America First - Nicholas J. Fuentes - The Regime Change Debate feat. Jacob Wohl | America First Ep. 161

00:00:03.000 Good evening, everybody.

00:00:04.000 You're watching America First.

00:00:06.000 My name is Nicholas J. Fuentes.

00:00:07.000 We've got a great show for you tonight.

00:00:10.000 Tonight is a debate episode.

00:00:13.000 We are having Mr. Jacob Wolf on to debate regime change in Iran.

00:00:18.000 You know the news this week, which is that the Iran deal has been withdrawn from.

00:00:23.000 We've seen the news yesterday and today about Israeli strikes, Iranian strikes around Israel and Syria.

00:00:31.000 And we are looking at a situation where.

00:00:34.000 The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States are being pushed ever closer towards direct military conflict with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

00:00:43.000 And here to talk about it with us tonight is Jacob Wolf.

00:00:46.000 I'll be bringing him in on Skype right now.

00:00:49.000 So let me just call him up.

00:00:53.000 And we should be getting started momentarily.

00:00:56.000 Jacob Wolf's been on the show before.

00:00:58.000 We had him on last fall to debate our aid for Israel.

00:01:03.000 And he joins us right now.

00:01:04.000 Let me just set up our audio here.

00:01:06.000 Jacob, can you hear me loud and clear?

00:01:09.000 I can hear you loud and clear, Nick.

00:01:11.000 Let me just, you know what?

00:01:11.000 Excellent.

00:01:13.000 This little earpiece has been giving me some trouble.

00:01:15.000 I'm going to actually switch over to my headset.

00:01:17.000 Just one moment.

00:01:19.000 No problem.

00:01:23.000 All right.

00:01:23.000 Let me just flip on over.

00:01:26.000 Seamless transition from one to the other.

00:01:29.000 I don't know if it's, maybe it's my PlayStation controller that's causing a little bit of interference.

00:01:35.000 Let me just make sure.

00:01:36.000 Can you give me a sound test there, real quick?

00:01:39.000 Testing, testing.

00:01:40.000 One, two, three.

00:01:41.000 One, two, three, four, five.

00:01:42.000 Perfect, perfect.

00:01:44.000 Let me just pull you up with your video on the screen and we should be all set.

00:01:49.000 I'm excited.

00:01:51.000 So let me just whip that up there and put it over here.

00:02:03.000 All right, we're all set.

00:02:04.000 So welcome to the show, Mr. Jacob Wool.

00:02:07.000 It's your second time on.

00:02:09.000 It's good to be with you.

00:02:10.000 Yeah, it's good to be back, Nick.

00:02:12.000 I know this is a topic of tremendous importance.

00:02:15.000 And, you know, I think it's important to debate it.

00:02:19.000 There's a lot of, you know, sort of demagoguery on both sides of people who sort of castigate one side or the other when it comes to Iran.

00:02:28.000 And I think it's important that we really talk about the merits of going one way or the other here. 1.00

00:02:34.000 I think that's a very fair thing to say.

00:02:36.000 I agree.

00:02:37.000 I think you see it on both sides.

00:02:38.000 I think it's important to have this conversation because it is a high stakes situation, obviously.

00:02:44.000 And, Before we get started, I just want to agree to a few ground rules.

00:02:48.000 I just had a debate with Mr. Arthur Shopper on the Red Elephants channel.

00:02:53.000 I don't know if you saw it, but it didn't go quite the way we planned.

00:02:57.000 So, just as long as both sides are pretty much respectful, letting each other finish, I think it should be pretty smooth.

00:03:03.000 Is that fair?

00:03:04.000 Right, right.

00:03:05.000 I think that's all good.

00:03:06.000 All right, very good. 0.72

00:03:07.000 So, your position, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that we need to implement regime change in Iran.

00:03:13.000 And you said things like Jared Kushner should be the Shah of Iran. 0.57

00:03:17.000 You've said that we should turn Iran into a parking lot. 0.99

00:03:20.000 And as a shit poster, I recognize there is a quality to this that is trolling, that is a little bit hyperbolic. 0.98

00:03:26.000 But could you clarify for us what exactly is your position on regime change in Iran? 0.97

00:03:31.000 So, obviously, some of the remarks you mentioned there are sort of tongue in cheek, partly.

