The StoneZONE - Roger Stone - Col. Douglas McGregor | 06-16-25
Aired: 2025-06-17
Duration: 21:46


=== Rural Hospitals Defending America (15:38) ===

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[00:01:01]  The Stone Zone.
[00:01:02]  Entertaining and informative on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:01:08]  And we're back in the Stone Zone.
[00:01:10]  Joining me now, retired U.S. Army Colonel and combat veteran Douglas McGregor.
[00:01:16]  He is a legend in military circles because of his leadership in the Battle of 73 Easting, the U.S. Army's largest tank battle since World War II.
[00:01:27]  He is also one of the most formidable defense and foreign policy thinkers in the country.
[00:01:34]  He is the CEO of our country, Our Choice.
[00:01:37]  You can follow him at ourcountryourchoice.com.
[00:01:40]  Former advisor to the Secretary of Defense, Colonel McGregor, welcome back into the Stone Zone.
[00:01:46]  You have a very strong and persuasive piece today, picked up by Zero Hedge, I was happy to say, that you make the case that the President Trump should not use U.S. force, should not enter this conflict, should not attack Iran.
[00:02:05]  At the same time, Bibi Netanyahu is telling us that if Tel Aviv fails, well, New York City will be attacked, which I think is unlikely.
[00:02:16]  Please, Colonel, make the case.
[00:02:21]  Hi, Roger.
[00:02:22]  It's good to talk with you.
[00:02:23]  My concern at this point is that the situation for Israel with each passing hour grows worse.
[00:02:31]  Israel is really being pulverized.
[00:02:34]  The Iron Dome, as well as Israeli intelligence, I think collectively they failed.
[00:02:40]  The Israelis launched a Pearl Harbor-style attack, expected the Iranians to reel in shock, and to their surprise, the Iranians recovered quite quickly.
[00:02:51]  And since then, Iranians have been launching inexhaustible numbers of missiles.
[00:02:57]  Large numbers were old missiles designed to attract Israeli and American air defense capabilities because we have the FAD radar and battery on the ground, as well as Patriots.
[00:03:10]  These are operated by U.S. troops.
[00:03:12]  We also have Aegis-class destroyers operating the Aegis air defense system.
[00:03:18]  And Roger, we're running out of missiles.
[00:03:20]  We just don't have very many in reserve.
[00:03:23]  The Israelis are running through most of those.
[00:03:26]  And to be frank, the Iranians have only just begun.
[00:03:29]  And right now, the latest reports that I'm seeing from people I trust who know what's happening tell me that the Iranians are planning to launch attacks so devastating that by the time the carrier battle groups and additional forces, air and naval power from the United States arrive in the region, there may not be much of Israel left.
[00:03:51]  So my view is that the best thing right now that we can do to rescue Israel from this situation is to come to an end, to say, look, we've got to find a different way forward.
[00:04:02]  We have to end the tragedy in Gaza.
[00:04:05]  That's being the catalyst for all of this hatred and destruction.
[00:04:08]  We have to put all of our assumptions aside.
[00:04:11]  We need a great power conference.
[00:04:14]  And instead of trying to exclude everybody we don't like, we have to bring in the people that can help us put this thing together.
[00:04:20]  And that means Russia and China, India, and probably Brazil, along with ourselves, sit down and talk to each other as equals, insist on a ceasefire, and then tell the Iranians and the Israelis, stand down, and we'll arbitrate this thing.
[00:04:38]  And the outcome may not be 100% of what anybody wants, but I think we need to do something quickly because this could ultimately spin out of control, move beyond the region, and the Russians and the Chinese and others who may not really want to be part of this may feel obligated to intervene.
[00:04:56]  And then there is always a nuclear threshold.
[00:04:59]  And the Israelis have substantial numbers of nuclear warheads.
[00:05:03]  Using one of those at this point would be catastrophic because I think inevitably nuclear weapons would be used against them, not necessarily from Iran, but other sources.
[00:05:13]  In other words, before this thing goes any further, I think President Trump needs to stand up and say, let's take a different approach entirely.
[00:05:23]  He seems to have done that.
[00:05:25]  It was interesting that immediately after the attack by Israel, he was calling for talks.
[00:05:30]  He wanted to get the Iranians back to the table.
[00:05:33]  It's a Wall Street Journal story out this afternoon.
[00:05:36]  It says that they are ready to come back to the table.
[00:05:38]  I found that encouraging.
[00:05:40]  Do you think the Iranians are foolish enough or perhaps their command and control is somewhat dysfunctional?
