Iran-Israel Possible Open War: Former CIA Analyst’s Perspective! W/John Kiriakou

Hello everybody and welcome to Geopolitical Trends, where truth matters. Very excited to be with you because I have an interesting guest for you, and I'm not gonna waste too much time because my guest is on limited time, so I'm gonna get into it right away. So let me bring in John in here. Hi John!

Hey, how are you David? Good to talk to you.

Thank you very much for being here on Carving Out Time. I know how busy you are, and, and we know, so my, my, uh, my viewers are very excited to have you here because they're going to be hearing from your perspective. So, uh, guys, just regarding John Kuriakou's bio, I put the entire, the full bio in the description along with the titles of his books. So just for me briefly to give you a heads up, just for you to know, who John Kiriakou is. He's an American author, journalist, and a former CIA intelligence. He was also working in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Congress. So, and he is the host of The Political Misfit along with Michelle, which by the way, I'm going to bring in Michelle next time. So FYI, guys, John speaks Arabic. So that's just for you to know. Yeah, and some of his books, guys. Here is the latest book here, The Reluctant Spy. You want more? You might want to check it out. I have also another picture of these, one of the books here, The Wind Time Like a Spy. So you might want to, guys, take a look at John's books. You will learn a lot because you don't become a CIA analyst just out of the whim of— those are years and years and years of experience. Yeah, well, speaking of that, John, I'm gonna get into it right away. Given your professional background as a former CIA analyst, as also one who is dealing with the Foreign Relations Committee and so forth, where do you see the stage of the global order given the chaos that's going on? What are we looking at?

Oh, I think we are looking at, uh, the beginning of a permanent multipolar world. You know, we had this period from the fall of the Soviet Union until, uh, you know, until recently, until the last few years, where it really was unipolar, with the Chinese making, uh, some, some moves to the, to the front of the line. But I think now we really do have a unipolar world, and I, I mean, a multipolar world. Yeah, yeah. And, and it, it didn't necessarily have to be from the American perspective But we made some strategic errors, I think. We pulled out of the JCPOA, for example. That was a mistake. Rather than to work constructively with the Chinese, we decided to— well, President Obama decided to pivot to Asia. That was meant to challenge the Chinese. And, you know, there were so many areas, David, where we could have cooperated with the Russians. It could have been counterterrorism, counternarcotics, counterproliferation, all different, different areas. And we elected instead to, uh, to challenge the Russians. Now, the Russians are not as economically strong, of course, as the Chinese. They don't have, uh, they don't have the, the kind of population that the Chinese do that will fuel economic growth. But really, there are three main powers in the world right now, and, um, And this is something I think we're going to have to get used to. Wow.

Well, speaking of JCPOA, I, as one who wrote a book about Iran back then, I titled Volatile State Iran in the Nuclear Age, and I did address this issue of the JCPOA back then. And I said, what is the possibility of one of the members kind of withdraw from it or sort of don't respect the spirit of the agreements? What I'd like to get your input, John, is about the ongoing tensions now between Israel and Iran, and this specifically pertains to the nuclear aspect. Do you foresee, in your opinion as an analyst, because you have the analytical thinking, do you foresee that Iran will move into that direction of, you know what, the gloves are off, we're going to go ahead, we're going to move forward with the nuclear device?

Boy, that's a tough one. And I, I think, well, in my heart I think no, because there's no upside for Iran. It will open Iran to any number of attacks and, and lifelong sanctions. Um, but then on the other side, it's probably something that, that the United States and the West ought to prepare for. Now, again, the JCPOA was a good idea. The JCPOA worked. And I'll add, too, that the monitoring mechanism that was called for in the JCPOA was exactly the same monitoring mechanism that the United Nations used in Iraq. The same lead seals, the same surveillance cameras, the same inspection regime. And it was working. It was working for the 2 or 3 years that it was actually in place. We decided to walk away from that, and that's a shame. Now, where we ended up burning ourselves—

Hmm.