00:03:38.000 But here's my position on Iran as I see it. 0.80

00:03:42.000 And the fundamental approach here is based upon what I feel is the very solid grounding that Iran is on their way to a nuclear weapon. 0.72

00:03:52.000 And if I didn't believe that Iran was on their way to building nuclear weapons that could strike the United States, I would not be in favor of regime change in Iran. 0.55

00:04:01.000 I'm not one of these people that's a humanitarian that believes that the United States needs to step in and overthrow every regime in the world that's a little bit too rough on its people or a little bit too astray of what we feel is Western democracy.

00:04:14.000 I'm not one of those people at all.

00:04:16.000 I'm all about brutal regimes as long as they play nice with the United States.

00:04:20.000 And what I see happening in Iran.

00:04:22.000 Is not playing nice with the United States.

00:04:26.000 The Iran deal has been a disaster.

00:04:27.000 I'm glad to see Trump leave the Iran deal. 0.88

00:04:29.000 And what I believe is we need to bring about regime change in Iran using every tool at our disposal. 0.79

00:04:34.000 That doesn't just mean military, it means diplomatic means, it means economic means, including economic sabotage and sanctions, whatever it takes to weaken and ultimately remove the regime from Iran, which we know is very hostile to the United States.

00:04:49.000 In fact, I was watching today on the floor of the Iranian parliament.

00:04:53.000 They were burning American flags and chanting death to America. 0.92

00:04:57.000 So, in my view, it's time to get that regime out of there as soon as possible.

00:05:02.000 And so, just to clarify, you say other means besides military.

00:05:06.000 So, are you implying then that military is not your first choice?

00:05:10.000 Would you say that America should go to war with Iran, or do you think that comes later or at all, or what's the position there?

00:05:17.000 So, just to be very clear, and I think it's good that you picked up on that, that way there's no confusion.

00:05:22.000 I mean, all means, including military.

00:05:24.000 So, it could mean Military force, it could mean, and it will likely mean a blend of military force combined with covert action, combined with economic and diplomatic action to isolate the regime and basically have them run out of money and ultimately weaken their will to run that country.

00:05:46.000 So essentially a total war.

00:05:48.000 So you say economic, but also, okay, so military as well.

00:05:52.000 And I guess my, to begin, if this is the central theme, and I'm glad that we clarified that because.

00:05:58.000 You know, there are a lot of different approaches to Iran.

00:06:00.000 Some say we should just strangle the regime with sanctions.

00:06:03.000 Some say we should just do military force. 0.89

00:06:06.000 I think the problem is this a war in Iran.

00:06:10.000 I mean, if you understand the magnitude and the scale and the scope of a conflict in Iran, it would be almost unwinnable for the United States, for any actor in the region who would want to go against Iran.

00:06:20.000 You've got a nation that is largely desert and mountain, which are among the most difficult kinds of terrain to fight in. 0.78

00:06:26.000 They've got a population of over 80 million people, much larger than Iraq, and it took us. 0.53

00:06:32.000 A long time to stabilize, and even then we couldn't even do it. 0.98

00:06:35.000 So it'd be much more difficult to stabilize that country, to occupy that country. 0.99

00:06:39.000 You've got a country with a much bigger military than Iraq had in 2003, a much larger population of fighting age people. 0.99

00:06:46.000 And so I think the proposal of a war in Iran is something that we have to take seriously. 0.93

00:06:50.000 And I guess my question then to you is have you seriously considered the magnitude of what it would take to get rid of the Iranian nuclear program, which is an all out war and then a very brutal and long occupation? 0.71

00:07:04.000 So, I think you bring up some interesting points there.

00:07:06.000 And what you just introduced was basically the precarious nature of going to war with Iran versus going to war with, let's say, Iraq or Afghanistan.

00:07:16.000 You have the terrain, you have a great number of people, you have multiple military apparatuses that are now well funded, thanks greatly in part to Barack Obama and well trained and in some cases well equipped.

00:07:28.000 So, I don't dispute the claim that going to war with Iran, defeating their military, and then staging some sort of occupation of the country is. 0.63

00:07:38.000 An enormously difficult, if not impossible, task. 0.80

00:07:41.000 But I think there's also a number of interesting advantages to going into Iran versus going into Iraq.

00:07:48.000 Namely, you have a very young population, which is in many cases increasingly secular, particularly in the urban centers.

