is professional, I don't agree with his politics, but David Albright has signaled that the Iranians are beginning to hide nuclear weapons.
Sorry, 1990 to have nuclear material again underground further to try to shield them from bombing.
So there is evidence that the Iranians could be stalling, but I think the overriding story here is that this is basically a bureaucratic, autocratic, almost Sovietized part of the world, and that they are pretty slow in negotiating.
In fact, they still maintain that they want to do indirect negotiations, which is these are sort of bizarre situations in which Witkoff's in one room and the foreign minister Rachi's in another room.
They're not doing themselves any favor.
But I mean, going to full-scale war because the Iranians' tactical decisions diplomatically are goofy, I'm not really sure is in the American interest.
Hang on for a second because I want to talk about the political calculation here domestically, because obviously from Georgia and people, they're coming in and out.
The Georgia Election Board, we've got it up streaming.
It's right there.
It was on this right there on the screen.
You can dip in and out of that.
A fascinating effort in Georgia as we dig in there to make sure they don't give up the ballots and get to the bottom of this entire mess, the stolen 2020 election.
Yes, it's still living and breathing because the streets of Minneapolis are still living and breathing.
25 million of illegal alien invaders have not left the country.
Natasha Owens takes us out with her hit, the boss.
Well, look, I mean, if we are on a path to a conflict, which I agree with your assessment, it seems like we are.
Again, if it really is very quick over and done, I think the president will be viewed as a massive success.
But if it turns into a long drag out thing, right?
Like, I mean, they're talking about what three or four weeks right now.
Well, that's what they were saying at the beginning of Iraq, right?
Like, you know, and then a decade or so later, we were still there, right?
So, like, the question is: can the president do something quick and not protracted and not long?
And is the objective achieved very quickly and are American lives protected?
If that's the case, then, you know, he's going to go down as an incredible leader if he gets us dragged into a long, protracted war that destabilizes the region.
And I think when we got cut off there, I was just talking about when the connection dropped for me.
We were just talking about how Greek people, I've been talking to lots of different Greek people, both inside and outside government, and they are all talking about this and whether or not it may or may not destabilize the region.
Everybody understands that this has worldwide consequences that will ripple across Europe, that will go into Asia, that over to the United States.
And so, will this undercut the president's broader agenda of rewriting the global economic order in a manner that helps America first with the trade deals that he's been doing around the world?
Will it undercut the energy agenda that he's achieving?
Or will it, again, just be a quick or you know, in and out type of a thing?
I don't, I don't know the answers to those questions.
I can't see the future.
But I can tell you that those are the questions that American voters are going to be asking.
And again, at the end of the day, if Republicans want to win the midterms, they need to deliver economically on the things that President Trump campaigned on in 2024 and in other elections as well.
The MAGA agenda.
And I don't know how war helps the economy so much.
It really probably doesn't, right?
Like, and so this is, you know, not necessarily the thing that is going to address the big buzzword of the year, if you will, which is affordability, right?
Like, which we'll probably have another buzzword from the Democrats by November.
But the point is, is that it's, you know, I don't know if this does that.
My understanding is my sources in Rome, of which we're very well sourced, even with Harnwell now in Australia, that you've got some pretty big interviews.
I don't want to tip them off, but you got some pretty big interviews coming up in Italy in Italy.
Kurt, in the time we got remaining, and I want to do something.
You know, there has been this tension or discussion between the Israelis and the Americans.
And Netanyahu is basically, and they've leaked this out, to say, look, if you're not prepared and not ready, we got it.
If the political calculation is not right, we got it.
But we're going to go.
You know, we got this thing where we want it.
We're going to go, but we're going to need some defensive backup.
We're going to need those Aegis class sent back to the Eastern Med.
We're going to need DADs and Patriots.
You've got to back us up because Tel Aviv.
And people don't realize President Trump won the 12-day war.
One of the reasons he stepped in to take it down was that Tel Aviv was getting really eviscerated.