US law says that we have to impose sanctions on any country that does business with Iran. Well, as JCPOA, everybody was doing business with Iran, including the British, the French, the Germans, the Japanese, everybody. And so just because Donald Trump decided that we were going to pull out of the JCPOA doesn't necessarily mean in our allies' thinking that now they should pull out of the JCPOA as well or risk being punished. And so the French were the first to say to us, look, if you want to pull out, go ahead and pull out, but we're not pulling out. We're signatories to this agreement too. And if you want to sanction us, then go ahead and sanction us. And of course we haven't. So, you know, in the first year or so of the Biden administration, it seemed like there was enough of a desire on the part of the US government to want to reenter the JCPOA. And so we engaged the Iranians in talks. Those talks went very poorly. Uh, not much was, was agreed upon, and in the end, both sides just, uh, gave up. It was a bilateral decision. We just gave up. So relations are, are not good. Now, with that said, I, I think we underestimate the Iranians' intelligence in that I think that they've concluded that they don't really need a nuclear weapons program. It would be too much of a risk for them, and it would be incredibly expensive. And I think that if they really wanted to have a nuclear weapon, they would have it by now. They could have certainly purchased the technology from the North Koreans or from the Pakistanis, and they haven't done that.

Very, very interesting. And now with the dynamics that's taking place between Iran and Israel, And as one, you spend a lot of time in the Middle East. As a matter of fact, you spend a lot of time in Iran.

Many years.

So yeah, you, so you are, you are very familiar of how the geopolitical landscape in that part of the world, even back then. And now I'm sure you are witnessing the shift and this shift that is taking place in light of what Israel did by attacking Iran's consulate in Damascus and by Iran retaliating. Do you foresee an open war? Because a lot of people are wondering. Are we going to be seeing an open war between these two, which means will involve other players?

No, I don't think so, and I'll tell you why. Um, first of all, I was stunned by the Israeli government's very disingenuous statement yesterday that it never occurred to them that the, that the rest of the world would consider an attack on the Iranian consulate a provocation. Like, what planet do you live on if a violation, a military violation of the Vienna Convention, is not seen as a provocation? So that was for domestic consumption. We should just ignore it. But, you know, I have to compliment the Iranians on the great restraint that they have shown, really since last October. Certainly they are arming the Houthis. They're funding and probably arming Hamas. They're arming and financing Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Lebanon.

But the Israelis have tried repeatedly to pull the Iranians into this war because they know that if the Iranians go to war with Israel, the United States will have to go to war on Israel's side. And the Iranians just have not taken the bait. Now God knows they've faced these provocations, but look at the Iranian response last weekend. You launch drones and ballistic missiles that take 4 hours to reach Israel knowing that they have the Iron Dome, knowing that the US has Patriot missiles in the region, knowing that the Jordanians are also watching the skies. They knew they weren't going to hit anything, but the point was that they responded, and they didn't respond hard enough to make the Israelis really do something terrible. I think it was a very good decision on the part of the Iranian government.

Yeah, some analysts were saying that it was a slap in the face to Israel because Israel now is not— as of today, no decision has been made within the war cabinet in Tel Aviv whether to retaliate or not.

That's right.

I'd like to go back to your point about the US getting involved with— hypothetically, we go with the hypothetical here— should this go forward with an open war, what do you think Russia and China will do vis-à-vis supporting Iran? Will they move forward with that or not?

