Larry Johnson and Mike Adams dissect the Strait of Hormuz crisis, alleging a planned U.S. assault on Karg and Keshim Islands ignores Iran's ability to block shipping and shift the petrodollar to a petroyuan system. Johnson warns that closing this chokepoint will trigger an engineered famine within eight months due to fertilizer shortages, while criticizing obsolete American technology like the USS Ford against hypersonic missiles. The discussion highlights predicted market volatility linked to "weekend Trump," intelligence failures regarding regime removal, and concludes with urgent advice to stock survival supplies like potassium iodide and freeze-dried food against potential World War III or domestic attacks. [Automatically generated summary]
What's fascinating is the Zionists have run an information operation against the West to convince us that Muslims hate Christians.
However, if you look at the Muslim theology and you ask a Muslim Imam, who is Jesus, they respect Jesus as a prophet.
They respect him as a prophet of God.
Right.
And Mary, the mother of Jesus, she is venerated as a holy woman.
You ask the religious Jews, who is Jesus?
He's a nobody.
He's a nothing.
And Mary, she's a whore.
That's what they say.
Yeah.
So, you know, and yet the Christian Zionists side with that crowd, I don't get it.
Welcome to today's interview here on BrightVideos.com.
I'm Mike Adams, and we are joined by a returning guest, although we haven't spoken with him for a while.
It's Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst, and he worked with the counterterrorism group there at the CIA.
And boy, has he been busy.
He's been doing a lot of interviews and giving a lot of analysis of world events right now.
He joins us today, and his main website is sonar21.com.
We'll bring you back to that in a little bit.
But welcome, Larry Johnson.
It's an honor, sir, to have you on the show today.
Thank you for the invite.
Happy to be here.
Yeah, thank you for being here.
And again, I don't know how you do it because I see you on everybody's show.
Are you doing like 10 interviews a day or what are you doing?
It's between, I'd say, five and seven a day.
It's been pretty busy.
This is so much better, though.
Back 20 years ago when I was a TV talking head, the problem was always they'd send a limo.
So I lived in Bethesda, Maryland.
The limo would show up, and whether you're going to CNN or Fox News or ABC, you always had to go to downtown D.C.
So that was usually a good 45-minute trip, even though I'm only like eight miles away.
But the traffic was such that you got delayed.
And then you'd go in, you'd sit in the green room, they'd put makeup on you, then you'd go sit in front of a camera and talk for five minutes, and then you'd go out, take off the makeup, and just repeat the process in reverse.
You'd spend two hours to do just one interview.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, you'll get better.
Much more traction better.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right.
So I saw a video from Netanyahu, allegedly, who said that no matter what Trump does and no matter what negotiations or agreements might happen, Israel is going to keep bombing Iran nonetheless.
Doesn't that say to all of us that Trump is not in charge at all of what's happening?
Yes, to an extent.
Now, it'll be up to Trump at that point, if Israel tries to do that, to pull the plug on Israel, cut off Israel's financial aid and military aid.
Without us, they can't continue doing that.
So, you know, it's one thing for Netanyahu to talk tough.
But there are some media reports circulating today said that JD Vance got into a shouting match with Netanyahu yesterday over the fact that those Zionist thugs, the settlers, are killing Palestinians.
Christians, Palestinian Christians are being murdered by these thugs.
Well, I mean, yeah, they murder equally.
I mean, they murder everybody who's in the way of their Greater Israel project.
Yeah.
And then now they're claiming victim status.
Have you seen all the videos now coming out of all the missile damage in Tel Aviv and all of a sudden they're complaining about civilians being hurt?
Yeah.
Yeah, when they've got a body count of over 70,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
Exactly.
What's fascinating is when you look at the Zionists have run an information operation against the West to convince us that Muslims hate Christians.
However, if you look at the Muslim theology and you ask a Muslim Imam, who is Jesus, they respect Jesus as a prophet.
Now, they don't accept the Christian view that he is the Messiah, but they respect him as a prophet of God.
Right.
And Mary, the mother of Jesus, she is venerated as a holy woman.
You ask the religious Jews, who is Jesus?
He's a nobody.
He's a nothing.
And Mary, she's a whore.
That's what they say.
So, you know, and yet the Christian Zionists side with that crowd?
I don't get it.
No, it makes no rational sense at all.
But I guess that leads to the bigger question is, is Netanyahu and the Zionist regime, let's just call it the Epstein regime, are they trying to destroy the world in order to fulfill their biblical prophecy, you know, Armageddon accelerationism or something?
Is that what's going on?
Well, yeah, there is definitely within that extreme Zionist group, those who believe that.
Now, the real definition of Zionism, because this applies to Bibi Netanyahu, who says, there is no God, but God gave us this land.
And you're going, what?
Either you believe in the scriptural foundation of it that you claim to believe in, which provides your entire justification for what you're doing.
And if you don't believe in that, then how can you profess that that's your reason for being?
It's completely illogical.
It doesn't make sense.
