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July 14, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:23
July 14, 2006, Friday, Hour #2
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Thank you, Johnny Donovan, and uh it's a pleasure and a privilege to be with you as a fellow student of the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies coming to you today from the Midwest campus in Detroit, Michigan, the motor city still.
And the growing life sciences corridor with Google, the latest to choose Michigan and Arbor, Michigan, for their next Google Plex.
And we're very excited about that here at the uh at the Midwest campus of the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, where there is never a final exam, but we are tested every day.
I am Paul W. Smith, and it is a pleasure to be with you and even more so a pleasure uh to say that uh after Mark Belling uh did a great job and Tom Sullivan did a great job, uh I am happy to announce that actually on Monday, Rush Limbaugh will be in for Rush Limbaugh on this your favorite radio station.
Nice to share this Friday with you, uh keeping an eye on the the breaking news of the day.
The Middle East has blown up.
We're not watching a part of the world that is close to war, we're watching a part of the world that is at war, and of course, frankly, in many ways they always have been.
Now, here at the uh Institute in the Midwest, here in specifically Detroit, Michigan, we happen to live in one of the few places in these United States where there are so many people who are at the very least sympathetic to the other side, or the wrong side in terms of who the United States calls an ally.
Uh, one front page of this one, the Friday Oakland Press, local Jews and Lebanese split on Israeli response.
Now that's not happening a lot of places.
It is happening around here.
There are so many people who live here who still have roots and family and friends still living over there on the quote unquote wrong side.
Now I'm not talking about the ones who haven't made the transition to living here and should.
I'm not talking about the ones who don't believe Israel should exist.
I'm talking about fine, proud Americans who are very much here but still have a connection there.
It's an especially tough time for them.
Uh by the way, Hezbollah TV reporting that the building housing the headquarters of the guerrilla group has been destroyed in an Israeli airstrike, and that's what the Israelis are trying to do.
President Bush says Israel should try to limit civilian casualties in this uh escalation of attacks on Lebanon, but the President is not going to answer Lebanon's plea to call for a ceasefire.
Not gonna happen.
Uh Israel has to be able to defend themselves and do what they must do.
Our phone lines open to you on the Rush Limbaugh program at 1-800-282-2882, 1-800-282-2882, or Rush Limbaugh.com, and talking about some of the other news of the day, which now is completely tied in with the biggest story of the day.
And the energy uh security was to be the focus of the discussions of the G eight summit, uh, but that's just not gonna be the case right now.
Obviously, they're gonna be talking about what's happening in our world.
And this is not the first time that uh external issues, uh, in this case external crises are are expected to steal the attention away from the stated agenda, issues of global energy security, infectious diseases, and education.
This unfolding crisis in the Middle East between Israel and Hezbollah and Lebanon will uh be a big part of the uh conversation.
Now those standoffs over uh North Korea's test firing of the missiles and Iran's nuclear ambitions expected to get attention, but not as much attention.
And there are even those who say that Iran did this on purpose.
They uh fueled this fire to get the attention off of them.
Who knows for sure, but at least I do know this.
We have uh an expert here to join us, uh Ariel Cohen is senior research fellow of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Heritage Found Foundation, uh, USA.
Uh we're gonna talk about U.S. relations with Russia in light of some of these big issues facing the U.S., of course, uh Israel and uh Lebanon, Iran, North Korea, also the state of democracy in Russia, and recently come into question, most notably with Vice President Cheney's broadside against curbs on the press, political opposition and s uh speech in the former uh Soviet Union.
They seem to have gone backwards way back, and uh senior research fellow of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Heritage Foundation, his latest book, Eurasia in the Balance, the U.S. and regional power shift, Ariel Cohen, is on the other end of our line.
Ariel, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Show.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
It's a great pleasure.
I'm uh I'm guessing that uh tonight, when the president has dinner with Putin before the start of the GH summit with the other world leaders, they're gonna be talking an awful lot about this, the Middle East.
I'm also guessing that uh Putin will not be eating crow.
And I'm also thinking that uh they're not gonna be best buds smoking a fine cigar after dinner.
It depends what happens.
