Israel/US underestimated Iran's Capabilities, Now They are Paying the Price! W/Larry Johnson

Hello everybody and welcome to Geopolitical Trends, where truth matters. Excited to be with you as always. I'm even more excited today because I have a dear friend, Larry Johnson. To those who do not know Larry Johnson, you need to know who is Larry is here. Let me bring Larry in. Hi Larry.

Hi there.

Good to see you and thanks for coming on here. We are very excited to have you as always. Uh, to those who might be here for the first time, just To give you a brief intro about Larry, Larry is a former analyst at the CIA back then prior to moving to the State Department's Office of Counterterrorism. He is the host of the Counter Current YouTube channel, which I highly recommend for you guys. I'm going to put the link in the chat box. Go check it out. I watch his videos there, so very, very, very interesting. And I put a full bio and full links to his Substack and all that in the, uh, in the, this video descriptions. Let's get into this, Larry. We got a lot to cover. So first of all, I would like to have your overall assessment about the ongoing war of Iran, US, and Israel.

Well, despite Trump's claims that he's defeated Iran, 100% defeated, the exact opposite appears to be the case, that Iran not only is holding its own, But Iran has got the United States on the defensive, and there is no clear path forward for the United States to obtain a victory. A victory being defined as forcing a regime change in Iran and/or forcing Iran to surrender and submit to the United States to say, okay, we'll, we'll do whatever you tell us to do. Not gonna happen. Uh, Iran is in the process of remaking the face of the Middle East. Um, I, I seriously doubt if the United Arab Emirates will get— will survive this. The more I look at it, I think Iran is taking it apart piece by piece. The UAE is, is a lie. It's not It's not built upon any native culture. It's just, uh, it, it claims to be Muslim, but it's, it's really like one of the most expensive whorehouses in, in the world, uh, with the decadence that goes on there. And its reputation as a playground for, for the degenerates of the world is— it's, it's been severely damaged. Those degenerates have been largely abandoning Dubai over the last, uh, 15 days since the start of this war, and the trend will continue. I do not see Iran letting up at all on that. But what Iran has done, they have destroyed the eyes of the US military in terms of the radar systems, uh, that, you know, these are, uh, the ANT It was a TYP— T-P-Y, I can't keep the letter straight— 2, which is about a $500 million radar system. Iran's destroyed 4 of those. And there's another one that was— cost over a billion dollars. My understanding is Iran's destroyed at least 2 of those. So you're looking at a minimum of $4 billion of lost radar that is not really readily replaceable. Yeah, that has eliminated the ability to early detect launches out of Iran of missiles, which is why Israel right now is only getting maybe a minute notice before an impact. So in basically dismantling the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf, Arab countries, is the first significant accomplishment of of Iran. Uh, it is then— it is now depleted, or almost depleted, the U.S. THAAD and Patriot PAC-3 missile defense, uh, inventory. And I can, I can take you through that analysis if you're interested, but you're not— the United States literally on that front has run out of missiles. In fact, I was aware It happened last week at one of the bases in the Middle East that they, they were completely depleted. They didn't have any more. And there's no more on the horizon. It's not like the United States can just flip a switch and all of a sudden just start producing thousands of these. No, they don't have that capability. And it's now further hamstrung by the fact that China's prohibited the exports of rare earth minerals, gallium in particular, which is a critical component in those, uh, and air defense missile systems.

Yeah, and we will touch about— we will talk about the radar aspects in a second here when we get to Russia, because Russia is playing a major role behind the scenes that everybody was at the beginning, where is Russia, where is Russia? Russia has its own game, and we're gonna address it in a minute here. What I want to get into this, uh, Larry, you know, uh, as a follow-up to what you argued about or presented is how badly, how badly did the US and Israel underestimate Iran's capabilities. We're talking about missile in this technology, but in this, in this aspect, but also we're talking about the strategy that Iranians had in mind for this same scenario here.