00:07:56.000 And I say urban centers, you're really talking about Tehran and maybe a few others.

00:08:00.000 But you have a young and very secular population.

00:08:04.000 And the regime is not popular with these people if you look at many sources of polling. 0.66

00:08:09.000 And I think that what that allows you to do is bring about an end to the Iranian regime, an end to the Mollahs, in an expeditious fashion that hopefully involves minimal use of the United States military. 0.71

00:08:21.000 Minimal use of boots on the ground, minimal use of U.S. planes flying over Iranian territory. 0.96

00:08:27.000 And that would be the best case scenario. 0.95

00:08:28.000 Although I might point out that a lot of times, sort of slow wars that are waged only economically and wars that rule out the use of military force end up ultimately coming at a greater cost, both financially and in terms of human life.

00:08:43.000 If you look at Iraq, for example, more people died during the 1990s from economic sanctions.

00:08:51.000 We're talking about Iraqi people here. 1.00

00:08:53.000 Which I do value less than American lives. 1.00

00:08:56.000 You can hate me or love me for it, but it's the way I feel.

00:08:59.000 But more Iraqis died as a result of sanctions on Iraq than died as a result of the U.S. invasion.

00:09:06.000 And these are fairly well agreed upon numbers that I've seen from the U.N., Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the United States military, you name it.

00:09:15.000 So you can talk about going just economic, you can talk about using military force.

00:09:20.000 I think what you need to do is leave all options on the table, including boots on the ground.

00:09:25.000 You can't close off anything.

00:09:27.000 And then what you need to do is say, given that we have all of these tools at our disposal, what is the fastest and most cost effective way?

00:09:34.000 And when I say cost effective, I mean money and lives, way to bring an end to the regime, which I feel is irreconcilable.

00:09:42.000 I don't think there's any way that you can bring them back to the table and come up with a better deal.

00:09:47.000 I know a lot of people speculate this is going to be something like North Korea, where we can sort of game them economically and diplomatically, and then they'll come to a table. 0.88

00:09:56.000 But there's just a lot of differences, right? 0.73

00:09:58.000 The main two that I think are important is number one, North Korea is essentially a satellite of China.

00:10:04.000 So it's a lot easier to finagle them given the amount of business that we do with China.

00:10:08.000 That's the first thing.

00:10:09.000 And number two, North Korea is a secular state or a secular state that worships their leader, Kim Jong un.

00:10:17.000 Iran is not that.

00:10:18.000 Iran is not economically dependent on the United States in any way, shape, or form, as North Korea is as a proxy of China. 0.95

00:10:26.000 And number two, they're an Islamo fascist state. 0.90

00:10:28.000 They're deeply religiously serious about their obligation to. 1.00

00:10:34.000 Wipe America off the map.

00:10:35.000 They're very serious about this.

00:10:37.000 Just listen to what they say.

00:10:38.000 And I think this is a big problem in foreign policy when people tell us they're going to do something and we don't take them at their word.

00:10:45.000 I think that's a real problem.

00:10:46.000 So that's kind of my proposal broadly when it comes to what to do with them and how.

00:10:52.000 Well, I think this is, I think a lot of people be disappointed that you phrased it a lot more reasonably than you did, than you have on Twitter, you know, which I have a begrudging respect, although I don't agree with it.

00:11:03.000 I do have a begrudging respect for the tongue in cheek. 0.57

00:11:06.000 The shitpost, because you do get a reaction. 0.82

00:11:08.000 But I will say I disagree with almost the entirety of the substance of that proposal, which, you know, in the first place, you talk about the young population in Iran, which is they're not content with their government. 0.95

00:11:20.000 And maybe I would have bought that 15 years ago, but we heard the same thing in 2003 that in Iraq we'd be greeted as liberators.

00:11:28.000 We heard almost exactly the same thing in 2011 when we went into Libya during the Arab Spring.

00:11:34.000 We heard that these popular protests and uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and all the rest were a democratic people, a liberal people that wanted to rise up and vote at the ballot box. 0.60

00:11:46.000 And it turned out that actually, even when they did end up being able to vote, in the case of Egypt with Hosni Mubarak, they voted in the Muslim Brotherhood. 0.92

00:11:53.000 The next generation was more radical, more fundamentalist, more Islamofascist in your words. 0.87

00:11:59.000 I wouldn't use that, but in those words, they voted in the Muslim Brotherhood. 0.84

00:12:02.000 In Libya, we instituted regime change against Gaddafi, and we said we're going to take him out. 0.68

00:12:07.000 And we would give way to the peaceful protesters and they would decide their own fate.