But it's important for all of us to recognize the fanaticism that is at play here, because under that fanaticism, it seems that they could easily justify to themselves the use of nuclear weapons, doesn't it?
Yes.
Oh, no, no, absolutely.
Or blowing up the Al-Aska Mosque.
You know, there are those within the, you know, the, I don't want to call them the ultra-Orthodox because we've got to distinguish.
There are Orthodox Jews who believe that the creation of the state of Israel is a sin, that it can't come into being until the Messiah returns.
So they don't really support this current version of Zionism.
And that's why you'll see in New York City many times Hasidic Jews, you know, the ones with the curls and the long, long coats and the beards, they'll be out protesting in favor of the Palestinians.
So, you know, we've got to avoid sort of the simplistic labeling of Jew, not Jew, you know, it's sort of a specific variant, this Zionist, whether or not they're religious or not, doesn't matter, but they use Zionism as a justification for their actions.
Yeah, a really important point, that Zionism is not equivalent to Judaism, and also opposing the tenets of Zionism is not anti-Semitic at all.
Correct.
In the least.
But you mentioned the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and it seems like that would be one of the next steps of escalation in order to provoke a very strong reaction from the Muslim world.
Do you think that Israel or certain elements within Israel may be planning a false flag destruction of that?
Oh, yes, no, absolutely.
Yeah, I think very much so.
You've seen it over the last five days, they have closed, the Israeli authorities have closed access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque for all Muslims at the end of Ramadan, and they closed the church of the Holy Sepulchre to Christians.
So to my knowledge, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is, you know, the claim is it's built on the site where Jesus was crucified and buried, that that hasn't, that's never been closed until now.
Actually, the person that holds the key is the chief Muslim imam of Jerusalem.
So the Muslims have always kept the key to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
In part because there are so many Christian sects that fight with each other over who has the right to lead there, they turn to an outsider or someone who's basically neutral.
Wow.
Okay.
Okay.
Well, yeah, a lot of people suspect that they've closed it because they need to sort of twin towers the mosque.
Yeah, it could be.
Yeah, this is Israel's in a tough situation right now.
You know, they talk a good game.
Trump is all over the map.
Yeah.
And it looks like before we came on air, he claimed that he's now gotten message from Iran that they will not build a nuclear weapon.
Well, you know, that's been their position for the last, you know, 46 years.
Right.
So, you know, duh, they've agreed to what they'd already agreed to.
So if that's true, if that report is true, then this is, I take that as a sign that Trump's trying to figure a quick exit out of this war because the U.S. is losing.
Do you think Trump is actually communicating with any official in Iran that has?
No.
Okay.
No.
So is he giving bad intel or what's happening?
Yeah, he's just lying.
You think he's just fabricating this himself?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
That seems feasible.
Look, even when we were, quote, negotiating with the Iranians, we never had direct conversations.
Witkoff would go to, Jared Kushner would go to Geneva.
They'd sit in one room.
The Omani, the guy from Oman, the chief mediator, would come in, talk to them.
Then he'd go to the other room and talk to the Iranians.
Then he'd come back and talk to Witko.
So there wasn't direct communication.
So the notion that now there's direct communication, what's been happening is the United States in desperation because Trump either ignored the intelligence or there was an intelligence failure.
I think it's the former, not the latter.
They refuse to take into account what the implications of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is.
And it is devastating for the U.S. economy and the global, most of the global economy.
Ironically, Iran's doing pretty well out of this deal.
True.
Before the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran was selling its oil at $47 per barrel.
They produced 1.1 million barrels a day.
Now, they are producing 1.5 million barrels a day, so almost a half a million more barrels per day, or 500,000 more barrels per day.
And they're selling it at $97 a barrel, double the price.
So they are making now more money.
And then on top of it, they're charging an exit fee for those vessels that want to get out of the Strait of Hormuz that will pay for their cargo in terms of Chinese yuan.
And in the course of this, the payment system that used to go through the United Arab Emirates and could be controlled via the United States and the petrodollar, now it's going through China, through the Yuan.
And Iran is actually sort of out of the sanctions woodshed now.
Yeah, so effectively, the Strait of Hormuz is open selectively to vessels that have destinations approved by Iran and that are willing to, as I understand it, pay a toll essentially.
I guess it's $2 million, which is really only a tiny fraction of the value of the cargo they're hauling, by the way.
Right, right.
And it's paid in Yuan, too.
So it's really forcing a shift from the petro dollar to, if you will, now the petroyuan.
Yeah.
So Trump, Trump's Trump's the president that is collapsing Western control over the Persian Gulf, America's presence in the Persian Gulf in its military bases, as well as the viability of the petrodollar itself.
Massive US Military Move00:07:18
It's like, but he announces that he's got 100% approval and he's winning.
This doesn't look like winning.
He supposedly got 100% approval of MAGA, whatever that is.
Right, whoever's left.
I'm ashamed to say, I voted for Trump.
And I now regret my vote, which doesn't mean I would have voted for Kamala Harris.
I would have voted for, probably would have voted for my dog.
But Trump has betrayed the American voter.