Uh, the, the, the West thought it was going to play the equivalent of a children's soccer team, and instead, uh, they've wound up with, uh, uh, one of the most elite teams in the world. Uh, Iran was anything but a— Iran actually had planned, you know, they had a war plan in place, unlike the United States. United States and Israel, I think their plan consisted of the fact that they Israel, through Mossad, had recruited a top-level Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander, General Ismail Kani. And Kani, you know, apparently he'd been working quite a while. It was considered, I think, one of the most productive intelligence assets of Iran. He was instrumental in the murder of Hassan Nasrallah, the murder of the lead Hamas negotiator, Haniyeh, which took place at the inauguration of President Prigozhin. I would not doubt now, with the benefit of hindsight, that he was also involved in sabotaging the helicopter through his operatives sabotaging the helicopter of Raisi, the former president, who was killed in a crash. I think he was actually executed or assassinated. He was— Khamenei came to everyone's attention because he was always around these assassinations but never happened to be there. You know, he'd excuse himself from a meeting 10 or 15 minutes before the attack came. And reportedly it was this last one on February 28th where he got out. The Ayatollah Khamenei, Minister of Defense, other top Iranian leaders were killed. And I, I think the West's plan was to use Khamenei as their lead guy to lead a popular uprising and throw out the Islamic regime. Uh, you know, I don't know what what it was that caused Khamenei to flip, to be willing to work with the Israelis on this, but he did, I think. But it backfired. The surprise attacks hit Iran just in the same fashion that Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 ignited a fury among the population. And that same thing is self-evident. I was just interviewed the other day by a young Iranian, you know, I call him a young man, he's like 39 years old, so he's even younger than my son. But I started asking, he was interviewing me, but I started asking him questions about, you know, his reaction to this. And, you know, I think from talking to him, you would have placed him in a category of people that might have been opponents of the Islamic Republic, but not now. They are 100% Iranian patriots fighting against this outside evil. So that's why I say the United States failed with Israel. Their plan was based, predicated upon a false assumption that there was widespread opposition to the Islamic Republic. That assumption was fed by a CIA information operation where they did false polling and created false results, but Donald Trump and his team believed them, and they're now finding out that not only is that not the case, it's the exact opposite, that the Iranian leadership enjoys widespread support. I did see today that the You know, the CIA hasn't lost, you know, they've now kicked into another part of their campaign. They're describing Mojtaba Khamenei, the new Ayatollah, as he's not really a very smart person. His father just didn't think he had what it took to be leader, you know, that kind of thing. So it's just like, all right, feed the story. But meanwhile, Iran has withstood the full brunt of Israeli, US military air power. The United States does not have the ability to turn this into a ground war, even though they talk about it. If they did, the, the death toll on the American side would soar so dramatically, and the United States would face a devastating defeat. And the naval power is basically neutered as well. They can't get close enough to Iran's shores without being attacked. So this is, you know, we're learning the lesson of air power. It has great limitations, and Iran's got the ability to absorb the blows and deliver blows back with a daily barrage of missiles. Yeah, which they did.

And as a matter of fact, I argued a few weeks ago, Larry, that should this war break out between US and Israel and Iran, it will be mainly conducted first by air and missiles. And there are those who are saying, "Oh no, we will walk in." I said, "You have no idea whom you're dealing with. Iran is not Iraq, is not Afghanistan, is not Yemen. And you need to understand the history of the Iranian system, how it has been built throughout the years." Yeah.

Well, look, I learned early on from two different sources. First was CIA in January of 1986. I was in the career trainee class. We were at Camp Perry going through a 12-week paramilitary course. The reason they were putting us through this paramilitary course was to help us gain some appreciation what it was like to, to, if you're going to ask somebody to carry a backpack or somebody to carry a radio for communication through difficult terrain while being chased with helicopter surveillance, to understand what that was like. And, you know, and I'm not at all suggesting that we endured anything like combat, but, you know, at one point I was carrying what was called a PRC-77, PRC-77, which was an old-style radio, and it was like carrying a 40-pound can of ammunition in your backpack. And then you had to have ammunition for your rifle, and then you had to have food, and then you had to have water. And all of a sudden, you know, you're walking around trying to navigate through woods and difficult terrain with 100-pound rucks. Not easy. And then you realize how easy it is to run out of supplies., and then you have to be resupplied. The second lesson came as a result of 23 years of scripting actual exercises for units like Delta Force, SEAL Team 6, all the Tier 1 units. And so you rapidly realize, particularly with special operations forces, they have real limits. They are not conventional forces, and they certainly— while they can— they're good at conducting a raid, a short-term military operation, maybe to do hostage rescue or destroy one particular target, there still is always the issue of how do you— getting in may be easy, getting out is difficult. What's the extraction plan? Well, so a lot of these armchair warriors now that are trying to direct tactics against Iran, you know, they talk about sending 2,200 Marines to seize Kharg Island. Okay, For starters, how do they get there?