00:12:12.000 And what has happened is Libya is still a failed state.

00:12:14.000 There's still no government.

00:12:15.000 And ISIS has taken a major stronghold there.

00:12:18.000 And then we talk about military action.

00:12:19.000 And while I would agree with you that a prolonged sanctions regime would do a tremendous amount of damage, humanitarian, economic, and so on, I think that if you're looking at it in terms of the cost for America, a sanctions regime is far less costly to our country than a military engagement.

00:12:36.000 We saw that the war in Iraq, we heard a lot of the same kind of talk about Iraq. 0.52

00:12:40.000 We'd go in, we'd take him out, and then we'd leave.

00:12:44.000 And it turned out that it was actually quite a different story.

00:12:46.000 We went in, we toppled him in a matter of months, but the occupation lasted a long time.

00:12:51.000 It was because we didn't get what we expected so much after he fell.

00:12:55.000 We got a civil war, a brutal insurgency, and then the rise of ISIS.

00:12:58.000 And so obviously it was a big blunder there. 0.78

00:13:00.000 So the idea we'd go in and get out and that would be the cheap option is a little bit ridiculous.

00:13:05.000 It could very well turn into a $3 trillion war, one we would have to occupy with something like a quarter of a million troops, depending on which.

00:13:12.000 Analyst, you ask.

00:13:14.000 And then in the last place about the last major claim about Iran saying death to America, death to Israel.

00:13:20.000 This is something that I used to believe a while ago, you know, because it is so overt and explicit.

00:13:26.000 And they're not doing themselves any favors by today.

00:13:29.000 After Trump pulls out of the Iran deal, they burn the American flag and they chant death to ignorance or death to America, depending on which translation you take. 0.97

00:13:37.000 And I used to think, well, of course they're saying it, it must be true. 0.83

00:13:40.000 But if you look at the record of behavior by the Iranian regime, There are a number of instances where they've proven the opposite, that they are not a millenarian, apocalyptic regime that is hell bent on their own destruction and destruction of other regimes. 0.89

00:13:54.000 If you look at the Iran Iraq war from 1980 to 1989, they ended it after 10 years.

00:14:00.000 After Iraq secured a number of victories on the battlefield, they said, We don't want to bleed anymore, so we're calling the quits.

00:14:07.000 After the Cobra Tower bombings in the 1990s, they severely moderated their behavior when they heard that the United States was considering a military reprisal.

00:14:15.000 And there's just nothing really that you could point to. 0.86

00:14:18.000 That demonstrates that Iran is going to make good or they intend to make good on those kinds of apocalyptic statements. 0.76

00:14:25.000 Well, there are two points you bring up there, and I'd like to address both of them. 0.95

00:14:29.000 So, the first part is you mentioned the tremendous costs that come along with a potential invasion as you lay them out. 0.74

00:14:37.000 And what I would say to that is number one, the invasion of Iraq was overwhelmingly successful, the occupation of Iraq was an overwhelming failure.

00:14:48.000 And so I think it's important to delineate between invading a country and overthrowing their regime and then staying along, nation building, holding elections, playing a part in the country.

00:14:59.000 And I will concede that there's always that camp of people that say, well, we broke it.

00:15:04.000 Now we've got to buy it.

00:15:06.000 And those people aren't going anywhere.

00:15:08.000 They're present in the White House, they're present in Congress.

00:15:11.000 And I think I will fight till my dying breath to oppose those people because it's not my view that our role is to.

00:15:19.000 Build schools or donate tractors or teach Western farming methods or set up universities.

00:15:25.000 I don't think that that's a reasonable role for the United States to play in the world.

00:15:29.000 If somebody would like to do that, I would advise them to perhaps donate to UNICEF or donate to a charity.

00:15:36.000 I don't think that's the United States' role.

00:15:38.000 I think that we can get in and get out with leadership from the top with Trump.

00:15:44.000 I believe that it's important from the very beginning to set a tough mandate.