Clearly.
He promised no new wars.
And now he's got us embroiled in a war that we cannot win.
You don't win wars through air power.
So the pattern that Trump has been using with Iran is that he will announce progress that we're close, we're negotiating, they've agreed to almost all our terms, and then he will surprise, bomb them, assassinate them, attack them, usually in conjunction with Israel.
It seems to me that's exactly what's happening this week.
No, yeah, no, you're exactly right.
Because, and this is planned out in advance.
This is not something that's just developed over the last couple of days.
On March 12th, the United States started a massive movement via C-17 transports.
These are the largest, you know, they're up there with the C-5A.
It's a large transport that we're carrying.
It can carry up to 200 and I would say 204 combat-loaded soldiers or sailors or Marines.
It can carry tanks.
It can carry armored personnel carriers.
It can carry artillery pieces.
It can carry helicopters.
So there have been a total of 35 flights as of yesterday, with 11 more scheduled for this week.
And they're taking off from bases, locations that are associated with the Special Operations Forces with Delta Force, SEAL Team 6, the Knight Stalkers, Task Force 160, the helicopters, 75th Rangers out of Joint Base Lewis-McCord in Washington.
There's also a Ranger battalion down in Georgia at the Hunter Army Airfield.
So all of these forces are moving to one of them's in Israel, two of them are in Jordan.
So they've got three locations to pre-position.
At some time this week, I think they will move forward, try to move forward anyway, to Al-Udid Air Force Base.
That would be probably the prime location, but they may choose some other site.
And from there, the intent, weather permitting, will be to launch, I think, a combined assault on Karg Island and Keshem Island in the south in a bid to both take control of Iran's oil in the Persian Gulf and control of that island.
If they do that, despite all this happy talk about, oh, we're making progress with Iran, Iran is just, you know, they're going to go, I won't say nuclear, but they're going to escalate their attack to a point that our forces that are on Karg and Keshim, if that's the way we go, they'll be in jeopardy.
We don't, these forces, you know, they've only really got two ways of moving.
They're going to move through the air on a helicopter, or some could move on a fixed-wing aircraft and parachute.
But that's not the normal route.
That, you know, while Delta until Team 6 are equipped to do that, that's not the optimal insertion.
And even if they survive that insertion, then they have to be resupplied.
Yeah, resupplied, and how do they get out?
How do they get out?
And they're going to be taking, I would think, just endless drone attacks and artillery because they're within range of Iran's artillery at that point.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So this would be a terrible, terrible decision.
You know, I'm sure it's been put forward to Trump as an option, but it sure looks like he's going to do it.
Is it possible?
I mean, since you worked in the CIA, you know how information flows to the president, and sometimes it's blocked, well, often.
But is Trump getting truly bad information?
For example, I've heard Trump's people claim that U.S. forces are able to shoot down like 94% of incoming Iranian ballistic missiles and things, whereas Ted Postel says it's more like 5%.
Yeah, Ted's right.
Ted's right.
They're wrong.
They're lying.
They don't have the numbers.
Look, as of end of December 2025, the maximum number of PAC-3 missiles for the Patriot that they could have had in theory, 4,620.
That means, because you have to use two of those missiles for every inbound ballistic missile, if you've got that 4,620, that means you can shoot down potentially 2,310 missiles.
Well, Iran's already fired that, and we know that at least 1,000 of those PAC 3s were sent to Ukraine starting in 2023.
And since 2023, Russia's fired more than 12,000 missiles.
So there's just no way that the Patriot missile system is still intact.
If it's not depleted already, it soon will be.
Same applies to bad.
Israel really confirmed all of that today because it seems like they lifted the censorship and suddenly they're playing victim and they're saying, oh, look, Iran hit civilian buildings and we never attack civilians.
We only attack military targets.
And the rest of us are like, what?
What?
Until there's 175 dead schoolgirls.
Well, yeah, exactly.
Plus the exploding pagers, the assassination of Iranian scientists, the murders and slaughters in the West Bank, the bombing of even Christian churches in Gaza, on and on and on.
Yeah, I actually had not seen the news reports that the Israelis are out now lifting the veil.
So that tells you how desperate the situation is.
Yeah, it was flooding my feed this morning on X all of a sudden.
You could tell somebody flipped a switch and all of a sudden there's all these photos of the damage in Tel Aviv and it is considerable, which proves your point, Larry, that the Iron Dome interceptors simply are not working.
Right.
Yeah, no, well, The systems have been, number one, they have limited capability.
Iron Dome would be good against some of the subsonic rockets that Hezbollah was firing before, say, Hamas.
Fertilizer Exports Halted00:07:39
Right.
But they're completely useless against the ballistic missiles, particularly the hypersonic ones.
I want to remind our audience of your website, sonar21.com.
And it's Sons of what again?
Sons of the New American Revolution.
That's it.
That's where sonar comes from.
Okay.
21st century.
So I base that upon, I'm a member of the Sons of the American Revolution because I have 28 ancestors that fought in that war.