Get there.

So you're going to put them on a ship and have them go through the Strait of Hormuz? They'll get sunk before they get through the strait. Are you going to disembark them down in Oman and then truck them across, uh, the— or, or, you know, the Mediterranean and truck them all the way across to Iraq, into Iraq, so they can then invade from there? Or You know, you're gonna, uh, try somehow try to get boats assembled in Bahrain. Good luck with that because the Iranians are blowing the hell out of the Fifth Fleet headquarters on a daily basis. So, you know, but let's assume they somehow managed to get the troops onto Karg Island. Then what? Then what? They're pretending that Karg Island is the— you know, the West is falsely being told that Karg Island man, you take that out, you take out Iran's oil ability. No, it's one-fifth of the terminals that Iran has available for shipping oil. So it would be damaging but not, you know, crippling. Well, if anybody's paid attention to the war in Ukraine, there's this little— this thing called FPV drones that both sides have, and The, the previous wars where you could mass a company, you know, 150 guys with trucks in there and move forward as a unit, you can't do that anymore. The, the FPV drones blow the hell out of you, not to mention missiles that can be fired from either helicopters or fixed-wing aircraft or ground-based units. So you put any, any, you put 2,200 Marines on Karg Island, you know, that'd be like putting General George Custer's 7th Cavalry out in the middle of the Indian village. They get overwhelmed. So, you know, that's not going to work. And they think there's no amount of troops we could land on the west shore or the east shore of the Strait of Hormuz to, quote, secure that so Iran couldn't keep it closed. That's why I said there's no viable ground option here. 23 years ago, this shows you how much the war has changed in a quarter of a century. 23 years ago, we could assemble 165,000 soldiers in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to launch across border into Iraq, but you can't do that these days, not at all, because ISR spots them. If not, if the Iranians don't spot them, the Chinese and Russians will spot them. Provide the coordinates to Iran, and Iran can destroy them. So now you got to come up with a different, uh, a different approach. That's why I say the United States does not have any good options on this.

And this goes back also— this is nothing new in the sense of— I'm sure you, you recall, uh, when— what's his name— Richard Perle was at the Pentagon. Yeah, you remember the, the policy paper that came out around the 2006, if I'm not mistaken? Or even the one back in '86, some, you know, the same argument we're seeing right now for the new one pushing into this. And I've always argued, Larry, Iran is no small matter. I, throughout my writings, whatever I did, I've always warned against doing so. You mentioned the Mujtaba Khamenei earlier, and I would like to just highlight one aspect here. I got it on good authority that it was a phone call placed from Paris, from Macron, asking, uh, Mujtaba Khamenei to stop the war. And in return, this is what I got, Larry, and in return, Iran's demands will be met. How much can we trust Macron with such a statement? Is France just saying this to sort of not be left behind, or is it just realizing they're gonna be impacted economically given that massive amount of oil comes through the Strait? Of course, for them, for the Europeans, um, can't believe him at all.

But, uh, you know, if I'm Mokhtar Khamenei, I, I'm going to say very clearly, okay, let— if you lift the sanctions first, you do all this first, you show us, you take those steps, and then we can talk. But we're not gonna— we're not gonna stop anything on a promise that you're going to do something as you promised with the JCPOA. We signed that, and despite our signature on the JCPOA, you did not lift sanctions as you were required under the JCPOA terms. So, you know, I think Iran's at the point where they're no longer going to trust any promise by anybody from the West, not at all. They're going to get actual action before Iran makes any concessions.

Yeah, and that leads us to the really the fundamental theme in this particular livestream here. Does Iran have the upper hand now?

I think so, yes.

I agree too, Larry, because that becomes clear.