Is there an option here that the Israelis can do it on their own and we can provide enough minimum defense that we don't get dragged in, that the Persians just are going to say, screw it.
I mean, number one, I think to answer your question directly, that would potentially imperil the negotiations between the United States and Iran.
And the president seems to like these talks going on just to have the talks.
I mean, say what you will for the Iranians, but the president is negotiating a number of world conflicts right now and likes to be part of the conversation.
And supporting a military action led by Israel on Iran isn't exactly the act of an interested party.
So I think the Iranians would discontinue it.
So, and then additionally, I'm not sure there's full trust from the Israelis, actually, that if the Israelis led the attack, number one, that they could decapitate the regime.
All the reporting since the beginning of the administration is that they feel that they can't.
They couldn't bomb Ferdow, and they can't even do a lot of these special operations without U.S. air support.
That's all the reporting, and that's all the military understanding that I have on that front.
And then, secondarily, there is the precedent.
It's a small precedent comparatively of Yemen.
So, the president got into a new war in Yemen with the Houthis last spring, and then he left it.
He cut bait.
He cut a separate deal with the Houthi leadership, and he said this is basically an Israeli problem.
Now, Yemen and the Houthis are much smaller potatoes than the Iranians, but the Israelis must have to fear that contingency, and they should fear it, that if the war got really nasty and the Iranians put up much more of a fight this time, which I deeply suspect they will, that Trump and the U.S. will just get out and then the Israelis will have a war that they can't finish.
So, Kurt, we've got on the screen down below, we're all day at the Georgia Election Board hearing.
The war room audience is very focused on the steal of 2020.
We've had these reports now that they're mocking and ridiculing us in Minnesota about how we, you know, the Marxists are saying we lost and we retreated.
We're not going to do any mass deportations.
They just had a major jury nullification here in Dallas on a murder, on Trende Aragra murdering people in cold blood.
And now we see these pamphlets and courses on jury nullification, how they're training up the left.
The left is motivated.
It's doing voter registration.
It's getting out the vote.
How does this play?
Particularly, and I'm just saying what was in Axios this morning, that the administration has not said, hey, this is not true.
This detailed plan of an extended bombing campaign.
How do you think that plays domestically, given the fact they had the meeting yesterday at the Capitol Hill Club, and they talk about everything's about the economy?
We had Navarre in here.
It's all predicated on affordability, GDP growth, wage growth, job growth, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Well, it's hard to make the argument that you're focused on the economy if you're starting new foreign wars.
And then additionally, this is a foreign war, unlike some of the other of the adventures that Trump has flirted with, that actually could really spiral the economy.
I mean, it is not going to be hard for the Iranians to close the Strait of Hormuz, the very small channel of water that a lot of global oil goes through.
If the Iranians close it and all they have to do to close it is start firing a few missiles or a few bullets, literally at ships, and no one's going to put their sailors through it.
No one's going to insure those kinds of ships except for black market pirates, frankly.
That could spike the price of crude to, let's say, 80, $90 a barrel.
So, you know, 1.5x, 2x.
Americans aren't going to like that.
Americans aren't going to understand why we're doing this.
Moreover, I think that there's a sort of canard or leit motif that basically Trump's support is durable.
I agree with that.
I think if you call, I think if we do this war with Iran and we are calling people at Easter, say, you know, early April, and they ask, do you support the president?
If you call the median listener to War Room and you ask them, do you support the president?
Do you support the administration?
They're going to say yes, right?
But there's a lot of ruin and level of support.
There's such a thing as motivation.
There's such a thing as demotivation.
And if, you know, it's one thing to prefer this administration over a Democratic one.
It's one thing to prefer Donald Trump over most Republicans or any Republican.
I do, certainly.
But it's another thing to not really understand or have faith in the course of action that looks a lot like George W. Bush, that looks a lot like George W. Bush's second term.
And meanwhile, the Democrats can dust off the 2006, 2007 playbook and run the anti-war movement thing.
Yeah, it'll be very cynical because the Democrats continued a lot of these wars.