So, you know, I come genetically predisposed to fight for liberty, to fight for freedom.
And, you know, that's what my ancestors sacrificed for.
They didn't fight and die for this nonsense that we got going on right now with Donald Trump.
Isn't that the truth?
Let's talk about the implications on our republic.
This destruction of energy infrastructure with all its downstream effects of blocking exports of helium and sulfur and sulfuric acid, not just natural gas.
We're seeing New South Wales and Australia now declaring some kind of emergency and saying that they're going to have to have energy lockdowns.
The Philippines just declared a national emergency based on fuel shortages today.
They don't have enough diesel.
Thailand has halted about half its shipping fleet.
Taiwan is about to run out of gas that powers its grid.
And Japan is in dire straits financially and industrially if this continues.
I mean, the whole world's going to pay the price for Trump's arrogance, it seems.
Yeah, no, so the damage that's already inflicted is significant, it's substantial, and it's going to, it is going to last at least for the midterm, you know, a couple of years.
The shutdown of the liquid natural gas, because Qatar was a major supplier of that, that's now about 25% of the world supply gone, shut off, no longer available.
The oil coming out of the Persian Gulf, about 21% of world consumption supply.
And the ones who got the bulk of that were India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, and Australia.
Gone.
There's no way to turn it back on quickly.
And connected to that were the, let's call it the petrochemical side of the house, particularly with respect to the urea that is manufactured out of the natural gas to produce fertilizer.
35% of the world fertilizer supply comes out of Persian Gulf.
Well, we are now in the planting season in the northern hemisphere.
And I'd say close to 65% of the world landmass of arable land is north of that hemisphere.
So no fertilizer, no planting, no crops.
So this means that there's, you know, eight to 10 months from now, there's going to be a food crisis.
Engineered famine.
Engineered famine.
An engineered famine.
Exactly right.
Let me add to that, too, that I think Russia has halted or banned all exports of fertilizer.
China has halted all exports of both fertilizer and refined fuel products, including jet fuel, gasoline, diesel.
Australia, which is a massive landmass, of course, not that Americans typically know that for some reason, but it's a continent.
Australia depends on long-distance trucking and airlines, heavy transportation.
That country is going to suffer first, it seems.
Yeah, so already you're seeing an economic contraction, which is that's negative economic growth.
So I would argue, and once the statistics are collected and they'll be able to apply the specific definition, if you've got two successive quarters of negative economic growth, then that's a recession.
And if it's greater than 10%, that's a depression.
So we're well into the recession territory among a number of countries.
As I pointed out, Iran's actually doing okay out of this.
Russia is doing great.
Russia is making upwards of $5 billion a month of additional income now because of its oil, its liquid natural gas, and its fertilizer.
But they're also, as they pointed out, we're going to take care of our farmers first, make sure they have enough fertilizer before we go out and try to sell it to the rest of the world.
See, that's what really concerns me because a lot of the smaller nations, let's say Thailand or Indonesia, for example, or Central and South American nations, they depend heavily on inputs from these other larger nations.
Brazil in particular.
Now, Brazil is, they got a bit of a respite, and they've got some time to figure this out because they're now starting to enter the winter season, so they're harvesting what was planted already.
And so they're not going to be going back into an immediate planting season.
Right.
And there's some amount of food in the supply chain right now, but I just saw Dow Chemical announced a doubling of its polyethylene prices.
So, of course, we know that that also is related to this entire scenario.
But that means bottles, plastic bottles for food, beverages, vitamins, supplements, drums, the drums that are used to ship everything.
All of this polyethylene plastic is going to double in price, and that's just the beginning.
So the supply chain is going to get way more expensive with increased scarcity globally.
Well, and already in the United States, diesel is up at least two bucks a gallon.
That's right.
So the transportation cost for food, that's gone up for every item you go in to buy at, say, Home Depot or Lowe's or BJ or whatever your hardware store is.
So yeah, no, this is a particular type of inflation that can't be managed by strictly monetary policy.
Normally with what you call monetary inflation, where you've got too many dollars chasing a fixed number of goods, that's going to create inflation.
But now, when you've got this amount of money out there, you've actually shrunk the supply, and there's no way to re-inflate that supply anytime soon.
You got a problem.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Famine, again.
In your view, does Trump have any viable off-ramps that he would psychologically be willing to consider given that he's an egotistical child?
That's my opinion anyway.
Yeah, no, I agree with you.
Again, if the announcement that I heard earlier was true, that he was taking saying, okay, Iran has agreed not to build a nuclear weapon.
We got an agreement.
Well, it's like you had that agreement in the first place, but let's just go with that.
So he could say, we got an agreement.
They're not going to build a nuke.
Fabricated Nuclear Agreement00:07:38
The United States has really already lifted sanctions on Iran.
So Iran's no longer facing those sanctions.
Doesn't that just affect oil, though, right now?
Well, that was the principal sanctions on Iran.
Okay.
So, you know, so they're sanctioned free of that.
So the next step is if Donald Trump then says, you know, because we've got this peaceful arrangement, we no longer need to have our massive military presence in the Gulf.
