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June 20, 2025 - Jim Fetzer
21:25
Col. Douglas Macgregor: Israel in ‘VERY SERIOUS TROUBLE’ in War with Iran
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It is June 18, 2025, and all eyes are on the Trump administration right now, as the question seems to be not if, but when they will get directly involved with the U.S. military carrying out strikes against Iran while we know that the U.S. has already been directly involved in the war on Iran.
Up until this point with all of its support for Israel.
But didn't Trump just campaign on this promise of no new wars?
He promised to end the endless wars, a story that we have heard time and time again, and yet the American people find themselves right back here in this same position, except this time.
Trump is targeting a country that even the So, what does that mean for what is to come?
Well, we got into all of the latest with a special guest earlier.
So, let's take a listen to that conversation now.
Joining me now to discuss is retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas McGregor, a defense and foreign policy analyst and former advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Defense.
Colonel McGregor, thanks so much for taking the time to join me.
Sure, happy to be here.
Now, I want to get your take on the latest here, as this week the Pentagon has been moving military assets to the Middle East and increasing its presence in the region.
But according to President Trump, We now have complete and total control over the skies, over Iran.
And according to Senator Ted Cruz, we are carrying out military strikes on Iran.
So as you see it right now, is the U.S. at war with Iran, even just with all of the support it's providing to Israel?
Yes, just as we are a co-belligerent in Ukraine.
We have from the very beginning been a co-belligerent in the war with Iran that Israel has started.
No question about it.
Yeah, and when it comes to how involved the U.S. is going to get, I know that that's a major concern right now as we've watched some of Trump's commentary on social media in particular.
What are your concerns about where that stands and what that could mean for the American people going into this?
Well, we are committed to action against Iran.
It's not a question of if that will happen, but when that will happen.
I think there has been a slight delay.
In order to assemble forces, air and naval, because that's effectively what President Trump is pinning his hopes on, American air and naval power.
Now, understand that we have three branches of government in the United States.
One is the media, the mainstream media.
They are 100% in Israel's pocket.
Then you have Congress and the White House.
They are 100% in Israel's pocket.
And then finally, you have the military industrial sector.
Led by the retired and active four stars and their shareholders.
They are 100% in Israel's pocket.
So there is no debate about what will happen.
We're going to launch, I would imagine, airstrikes involving primarily B-2, B-1 bombers, delivering very, very devastating, precise munitions, ostensibly to destroy the underground.
Facilities that the Iranians have.
And also, I think, to pursue this illusory regime change approach.
And we'll kill more people in Tehran and other places that we think are going to be, you know, essential parts of the national leadership.
The problem with all of this is air and naval power does not win wars.
It never has.
Secondly, it's assuming that Iran is weak and already in a state of disarray.
The opposite is the case.
Israel is in very serious trouble.
They embarked on this war without understanding what they were doing.
And I think Ben Gavir said that by accident in public when he mentioned, oh, we didn't appreciate the power of the Iranian missile arsenal.
Well, that's an understatement.
They can't stop much of anything.
Iron Dove has turned out to be a sieve.
Iron Dome, that is.
And we're not going to be able to do as much damage as we think.
I think the integrated air defenses will have an impact.
Can they prevent everything from getting through?
No, that's impossible.
But I think it's going to retard the effort that we're about to undertake.
The other thing is we have over 40,000 troops on the ground in the region.
I imagine that once we attack, the Iranians will feel obligated to attack those targets.
So we could lose a lot of people.
We don't have the air defense network in place to stop much of it.
Our air defenses have always been woefully behind the rest of the armed forces in terms of their development and investment.
When I was in the Army, where you have much of your ground-based air defense, we always used to refer to them as the redheaded stepchildren.
They never had enough.
But we, on the other hand, had never really faced an enemy that had tremendous missile and air power.
And Iran definitely has that.
So I think we're at the beginning of a long war.
There will be no sudden surrender by the Iranians to Donald Trump, no matter what he's being told.
And I think he's very foolish to believe any of the people talking to him because these are the same people that urged us to become involved in Ukraine and sponsor the Ukrainian battering ram against Russia, telling us all back in February of 2020.
Oh, the Russians are incompetent.
The Russians are running out of ammunition.
The Russians don't have enough missiles.
The Russian soldiers don't want to fight.
On and on and on.
Well, that was all nonsense lies.
Most of what is being heard in the mainstream media about Iran is also one big lie.
Iran is not about to surrender.
It's not going to crumble.
There will be no uprising to remove the regime.
So, fasten your seatbelts and get ready.
This is going to go on.
And on and on until Israel is practically destroyed.
Then the question is, will the Israelis turn to a nuclear weapon?
That, of course, is the last thing in the world they should do, simply because if they do use a nuclear weapon at some point in desperation, others in the region will suddenly produce nuclear weapons that will be used against them.
And, of course, that is a Pandora's box that no one in their right mind should want to open.
But I don't think any of this is being carefully considered.
And that is a major concern, right?
Because when I'm hearing Israel's defense minister saying Tehran will burn, I'm wanting to know, okay, what does he have in store?