00:15:48.000 Maybe that means no boots on the ground, although I'm not familiar enough with the military tactical thinking, and I don't know that anyone is, with regards to what you would do in that regard.

00:16:01.000 So I think you can overthrow the regime in Iran.

00:16:03.000 And not occupy the country and end up in an endless insurgency and occupation, which you hope at some point is going to become successful.

00:16:12.000 So that's the first thing I would say.

00:16:14.000 Now, the second part of your statement is something that has been circulated a lot. 0.65

00:16:19.000 I really believe that its strongest roots are in this sort of Noam Chomsky school of foreign policy, and that's that Iran is a sort of isolationist, harmless sort of power in the Middle East. 0.76

00:16:32.000 And yeah, they talk tough and they say these bad things, but. 0.63

00:16:35.000 They're not really doing anything that goes against the interests of the United States, and thereby investing a single dollar into removing their regime would be frivolous.

00:16:44.000 Now, I take a lot of issue with that school of thinking. 0.94

00:16:48.000 The vast majority of the U.S. casualties that came in Iraq were a result of Iran.

00:16:53.000 Iran was funding militias and giving them weapons and training them and sending them into Iraq to kill U.S. troops.

00:17:00.000 Now, a lot of people say, well, we were foreign invaders, and that's their fault.

00:17:05.000 And I just don't buy into that sort of apologist thinking that, well, Iran was right to kill Americans. 0.97

00:17:12.000 I think that's just disgusting.

00:17:14.000 And I think people like Noam Chomsky that spread that sort of stuff, the sort of moral relativist crowd, are really morally bankrupt at the end of the day.

00:17:23.000 So I think you can move into Iran, you can remove the regime, and then you can let them pick up the pieces and have a prosperous country once again, as it sort of was pre Mola era when the United States had the puppet Shah in place. 0.78

00:17:39.000 And tongue in cheek, I sort of mentioned Jared Kushner as a Shah, but that might be the best option. 0.96

00:17:45.000 It is to bring in a Shah, bring in a puppet dictator to take over the country. 0.99

00:17:50.000 And the U.S. has done that successfully. 0.92

00:17:52.000 You know, a lot of people like to point to the failures in regime change.

00:17:56.000 But if you look at all of the regime changes that the U.S. has been involved in, many of them have been successful.

00:18:02.000 I would point out Egypt as a good example.

00:18:04.000 You mentioned Libya. 0.64

00:18:04.000 Well, Libya was an abject failure. 0.64

00:18:07.000 We removed Gaddafi, which we never should have done, and ISIS took over. 0.87

00:18:11.000 There's no disputing that. 0.56

00:18:12.000 But you look at what happened in Egypt, okay?

00:18:14.000 Egypt was overthrown. 0.89

00:18:16.000 By some very unsavory people that had sort of embedded themselves into the Islamic Spring, the Arab Spring, as some say.

00:18:25.000 And we ended up with Al Sisi in charge.

00:18:28.000 And Al Sisi has been a very cooperative leader.

00:18:31.000 He's done some bad things here and there. 0.90

00:18:33.000 He bought some RPGs from the North Koreans, and we weren't too happy about that. 1.00

00:18:37.000 But sort of on balance, Al Sisi's been pretty good. 0.93

00:18:40.000 And if we can find an Al Sisi, cultivate him, and put him in place in the country of Iran and take a hands off approach to what happens next, I think we'll be in pretty good shape. 0.82

00:18:49.000 Yeah, I have just generally a big problem. 0.98

00:18:52.000 I think this sounds very good on paper. 0.99

00:18:55.000 And like I said, I would have agreed with you 15 years ago, but it's not just Egypt.

00:18:59.000 I mean, we look at the record of regime change in the Middle East, and it's Egypt, but it's also Libya, and it's Somalia, and it's Iraq, and it's a botched attempt in Syria.

00:19:09.000 And in every one of these cases, there's not a single success. 0.52

00:19:12.000 Egypt, I think, is unlike the others.

00:19:14.000 Egypt, we didn't really overtake them by force, we gave tacit support to the protesters.

00:19:20.000 They elected somebody.

00:19:22.000 We ousted them. 0.74

00:19:23.000 I don't think that's really comparable to what it would take in Iran, which is a war, which is a full scale major military conflict that would entail 200,000 at the minimum U.S. boots on the ground. 0.93

00:19:34.000 And that's also airstrikes.