That's a very good question. You know, just last week, And I don't even remember now who it was. It may have been the Polish president suggested almost offhandedly that maybe the Chinese would be interested in mediating. And then within 48 hours, the Chinese were offering to mediate. So one thing about China, I'm not a fan of the Chinese government, of course, but the Chinese do not— with, with very specific exceptions. The Chinese do not have a history of, um, imperialism. You know, they took Tibet. Absolutely, they took it. They've held it ever since. They have fought border wars with the Indians. They have fought border wars with the Vietnamese. But, but they don't go around the world invading other countries or attacking under other countries. It's just not something that's a part of their foreign policy. So I can't, I can't see the Chinese becoming directly involved in a Middle East conflict. I do believe that the Chinese will offer to mediate. The Russians, absent a conflict in Ukraine, would have to come in on the side of the Palestinians, not militarily necessarily. Yeah, but I think with, with weapons and with and with assistance and material and ammunition and things like that. Although, you know, you're talking about a lot of nuclear countries here, and I just like to believe that cooler heads in a situation like that would prevail.

Yeah, yeah. But at the same time, the West is preventing anything from moving forward. If I just can mentioned when China wanted to offer to mediate between Russia and Ukraine. What did we do? We stepped forward and kind of shut the door on that because we saw the success that China achieved when it comes down to establishing diplomatic ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Yeah, two arch enemies. So I do see the possibility of something like this, but the West is going to— I think the statement by the Polish president was nothing but for domestic consumption also. Because they don't want to see the Ukrainian conflict resolved, which, by the way, you and I know there is no way out but negotiation.

Yes.

And I'd like to have your input on that.

That's a point that I try to make as often as possible, and I say it frequently in my writing. One thing that the United States has been bad at in the last 20 years is allowing the diplomats to do their job. I remember when I was still at the CIA, we complained all the time about the George W. Bush administration because I had never seen an administration work so hard to not talk to our enemies as the George W. Bush administration. Going back, going back to— well, I was going to say the Nixon administration, but you could go all the way back to the end of the Second World War. And engagement with the Soviet Union, for example, and then beginning with, with, uh, Nixon, engagement with both the Soviet Union and China was, was a mainstay of American foreign policy. George W. Bush made a decision to not engage with our enemies, and that's become policy for both of the major political parties here in the United States. That's a, that's a mistake. And, you know, we used to say We used to say that here in the United States, our own partisan differences ended at the shore, right? And overseas, we were always unified. Well, you know what? Now we're unified again, but in the wrong way, in a bad way. We're unified in that we have this foreign policy where we try not to engage with the governments of countries with which we disagree. And I think that's just a terrible mistake. I'll add one other thing too, if you don't mind. Sure, I had occasion to, um, to speak with the Russian ambassador to the United States several months ago. I had written a column that he had read, and one of his aides reached out and he invited me to lunch. The ambassador invited me to lunch, and so he said he wanted to know one thing. Even in this time of war, is there any way that the United States and Russia can cooperate on something? And I said, oh yes, and I've been consistent with this. I said, look, Afghanistan produces 93% of the world's heroin. Almost all of that heroin goes to Russia and Iran, and Russia and Iran have the highest rates of opioid addiction in the world, 5 times the rate of opioid addiction that we have here in the United States. So we can absolutely cooperate on counter, uh, narcotics, which we don't do. Um, we are just as worried as the Russians are about, uh, the prospect of terrorist groups or rogue nations acquiring fissile material. So we should be and could be cooperating on counter-proliferation. And Russia has been the victim of terrorism just like The United States has been a victim of terrorism, and so we should be cooperating on counterterrorism. There was a piece in the Washington Post just today saying that Tajikistan, as small as it is and as small a population as it has, provides more fighters to ISIS on a per capita basis than any other country in the world. We should be cooperating with the Russians on that to stop that. And, and you do that by, by encouraging economic development and education.

But very, very interesting.

We're not working with them.

Yeah. Let me go back to the Middle East because again, there's a lot. Anything happen on a global stage, if the Middle East is involved, you know how it is. It's going to suck in all the energy. What I wanted to get your input on is the role of the Arab and Muslim countries. Hypothetically, should an open war escalate? What do you anticipate? What do you see? Because I see now Jordan is already— Egypt, I can't trust them. The Turks are playing both sides. I look at Turks with the issue of Cyprus and, and Greek, you know, that, that story. Then Saudis and United Arab Emirates, you know, they're giving a lip service to Americans, but they're doing their thing behind the scenes. Where do you see the role of the Muslim world that is wishy-washy as far as what it stands on?