We can pull them out so they can come back and do something productive for America.
That's his offer.
If he does that, that's his off-ramp.
I think Israel would agree will stop provided Israel stops.
But if Israel doesn't stop, and if the United States doesn't take actions to stop Israel, Iran's just going to continue hammering them.
Well, and hasn't Iran said that they're going to continue this war until Israel is destroyed?
And hasn't Israel said basically the same thing about Iran?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, this has been, you know, Iran has been unfairly and unjustly demonized over the years by the West, particularly in the United States.
We don't take responsibility for anything that we've done.
You know, example, you'll hear people say, well, you know, Iran chanced death to America.
What have we done to them?
Where do we begin?
Right.
Yeah.
So let's start September 1980.
Yeah, Iran's students are holding American diplomats hostage, CIA personnel hostage.
And the United States, with a wink and a nudge and a pat on the back, gets Saddam Hussein to attack Iraq, Iran.
So the Iran-Iraq war starts in September of 1980, hit Ronald Reagan, and Reagan gets the hostages back.
It was the parallel that you talked about earlier.
And then Don Rumsfeld goes and starts meeting with Saddam Hussein.
And guess what?
We start selling Saddam Hussein precursor chemicals that are used to make chemical weapons.
And in August of 1983, Iraq launches its first chemical weapons attack on Iran and continues, launches 20 more weapon of mass destruction attacks on Iran, chemical weapons, the last one stopping in August of 1988.
Well, during that entire time, Iran never built or used a chemical weapon against Iraq.
Never.
But because of that war, over 300,000 Iranians died.
Well, you look how upset we get over the 4,000, less than 4,000 Americans who died on 9-11.
And we get upset at the Muslims over that.
Well, it's understandable why Iran chanced death to America.
And in fact, during the last two years of that war, prior to that, the CIA was hand-carrying intelligence to Iraq to use against Iran.
And then that job was transferred to a former defense attaché to Saudi Arabia and to Yemen, a colonel named Pat Lang.
Pat was a mentor of mine and a friend.
He died a couple of years ago.
So, you know, here's the United States who basically helped provoke that war, funded that war, helped it go on, and killed 300,000 Iranians.
So when Iran chanced death to America, I understand.
Plus the decades of economic sanctions that and also don't forget Scott Bessent admitting that there was a financial terrorism committed by the United States against Iran to destroy their currency.
I mean, he openly admitted it.
That's an act of war or terrorism.
Yep.
Or the U.S. continued support for the Mujahideen El Khalkh, MEK.
They were designated as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997.
That designation was lifted by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in 2012.
Why?
Because the CIA was using the MEK to launch terror attacks inside Iran.
So, you know, the United States is a state sponsor of terrorism.
Absolutely.
There's no question about that.
But let me ask you this.
Let's shift slightly.
If Trump says we have an agreement with Iran, even if he fabricates it, and thus we can remove our military from the area, that doesn't resolve the Strait of Hormuz, that, of course, Iran maintains control over the strait and can selectively allow certain ships to pass through and not others.
But also, I think more importantly, from the U.S. State Department point of view, the U.S. presence in that area is now gone.
I mean, the Fifth Fleet headquarters, the bases in Iraq, look, practically evacuated the military bases in Iraq at this point.
And the future of the U.S. in that region seems to be gone at this point.
What's your take on that?
Yeah, no, the face of the Middle East is now being remade.
Let's be clear.
Iran is the only country in the Gulf around the Persian Gulf, with the exception of Iraq, that has a government that's been elected by the people.
The government of President Pazeshkin, while the Ayatollah is not elected by the people, in accordance with it, is an Islamic republic.
Nonetheless, there still is an element of democracy there.
And one of the real ironies, I learned this the other day from a new friend, Yaakov Rapkin, a professor.
Yaakov has written extensively on Zionism.
He's a Canadian now, resides in Canada, but he was born in Leningrad right after World War II, which is now called St. Petersburg.
And he recounted his experience of going to Tehran and visiting the Jewish quarter.
And this group of Jews, Iranian Jews, they've been there for, they count their ancestors back for almost 3,000 years.
Whoa.
Think about that.
2,600 years.
Whenever the Babylonian captivity took place and the Jews were carried off from Israel back to Babylon, that's where they set down their first roots.
And in talking to them, they noted that their children are required by Iranian law to have a religious education at school.
I don't know if it's like once a day or once a week, but they're not the religious education that their children get is Judaism.
Because they identify as Jews, they are allowed to be taught Jewish religious tradition.
Same for Christians.
So the Muslims get taught Islam, Christians get taught Christianity, and the Jews get taught Judaism.
Carrier Jets and Threats00:15:20
Huh.
How about that?
It doesn't fit with our narrative.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And, you know, I watched you for years commenting on the Ukraine-Russia war as well.
And, of course, most of that took place under Biden.
And we watched as the Biden administration just flat out lied to America constantly about the success of the West and the effectiveness of Western weapons.