00:19:35.000 I mean, that's a major military feat. 0.91

00:19:38.000 And not only that, but to secure the gains of a war in Iran, you're going to have to have an occupation. 0.98

00:19:43.000 It's very easy to say, well, you know, we only want the good part, which is going in and taking them out and then leaving. 0.96

00:19:49.000 But how does it not end up like a situation in Libya? 0.98

00:19:52.000 How does it not end up like a situation in Somalia?

00:19:54.000 How does it not end up in a situation where? 0.93

00:19:56.000 The Iranian regime, which comes next, is actually far worse.

00:19:59.000 I think that if there is a major U.S. attack on Iran, it's probably the most likely outcome that the people in Iran will not exactly be keen with the United States.

00:20:09.000 You imagine that you have a very young population.

00:20:12.000 Maybe they want to modernize.

00:20:13.000 Maybe they want to westernize or liberalize.

00:20:15.000 What would be the effect of the United States dropping bombs on them, going in, invading their country, killing a lot of people with a major ground force, major airstrikes?

00:20:24.000 I mean, that's a major engagement.

00:20:26.000 I think you might actually have the opposite effect.

00:20:28.000 Whereas the Trump strategy, I think. 0.60

00:20:31.000 Would be to choke the regime with sanctions and either get a deal or affect regime change by the Islamic Republic dying a natural death and maybe protesters arise.

00:20:40.000 Who knows what could happen? 0.87

00:20:42.000 In that case, maybe that's a scenario where a more favorable regime can come to power.

00:20:47.000 If America comes in, they essentially vindicate the most hardline, the most fundamentalist, the most Islamic views, and you get exactly what happened in Libya, you get exactly what happened in Syria or everywhere else. 0.72

00:20:57.000 In the case of Syria, we did our second airstrike in April.

00:21:01.000 It actually Rallied support around Assad in Damascus where there had been none.

00:21:05.000 The same was true the year before.

00:21:07.000 And so I think this kind of occupation, basically just the naivety or the naivete of unintended consequences or just rolling the iron dice of getting in this kind of conflict, we know the costs will be significant financially, no matter what.

00:21:23.000 We know the costs will be significant in terms of lives, no matter what.

00:21:26.000 What comes next is a Pandora's box, and 99% of those outcomes are very, very bad. 0.96

00:21:31.000 And so I just think that, I mean, you can say, well, Maybe one day we get a Western leader like the Shah. 0.95

00:21:36.000 Maybe one day we get a leader that's favorable.

00:21:39.000 I think that's an outcome, but it's a strongly, strongly, or a very, very unlikely outcome. 0.98

00:21:45.000 And you bring up the Shah, which is a perfect example. 0.83

00:21:48.000 We overthrew Mossadegh, and that's not actually totally true. 0.92

00:21:51.000 Mossadegh was democratically elected in 1948, and then in the next election, by 1953, he had actually abused the Constitution to come to power by 1952.

00:22:01.000 And it wasn't entirely by the United States that we deposed him, it was actually a lot of people within Iran that.

00:22:06.000 Had that had it out for him and they took him out.

00:22:09.000 But even in that case, with the CIA going after Mossadegh, we'd installed the Shah and it lasted what, 26 years, 25 years? 0.75

00:22:17.000 Barely a quarter of a century.

00:22:18.000 And then in that case, the Carter administration was going to try and save the Shah's regime, the Pahlavi regime.

00:22:25.000 And the military generals didn't even make an attempt at Iran because they said there's basically no hope.

00:22:30.000 It's just a situation where there's really no winning if we get into a war.

00:22:35.000 And look, Iran may very well be on a path to a bomb. 0.90

00:22:38.000 I think them getting a nuclear weapon. 0.95

00:22:38.000 Who knows? 0.95

00:22:41.000 Even if they do, it's not the end of the world and certainly not worth the cost of another $3 trillion war and 200,000 people in the desert who could be killed.

00:22:52.000 Well, I think you bring up a couple of interesting points.

00:22:55.000 And, you know, a lot of people that are sort of in my camp and want regime change aren't even willing to acknowledge the Pandora's box, the effect of unanticipated unknown unknowns and outcomes you just can't plan for.

00:23:11.000 I'm perfectly willing to accept.

00:23:12.000 That there's a lot of uncertainty when you embark on these sort of things.