That's a good way of putting it. And I would have to agree with you. I think it's largely wishy-washy. You know, looking at these countries independently of one another, the Saudis, regardless of their new relations with the Iranians, the Saudis hate the Iranians and they fear them. The Bahrainis fear them and hate them even more than the Saudis do. The Kuwaitis want to just be left alone. The Emiratis prefer strong business ties to Israel, but they're willing to take a step back over the course of this conflict. The Qataris are pro-Hamas, period. They always have been. The Omanis are the diplomats of the peninsula, so they want everybody just to get along. But then you look at the Egyptians, the Turks, some of these other countries, the Jordanians, as you pointed out. The Jordanians are in the world— are in the wrong neighborhood is what I meant to say. Oh, yeah.

Indeed.

They worry about the Israelis because they share such a long border with Israel, but at the same time, fully 50% of Jordan's population is Palestinian.

Palestinian.

And so they have to stand up for the Palestinians, Palestinian rights, and Palestinian human rights.

Yeah.

The Syrians, it goes without saying, are constantly wronged by the Israelis. So, you know, it comes down to the Egyptians. And what have the Egyptians done since October 7th? The Egyptians have done really nothing to help the Palestinians. They've sealed the border because what's the thing that the Egyptians want the least? They want an open border where Palestinians are going to stream across it and have to be placed in refugee camps in Sinai. That's happened before. They don't want it to happen again. So I think that the bottom line here, David, is all of these Arab countries are taking this unfortunate wait-and-see attitude, thinking What position can I take that is going to cause the least amount of damage to my own country? And then their thoughts of the Palestinians are secondary to that.

Very, very interesting. Let's shift to— and I know given the timing, and I'm keeping an eye on it— let's shift to Ukraine-Russia conflict. And the reason I wanted to tackle this before we go to Far East and Asia, we'll close up with that. So for the Ukraine-Russia conflict. What do you anticipate more coming forward given the statements last week by the Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying that, well, of course we're gonna admit Ukraine to NATO, which was crazy statement anyway. I don't even know why he said that. What I wanted to get your input, John, on is the idea that Russia is moving forward with some plan Yeah, are we seeing Russia taking over Kyiv anytime soon?

I don't think so. Um, you know, the Russians, the Russians from, from very shortly after the start of the war, uh, have been suggesting, uh, uh, peace talks, right, that would, that would be brokered either by the Chinese or by the Turks. Um, the United States and Ukraine have rejected that from the very beginning. Now the conventional wisdom is that the Ukrainians just cannot maintain this pace of war. They just can't. They can't hold the territory that they reclaimed from the Russians. The Russians are moving back in. Good weather is upon us, and that makes it easier for the Russians to move west. The bigger problem is that the Republican Party here in the United States has turned on Ukraine. Whether it's for ideological reasons or for economic reasons, the Republicans just don't want to fund this thing anymore. Now, on Saturday, the House of Representatives is going to vote to provide another $61 billion in aid to Ukraine. Half of that is going to, um, is going to be in the form of a loan, a loan that would be forgiven after the election. So, um, How much longer are we gonna, are we gonna end up doing that? I think that there's really no national, there's no national desire anymore here in the United States to keep funding this, this war and providing material for this war. And at the same time, Russia is so much bigger and so much stronger than Ukraine. The Ukrainians just don't have the population to keep this thing going forever. Wow.

And I think Ukrainians just did, uh, crossed one of the red lines now by attacking, uh, I think a radar system that deals with the nuclear weapons for Russia, which is a red line for— I wonder how, uh, the Russian president is going to respond to this, but, but it would be interesting to see. Now, if we are to think about this, will Europe ever take a stand as far as pushing back against the US as far as, you know, we're done with this, let's sit down with the Russians and negotiate a settlement. Do you see the Europeans taking an initiative like this?