Oh, we're going to send the tanks and it's going to change everything.
We're going to use the High Mars.
It's going to change everything.
And now that exact same tactic is being used by the Trump administration.
It's just like Biden 2.0 or Obama 2.0 almost at this point.
Why has Trump resorted to the same outrageous and obvious lies that Biden used, you know, claiming that none of our planes are shot down.
They all have maintenance issues.
Or the USS Ford, you know, out of commission now for 14 months.
Oh, it's a laundry room fire.
Okay.
Well, that's a bad laundry room fire.
Yeah.
Yeah, this Andrei Martianov put out a, he commented on a video the other day with respect to the Ford, comparing it to the USS Forrestal Vietnam-era carrier that John McCain, through a negligent discharge of a missile, almost blew the ship up, caught on fire.
It took the crew 19 hours to put the fire out, and it actually killed, I want to say like 19 sailors and injured 100 more.
After that, they had to get McCain off the ship because he probably would have been killed by some of the sailors who blamed him for what happened.
But the point was that it took them 19 hours to build a combat accident, get that under control.
So what the hell happened in a laundry room?
It took him 30 hours, 30 hours to contain the fire?
You know, there's more to this story than we're being told.
Clearly.
It's like the shootdown the other day of the F-35.
That what happened was the heat-seeking missile got close enough to the plane and the plane had off, shot off a, you know, let's call it a flare or a magnesium piece that burns to try to distract or divert the missile.
And the missile exploded and the shrapnel from the missile hit the F-35, damaged its wing and its tail.
And so that's what happened there.
It wasn't a direct hit, but it was close enough that it damaged it beyond repair.
But if the USS Ford, which is, I believe, the most expensive ship ever built, something like $13 billion.
That is like $15 billion.
Hey, that's a couple of billion dollars among friends, right?
Well, they're going to probably have to add another couple billion for the repairs now.
Yeah.
You know, and it's out of commission for 14 months.
It just, doesn't it just prove, and plus the F-35 incident and all of the F-16s that have been lost or remember the couple of the F-18s in the Red Sea that they said rolled off the edge of the Abraham Lincoln at that time?
Yeah, one rolled off, one was hit by friendly fire.
One, it's not clear what happened.
Right.
But if this is the case and none of this is occurring from enemy fire, then it's just proving that our modern military is utterly incompetent.
Well, I'm not sure incompetent is the correct word.
I mean, there is definitely some of that, but we have a military that's not designed for the 21st century.
It is we've relied on very expensive technology instead of inexpensive technology.
So we're now at the stage where each of the PAC-3 missiles that's on a Patriot missile battery, when you fire, you've got an inbound drone, a geranium drone.
You know, it's one that looks like the giant triangle.
You fire those two Patriot missiles.
Each one costs, I've heard different estimates, $4 million, $6 million.
Let's go up to $6 million.
So you're firing $12 million worth of missiles at a drone that costs $50,000.
Well, you know, you can't afford to keep doing that.
You just, it's run out of money.
Again, the aircraft carrier, $16,000, $15 billion for an aircraft carrier took, what, six years to build?
And then it can be quickly disabled by somebody throwing a shirt in the toilet or somebody lighting the dryer on fire or getting hit with a hypersonic missile.
So these are weapon systems that no longer make sense because the technology that has taken place with respect to drones and missiles, particularly hypersonic missiles.
The aircraft carrier has really outlived its time.
Its arrival in the 1930s, just as aviation was starting to get its legs underneath it, it became the primary vehicle that you could deliver airplanes far away because the airplanes had a limited flight range, but now you could take them to the spot they could fly off.
Well, that no longer works like with Iran, because if you bring like an F-35B jet that's on an aircraft carrier, it's got like a 600-mile combat radius.
Now that means it can fly 600 miles and it has to be refueled.
Or, you know, it can fly 300 miles out and then 300 miles back without refueling.
So if you get close to the Iran's southern coast, then all of a sudden that ship, as happened to the Abraham Lincoln, can get shot at with a shorter ship missile that can destroy the carrier.
Or if a hypersonic missile.
So they have to get far enough away, and the farther away you get, the less effective is that air capability that you're carrying.
Right, right.
So what you're describing is an obsolete approach to the projection of power from the Navy.
Now, so my next, my follow-up question to you on this, Larry, is that if Trump walks away from this Middle East situation without controlling the Strait of Hormuz, which seems almost impossible to achieve at this point, but if he announces victory, sails away, pulls our military forces out of the area, even if he can fool the American people to say we won, doesn't the rest of the world look at this and say, wow, America is no longer the biggest bully on the playground.
They can't make good on their threats.
Yeah, no, exactly right.
One other thing, you know, one other dynamic that will enter into this is Iran could agree, say, okay, listen, we'll lift the blockade on the Strait of Hormuz.
They'll tell this to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, tell it to all of them.
But you guys got to get rid of the American bases.
If you continue to keep American bases in your country, then we're going to not let your ships pass through the strait.
That simple.
And I think that they could probably Win that argument.