Uh I suppose it does.
But it'll be interesting to see, that's for sure.
What does uh what does Ariel Cohen think is going to happen?
First of all, uh the best uh laid plans of Meissen Man uh came up in smoke in Lebanon uh because while the G eight uh Bush puts in Condi Rice and others were putting together very carefully painstaking painstakingly um a uh program to get the Iranian nuclear program under control.
The Iranian fully owned subsidiary, Hizbollah, that was uh founded by the Iranian intelligence and revolutionary guards in the early eighties, uh launched an attack that uh was on purpose, a provocation against Israel.
Uh and uh now the G eight and the world, instead of looking at Iran, uh looking elsewhere.
Uh the Iranians did the usual cartoon trick of they ran that away.
And everybody is looking that away uh instead of looking at the Iranian nuclear program.
And this is something for China and Russia, the two permanent members of the Security Council, to consider.
Over the years, Russia and China uh were um not supportive of Iran, uh of course not, but at least somewhat protective of Iran and were against the uh UN sanctions or God forbid uh use of force against the Iranian nuclear program.
Now we all are facing with Iran that is behaving irresponsibly, and Putin Bush could um focus on uh how Russia, U.S., and possibly even China can work together in the UN Security Council and elsewhere to bring this threat under control.
We've already found Iran's fingerprints on the rockets that are being used by Hezbollah, the rockets that are coming out of Lebanon into Israel.
So they're fully involved.
It's no secret, it's no surprise, same with Syria.
Uh I uh i I want to get I want to get back to that because it is the news of the day, but since uh we also have you and your expertise from uh the Heritage Foundation, uh I want to l talk a little bit more about those uh relations with Russia, and uh and what I'd hate to see with it would be, you know, when we we choose sides and we get the international headbutt that it's China and Russia versus the USA and Japan.
Um I would still think that uh there are a lot of common interests.
Uh neither uh Russia nor China are interested in a global conflagration or a new war in the Middle East, that will uh send the oil prices uh skyrocketing, which is very bad for China.
But later on, if we're moving into a major economic crisis because of high oil prices and because of the war, that will cause a drop in oil prices that is very bad for Russia.
So uh ideally in the rational world, uh people like Putin people like uh President Hu Jintao of China uh need to coordinate their policies with President Bush, and we need to coordinate our policies with them because in a world that is increasingly interdependent and globalizing, we are all dependent on each other.
And it is the anti-status quo players, the uh spoilers, if you wish, like Iran and their subsidiary, the Hizbala terrorist organization and Hamas, which is increasingly under the Iranian sway, those are the spoilers,
those are the West haters, th those are the killers of children and women who are trying to destroy our world, to destroy our civilization, and we need to work with anybody who is willing to cooperate with us uh to defeat our enemies.
And we need Russia, as uh as we've talked about and uh again moving uh toward democracy and although uh he has been criticized uh for his record on democratic reforms and and slipping backwards actually uh going into this uh G eight summit the it was expected they would be treading lightly because they need Russia's help on North Korea and with Iran uh and uh so we would expect that the president will have a nice dinner and will uh raise these concerns privately but
now all of the uh attention is truly as Iran wanted it to be and Syria too on what's happening in this new Middle East war in this new fighting.
Absolutely and there's another very important dimension to our relationship with the Russians.
What is uh on the agenda bilaterally with Russia is uh Russian membership in WTO in the World Trade Organization and uh the Russians um uh connected that uh to two major uh economic transactions.
First there is a giant natural gas field uh in the Barents Sea the Barents is pretty much in the area of the North Sea it's somewhere between um and to the north of Norway and Russia and uh to the east of Great Britain.
Uh and in that sea there's a huge uh gas field called Stockman.
Uh Stockman has trillions of cubic uh feet of gas and we are interested in buying it in the form of LNG, liquid natural gas for our dwindling supply.
Um and uh the Russians um conditioned their membership in WTO uh on uh allowing us to access uh the Stockman deal.
