Trump Tweets War Warning, Pompeo Wants Regime Change: US Iran Attack Coming Soon?
President Trump sent out an angry, all-caps, Tweet last night, warning Iran that it would suffer "consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before" if it threatens the United States. This came after Iranian president Rouhani said that peace with Iran would be the "mother of all peace" but war would be the "mother of all war." Secretary of State Pompeo also joined in, announcing a new US government propaganda media outlet aiming to push Iranians toward regime change and calling the country's leaders "mafia-like." Well-funded neocon think tanks in Washington like the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies are dedicated to war with Iran. Will they succeed?
President Trump sent out an angry, all-caps, Tweet last night, warning Iran that it would suffer "consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before" if it threatens the United States. This came after Iranian president Rouhani said that peace with Iran would be the "mother of all peace" but war would be the "mother of all war." Secretary of State Pompeo also joined in, announcing a new US government propaganda media outlet aiming to push Iranians toward regime change and calling the country's leaders "mafia-like." Well-funded neocon think tanks in Washington like the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies are dedicated to war with Iran. Will they succeed?
President Trump sent out an angry, all-caps, Tweet last night, warning Iran that it would suffer "consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before" if it threatens the United States. This came after Iranian president Rouhani said that peace with Iran would be the "mother of all peace" but war would be the "mother of all war." Secretary of State Pompeo also joined in, announcing a new US government propaganda media outlet aiming to push Iranians toward regime change and calling the country's leaders "mafia-like." Well-funded neocon think tanks in Washington like the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies are dedicated to war with Iran. Will they succeed?
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Liberty Report.
Obviously, you can see that today we only have audio, no video.
Our technician is out, but hopefully, we can get you a good message and update you on what's happening.
And Daniel is with us as the co-host.
Daniel, welcome to the program.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you?
Well, doing well, and we have to improvise a little bit today, but I guess our viewers can stand not looking at us every single day.
The important thing is the message, and there's lots to talk about.
There's more to talk about today, and it's interesting.
And guess what?
We're going to be talking about Iran and foreign policy and Donald Trump.
And also, somebody that sort of gets to me, and that's our Secretary of State, Pompeo.
You know, we have our ups and downs with Trump, and he's one day struggling for peace and working for peace, and the next day he's aggravating things.
But if you really are looking for an aggravator, I think you go to Pompeo.
But Trump is responsible.
He appoints these people.
And the thing that has always befuddled us is that, you know, one day he's doing something that we praise.
And, you know, when he tries to be more sensible with Russia and when he wants to open up the door to negotiation with North Korea.
But he has been consistent with Iran.
And here they go.
Yesterday, it just opened fire threats and intimidations.
We have sanctions on Iran.
And we got out of the nuk agreement and put on sanctions and just a mess.
But then it ratcheted up because the Iranians started responding.
And I think very dangerous situation.
And Trump, though, has took the position, oh, it'll before you know it.
They're going to come and they'll want to make a deal.
So he's still following his strategy.
And I guess he thinks he had a total victory with North Korea.
And maybe he can be more effective than we might think, or at least what I might think.
But anyway, right now he's pushing it, and Pompeo's there, and those are his advisors.
And if they get in a quandary, they just go to John Bolton, and he'll sort it all out.
But I think it's a mess.
And this is a dangerous spot.
Israel is cheering Trump on.
Nanyahoo is very complimentary of what's happening.
But if we're working toward peace, it's not exactly a good sign for our position.
Yeah, Dr. Paul, you know, we decided on this topic because late last night, it was, I think, about 8 or 9 o'clock Eastern Time, President Trump put out a tweet, and he put it out in all caps.
So he's very serious.
He said, to Iranian President Rouhani, never ever threaten the United States again, or you will suffer consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before.
You are no longer a country that will stand for your demented, we are no longer a country that will stand for your demented words of violence and death.
Be cautious.
So all caps, a big warning, big warning from him.
And it was the context of the tweet, though, was something actually, if you read it carefully, you'll see that it wasn't the provocation that Trump was trying to make it.
It was President Rouhani of Iran who was essentially saying that Iran prefers peace to war.
He tweeted earlier, Americans must understand well that peace with Iran is the mother of all peace, and war with Iran is the mother of all wars.