They've got the, uh, you know, the West has been lying about a lot of things. So let's see, they claim there was only minimal damage to the 4 or 5 tankers at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. That's a lie. That's not true. That was a lie. They were, they were, they were, uh, destroyed is the nicest way to put it. Yeah, um, they claimed that the KC-135 tanker that went down, that that was an accident. No, no, it didn't. Then they started to come to the— the two KC-135s flew into each other. They wouldn't be that close to one another. The, you know, they— it'd be one thing to argue that while trying to refuel an aircraft, something happened that forced the KC-135 out of the sky, but again, that's not what happened. Yeah, the— my understanding is the second, uh, second plane saw the launch of the SAM from the ground, took evasive action. It was somewhat damaged, but the one KC-135 was blown out of the sky. And the part of the Pentagon's logic is they don't want to admit that it was a combat casualty because that doesn't fit with the narrative. So they want to claim that it's an accident. That way they don't have to have an official reception of the bodies out at Dover Air Force Base. Um, the, uh, the, the knockout of, uh, the, uh, radar air defense systems in Iraq, in Bahrain, in Saudi Arabia that were supposed to protect U.S. installations. So, you know, they're all gone. Al Udeid, gone. So, um, Iran is in a position that it can keep the Strait of Hormuz closed that any effort by the United States to try to open it is going to create such an enormous military cost in terms of loss of ship, loss of lives, that whatever they might be able to do to try to take control of it will be so both politically, economically, and militarily costly that the United States won't be able to, to do it. Uh, but then come the missiles, you You know, the, the early on, the US is making bragging about, oh, we've knocked out all these missile launchers. Well, I, I question even that claim. But, but now Iran is, uh, still launching missiles. They are— US cannot stop them. And a lot of them are being launched from underground silos. So neither Israel has run out, effectively has run out of an air defense missiles in their multi-layer system. They got Iron Dome and then David's Sling, and those— then there's two other levels above that, Patriot and THAAD. Those upper two levels, gone, gone. And lower two levels really aren't effective against ballistic missiles.

And that became clear and evident as to the capabilities of Iran's missile capabilities. And this is why The US and Israel were insisting during the negotiations that the missile capabilities will be part of the negotiations, and Iranians saying, hell no, we are not going to be accepting that particular condition. Correct. To me has always been the damaging aspects of all this is that we embarked on bombing them in the middle of negotiations.

Yeah.

And that's— yeah.

They, they are— they justifiably feel betrayed. You know the, the old saying, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Well, it's now shame on Iran. They got fooled twice, once last June and then now. And so they finally have awakened and said no more. And they say in Spanish, nunca jamás, never again. That's true.

Uh, Larry, you mentioned a database, and I, uh, I read some reports, not from, from here, the US, it was from the Middle East in a foreign, in Arabic language, that the damage was severe. We're talking about images like in Gaza. And of course, it was a media blackout on both sides, the Israelis and the Americans, because to the point now Donald Trump is threatening people that with death penalty. I mean, how crazy this delusional president. So now what I wanted to ask about this aspect is, is that Mojtaba Khamenei made it clear to the neighbors— Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan to a degree, Egypt to a degree— that the war is not against them, is against the presence of US military on their soil.

Correct.

That means they have no sovereignty regarding this installation. My question, Larry, is, do you foresee, for example, the Gulf states will have the gut to tell the Americans, hey, you need to draw down your military presence here because that is exactly the cause of our instability and insecurity and so forth?

Yeah, I do, because the economics of it will finally make sense. They'll realize that as a result of the shutdown of the flow of the export of oil, the export of liquid natural gas, and the export of urea for the production of fertilizer out of the Persian Gulf, that all of that's going to have a tremendous negative effect on the economies, particularly Western Europe. U.S. will suffer a little less, but it's still going to suffer from an inflationary standpoint. Point. And, um, they'll, they'll turn to China. China and Russia, particularly Russia. Russia's coming out of this making— they're making like $150 million a day. So they'll, they'll be raking in around $4 to $5 billion a month just from the higher gas prices. And that's not, that's not including the cost of estimating liquid natural gas supplies going out in increased numbers, as well as fertilizer, which Russia is— if they're not the largest providers fertilizer, they're the second largest after the Persian Gulf countries. So, you know, Russia is coming out of this in excellent shape financially and strategically.