The other deal which is somewhat smaller is Russia buying twenty two Boeing aircraft um uh from us uh for their growing uh airlines Aeroflot uh so uh there's a lot uh on uh the plates in uh St. Petersburg uh besides uh their steak uh and their salmon uh one of the business uh one of the other things I want to uh we we need to take a break here but one of the other things I want to uh to ask uh your expertise about and what you've heard about this uh uh plan
that might be announced uh the beginning of negotiations on an agreement that would allow Russia to take nuclear waste from reactors used for civilian power in the United States.
And this too is big box this is big lux for Russia.
Let's come back to that and let's come back to our callers as well at 1800 2828 eight two that's one eight hundred two eight two twenty eight eighty two Ariel Cohen is with us.
He's senior research fellow of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Heritage Foundation USA, right here on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
This is the Rush Limbaugh Program and it's Friday I'm Paul W. Smith sitting in for Rush Rush is back Monday, 1 800 2828 eight two, one eight hundred two eight two two eight eight two or rush limbaugh.com Ariel Cohen,
senior research fellow of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Heritage Foundation USA, talking about the G eight and what's going to be discussed and uh the President having dinner uh privately with Putin tonight and they'll talk about those twenty two Boeing aircraft that Russia's going to buy and some of the other issues that are going to be discussed and one of them too about the U.S. and Russia uh announcing the beginning of negotiations on an agreement that would allow Russia to take nuclear waste from reactors used
for civilian power in the United States.
And it said that such an agreement would represent a policy shift for the United States.
What do you know about that, Ariel?
Uh the Russians were keen to develop the nuclear waste storage uh industry uh for a long time.
Don't forget, since the beginning of the Cold War, Russian nuclear complex nuclear industrial complex is as sophisticated and probably even larger than the American one because the Heston a bigger country with a lot of uh uranium supply and by the way uh since the end of the Cold War,
they were selling us uh diluted uh uh nuclear uh fuel the uh old enriched uranium from uh the nuclear warheads that were aimed to destroy US They blended it down to the uh nuclear power station fuel and was selling it to us.
So some of the electrons you and I are using now for this radio program or uh just for uh light and electricity may have come from the Russian uh nuclear warheads, Soviet nuclear warheads from the Cold War.
Uh beyond that, um, in the midst of uh far away lands in Siberia, uh where they have uh uh whole cities of uh nuclear physicists and engineers, they want to develop the storage industry.
And because a lot of reactors around the world are American uh built, uh they needed uh US uh approval and signature uh to take in nuclear waste from places like uh East Asia, for example, Japan and uh Taiwan, and now the United States.
So uh we are going ahead with that.
Russia is about to earn uh something like fifteen or twenty billion with a B dollars over the next five years from that storage uh industry.
And of course, everybody uh says, NIMBY, not in my backyard.
We don't want to store it now.
Look at U Yucca Mountain and uh Utah.
Um so they're going to develop that, they're going to make money, and uh everybody else is going to get rid of the nuclear waste.
And so this is a win-win with Russia.
I wonder if they'll take our garbage.
We've had a big problem with that in Michigan, uh getting uh uh Canadian garbage.
That's another problem, another time, I guess we'll discuss.
A lot of people want to talk with you, so let's uh give them that opportunity.
Ariel Cohen here from the Heritage Foundation at 1 800 282 2882, 1800-28282, and Ralph from British Columbia is on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
Say hi to Ariel Cohen.
Ralph.
Hello, Ross.
Um my comment, sir, Mr. Cohen, was that I would uh un undoubtedly admit that you are correct.
We are in a global community and we do need to work with China and Russia financially.
However, uh I don't think we should ignore the elephant sitting in the room, which is basically the fact that China is supporting uh North Korea, and they've done so since the Korean war.
And that's something that, you know, while dealing with them economically, it's certainly a fact that they are few funding our enemy.
That's my point.
Uh I think you're absolutely right uh in terms of supporting the regime, although in the longer term, if if I was uh a Chinese uh foreign policy expert or Chinese uh even Chinese leader, if if I possibly can put myself in their shoes, which is quite a stretch for me, um I would ask myself, do we Chinese need a nuclear armed neighbor right on our door doorstep for that matter?
If I'm a Russian, um uh do I need uh nuclear armed North Korea with missiles uh right at our doorstep.