Not under a Democratic president, no. Now, if Donald Trump becomes president again, he's expressed such anti-NATO sentiment that I think the Europeans would want to take leadership of of NATO. So long as there's a Democrat in the White House or a Republican who's not named Donald Trump, um, then I think, I think that NATO is going to continue to look to the United States for leadership and for the bulk of the NATO budget. At the same time, you know, you've got to ask yourself if, if NATO is really still necessary. Yeah, I, I'm, I personally believe that it's that it's not. You know, I, I learned something interesting the other day. Um, what is the only time in the history of NATO, starting in 1948 to the present, where NATO was called upon to defend another NATO country from attack? Do you know? It was September 11th.

11th.

That was it. That was it. And NATO came to our defense. Now unfortunately, that meant going to Afghanistan to occupy Afghanistan. But, um, but that's the only time. And you know, and another thing too, is it really worth the effort and the money? We have promised the Russians repeatedly over the course of the last 4 presidents that we would not continue to expand NATO to Russia's borders, and then we've broken that promise repeatedly. Look at Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland. We just keep doing it over and over and over again, and we give the Russians no reason to trust us.

Trust us. Yeah, we lost credibility. I mean, I've been saying this even during my time in Washington, that I was in the thick of it in a sense of what are we doing here? And sometimes you'll have a conversation with the boss The boss will invite you for dinner just to pick your brain on stuff. And I say, sir, that's where this is going is not going to bode well for US interests in the long term. And of course, you know, you get the bureaucracy over there and all that stuff. So let me shift to just for my viewers, guys, just prepare a question or two for John later on before I let him go here.

So may I anticipate a question or preempt a question?

Sure, sure. Let me— if I see one here—

forgive me if, if this is embarrassing to you, but I feel compelled to say something because I'm, I'm glancing at the chat.

Yeah, let me see, because I wasn't looking at it at all. Let's see a question here. Yeah, go ahead, John.

If you think that I am still in the CIA after I blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program, lost my pension, lost my job Lost my family, lost my freedom for 2 years, and you think I'm still in the CIA? That is the epitome of intellectual laziness. Sorry. Yeah, there it is.

You're right, I didn't see that one. And I— guys, I know I— well, I do have a— I do have the community here, John, be a very, very respectful, very intellectual. Sometimes I'll get to those trolls and so forth, and, uh So I'm glad you said something. So I didn't see it, and I will check out all this later on after that. So let's talk about the, uh, uh, let's talk about, uh, Far East, China. Yeah. And the reason I want to get your input on this, because it just came to my attention this morning, believe it or not, that the Philippines and the US is going to be conducting naval drills.

Yeah.

But not Not— this is the key— not on the Filipino waters. Yes.

So this is crazy, right?

Yeah. Well, what does it mean, John? How do you explain this?

You know, it's this unnecessarily provocative pivot to Asia that started with Barack Obama. Listen, we have a very, very long relationship with the Filipino government. It's had its ups and downs. We used to have the biggest Air Force base in the world there, Clark Air Force Base. We used to have the biggest naval base in the world there, Subic Bay. We don't anymore. But now we have— we've moved much more closely toward the Filipinos and vice versa in the last 10 years or so. And then just last week, we had the Japanese prime minister here in Washington for a state dinner. And the very next day, uh, the, the president of the Philippines, Bongbong Marcos, he came as well for this trilateral meeting. The meeting was all about confronting China. The whole thing was about confronting China, not about protecting the Philippines, not about protecting Japan, but about being proactively provocative against the, uh, the Chinese. One of the things that I think many American policymakers forget is that it was Chinese who were attacked by the Japanese, and, and the, the, the viciousness of that attack, which lasted from the 1930s into the middle of the 1940s, it's a part of the Chinese DNA. You know, Chinese children are taught about the viciousness of the Japanese occupation. It's the Chinese that are more worried about what the Japanese might do to them than the reverse. And so why we've decided to confront the Chinese like this in the South China Sea of all places, or in the Strait of Taiwan, or on an island that's only 6 miles off the coast of of mainland China by putting 1,000 US troops. I just don't get what the endgame is.