So he's saying it's better to have peace than war, but if you pick a fight and if you invade us, we're going to come at you.
You know, you're going to have a fight on your hands.
Talk about ratcheting it up really unnecessarily.
Yeah, and then Pompeo follows it up, and he said that, oh, yes, you know, the Rouhanis and these guys, these little radicals, and they're like the mafia, and they always accuse us of provoking things.
But Pompeo wanted to argue that their goal was to help the dissidents.
Well, you know, does he know anything about it?
Rouhani actually represents a more modest tone, and he was elected, and yet he, but Pompeo said, well, these guys are so bad, we have to help put the dissidents in power.
Sanctions and Diplomatic Tensions00:07:12
You mean that they're going to be involved in internal election and support of candidates?
But that goes on and on.
And, of course, we've said it many times.
Once you go in there and start helping people, you unify everybody.
The moderates unify with the radicals because they have to do it for patriotic reasons.
Exactly.
And it's really funny to see Pompeo.
You know, he was over at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley.
His chest was puffed out, and he's making all these statements, which is pretty unseemly for a Secretary of State.
The gentleman who's in charge of our diplomacy for the United States is over there puffing out his chest for war.
But, you know, let's talk about Iran versus some of our other allies.
They may not have perfect elections.
Of course, neither do we, but at least they have elections.
We pointed out before, how about our good allies, the Saudis?
They don't have any elections.
When he talks about helping the dissidents come to power, we know who he's talking about.
He's talking about this crazed cult, the MEK.
And if the U.S. thinks that this group, this terrorist organization, is going to go and take over Iran, they're more deluded and demented than they were when they were pushing the war with Iraq.
Well, that's for sure.
And they were describing these people that were with the crooked schemes.
I kept thinking, does he know what's going on or what kind of reputation our CIA and FBI has to say that they are going to be, you know, and he mocked the idea of these religious people.
And at the same time, you know, he ignores the fact that right now the intelligence community in this country is on the ropes.
But I think one of the big issues going on right now are the sanctions.
We put on sanctions, we leave that treaty.
And now, though, we're preparing to put on sanctions for anybody who's willing to break the sanctions.
So we're going to take on a lot of people, the Europeans and the rest.
But I think the other thing that's interesting, you can be sure the Chinese are very happy to help break the sanctions and buy the oil from Iran.
But I think one other one that's in a way hilarious, Iraq is going to break the sanctions because they buy a lot of oil from Iran, and we're going to stop it.
Well, that's our country.
We own them.
You mean they're going to turn against us?
And they're going to continue to deal with the Iranians.
So the whole thing is such a joke, a joke in a sense of a sad thing.
It's so tragic.
And the other word that I think of when I look at all this is so unnecessary.
Why are they compelled to do this?
And yet, I guess they sincerely believe they'll make a better world, I guess, from their viewpoint.
A better world for whom?
And that's when you have to narrow it down on exactly who these people are working for.
Yeah, that's a great point, Dr. Paul, bringing up Iraq, because it's expected that they will get a waiver and be allowed to buy gas and oil from Iran because they're extremely dependent on it.
And, of course, it's a neighbor.
And interestingly enough, you know, our candidate, quote unquote, lost the election, and he's no longer in charge.
So, you know, this is just another long-term example of what happens when the U.S. gets involved in regime change, which is exactly what they're trying to do with Iran.
Yeah, and, you know, the one thing is if you're if anybody makes a sincere effort to try to sort this out and make the right kind of anticipation, whether they're on our side or whether we were thinking about how the others would think about it, because it's on again, off again.
Yesterday, it's one thing.
Today, it's another thing.
And some people say, well, that's just Trump's strategy, Trump's strategy.
Well, it might be, but I don't think it's a very good idea.
A lot of people don't think about it or know about it.
One of the significant events that helped lead us into war with Japan in World War II had to do with oil and sanctions and us cutting off the oil.
You know, oh, well, that's who knew that the Japanese were bad people already, and that's it.
Well, they had their problems, but I'll tell you what, sanctions.
And we wouldn't put up with it.
Boy, if we were under the gun and they cut off a vital supply of something, we would be pretty furious.
Yet we do it nonchalantly and think that they're going to roll over.