I think we did not have enough cooperation from Beijing uh on um disarming uh Kim Chong ill.
And I also am kind of disappointed because I'm looking at the example of Germany, and Germans after the collapse of the wall really wanted to reunify and be one people, and it it costs them a lot.
It cost them a trillion Deutsche Markets, you know, close to uh close to uh uh what, probably seven hundred fifty billion dollars.
It was like several GDPs of Germany.
Uh but they wanted to reunify.
It looks like South Korea is looking at the bill, a potential cost of reunification with the North that is falling behind in development, and they don't really want to reunify with their brothers.
Dr. Cohen, we're gonna run out of time, and I'll tell our callers they will get a chance to come on because with our next guest in the next half hour we'll continue talking about Israel and Hezbollah.
But I know you have some strong feelings about this uh and want you to be able to express them in uh the very little time we have left, though, but that you believe Iran is behind the Hezbollah attacks and wants a new Middle East war.
Absolutely, because Iran uh uh founded his balah, uh uh Hezbollah, which is a terrorist organization, is a fully owned Iranian subsidiary.
The remote control for his balah is in Tehran, and Iran wants to shift the world's attention away from the discussion of its uh nuclear uh military program, the Iranian bomb uh program, uh, and focus on Arab Israeli conflict.
Uh Iran wants to lead the Muslim world to be the leader and uh to um uh uh upstage the radical Sunni uh Muslim uh wannabe leaders like Usama bin Laden.
And Israel obviously can't sit still while Hezbollah rains rockets on their cities, killing civilians, threatening power stations, refineries, Haifa Bay, all of that.
Appreciate your help on this uh very much, Ariel Cohen.
It's my pleasure.
Uh senior research fellow of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Heritage Foundation, Ariel Cohen.
That conversation will continue with George Friedman, the CEO of Stratford.com coming up next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Thank you, Johnny.
1800, 282-2882.
Our lines always open to you, and we'll get into this open line Friday.
Uh a little bit of a uh kind of a uh unadjusted version of it in the final hour here with the breaking news we want to stay on top of, as always on the Rush Limbaugh program.
1800, 282-2882 or Rush Limbaugh.com.
We have uh George Friedman with us, uh Dr. George Friedman, Middle East expert and author of America's Secret War.
Uh he is a part of Stratford, the world's leading private intelligence firm, and he is on the other end of our line and uh willing to talk with you as well if you have questions or comments about what is happening right now in the Middle East.
Senior Israeli foreign ministry official Gideon Mayar has told reporters that Israel has, quote, concrete evidence that Hezbollah plans to transfer the kidnapped soldiers to Iran.
No specifics or source of the claim.
He says, as a result, Israel views Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran as the main players in the axis of terror and hate that endangers not only Israel but the entire world.
And I'm sure you have a thought or two on that as well.
Dr. George Friedman, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Thank you for having me.
Uh some of your thoughts on what's been happening over the last twenty-four hours, and uh and uh uh I I'm dying to ask this question.
I guess I'll ask it first.
You're a private intelligence firm.
Do you have a great advantage over our own government intelligence since it was uh gutted during the Clinton years?
Well, only because we're smaller, poorer, and more desperate.
You know, the U.S. intelligence is a huge entity, it knows a great deal, it operates extremely well.
We're more focused, we're much, much, much smaller, and uh we leverage our resources better.
So we've been paying attention to Hezbollah for a while, while CIA has had to diffuse his attention on other things.
Well, and and the as we uh noted with our guest last half hour, Ariel Cohen, the the Iranian Revolutionary Guards founded the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah, party of God, so-called, after the Ayatollah, uh uh his uh Islamic revolution.
They've been behind the murder of U.S. civilians in Lebanon, attacks on Israel since they began, since 1982.
And now they're just thought of as a subcontractor for Iran.
They're a complicated group.
Uh they occupy the Baikot Valley, which is one of the great heroin producing and transporting areas of the world.
So they're more than just a terrorist group like the FARC down in Colombia.
These guys make their money uh in drugs, and they invest it in Beirut land and banks and around the world.