How ironic, Larry, that we are asking now for Russia's oil. Oh yeah, ironic.

Yeah, it was, you know, the— we had to— we're going to sanction them, boy, we're going to hurt them. Then all of a sudden, no, no, no, hey, please sell, sell as much as you can, help, help. You know, again, we're back to, uh, I, I would take— I'm working on, on the lyrics to alternatives— the Beach Boys song, Help Me Rhonda. Ah, you know, help me Russia, help, help me Russia.

You know, because I, I found it very weird and odd that we are all of a sudden, oh, Russia, can you help us with oil?

Well, it's like, you know, I've, uh, I think an entire— we could put together an entire musical about this one, you know. So like, on this, it would be the Help Me, Russia song, uh, and then Donald Trump When will the war be over? Feelings, my feelings. So you got to make a choice on the songs. Now, you know, it was the one from the '60s, you know, feelings, nothing more than feelings. Or is it, you know, let's update it to the '70s with Boston, more of a feeling. You know, lots of creative choices here. Yeah. You know, I don't mean to make light of this because this—

no, no, no, I know what you mean.

This is horrible. It's horrific. It is the death and destruction being visited by the insanity of our president, Donald Trump. He's lost his mind and there's nobody to stop him. He's surrounded by enablers. Reportedly, J.D. Vance and Tulsi Gabbard tried to, you know, intervene, but they got shut out. And I don't— I think there are so many compromised people in Trump's cabinet. That the ability to enact the 25th Amendment, where a majority would come together and say, no, we got a president's got to be removed. That's not going to happen. And so Donald Trump is, he's not only laying the foundation for destroying the Republicans in the midterms, but destroying the economy too.

And it's becoming very, very clear and evident as prices, even for us here in the state of Texas, Usually we are an oil state. Usually we don't see this problem. Now it's going up to $3.61 or so.

Yeah.

This leads me, Larry, to ask you about your assessment. How do you see it moving forward when it comes down to the global energy security?

Oh yeah.

Because we know the Strait of Hormuz now, you know, almost 21% of the global oil transit through that strait now there. And now you have countries, especially Europeans, going to be hammered with this. Iran, of course, they can just shut down. They already shutting down, whatever. How do you see it moving forward from the perspective of impacting the global economy here?

Well, the most important effect right now on the horizon that will manifest itself this week is the shortage of liquid natural gas in Taiwan. As of the start of last week, my understanding was they only had about a 10-day supply. And so when they run out, even they don't have great reserves, their actual— some of their manufacturing processes are going to come to a screeching halt. And then there's not— it's not like there's a ready supply out there on the ocean. You just make a— you know, it's like ordering pizza. Hey, I need a, need a new pizza here at this address. No. Um, they could be literally weeks without a liquid natural gas. This is actually going to change, I think, China's calculation about dealing with, uh, Taiwan, because China will be in a position— hey, hey, little buddy, you need some help? Yeah, China can come to the rescue. And then all of a sudden, China's in a much stronger position. This is adamant right now. We've got a 15-day oil shock. The Trump administration is lying its ass off, pretending, oh, nothing to see here, move along, this is, nah, this is just a minor glitch, no big problem. Um, in, in the 1973, in the wake of the Yom Kippur War, uh, the oil shock, the cutoff of oil by the OPEC nations, I don't think it lasted 2 weeks. Then we're now well into week 3. For this event. Similarly, with the invasion of— when Russia invaded Ukraine as part of a special military operation, February 2022, again, there was a shock, but it wasn't, you know, the supplies hadn't been cut off. This is a literal turning off the faucet and there's no more oil running, running. And it's not just oil, liquid natural gas not running. So, um, in every single one of these disruptions in the past, there have been, uh, global recession has followed. Well, that's exactly what's going to happen here, except this global recession is going to be much more profound. So we just, we, we've lost, we've lost complete control. Yeah.