Well, wouldn't they also win the argument that ships need to pay a toll as a means of reparations against Iran, and that once the reparations are paid off, then the toll goes away?
I mean.
Yeah, they're going to demand that.
I'm not sure they're going to find a solution there.
Particularly if they can get a commitment that there will be no more attacks.
And in fact, one way to provide that security is to get a military pledge from Iran and Russia that in the event that you are attacked, we will view it as an attack on us.
So that, I think, would give Iran enough assurance that, okay, we're good.
Because they'd know that then the other countries, Israel, United States, if you're going to hit Iran, you're going to be hitting Russia and China.
Are you ready for a nuclear exchange?
So like Eastern Article V. Yeah.
Yeah, but I'm not sure Russia would want to go that far.
No, I think they would.
I think they would.
Do you think so?
Yeah.
Because what they want is to get that north-south economic corridor open.
And they don't want Iran anymore to be threatened.
And so I think Russia would be willing to do that.
So then can you walk us forward then?
Suppose this does get resolved in the manner that you just mentioned.
There's a mutual defense pact between Iran and Russia.
There's relative peace.
The strait is reopened.
Energy starts to flow again within a few weeks.
What does the world look like for America's future and America's leverage in the world from that point forward?
Oh, dramatically weakened.
At that point, the United States' dominance in the Persian Gulf is going to go away.
Now, look, let's recognize these Gulf Arab states, let's call them family-run crime.
It's a form of organized crime with families.
The royal family in Saudi Arabia, et cetera, they all like to be shake this, shake that.
But they don't have any foundation of popular support.
And I think if you realize that something like 90%, particularly in United Arab Emirates of the population, are foreigners, not Emiratis.
And they are going to be compelled, they've got to do something or they're going to die, economically die.
And I don't mean some far-off date in the future.
Literally with no ships coming in bearing food, they're going to run out of food.
They don't have their own agricultural systems in these countries to sustain growth.
Right, or water.
Or water if the desalination gets hit, right?
So they've been pretty careful now of late about what they're doing to Iran.
And Iran has just now, over the last couple of days, shifted its attacks more and more towards Israel.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Well, isn't that because they've already destroyed most of the military bases in the region?
Well, true.
Yeah, they've been hit and severely damaged.
I'm not sure to what extent there are people, American still troops standing there or not.
We'll see.
Okay, and your best guess, Larry, for how much longer can Iran keep up this continued launching of these missiles?
Oh, at least six months.
Wow.
Wow.
Well, what's Is anything left standing in Israel?
I mean, in six months, because the Haifa oil refinery, I understand, was hit hard, maybe destroyed.
Yeah, I think at this point, Iran's going to focus on taking out the port and taking out the military airfields.
They're going to stay away from civilian areas, and they're going to stay away from hospitals and schools.
Okay, but infrastructure would be considered, like power plants would be considered.
They've stayed away from the power plant, too, because they say, look, we're not going to deprive people of power unless you deprive us of power.
You deprive us of power, then you're going to suffer the same fate.
Okay, let's talk about Qatar Energy for a moment because they have 14 natural gas trains there.
Two of them have been destroyed with a three to five year repair time, according to their own official announcement.
That leaves 12 trains, which, of course, to our audience, those aren't really trains.
Those are processing facilities.
So there's 12 left.
If those 12 get destroyed, then the world collapses as we know it, and there's a 10 to 15 year repair time.
Larry, do you think that these 12 trains are going to survive whatever happens next?
Yeah, for now.
Again, it depends on is there going to be an attack against Iran's resources?
So Iran's doing very much sort of a tit for tat, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.
So you hit our natural gas, we'll hit your natural gas.
You hit our oil, we'll hit your oil.
You hit our nuclear power, nuclear plant, we'll hit your nuclear plant.
Israel has promised to continue bombing Iran.
Couldn't Iran's retaliations include Qatar's natural gas fields?
I mean, it's a three-party scenario where the one party, Israel, is just completely out of control, doing whatever they want.
Yeah, potentially.
It depends on what Israel bombs.
Yeah.
So, you know, that's why I say there can be some transfer, if you will, of violence to Qatar based upon what Israel does.
Right, that's a good term for it, transfer of violence.
Tell our audience about your website, sonar21.com.
Sonar21.com.
It's a blog I try to write daily, post articles.
People can comment.
I don't have a rigid policy of you have to meet my ideological test.
You can disagree with me all you want.
Just I don't accept insults and that homin attacks.
That'll get you tossed.
And I try to let people have a polite discussion, but oftentimes people get all heated and emotions take over.
And I want to remind our audience that you have a support us button on your website right here, different ways to support you.
Because one of the questions I've had over the years is, how do you fund what you do?
I mean, it's not lucrative telling the truth these days.
Dangerous Assumptions About War00:05:57
Right, right.
In the past, I've suffered financially.
Now this helps defray costs.
But I made a decision not to do advertising and not to require people to donate in order to read.
Now, I am going to be making an adjustment to my website so that in the future, the same thing applies.
I have a Substack, son of the New American Revolution on Substack.