Well, I still think in the idea that some in Washington still looking at Philippines as a colony for us. Doesn't matter sovereignty or not, it's just on paper. There is another point that I was aware of, and this has to do with the current President Marcos Jr. Bongbong, his father's assets that been sort of blocked in the US. Could this be a part of that? Because I was aware of what Ferdinand Marcos Senior assets were at that time. Oh yeah. They were blocked. Yeah.

You and I are of a certain age.

Exactly.

In terms of foreign policy, I was a senior in college when Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown in the People Power Movement. It was very, very powerful. And, um, and you're right, that whole family was under sanctions. I remember that, uh, Imelda had something like, what was it, 10,000, 20,000 pairs of shoes. Crazy thing, you know, while people were living in poverty and squalor in her country. How in the world that family came back, I have no idea. But I think you're right, David. I, I think that at least the families assets are frozen or have been confiscated and turned back over to the Filipino people, I would assume.

Yeah, but it's just my concern with the rushing up tensions in that part of the world, especially when you consider that NATO wanted to open an office in Tokyo. And you kind of start to wonder, why are we going to the Far East to create more tensions over there? What for?

Yeah. And in fact, we gave Japan Major non-NATO status. That's an actual status with capital letters. Major non-NATO ally status. Saudi Arabia is a major non-NATO ally. Bahrain is a major non-NATO ally. My guess is the Philippines is going to get it right soon.

Oh, what does it mean? Like, do you have now access to—

yeah, they have access to, to some weapons and weapon systems that they otherwise wouldn't have access to. For example, the UAE, Australia, uh, Saudi Arabia, they have access to the F-35. So we'll give the F-35 to the Japanese as well, and, and we don't for other countries. In fact, Turkey is a member of NATO and we won't give them the F-35.

Wow.

Yeah.

Wow. Well, that explains it now, why Japan went ahead and increased its defense budget for 2024.

Oh yeah, because, because we order them too. You know, the guideline for NATO is that you have to spend at least 2% of your GDP on a military budget, and something like 3 or 4 countries spend that much money on— or 3 or 4 NATO countries spend that much money on their defense budgets. But we're demanding it, and we're forcing them to spend more money. It's very dangerous.

Very, very interesting. I want to take one last topic with you briefly here. And this has to do with Turkey and Greece or Cyprus. That is something you are very, very, very familiar with, uh, given your background, given also part of your professional career being spent in that part of the world. So why, what, what do you think of Turkey, uh, sort of, will it be, will there be a war or a conflict? I want to use the term war between Greece and and Turkey? Will Turkey agitate that country?

I gave an interview to a Greek newspaper a few days ago and they asked me exactly the same question. And I think no, I think there's no chance of a conflict. There's very disturbing rhetoric going back and forth. I'll say that. And you know, when the Turkish defense minister says that Turkey has a plan to take all of Greece's Aegean islands in 48 hours, or that Turkey has a strategic plan to launch ballistic missiles on Athens, which of course is a population center. You have to take those kinds of threats seriously, but the Turks always talk like that, and very rarely do they come close to actual shooting. The last time they came close to, to the actual exchange of gunfire was during the Clinton administration, and it was over an islet called Imia, which doesn't even have people on it. It has only a herd of goats. And it's a Greek island, but the Turks put the Turkish flag. Then the Greek Coast Guard went and they took it down. They put a Greek flag and, you know, then their ships went and Bill Clinton had to call both sides and tell them to cut it out. So I think a lot of this is, is just rhetoric. Now, more importantly, is vast amounts of natural gas. Have been found off the southeastern coast of Cyprus, stretching to Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine. And, um, and the Israelis, the Cypriots, the Greeks, and American oil companies have begun exploring, testing, and lifting some of that gas. The Turks feel cut out, and although none of that gas as has been discovered yet, is in Turkish territorial waters. I think probably a wise thing to do might be to share some of the wealth with the Turks and keep everybody happy. As things stand right now, um, the Turks recently sent a battleship to confront a French, uh, oil exploration ship And so there's, there's very little going on in, in the way of, uh, of exploration right now. This is a problem also for the, for the Israelis and the Palestinians because much of that field is accessible from, from Gaza, from Palestine. And, you know, in the original agreement between all these different countries, there was an acknowledgment that, that Palestine— and they used they use the word Palestine, or Palestinians is what it is, that Palestinians own some of this gas, but that it would be up to the Israeli government to decide how much of the money the Palestinians get. And you know what the answer is going to be? It's going to be zero. Yeah, so we'll see. Yeah, it's—