What is he thinking about?
And I know that that's something that you've been really highlighting when it comes to the US is that we, well, as a country, don't necessarily look at Long-term, what are our goals here?
Instead, we're just running into this war.
And exactly as you were noting, the expectation that Iran is just magically going to crumble, we're not seeing any actual evidence of that.
So what does that mean for?
When he's tweeting out unconditional surrender, he's calling for the evacuation immediately of Tehran, a city of around 10 million people.
But beyond that, I'm also wondering, okay, What does this mean for what the U.S. is willing to get into, especially when it comes to a president who campaigns so heavily on this promise of no new wars?
Well, whatever he campaigned for, remember he's entirely beholden to his real masters, who are the people that provided him with the money to seize the White House.
And we know who they are.
That is the class of billionaires like the Adelson's and others.
And the Jewish billionaires that fund the lobby and helped him to gain the White House now want to be repaid in kind.
So I don't think he has much choice.
What he's done, though, is that he's listened, as I pointed out before, to the same poisonous voices that took us into Ukraine, that created this terrible monster in Ukraine and then created the war that followed, that we have lost.
That the Ukrainians have lost.
Now, for some reason, he's allowed these people to convince him that we can walk in, bully and pulverize our way to success in Iran.
I think a part of him likes to bully.
He certainly thinks bullying tactics work, and I think it's based on his business experience.
But ultimately, I think it's a serious mistake, and it's not going to work.
And the question is going to be, all right, we've done this for X number of days.
You've committed all these aircraft, all these missiles, all these weapons.
Now what?
You know, the absence of strategy results in you arriving in a place like Stalingrad or a Quang Tri in Vietnam in 1968 or 69. And then you say, where am I?
What am I doing?
What's the point?
What are we achieving?
He's not asking those questions.
And he shouldn't be listening to the people that are talking to him to be perfectly blunt.
But again, he has to rationalize it based on the campaign contributions and what he owes those who helped him gain the White House.
It's going to fail.
This is not going to work.
And then the question is, how much further do you go?
I don't think we can afford to go much further.
And if you look right now at the price of oil, what is it, $75 a barrel?
I expect that the Iranians will prevent anyone from moving through the straits unless they authorize it.
They've essentially published an order saying if you're not authorized to go through these straits, you know, face the consequences, we'll stop you or sink you.
Are we going to sail most of the U.S. Army into the Persian Gulf?
I don't think so.
Excuse me, most of the U.S. Navy.
But I think we're going to sit offshore.
We're going to hurl bombs and missiles at people.
Historically, it doesn't make much difference.
I mean, I watched this back in 1981 and 82 in Lebanon.
We had a battleship at that point that was lobbying 16-inch rounds.
Nobody sure really cared.
It didn't make any difference.
It didn't change anything.
Ultimately, we lost all these Marines in that barracks stupidly, pointlessly, in a place where they had no business being and accomplished nothing.
Ronald Reagan, you know, wised up quickly and said, we're out and left.
Smart move.
He got out.
He didn't want to be dragged into this morass.
But we're not led by Ronald Reagan.
He may not have been brilliant, but he was rational.
I don't think we're being led by rational people.
I think it's a combination of arrogance, wishful thinking, and self-delusion.
So we're on a bad path.
Now, when will people pay attention to this?
When the gas costs $7 a gallon.
When the supply chains break down.
When you can't get something to eat.
When you can't do whatever it is that you want to do, that's when Americans will become interested.
Now, what happens across our country?
Well, we've got a lot of problems.
I saw lots of Mexican and other foreign flags being flown in Los Angeles.
I don't see any U.S. or Israeli flags being flown in Tehran.
I think Iran is far more cohesive socially than the United States right now.
So under those circumstances, I think we're on a very dangerous path.
But no one's listening.
It's back to those three branches of government.
But when things get bad, the American people are hurting, then we'll pay attention.
Yeah, all of a sudden when you start looking at gas prices and you're like, wait a second, why are we at war with Iran?
Which is always interesting when it comes to the messaging there.
I know that there have been some parallels drawn to the lead up to the war in Iraq, right?
Looking at weapons of mass destruction.
Now you have Trump in this position where he keeps using this phrase, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.
Yet he then turned around and told reporters that he does not care about the testimony from his own director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who told Congress back in March that the U.S. has no evidence that Iran is creating a nuclear weapon.
We now have CNN admitting in a recent report that according to their sources in the intelligence community, not only is Iran not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon, but it would still be years away from The
Russians never had any plans to march west and conquer Eastern Europe.
The Russians are not looking for a war with NATO.
What difference does that make?
It makes no difference at all if you're perpetrating a lie, and that's what we've been doing.
We've been saying, oh no, these Russians are evil.
They want to conquer everything, subjugate everybody.
Well, the same people are making the same argument now about Iran.
Truth does not matter.
What matters is whether or not people in the United States feel the pain.
Now, here's one other aspect of this thing that we need to take into consideration.
Our borders have been opened.