And that's usually what I— my big concern is now with this, uh, the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz. The rest of the world is going to feel the impact. Most Americans here, for us in the US, we tend to see this one here. Uh, one of the key, uh, how should I use the term, event? Should I use the term, uh, development? Uh, that I found very interesting, interesting from the perspective of how much we don't understand that dealing with other powers, the likes of Russia, the likes of China, will come necessary at one point or another. And my reference here, Larry, to sort of your assessment, what do you make, or what do you— what can be concluded from Donald Trump reaching out to the Russian President Vladimir Putin asking him to mediate with the Iranians.

Oh, the act of desperation, you know, and Russia basically said no, you know, you know, you've, you've made your bed, you sleep in it. What, what, what the United States did with Israel on the 28th of February was launched a war of aggression. The, uh, this is comparable to what Adolf Hitler did on September 1st, 1939. You launched an unprovoked war of aggression. And, uh, you know, it'd be one thing if Iran was threatening violence against the United States, which it had not— it wasn't— or that it was attacking and detaining US ships, US personnel. It was not. This was a completely unprovoked attack, particularly, particularly at the time, for Iran thought they were actually engaged in legitimate negotiations, that the United States really truly wanted to get a solution. Yeah, that turns out it was all just a pretext, uh, a pretend that it was to lull Iranians into a false sense of security so we could attack them and then change their government. This, this history for 47 years, going on 47 years now, of the hatred directed at Iran is really— there's no rational explanation for it. They claim that Iran has been, you know, on a campaign of unrelenting terror against the United States, and that's simply not true. In fact, you can't point to a single time in the last 47 years that Iran has carried out a terrorist attack inside the United States. You know, the attacks that have been attributed to, uh, you know, Islamic terrorists, or as, you know, one of my Shia friends reminded me, that's un-Islamic terrorism, because those who claim to be acting in the name of Allah, he said, are going against the very tenets and principles of, uh, of Islam in carrying out such terrorism. But we don't have a single act by Iran, nor by an Iranian proxy in the United States.

Oh, you're absolutely correct, Larry, especially with the last point about how some of the so-called Muslim countries are really acting in the opposite direction. I look at, for example, United Arab Emirates and its ties with Israel, far beyond what you and I will understand what we're referring here when it comes down to the intelligence sharing and the aspects of. And yet, what— where were those Muslim countries when Gaza was bombed to Stone Age? Basically, that's to me where that hypocrisy comes in. They only using the word Islam, uh, when it justify their needs to push the agenda, whatever that might be. Now, since we talked about Russia, I want to just play a quick clip here for the community, and, uh, and I'll do the— I will not do it. The translation for it because I'm not going to be— I'll just play the clip briefly, but I'll tell, share the community— share with the community rather what this is all about and get your take on it, Larry. So let me just share this one here. All right, and don't mind, guys, it's in Arabic here. All right, I'm gonna stop right there. Basically, what this gentleman was talking about, just a brief translation here. The statements that came out of Russia asserts that the United States and Israel are sort of attempting and actively striving to drag some other Arab nations into the conflict that sort of serves the interest of others. It has nothing to do with the Arab world. And this is exactly where the, from the perspective of the Russians, according to that statements in Arabic language, is that the notion that the current conflict primarily serves the interest of Israel, followed by those of the United States, which Russia views as having been drawn into this conflict under flimsy pretext and justification. What do you make, Larry, out of the Russian statements?

Well, uh, again, Russia is not the central player in this. Yeah, you know, they are on the periphery. Um, they have a strong relationship with Iran. They are supplying Iran with intelligence and military support assets. Iran itself, I don't think, is engaged fighting on the ground directly. But, uh, I think the Russian perspective, they're looking at this in a— the broad strategic vision. The fact that The United States' desire to get regime change in Iran is part of a long-term strategy to weaken Russia with the ultimate objective of weakening China. And so the base, U.S. base of operations for this, and from the CIA standpoint, has been Yerevan, Armenia. Because they, they've got permission to operate there, and so they're able to recruit assets and do meetings and funnel money and do training, a lot of that covertly, but using Yerevan as a springboard and going into Iran. We saw the Gulf, the Gulf Arabs did make a quick beeline to Moscow to try to say, hey, uh, could you guys help us here and get, you know, call off the dogs? And, you know, Putin and Lavrov, you know, their, their basic explanation was, you know, nyet, no, no. In fact, why aren't you guys, you Gulf Arabs, why aren't you condemning what the United States and Israel have done? And sort of put them in their place.