And there, if you want to comment, yeah, you have to become a financial contributor.
Not much.
It'd be like, just say $12 a year.
So at $12 a year, you can comment at will, but everybody can read.
Well, that makes sense.
And that also helps filter out the trolls and bots.
Yeah.
Which is a good mechanism.
Yeah.
Yep.
All right.
As we're getting close to the end of our hour here, and again, I want to thank you for taking the time with us.
What have we not covered that you think our audience needs to be aware of?
Let's go more in detail on the attack that's going to take place this weekend.
Okay.
At this point, the U.S. military forces that have moved into position and are still moving indicate that there is going to be a massive, likely coordinated attack.
I think it'll be on two targets, the Karg Island and Keshim Island.
Those are the only ones that make sense, simply because, you know, it's not just to inflict damage on Iran.
And some have said that, oh, there's, you know, they're going to put troops down at Chabahar, a port down on the Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea.
Well, why?
Because, you know, you're down there, you're not going to, that's not going to do a thing to open up the Strait of Hormuz, and that's just going to make you another target for missiles and drones.
Yeah, but isn't Karg also very far from the strait?
Yeah, it's up in the northwest corner of the Persian Gulf, or excuse me, the northeast corner of the Persian Gulf, just off the shore of Iran.
Well within reach of artillery shells.
Right.
So if they take Karg, it's just holding the oil infrastructure hostage, but not really opening the strait, right?
Correct.
That would be the Keshim Island, which is down in the strait.
But all of this sort of assumes that Iran's not going to be able to respond with missiles and drones and inflict damage on our occupying forces.
And I think that's exactly wrong.
And it assumes that we're going to be able to put ships in there that the Iranians won't be able to hit.
I think that's wrong.
But, you know, if Trump goes forward with this, then we'll be looking at, I think, the equivalent of Gallipoli, Gallipoli for the United States, a virtual massacre of our forces.
But to land troops on Karg, wouldn't that require the troop transport ships to sail through the strait?
No, not if they're brought in by helicopter.
Oh, I see.
Yeah, if they're inserted via helicopter or, you know, the SEALs supposedly could always swim there, but they'd be pretty tired.
So, no, I think they've got an insertion plan with helicopters.
Again, it's assuming that the air defense has been suppressed and that they're not going to shoot down the helicopters.
But again, I think that may be a dangerous assumption.
So what lie are we going to be told when thousands of U.S. Marines and Special Forces are killed?
Are we going to be told they all died in traffic accidents or something?
Yeah, they'll come out and say, oh, you know, that Iran once again rejected our offers of peace and rejected the, insisted that they want to build a nuke, and therefore we had no alternative but to launch this attack.
And again, when that attack is launched, and that's why they'll do it Friday night after the markets are closed, it's going to light up the oil markets a big time.
And so Trump has been able to talk it down, at least the early part of this week, by claiming, oh, yeah, things are looking up.
But I think he's doing that to deliberately manipulate the market.
Yeah, I've said Trump has a kind of a Jekyll and Hyde approach to his personalities.
There's weekday Trump where everything's great, negotiations are working, the markets are calm.
And then there's weekend Trump, where it's like bomb and kill and destroy everything.
And then he hopes that they can recover before the markets open on Monday again.
Right, right.
It's the same pattern.
He's become very predictable now.
Yeah, absolutely.
So that's why when he announced yesterday five days, I said, huh, why five days?
Oh, day five is when the 31st Mew is supposed to arrive in the Arabian Sea, be off the coast of Iran.
Now the question is, how close is that ship going to get?
Yeah, exactly.
Okay, one more question for you, Larry.
As a former CIA analyst yourself, what do you think the CIA is telling the president right now?
If we're to believe the press reports, they warned him that it was not wise to carry out this military strike, that the Iranian regime would remain intact, and that the Strait of Hormuz would be closed and would cause economic damage.
And you think that their conclusion is reasoned and rational on those points, but the president's people are just choosing to reject that information?
Stock Up for Survival00:04:17
Yes.
Okay.
All right.
That's simple.
Well, I don't think you become a CIA analyst by being a low IQ person, right?
I mean, you have to know what you're doing.
Yeah, you're supposed to.
I like to do puzzles and I can figure out how to do addition and subtraction.
It shouldn't be that complicated.
Okay.
All right.
Well said.
Well, Larry, thank you so much for your time today.
It's always an honor speaking with you.
We appreciate you and all that you're doing.
Hey, Mike, a pleasure.
Look forward to doing it again with you.
All right.
We'll do it again soon.
Thank you so much.
And again, the website, folks, is sonar21.com.
And please consider supporting Larry's work there because he, again, he doesn't take advertising.
It's not a lucrative thing that he's doing.
He's doing this just because it's the right thing to do.
So I want to thank him for his time.
You're watching BrightVideos.com.
And if you want to catch more of my interviews, as well as other podcasts and analysis, you can find them all at brightvideos.com.
I'm Mike Adams.
Thank you for watching today.
Take care, everybody.
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