this is very interesting.

Yeah.

All right, let me take, uh, guys, uh, because John is on limited time, he was kind enough just to carve out this time for us here. I'll have him back on the show, don't worry. Uh, I'm going to take one question or two just to be respectful of his time. Uh, Army with Harmony, this is an avid supporter of the channel, John. So question: my understanding is that the Golan Heights was hit and the Air Force base was damaged. Uh, when Israel— when Israel retaliates, will Iran continue to generally target military assets only?

That's a very good question. I saw the same reports that it was Golan that was hit, and I also saw a report that one rocket got through and hit the edge of an Israeli base north of Eilat. So, you know, this again goes to the very patient policy of the Iranian government on this thing. I mean, they could have targeted Tel Aviv and civilian population centers like the Israelis have, frankly, and they didn't do that. And so my guess is that if there is going to be more Iranian targeting, it's going to be of Israeli military facilities. I think that's actually a wise policy.

And you want to know my thoughts about it? I'd love to hear that. Why Iran didn't is because when Bill Burns, CIA director, went to Oman, that's when he asked directly the Iranians just to do something but avoid the civilians. That's why the Iranians, I think that, but there will be no next time. There will be no next time for Iran. Mark my word on it, guys. If Israel conducts some crazy stuff, Iran's gonna upstage the game by using its advanced missiles. And we all know what it means. So, uh, I want to say thank you here to Francis Tango. Thank you for your Super Sticker. And he's saying thank you to you, John, also for the information.

Thanks very much.

Very, very— I have a wonderful, uh, group here, uh, that they share the information intelligently and, uh, respectful. And Timeline Dunkley, one last question here, uh, to Dr. O. Do you hear anything about China making the energy force field shield. Do you know anything about that, John?

No, that's the first I've heard of it.

That's first time I heard of it too. I, I need to look into this.

Like, like an Iron Dome idea?

Uh, I, I don't know. I don't know. I'm gonna look into this and check it out because I do know China is working on something very, very highly advanced, uh, but it's not here. It's on the surface of the moon. That I'm aware of, but I'll check on this one here. Well, John, I can't thank you enough for really, really, really your time. Where can my viewers find you and find your work and so forth?

Ah, thank you. I publish everything I do on Substack. It's at John Kiriakou, and I'm also on Twitter at John Kiriakou.

Okay, I'm gonna post those for you guys on the description. Just check it out there. I do follow John on, on Twitter. Just go ahead and follow him on Twitter as well and read up his article on the Substack. So once again, thank you so much, John. Truly appreciate you, and I look forward to next time.

I'm looking forward to it.

All right, guys, I hope you find this very informative. I know John is on— was on limited time because he has other stuff. It was just kind, as I said, kind enough to carve out this time for us here, for you to hear a different perspective. There is the reason why I also wanted to reach out to John because someone I trust, someone who's been inside, understand the system, understand the global stage, knows how to read the geopolitical landscape. And I just want you have the opportunity to listen to a different perspective. As always, remember, geopolitics impact your daily life in more ways than one. Till next time, guys. Bye-bye.