[00:05:47]  Do you think that they will attack any U.S. asset either intentionally or through miscalculation or perhaps one of their proxies does so, prompting the president to act in a way that may not be in our best interests?
[00:06:04]  Thus far, the Iranians have scrupulously avoided doing anything that would give the United States an excuse to intervene.
[00:06:13]  As for the talk business, I'm very suspicious of what comes out of the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and others.
[00:06:19]  I don't find any evidence that the Iranians have expressed an interest or a willingness to come back at all.
[00:06:25]  And the other thing is that I think President Trump's credibility is at an all-time low.
[00:06:33]  They regard him as somebody they can't believe.
[00:06:36]  And I'm afraid that's true in Russia and China, which is another reason why President Trump needs to bring them in to a conference and stop pretending that we are not really on the side of Israel.
[00:06:49]  We are 100% on Israel's side.
[00:06:52]  Everybody knows that.
[00:06:53]  But we're also interested in Israel's survival, and we're not interested in destroying Iran.
[00:06:59]  And unless we stand up and say that and bring those others in, whatever President Trump does at this point may not make a great deal of difference.
[00:07:07]  Now, our mutual friend, General Flynn, has argued that the Israelis should be allowed to proceed in their own defense.
[00:07:15]  But playing devil's advocate, is it not true that the Fordow nuclear site is so heavily embedded that only American power, our proprietary conventional 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs, have the capability to take it out?
[00:07:36]  Well, Roger, I think you make a good point.
[00:07:38]  I would go one step further, and I would say I'm not sure we can take it out.
[00:07:43]  This is kind of a self-defeating process.
[00:07:47]  We could have had an agreement with reduced uranium enrichment for purely civilian purposes.
[00:07:54]  That was rejected, and ultimately it was clear that Iran had a choice.
[00:07:59]  It could be humiliated and essentially get on its knees and beg for forgiveness and be a subject state of Greater Israel, or it could fight.
[00:08:08]  You can't do business that way.
[00:08:10]  And Iran is not going to be subjugated.
[00:08:13]  We have to treat Iran as a sovereign state.
[00:08:16]  And I think if we bring in all of these other great powers at a conference, let the various people make their case, arbitrate it and sort it out, we can avoid a major war.
[00:08:27]  The problem right now is that you've got the Russians who are telling the Iranians, look, work with us.
[00:08:33]  We'll find a way around this.
[00:08:34]  You know, you can send your spent fuel to us.
[00:08:37]  You can store whatever you want with us.
[00:08:40]  And the Iranians are saying, no, we are a sovereign power.
[00:08:43]  We are not going to surrender our sovereignty.
[00:08:46]  So it's a very bad situation.
[00:08:49]  And then you've got President Trump.
[00:08:51]  You know President Trump, Roger, very, very well.
[00:08:53]  He takes things very personally.
[00:08:55]  And the worst thing that could possibly happen at this stage is that he decides to become personally enraged and commit us to a conflict that we're not prepared to fight.
[00:09:04]  We'll go through our arsenal of missiles and rockets and everything else very, very rapidly.
[00:09:09]  The best that we can put to sea right now at one time are four carrier battle groups.
[00:09:14]  We've got two on their way there.
[00:09:16]  Then there'll be two more that will be sent over.
[00:09:18]  They'll overlap for a brief period of time.
[00:09:20]  And then the other two will have to pull out.
[00:09:22]  And then defending them is not going to be an easy proposition.
[00:09:25]  And the worst thing that I could imagine happening would be to lose a capital ship at sea right now.
[00:09:31]  Then you are crossed a so-called Rubicon.
[00:09:34]  How do you get out of it when you begin taking a major loss like that publicly?
[00:09:39]  Rural Americans deserve access to the best our nation has to offer, especially when it comes to health care.
[00:09:46]  Across every state and every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense, protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
[00:09:54]  No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
[00:09:56]  They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
[00:10:01]  Each year, America's over 5,000 hospitals care for millions of patients, providing 24-7 emergency care, delivering babies, cancer treatments, and other life-saving care that patients rely on.
[00:10:13]  Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
[00:10:20]  Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
[00:10:22]  They employ our neighbors and keep our families health.
[00:10:26]  But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
[00:10:29]  Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.
[00:10:33]  Don't cut rural health care.
[00:10:36]  The other excellent point that I think you make that most Americans do not recognize is they just assume that there will be no effect on them.
[00:10:44]  Should we proceed and the Iranians shut down the Strait of Hormuz, where almost a quarter of the world's global oil supply flows, it would be, as you point, a huge disruption to supply chains and the cause of runaway inflation.