We have millions and millions of people inside this country about whom we know nothing.
And we know that corruption, criminality, terrorism, all of those things blend nicely.
What could happen inside our country?
You could wake up tomorrow morning and find out that a mall in Seattle was blown up and killed several hundred people.
You could find out that someone placed a low-yield nuclear weapon in proximity to Washington.
We have no way of knowing.
Now, people say, oh, well, they could never do that.
How many times have we heard that something like that could never happen, only to discover that it has happened?
I hope it doesn't come to those things.
But nobody is thinking through this thing very clearly.
When I wrote the piece that was published in Zero Hedge, I wrote all of those things because you have to have a conference involving the United States,
Russia, China, India, and I would argue Brazil as a great power in Latin America.
I would say they have to sit there And arbitrate these disputes and end all of this.
Well, that would mean that Israel would be compelled to behave like a normal state in the region.
And that's unacceptable to Israel.
Therefore, it's unacceptable to us.
This is a war about not just Israel's regional hegemony, which it is.
It's also about financial hegemony.
In the hands of the United States, directed from New York City and the banks of Great Britain and the City of London.
They failed, failed to rip apart Russia, failed to destroy the state, failed to create chaos, and failed to exploit the resources.
Now they've turned their attention to the Middle East.
What do they want?
They want the oil fields.
They want to control the region.
They have a terrible obstacle in their path right now.
It's called Iran.
The Iranians have said, no, we are a great civilizational power.
We are not going to surrender.
We will not turn our country over to you any more than the Russians would turn Russia over to the same financial interests in the West.
So this is another replay of the same failed strategy.
And how many regime change operations do we have to run before somebody finally figures out this doesn't work?
I don't have the answer, but I can tell you right now.
Everyone in Washington is rotten to the core when it comes to this business.
Why?
Because of money.
Everyone is greedy.
Everyone wants more cash.
The retired four stars, the active four stars, the senators, the congressmen, the president and his entourage in the White House.
Everything is about money.
And the same thing is true for the military-industrial complex.
These industries, it's true for the media.
Everyone is about money.
So truth is in short supply.
That it is.
And it is interesting, too, exactly as you were noting there.
I'm thinking, okay, we keep going through this, and at the same time, the American people, we keep voting for the guy who is telling us, hey, no new wars.
We're going to end the endless wars, right?
We're going to put an end to what has essentially been U.S. foreign policy as we know it.
And then not only do they never do it, but we have this growing multipolar world.
It's no secret that the U.S. has been wanting to target Iran for a while.
They are targeting Russia.
They would love to target China at some point.
So when it comes back home to what this means for the Trump administration and for the Americans' trust in the Trump administration, Where do you think that that stands, especially as we start getting to that point where gas prices start rising and people start looking around and going,
wait a second, I thought that I voted for the opposite of this, and yet here I am stuck in what could possibly be another situation where you have American men coming home in body bags because they were sent to fight in yet another endless war that we were told we weren't supposed to be getting into.
Americans have to come to the realization that this dichotomy I mean, Democrats and Republicans is meaningless.
We're really dealing with a uniparty.
We're dealing with an entirely corrupted, dysfunctional system.
This thing that we call democracy in the United States is a scam.
It's not real.
It's just not real.
When Louis XVI was crowned King of France, people in the streets in Paris and other cities said, long live Louis XVI.
As long as the price of bread doesn't rise.
And in 1789, there was a revolution because the French people in Paris could not afford to buy bread.
It spread like wildfire across France.
Now, pick a commodity, whatever you want in the United States.
Pick any place in the United States.
And you've got a very similar situation right now.
We don't have any authoritative media.
People go to people like you, Rachel, and to others in the alternative media environment to try and find out what's the truth.
Because if you go to the mainstream, just go through the MSNBC, CNN, Fox, what are you hearing?
It's the same narrative.
Gosh, does that tell you something?
We better wake up.
We need truth.
Where are we going to get it?
You're certainly not going to get it from the United States government.
The notion that we dominate the skies everywhere is absurd.
This is a mix of arrogance, self-delusion, wound up together that is taking us down this dark path into a fight that we are making worse by the day.
And anyone who thinks that the Russians and the Chinese And for that matter, many other powers, I don't need to go through all the Muslim powers, are all going to sit there quietly and watch us, on behalf of Israel, utterly destroy them.
In other words, Iran and anybody else in the region, they're wrong.
We're only at the beginning of this thing.
That's why I said we need a great power conference.
Let's stop this before it begins.
But nobody wants to.
The three branches of governments refuse to.
So where are the American people?
They're not awake yet.
They're too busy doing what they always do.
As soon as they can pick up a six-pack of beer, go home and watch the game, that's what they're going to do.
When they can't do that, Yeah, there is certainly a lot at stake here all around, and I really appreciate you taking the time to join me today to break down the latest, to also issue some warnings for the people who are tuned in.
Maybe they can tell their friends and families to watch as well.
Retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas McGregor, a defense and foreign policy analyst and former advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Defense, thank you so much for your time and insight.
Thank you, Rachel.
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