They expanded a lot of these wars, but it doesn't matter.
Cynicism wins all the time in politics and they can try to run it.
And then finally, one other domestic parallel that I think should be flagged from history.
Barack Obama came in as an anti-war president and he saw his own ranks demotivated by what they saw as an establishment sellout presidency.
And that led to the rise of Bernie Sanders.
And I think it should not be discounted.
It is very early in the political calendar, but there could be a serious new populist right backlash to an already populist right administration.
Let me ask you, you know, in the 12-day war and in Venezuela, there was a lot of buildup and people said, hey, if President Trump goes in and tries to do regime change bombing, it's going to be a disaster.
He sent an expeditionary force that was highly targeted, right?
He sent the B-2s from Nebraska and he sent the Midwest and you sent the Navy submarines with the Tomahawks, boom, over, done, obliteration.
In Venezuela, the same thing.
Take out the top guy, make a deal with the other people, figure it out.
What about, because President Trump is a guy who looks at a range of alternatives.
But if there's a strike, it's a concentrated strike and not this three or four week bombing campaign, which they may have leaked, as you said, just a negotiating power.
If it's intense, if it's concentrated, and if it gets results, where do you think that leaves us?
Your belief is that if you go in and it's more than just taking out ballistic missiles or some broader context with these negotiations, but if it's taking out the Iranian military, the Revolutionary Guard, the Mulas, the Ayatollahs, you own it.
You got everybody worked up in the streets by destroying, you know, Best and destroying their currency.
I mean, I think Colin Powell should have resigned for the Bush administration rather than advocate for a war he didn't believe in.
And I think that's on his record forever.
But Colin Powell's arguments internally cautioning against the Iraq war based on the pottery bond rule.
If you break it, you buy it, which is why the first Bush administration, George H.W. Bush, the father, say what you will, a more responsible president than his son, didn't go all the way to Baghdad because they knew it would look like this.
And so I think, you know, stipulating that we can even do this with the military plan that we're considering, that we can even decapitate the regime.
What do you replace it with?
And I mean, there's all these sort of goofy sort of proposals, principally anchored around the razor palavi person, the sort of Playboy.
And seriously, I don't mean to float this and I'm not rooting for this, but if he goes to Iran and he is murdered in like 10 days when he says, I'm here, I'm the king.
We're going to drill down on this for a minute on the other side.
The strategic President Trump is he going to roll the iron dice of war.
Find out potentially in the next couple of days.
Burt Mills on the other side.
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They've obviously got a bunch of clients from our audience and they love it.
So go check it out.
Remember, they've solved, I don't know, a billion dollars of tax issues.
So nothing that your tale of woe, they've heard before and they've solved before.
800-958-1000 or tnusa.com.
Either way, just tell them the warrant sent you.
Kurt Mills, we got a minute or two.
First of all, here's where I want to immerse the war and posse and everything.
You're great.
I want to give your site against it.
But if you had to recommend the guys who do the best job, you think of the counter argument, because I want people to get, I want everybody to walk into this thing with total eyes open, that you got all the information possible, because if something happens here, even a negotiation, this is going to have massive geopolitical impact and impact politically here domestically.
So what would be the who would you recommend to give the alternative to Kurt Mills's theory of the case?
Well, I think you should, in that case, we should flag the people that are pretty relevant on this.
And so I would say the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which is renamed from basically an Israeli word or a Hebrew word, because it is basically not declared an Israeli PR shop.
And they are driving the push for war.
This is a group of people who were chock full, frankly, of never Trumpers, people who signed the Never Trump letters, frankly, and people who did not support Trump's rise in the Republican Party in 2015, 2016, did not support him for election against Hillary Clinton.
And we're not, you know, particularly helpful in 2020, I would flag.
But they have been instrumental in writing a lot of Trump's Iran policy in term one.
And they are, I think, although they're not as represented in this administration, they are blowing the horn for war in terms of so FDD, we know those guys well, and you, you got Troy Turners.
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