And that makes them even more dangerous, uh, because they have resources that Al Qaeda, which is a lot simpler group, just doesn't have.
What has happened here is uh uh by capturing Israeli soldiers, Hamas and Hezbollah have struck the core Israeli nerve.
Israel can't ignore it, obviously.
And part of that has to do with a little background you can share with us.
George Friedman is the CEO of Stratford.com, a company he began in 1996, which leads the field in private intelligence, his most recent book, America's Secret War, detailing America's overt and covert efforts in the war on terror.
But there are some some there's some backgrounds.
Uh in one of them is that Israel lives with three realities.
And if you could share kind of uh some of your thoughts on that that you have in the past.
Sure.
First, uh geographically, it's a small country.
Uh it doesn't have a lot of strategic depth.
Israel can't do anything about that.
Demographically, it's vastly outnumbered by the Arabs.
Israel can't do anything about that.
The one advantage it has is what I'll call cultural.
Uh it's soldiers are better, they're better equipped, they're better trained, they're better motivated.
Or so it has been through the entire history of Israel.
Now, the capture of these Israeli soldiers strikes a nerve because this is the kind of stuff that Israel used to do against the Palestinians and the Arabs.
They would carry out brilliant commando raids.
Uh they would capture uh Arab guards who were asleep at the switch.
Now the Arabs have turned the tables on them.
So deep inside the Israeli psyche, they're asking the question, how did the Arabs get the jump on three Israeli soldiers on duty?
That hits so deep in this c in that country, because in that country, everybody serves in the military.
Sure, and this hardly, as you've said, hardly represents a fundamental shift in the balance of power, but for a country that depends on its cultural superiority, this uh this uh reverberates, this tremor reverberates dramatically.
And it reverberates at the kitchen table.
Uh, you know, we have slackers in this country, and the older generation always things to the younger generation are slackers.
Well, the fathers fought in 67 and 73 and 82 and did pretty well, and they've got their doubts about these kids, and these kids have to prove themselves, and they're all in the army, so right now this has posed a crisis of confidence, and Israel's gonna solve that crisis of confidence.
I mean, I don't think by any means they've lost the edge.
But they need to demonstrate to themselves and also to uh the Arabs, that they are still capable of waging war and waging it overwhelmingly.
We have folks who want to speak with our guest, the CEO of Stratford.com, George Friedman with us.
You can be a part of the Rush Limbaugh program at 1800-282-2882.
That's one eight hundred-282-2882.
I'm Paul W. Smith in for Rush.
Uh and we're going right to Houston, where we find Cody.
Cody, say hi to George Friedman.
Hello, sir.
Uh just got a quick question.
The um the last guest had uh had said that Iran was was pulling the strings to divert attention away from its from its nuclear uh excuse me, nuclear goals, and I I was just wondering why would Israel aid in that, seeing as that they could probably come to that conclusion themselves, especially given that the events that led up to Israel's response are really nothing new to Israel.
Why would they not hold out if they're going to do any kind of major incursion?
Why would they not be able to do that?
When has when has Israel ever held back after repeated rocket incursions into Israel killing civilians?
I don't remember that happening.
Well no, they would large scale offenses that that that would that would be really distracting, I guess, to to what would be taking this place in the J summit, like whenever there would be um any kind of rockets, they would they would it would seem as though Israel would pick and they would they would, you know, hit a car or they'd hit a uh a Hamas leader in a building, there wouldn't be this this large scale kind of incursion.
I was wondering why would they not approach it from that, which is what they had been doing.
W why would it seem like uh why would they do it if it is distracting from Iran, why would they do it um or or aid that?
Well, uh I'm not sure I completely agree with uh Dr. Cohen that that's the only motive.
Uh Iran wants to become the leader of radical Islam, take that mantle away from Al Qaeda, and that's another of their motives.
But it comes down to something very simple.
They fired a rocket at Haifa, Israel's third largest city, and it hit.
Israel withdrew from Lebanon because it didn't want to fight a war of attrition against an insurgency.
But if Hezbollah is going to impose an insurgency on them, they'd much rather it take place inside of Lebanon than uh in northern Israel.