[00:11:00]  You predict, I think, correctly, that gas could hit $7 a gallon virtually overnight.
[00:11:05]  Every working family in the country would be crushed.
[00:11:08]  Suddenly, truckers cannot deliver food, as you put it, causing our economy to crash.
[00:11:15]  So Israel taking, trying to drag us into this wider conflict, Americans should not assume that it'll have no effect on their everyday lives.
[00:11:26]  I think the impact would be catastrophic, as you point out.
[00:11:31]  No, you're 100% right.
[00:11:33]  Plus the fact.
[00:11:34]  I strongly support many of the internal, actually all of the domestic policies that President Trump has implemented.
[00:11:42]  They haven't been perfectly implemented.
[00:11:44]  We have a long way to go, but he is on the right track.
[00:11:46]  All of that could be lost overnight as a result of what you describe.
[00:11:51]  And Americans are pretty understanding until they can't eat, so they can't buy something, till they don't have a job.
[00:11:59]  We don't want to walk down that road.
[00:12:01]  And in the meantime, we can't lose sight of something else.
[00:12:05]  If we are truly Israel's friend, we stop suicide when we see it approaching.
[00:12:11]  And I think that's really the big issue.
[00:12:14]  Do we want Israel to survive?
[00:12:16]  I vote yes.
[00:12:17]  And if you vote yes, you've got to stop them.
[00:12:20]  This notion of letting them go on to defend themselves.
[00:12:23]  Wait a minute.
[00:12:24]  They're not defending themselves.
[00:12:26]  They're in an aggressive offensive war.
[00:12:28]  Greater Israel, it dramatically expands Israeli territory and control is not a matter of defense.
[00:12:35]  And so to say that is just ridiculous.
[00:12:38]  We've got to be honest.
[00:12:39]  Look at what's happening.
[00:12:41]  Put an end to this Gaza tragedy.
[00:12:44]  It has to end.
[00:12:45]  I was sent something tonight by a friend in Israel.
[00:12:49]  It was a video of people sitting in a shelter in Israel.
[00:12:54]  I thought at first it was an airport or perhaps a subway or something.
[00:12:58]  It was unfortunate.
[00:13:00]  I felt badly for the people who were there, but it's a hell of a lot nicer than being in Gaza right now.
[00:13:05]  And I think we need to put that Gaza thing right at the top of the agenda and end that catastrophe.
[00:13:13]  When President Trump visited Riyadh, and I think later said it again in Qatar, he announced that we would be getting food, medicine, and aid to those in Gaza.
[00:13:26]  But I saw no follow-up on that.
[00:13:28]  Do we believe that really happened?
[00:13:30]  No, no, Roger, it hasn't.
[00:13:32]  Very little has gotten through.
[00:13:35]  And that's been a deliberate Israeli policy.
[00:13:39]  You know, President Trump is someone that probably ought to publicly say that Israel should hold snap elections because it needs new leadership.
[00:13:49]  You know, mass murder is not a national policy that the world is going to support.
[00:13:56]  Some people got away with that in the past, and we know they still paid a price in the 20th century.
[00:14:01]  But this is the 21st.
[00:14:04]  That kind of thing is just no longer tolerable.
[00:14:06]  We shouldn't support it.
[00:14:08]  And he can stop it.
[00:14:10]  One of the most compelling things that you write here is we have 40,000 troops in the UAE, Qatar, across the Persian Gulf.
[00:14:17]  They're sitting ducks.
[00:14:18]  Iranian Shahred 136 drones cost about $20,000 each, while American Patriot missiles cost $4 million per interceptor.
[00:14:27]  Do the math, you say.
[00:14:29]  We will run through our inventory missiles and go broke while Americans come home in boxes.
[00:14:33]  This is, I think, a stunning reality.
[00:14:36]  You have much courage in saying it, but it has to be said.
[00:14:39]  It really does threaten to disrupt President Trump's governing coalition.
[00:14:45]  He was elected as the anti-war candidate.
[00:14:48]  He was elected as the candidate to a post-endless foreign war where our inherent national interests were not clear.
[00:14:56]  Yet I fear that some of his advisors, some around him, and some leaders, such as Netanyahu, seek to draw him into this war to do the dirty work of Israel.
[00:15:08]  And this, I agree with Tucker Carlson, who is taking quite a beating from some on the right today, but who is sticking to his guns as you have done.
[00:15:21]  While I have you, I do want to ask you about the stunning diplomatic move to bring Syria in out of the cold, to take our ambassador to Turkey, Tom Barak, who's an enormously able man, somebody I've known since 1972, make him a special envoy to Syria.