Yeah, and that's usually the right answer for something like that because that's, that's the key to that. Now, uh, one of the aspects that I would like to— first of all, before I forget, The movement of the USS Abraham Lincoln, what do you make out of it, Larry?

I think the Iranians are right that they did some damage to the deck.

Exactly.

Yeah, and that, uh, you know, that's why this made sure that it's far enough away that it can't— Iran can't touch it right now. Yeah, uh, and the same, I think the same fate awaits the Gerald Ford. The Houthis reportedly going to shut down Mandab al-Bab that strait at the south end of the Red Sea, and any attempt by the Gerald Ford to pass through that strait, they're going to get hit. Yeah, so, you know, we're showing that we're learning the limitations of U.S. naval air power.

Yeah, they're not going to be able to do that. And the last thing I'd like to cover with you, Larry, before I let you go, you wrote in one of your recent article, and I'm gonna put the link for you guys in the chat, chat box in a second here. You wrote, and I quote, one of the most common questions surrounding what will happen to Iran if it continues to blockade the Strait of Hormuz and to pummel Israel to the point of exhaustion is whether Israel will go nuclear. Yeah, I think, I think argument I made the same argument a few weeks ago. How much do you believe, in your opinion, that the US will also join in, in that aspect of the nuke deterrence or the, the nuke use against Iran?

If it was left just up to Donald Trump, they'd probably do it. But I think the— there are enough folks within both the Pentagon and in the White House that would prevent that from happening. Because they recognize that the consequences would be so devastating for the United States. Israel's, uh, you know, I argued in that piece that the way to keep this from happening is for Iran now to rapidly develop a nuclear weapon and make it clear that we've got a nuke and we will use it if attacked. That will force everybody to take a step back. So, um, now will they do that? I don't know. I'm just saying that the, the game theory points to that that's the best outcome. And you've also got to consider what Russia and China will do or are willing to do or are threatening to do if, if a nuclear device is used. Uh, you know, both countries want to keep, you know, keep the— if let's use it like a pistol, keep your nuclear pistol holstered. Don't pull it out. Keep it, keep it safe. Don't point it at anybody. Don't use it.

Yeah, yeah. I, uh, for the community, I put the link in the, in the chat box. Make sure you read the, uh, Larry's article there on Substack. Now, to follow up on this, Larry, regarding the nukes, uh, I also know that there are two other countries who mentioned they will come to the aid of Iran if ever Israel used nukes. And that one is North Korea. Okay, the other one is Pakistan. How likely is this?

I'd put— I would have more confidence in North Korea than I would Pakistan. Pakistan has still been such a tool of Western intelligence. I mean, the relationships there with CIA go back well into the '50s. Oh yeah, you know, the CIA U-2 base was based there in Pakistan, and then all the aid that funneled through to mujahideen groups fighting the Soviets in the 1980s and followed up with, you know, continued support to those groups, some enabling them to grow heroin poppies and sell heroin as part of a broader CIA strategy to subvert Iran and Russia. So I, you know, I don't see Pakistan following through on that promise. But I do see North Korea, which again spreads this out and makes it a potential into a global war.

That's going to lead into that one. And the last thing, Larry, I know I said that would be that, but I just thought of something else. With the devastation that is going on inside Tel Aviv, Haifa, Shemesh, them other parts of Israel, and now you have people that losing confidence into the government that they have been for the last 5 decades saying, you are well protected, nothing will ever harm you, no missile can get through. And all of a sudden we see now the, the, the, the, the deadly precision strikes Iran is conducting with the assistance of both Russia and China regarding the satellite imagery and the coordinates and so forth. What's next for Israel? Are we going to be seeing the end of Israel through this war that they didn't expect?