Uh hitting the third largest city with a missile is just too scary for the Israelis.
They've got to go up there, they've got to take out the launchers, they've got to push Hezbollah back.
Now they do that, they're going to be condemned by the entire world.
So if they're going to be condemned by the entire world, in for a penny, in for a pound, they are going to go and take apart Hezbollah, capture their ammunition dumps, take out their headquarters, disrupt their training camps.
They're going to put them in a position That is going to take several years for them to recover.
The interesting thing about all the criticism of Israel in the world is in a way it's now become counterproductive.
Given the fact that Israel is going to be criticized no matter what it does, it may as well take the most extreme steps for the same cost, uh, rather than let it rest.
But it basically comes down to this.
You shoot a rocket to the third largest city in Israel.
Israel is going to come back at you hard.
Hezbollah knew that.
They did it anyway.
They have another game plan.
They expect to be defeated.
But you've got a lot of Westerners in Beirut.
And Hezbollah pioneered hostage taking.
And my worry right now is I think the Israeli invasion is hardwired.
That's going in.
Sunday, Monday, sometime that time frame.
The thing to worry about right now is Hezbollah held hostages in the in Lebanon for years.
Yeah, we've got well, we've got twenty-five thousand or so Americans right now that we're talking about as we did at the start of the show.
How are we going to get them out of there?
Uh and uh there's there's talk, obviously, of American soldiers going in and getting the Americans out of Lebanon, which opens twenty-five thousand people is a lot of people to get out of Lebanon.
It's a done is to move into the Christian areas in the Shuf Mountains in the center, in the Christian areas of Beirut, get some of those people out.
But I think right now in London, in Washington, in Tel Aviv, one of the things that's being discussed between now and then is what to do about those people.
And it may be that Hezbollah is betting that Washington is going to hold the Israelis off out of fear of a hostage situation.
But I don't think that's going to happen.
I think they've miscalculated.
Washington wants Israel to go.
We want uh to continue the conversation and we shall.
George Friedman is here and our callers at 1-800-282-2882.
This is the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Paul W. Smith in for Rush.
We continue the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Paul W. Smith, a fellow student of the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, coming to you today from the Midwest campus in Detroit, Michigan.
The Motor City, the Growing Life Sciences Corridor, with Google choosing Michigan and Arbor, Michigan for their next Googleplex.
We're geeked about that.
And of course, here at the Institute, there is never a final exam, but we are tested every day.
Latest coming in from Lebanon from Beirut, in fact, in fact, Hezbollah has their own television station, Hezbollah TV reporting that the building housing the headquarters of the Hezbollah group has been destroyed in an Israeli airstrike.
No big surprise there.
Iran's president warning Israel against extending its offensive in Lebanon to neighboring Syria, saying such a move would be regarded as an attack on the whole Islamic world and be met with, quote, a crushing response.
We continue with an expert in this area, the nation's largest private intelligence firm, George Freedman is with us, CEO of Stratford.com, company he began in 1996, which leads the field in private intelligence, his most recent book, America's Secret War, details America's overt and covert efforts in the war on terror, but you don't give away any secrets.
You're not like uh New York Times or anything, are you, George?
Uh, no, I've got two kids in the military.
I prefer to avoid that.
All right, good for you.
1-800-282-2882.
1-800-282-2882.
And uh, let's go back to our callers here.
Did we leave you with uh were you gonna make uh one point or another, or we can we go right back to our callers here?
Let's go to our callers.
Did you finish?
Okay, you finished your thought.
Let's go to Jeff in Kearney, Nebraska.
Jeff, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Paul W. Smith, and you're talking too with George Friedman.
Hey, uh, Paul.
Love Michigan.
It's kind of a little secret for us, but uh love that that state.
It's a great question.
Professor I've got a question.
Uh I could understand when uh Iran was attempting to provoke the United States with their uh nuclear program so that we might fail in Iraq and our foreign policy in the area would fail.
But why, why in the world are they trying to provoke Israel?
They're not particularly concerned about Israel, and they're not particularly concerned about Lebanon.
They're concerned about two things.