=== Colonel Douglas On Stability (05:15) ===

[00:15:38]  It's a stunning piece of statecraft, but I wonder what your thoughts are on the implications of it.
[00:15:47]  Well, the Turkish-Israeli cooperation that helped to produce the removal of Assad and the emergence of this new government of former ISIS members and former al-Qaeda members is something that's very difficult to fathom.
[00:16:05]  We want something that produces stability.
[00:16:09]  But most of the people that we're dealing with right now in Damascus are bathed in blood.
[00:16:16]  They've killed untold numbers of Christians, Druze, Shiites, Armenians, you name it.
[00:16:26]  I don't know how long this thing will last.
[00:16:29]  And right now, the relationship between the Israelis and the Turks on this whole score is sickeningly reminiscent of the Nazis and the Communists in 1939.
[00:16:42]  I don't know how long this thing will last, Roger.
[00:16:45]  I think we need to be very careful.
[00:16:48]  We're in the Stone Zone.
[00:16:49]  We're talking to Colonel Douglas McGregor, and we'll be right back.
[00:16:53]  The Stone Zone on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:16:59]  The Stone Zone, entertaining and informative on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:17:06]  And we're back.
[00:17:07]  We're talking to retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas McGregor, former advisor to the Secretary of Defense and author of five books on military history and strategy, one of the great geopolitical and military strategic thinkers in the country.
[00:17:24]  And he has a very strong piece picked up today by Zero Hedge, in which he urges President Trump not to commit American force to the war in Iran.
[00:17:37]  You have a kind of a five-point proposal here for the president that you say the president should do to disfuse the conflict.
[00:17:45]  Colonel McGregor, go through this for us.
[00:17:49]  Well, first and foremost, I think we should do something nobody in Washington likes to do, which is to go to the United Nations and ask the United Nations Security Council to effectively impose a ceasefire that we say we will support, end the killing in Gaza, and make it clear to the Israelis that until they stop killing people in Gaza, we are not going to continue our aid to them.
[00:18:14]  Then also to talk about the other things that are going to have to happen in connection with Gaza, one of which is eventually we've got to put some soldiers in there that will provide some measure of security and separate the parties, and they'll have to come from non-aligned nations, not from us.
[00:18:31]  And then I think more important than anything else, we've got to hold a conference.
[00:18:36]  These things have happened before.
[00:18:38]  They've been done before, during, and after wars.
[00:18:41]  We need a great power conference, and we need to bring in China, Russia, the United States, also India, I would argue, which is not aligned but has strong interests in the end of this instability and ultimately Brazil.
[00:18:55]  We need to make this as global as we can, but still keep it to a small group of people.
[00:19:01]  And then we need to sort out these issues.
[00:19:03]  And I don't think that harms us.
[00:19:05]  I don't think that diminishes our power.
[00:19:07]  I think it will increase our influence and stature.
[00:19:10]  And I think it would be very good for President Trump to offer to host this wherever we want to have it and lead this effort and get everybody on side.
[00:19:21]  And we'll come up with a solution that won't necessarily be what everybody wants, but it will stop the war.
[00:19:27]  Because I'm very afraid of where things are headed right now.
[00:19:31]  Israel is not doing well, and we can't necessarily rescue it in time.
[00:19:37]  We need an end to this as soon as possible.
[00:19:39]  Well, as you correctly point out, the neocons, the warmongers have had 22 years, and they have failed.
[00:19:46]  They have lied to us.
[00:19:48]  The results since 2003 in the Middle East, 7,000 dead Americans, as you write, 50,000 wounded, open borders, 100,000 Americans dying yearly from fentanyl poison.
[00:19:58]  Clearly, America has other priorities at this moment, and I agree with you.
[00:20:03]  Our fear is that President Trump will lose his mandate to close our borders, to negotiate better trade deals, to cut taxes and regulation, to rebuild our military strength, to make America healthy again.
[00:20:17]  All of these important aspects of Trumpism could be lost with a decision to enter this war with our military might.
[00:20:27]  Let me thank our guest today, Colonel Douglas McGregor.
[00:20:30]  You can find him again at ourcountryourchoice.com.
[00:20:34]  That's ourcountryourchoice.com.
[00:20:36]  Colonel McGregor, thank you so much for joining us today in the Stone Zone.
[00:20:41]  Hey, thank you, Roger.
[00:20:42]  Appreciate it.
[00:20:42]  God bless you.
[00:20:44]  Thanks for listening to The Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
[00:20:48]  You can hear The Stone Zone with Roger Stone weeknights at 8 on 77 WABC.

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