And it's this sense of superior power because we have our empire and we have control of the monetary system, which we're rapidly losing and losing control of the reserve currency of the world.
But up until now, we've been able to do it.
But, boy, you know, this could break loose where, you know, if these sanctions are challenged by our allies, I would consider that a significant event.
And I think that's what's going on with the Europeans.
I don't know.
But the Europeans so far have tended to roll over pretty much for us.
But we'll have to wait and see.
One of these days, it'll be to their advantage to totally ignore us.
And it would be ironic, and I read this somewhere, if the Chinese, of course, you know, what is the U.S. going to do threaten to blockade the Chinese?
You know, we depend on them, but the Chinese may end up buying every single bit of excess capacity from Iran at a discount, you know, to throw our nose in it.
But, you know, one reason for this escalation, this war of words that really seems to reach a pitch yesterday is that Iran responded to the U.S. doing everything it can to keep them from selling their oil, which is their economic livelihood.
They said, if you blockade our oil and don't let us sell it, we're not going to let any other oil get out of the Persian Gulf.
We're going to block the Strait of Hormuz.
So it's a retaliatory motion on the part of Iran, not an aggressive, it's more of a defensive motion.
If you try to overthrow our government by blocking our oil, we're not going to let anyone sell it.
So that's kind of the origin of this spike.
And as you say, so unnecessary.
It is, and they work from the basis that we have a moral responsibility.
Unfortunately, they say it this way.
We work from a moral responsibility that we should do this.
We should spread our goodness.
And it is up to us because there is no other superpower and we don't want to have another one because it would be chaotic.
And a lot of people buy into this.
But I think less so than it used to be.
I think people are questioning.
I think that's why we have chaos in our government because people are getting a little upset with this on again off again.
But I think the other thing that the other factor here is the hatred that has developed between the political parties and the political system and the hatred toward Trump, which is there's not just one side that's responsible for this, but it's that antagonism that seems to override some of these other issues.
People Questioning Authority00:08:45
And obviously, if some of these things that were going on and the Democrats were in charge, they would be very accepted and it would be exactly opposite.
The one advantage that the opposition to Trump has is they have control of the media.
So if the Democrats, if Hillary were in charge, we wouldn't be hearing of these problems.
It would all be spoon-fed, you know, by the media.
Today, though, the media is in close alliance with the Democrats, so they can portray this and perpetuate it.
And I think that just adds fuel to the fire and this antagonism.
But what I fear is one of these days, something will get loose.
You mentioned the Straits of Hermuse.
What happens if an accident happens?
You know, that could be a big deal.
And that's the thing that the supporters were active on Twitter, Trump's supporters, and even some of his libertarian supporters, they're saying, oh, there's nothing to worry about.
This is just Trump.
This is exactly what he did to Kim Jong-un before they got together.
So it's just kind of how he does.
Things don't worry about it.
But, you know, that's pretty unsatisfying when you're thinking about a president who can launch missiles at will and doesn't care about getting permission from Congress.
You know, that's just not good enough, I don't think.
Yeah, and, you know, their military general in charge, the Iranian one, he says that Trump wouldn't dare take any military action against Iran.
Well, quite to the opposite, Trump is the one that shoots from the hip, and he's capable of doing it.
You know, early on, and I'm sure a lot of people forgot, and a lot of people remember, is what he wanted to demonstrate is that he wanted to test that big bomb.
It was not nuclear, but he said, well, I'm just going to go over there and show them what I'm talking about.
This is what's going to happen to you guys if you don't listen to me.
And he drops that in Afghanistan.
And he wasn't supposed to kill very many people, but it still was damaging.
But, you know, diplomatically, it aggravates and makes things worse.
So Trump, I think he is unpredictable.
That's why I think we've gone out of our way that when we see him moving in the right direction and he's getting a bum ramp, we try to encourage that.
And that, of course, was this bum ramp he got by talking to Putin.
And that is the way we want him to go.
And also in Korea, in North Korea, dealing with North Korea.
But then again, we have to be very cautious in our optimism because what should we expect if he said, hey, Pompeo and John Bolton, what I should do about this?
But then again, people say, well, that doesn't matter.
They're just there to sort of prop up the neocons.
And Trump, Trump's his own man.