Yeah, we're going to see a dramatic weakening in Israel's so-called military power. Let's, you know, a candid objective assessment is that in terms of fighting Hamas, Israel had every military advantage any country in the world could ever have.. It had the, you know, 250,000-300,000 troops activated. It had Hamas confined to an area 5 miles wide, 25 miles long, with no obvious way to be resupplied. Israel had tanks, artillery, armored personnel carriers, heavy armaments, aerial support, both fixed-wing and rotary-wing, missiles, uh, and overhead intelligence. What did Hamas have? Hamas had, you know, rifles and handguns, a few RPGs, a few sniper rifles. And yet Hamas has fought Israel to a standstill, and Israel's been unable to conquer them. Then now we find Israel in addition to fighting Hamas they're having to split their force. So now they got to fight Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Yeah, and as they, they didn't learn from the adventure in 2006 where they entered southern Lebanon, they lasted a little over 30 days and then they had to retreat. And that's the same thing that's going to happen to them here. They made some assumptions about, oh, we wiped out Hezbollah, we weakened Hezbollah. Nope, they didn't. And then they're going to try to continue this air war, and I believe that Iran is going to step up its targeting of the airfields that Iran— Israel is using to launch these strikes from. And so you'll find a significant degradation in Iran— Israel's aviation capabilities.

Well, to my knowledge, Larry, the Iranians struck the the Mossad headquarters within the, uh, Amman location inside Tel Aviv. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about for the military intelligence there. And they, they were able to strike that one. So that tells me where things are moving forward. So I'll give you a last word, Larry, as to where do you see the developments of this going.

Size matters. Uh, the fact of the matter is Israel is so small, with, uh, you know, being the size of about New Jersey, the state of New Jersey, uh, with a— it doesn't matter how big their army is because it's reservists and they're not very good. But all Iran has to do is basically focus all of its missiles on two cities, Tel Aviv and Haifa, and just basically destroy them, which they can. And when they do that, that represents 55% of Israel's population. And let's say during that same time, Iran is focusing on Tel Aviv. Well, you know, you take out, uh, you take out— I mean, Tehran. If the Israelis take out Tehran you're looking at about, uh, 13% of the total population of Iran. So they still got 87%, uh, operating. I did a comparison, you know, and it's, it's crude, but I said, look, if each side— if Israel was dropping 50-pound, uh, 52,000-pound bombs per day on Iran, and Iran was doing the same to Israel. Judging by what we know to be the damage circumference radius of a 2,000-pound bomb, yeah, how long would it take each side to saturate the other? Well, if from Iran's standpoint, if they did that to Israel, it would take, uh, 3 years. Roughly. They would have saturated bombed every single inch of Iran-Israeli territory. By the same token, if Iran was doing that to, uh, I mean, if Israel was doing that to Iran, it would take 273 years. Wow. A little bit of a difference. 3 years versus 273 years. Wow, that's why I say size matters. Iran is so big that no matter how much bombing, uh, Israel and the United States does, it's not going to bring about regime change, and it's not going to diminish Iran's ability to retaliate. That's, that's the lesson all people ought to keep in mind. Yeah.

And for us, for us here in the U.S., what do you, what do you see coming, given now the population starts to really question this delusional president?

Once again, we're spending billions, trillions of dollars overseas in a needless war that didn't need to be started, that we— a war of choice. And it's going to impoverish America and weaken our economy for sure.

Well, my dear friend Larry, I can't thank you enough. On behalf of the entire community, I say thank you for your insights.

Thank you, David. I always enjoy our conversations and I appreciate it. Thanks so much.

My pleasure. Thank you, Larry.

Bye-bye.

Hope you guys enjoyed listening to Larry here. It's a wealth of information. And by the way, tomorrow I'm gonna be, uh, doing a live stream for you about development just happened last night inside Tel Aviv. I will be sharing that with you. Also be on the lookout, I will have Carl Zah here on the 17th, and I also going to have Jayant Bhandari We're going to be addressing— I didn't forget it, of course— about India betraying Iran by giving the coordinates to the Americans to, uh, blow up that, uh, Iranian, uh, submarine that was part of the, uh, drills that India hosted. This is why you can't trust the Indians for that. And, uh, I'm going to coordinate with Giant, uh, regarding his timing for this. We'll do it this week. So hope you enjoyed listening to this, and I look forward to seeing you next time. As always, remember, geopolitics impacts your daily life in more ways than one. Till next time, bye-bye.