One, they're really concerned about what's happening in Iraq.
Very frankly, the United States is doing a little too well from their point of view.
They want to dominate Iraq, and they're trying to negotiate with the United States on that subject.
Uh, they use their nuclear program as a lever to threaten the United States with and to try to get concessions there.
Now, in doing this in Israel, they get an other lever.
Because right now, the U.S. is pretty much dismantled Al Qaeda on a global basis.
We haven't been hit in five years.
Hezbollah is a global organization.
And what the Iranians are really doing here is signaling the United States that there's a new sheriff in town, or rather, an old sheriff has woken up.
And that now the Iranians are coming at us with instability in Iraq, a nuclear program that may or may not be there, and finally, a very potent uh terrorist force, Hezbollah.
And what they're trying to get the United States to do is say, there are just too many things coming at me, Iran.
What do you guys want for a settlement on Iraq?
And that's one of the reasons why the United States is very happy to see the Israelis take apart Hezbollah.
Now, from the Iranian point of view, if Hezbollah operates globally, uh, they can claim the leadership of the Islamic world.
If Israel invades uh Lebanon and takes apart Hezbollah, Iran can say, you know, Al-Qaeda was yesterday's news.
We have reclaimed our position as the leader of the Islamic Revolution.
Forget the Saudis, forget the Wahhabis, forget Al-Qaeda.
We're back.
We provoke the Israelis, and we're going to take them on.
Either way it breaks, Iran figures it's got the advantage.
Let's hear from Saeed in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Paul W. Smith along with George Friedman.
Welcome, Saeed.
Yes, good morning, and thank you very much for taking my call.
I wanted to reiterate that this is a a very pivotal point in the history of the Middle East.
Uh at balance, the resolution to the Arab Israeli conflict, um, stability and democracy in Iraq, and the solution to worldwide radical Islamic terrorism lies in the West's recognition of the Islamic Republic of Iran as the uh as the greatest enemy of of the three things that I outlined.
Also, it is important for for for for for people to know that the people of Iran have no inherent uh um uh uh conflict um with uh with Israel.
They are not even a party to the Arab Israeli conflict.
The Iran that I grew up in was uh Jews and Muslims live side by side in peace for for thousands of years.
Uh so this is a creation of just the the the mullahs that uh that are keeping the Iranian people in um uh uh in in a in a um uh uh in bondage, basically.
And that's how the people of Lebanon feel, uh Said.
They they don't have a at this point the people of Lebanon and the people of Israel don't have a problem with each other necessarily, but it's Hezbollah dragging them into it.
My my question is uh does this also not represent an opportunity uh um uh here that um uh instead of you know the uh the much has been said about the lack of a military auction against Iran.
Um engaging the Iranian surrogate Hezbollah in in uh in Lebanon puts Iran in a position where it has to s to to fight a uh a war outside of its borders.
Very difficult for uh for for Iran to do to project power outside of its border against a organized military um action from Israel.
You you've asked a good question.
Let me let me we're gonna have to put you on hold, and your phone's making some funny noises too, but let's talk about that when we come back, because then we're gonna have to wrap it up with George Friedman.
Does this in fact create an opportunity?
We'll get George's answer in just a moment.
Here on the Rush Limbaugh program.
The Rush Limbaugh program, I'm Paul W. Smith.
Final question, George Friedman.
Is there an opportunity for the United States in this Middle East crisis, in your opinion?
Yeah.
The United States and Israel can crush Hezbollah and make it an operative, and it can also show that Iran is impotent.
Because the fact is, last corn put it, there's nothing Iran can do.
But at the same time, this is going to be tough.
I think there are going to be hostages taken.
There's certainly to be casualties.
Israeli troops will murder people accidentally, you know, kill people accidentally.
There will be CNN reports showing crying children, all of which are tragic.
So the real contest here is between the ability of these operations to be carried out and the ability of the American public to stand with it as it goes on.
George Friedman, thanks very much from Strat4, S T R A T F O R dot com in his book, America's Secret War, detailing America's Overt and Covert Efforts in the War on Terror.
When we come back, is the American dream dead?
That and more on the Rush Limbaugh program.
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