He makes his own decision.
He's not looking for any advice from us or from them.
Yeah, and that's the thing I don't know about that because, you know, Pompeo has extremely close ties to a very influential think tank in Washington called the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
And this is a hardcore neocon think tank.
You'd recognize a lot of the second-tier names, the people involved with the invasion of Iraq.
But this is, you know, we often warn about the influence of neocon think tanks.
But the FDD is funded in the millions.
It's a small think tank.
Most Americans haven't heard of it.
The founder of Home Depot, for example, Bernard Marcus, gave them $10 million in one year alone.
And their number one issue is canceling the deal with Iran and then regime change.
They've already got half of what they want, and they're piling money in.
They've hosted Pompeo on many occasions.
So this is the danger of these unaccountable Washington think tanks.
You know, the other way to probably explain some of my frustration with the fact that they're so inconsistent and they don't follow a pattern, but maybe the inconsistency is their pattern, you know, and that is to have distractions.
So when you look at North Korea, that's the threat to the world.
We have to do with it.
Ah, we've calmed that down.
Now we're talking to them.
We've settled this down.
And people say, well, this is good.
This is good.
Oh, I'll talk to Putin.
Well, this is good.
We're moving in the right direction.
At the same time, the real fight is with Iran.
And I think we've made that point many times.
And so these other things, and it's not just inconsistency, because if he really was working for peace, you know, in North Korea or working toward better arrangements with Russia, he wouldn't have those advisors.
He wouldn't be listening to somebody that is closely tied to these neocon think tanks.
So maybe there's a purpose for all this and the chaos is not just because they're inconsistent.
Maybe they're consistently trying to distract and fool the people.
Yeah, and that's a danger.
Even if he has, even if his instincts are good, he's surrounding himself with these people.
He's in an information prison cell.
But if you feel like we're ready to close, Dr. Paul, I would just have a final statement.
And that is kind of a message to Donald Trump.
And I was surprised.
I saw a poll this morning taken by Washington Post ABC News.
And it asked Americans, do they approve or disapprove of Trump's handling with the summit with Putin?
Now, if you watch the mainstream media, Dr. Paul, you'd say it was 110% negative.
It was a disaster.
Trump was a wimp.
He was horrible.
But this poll is fascinating.
It shows that among Republicans, 66% approve of how he handled himself.
You'd never know that watching the mainstream media.
But this is Trump's base.
66% is remarkable.
If he keeps that in mind and understands to ignore the mainstream media, keep trying to make peace with these countries, you know, I think he'll be sailing into a second term if he just listens to people.
Yeah, you know, I think the point you make is very important.
And excuse me, it's an optimistic point.
It means that the noise out there is not the real message that is being heard.
I think there's a little bit of comparison that we can make to the drug war.
I fought the drug war early on, but it never hurt me politically, and nobody understood this.
And then they started thinking, well, Ron doesn't like drugs.
He doesn't amuse them.
He doesn't give them the kids and all this stuff.
But they said it doesn't make any political sense.
How can you be against the drug war?
But the people never held it against me.
And before you knew it, the whole shift has occurred.
And the media was never on our side on that issue.
And the politicians who were so smart, they were never on that side of the issue.
And I think what you're pointing out there, that the noise about why Trump was doing the right thing about Trump doing, you know, having these talks with Putin, and he was being condemned.
And here you're describing a poll that shows the people were actually overcoming all of that.
That is very impressive.
So that's why I think people should always work from a set of principles that they try to refine and perfect as best possible, which they believe are true and right and working toward peace and prosperity.
In the long run, you win out.
As long as you're consistent, people trust you, they'll listen to you, and you can try to persuade and make yourself as informed as possible.
And I think people can be changed.
So I think that poll is just fantastic.
And I think it happens before.
I think truth wins out.
In the end, truth will prevail, even though we have to struggle and overcome all the political and the media obstacles.
But that is the reason we should give the people a lot of credit in spite of the fact that we complain about the people going along too much, too.
But I think ultimately, and that's why I think our program is important.
That's why I think the Internet's important in spite of its shortcomings, because I do believe the people are good people, and I certainly believe that the large majority of people are really with us on searching for and promoting peace and prosperity, which I am convinced obviously is a worthy goal.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.