00:23:16.000 But what I would say is, I think the regime is already weakened.

00:23:20.000 I think that it doesn't take much to take them out.

00:23:22.000 I hope that whatever we end up doing to remove the regime, and it is my belief that regime change has basically become the policy within the Trump White House.

00:23:29.000 I hope that we have whatever we do requires minimal loss of life, requires no military force.

00:23:35.000 In fact, I like to see what Trump's doing with the Arab League, with the Gulf Cooperation Council.

00:23:40.000 The Gulf Cooperation Council has trained as many as 500,000 commandos that work in micro teams and I think make probably quick work of the Iranian regime in Tehran.

00:23:51.000 They can do all sorts of things with cyber.

00:23:53.000 They can set the revolutionary guards against the rest of the military.

00:23:56.000 There's a lot of very specific tactical things that we really don't have time to get into because we'd be here for 16 hours that we can do. 0.82

00:24:03.000 And what I'd like to see is I'd like to see the Arab nations, for once, front a lot of the cost of this sort of thing. 0.97

00:24:09.000 If they believe that Iran is truly the threat that they say it is, I welcome them to continue to buy U.S. weapons and create U.S. jobs and go crush Iran. 0.97

00:24:19.000 And I think that's really the optimal outcome an outcome where Israel does a lot of things on the intelligence side, the United States leads the economic front. 0.97

00:24:27.000 And the Arabs lead the military front in an all out effort to depose the regime in Iran and bring about a new regime. 0.68

00:24:34.000 And I acknowledge there's lots of unknowns. 0.95

00:24:35.000 The new regime could be worse.

00:24:37.000 But what we do know is we've got limited time here.

00:24:38.000 It doesn't mean we've got to do this tomorrow, but we've got limited time. 0.98

00:24:42.000 Iran is on the track to a bomb.

00:24:44.000 The people that said Iran doesn't want nuclear weapons were just plain wrong.

00:24:48.000 And I think what was perhaps most fascinating about Netanyahu's speech last week was that the entire thinking about Iran.

00:24:57.000 The entire thinking that kept the United States out of Iran when we invaded Iraq, the reason we went into Iraq rather than Iran, we were going to go into somewhere with Dick Cheney in the White House, was this whole idea that Iran's not building a bomb, that their nuclear ambitions are perfectly innocent, and they're just looking to have nuclear energy.

00:25:16.000 Well, what we've learned is when a rogue dictatorship tells you they want nuclear energy, you need to say no. 0.60

00:25:21.000 Because what we found out last week from Netanyahu was that their entire operations between 1999 and 2003 and 2004 were a weapons program. 0.63

00:25:32.000 And then you have Obama trouncing into Iran, basically, and signing an accord which doesn't allow inspectors to visit military sites. 0.79

00:25:40.000 I don't know about you, but if I were a military and I were developing military nuclear weapons, I would do so on a military site.

00:25:47.000 And we have zero visibility into what's going on in those sites.

00:25:50.000 So that's sort of the ideal situation as I see it minimal U.S. involvement, the U.S. military industrial complex, perhaps getting rich and creating lots of jobs thanks to a Saudi, primarily Saudi, but other Gulf state led military effort.

00:26:04.000 And the United States basically knocking them around economically, Israel doing what they can do covertly from the intelligence side, and an overall transition which brings about the end of the regime perhaps over the course of a number of months or years. 0.79

00:26:19.000 I guess the elephant in the room is that I just don't see it as a major U.S. strategic interest to depose the Islamic Republic. 0.78

00:26:25.000 I just don't see it as our interest. 0.95

00:26:27.000 I think it's in Israel's interest that we get rid of the Iranian regime. 1.00

00:26:32.000 I don't think it's in our interest. 1.00

00:26:33.000 I mean, let's say hypothetically they get a nuclear arsenal.

00:26:37.000 I don't think really the calculus on the ground changes very much.

00:26:40.000 I mean, perhaps Iran is freed up to be a little bit more aggressive with some of their proxies in Yemen and Syria and Iraq.

00:26:47.000 But, you know, for all these people that talk about Iran's regional domination and the Shiite crescent that stretches from Beirut to Yemen, I mean, a lot of this is overstated.

00:26:55.000 The United States and Israel and Saudi Arabia have complete hegemony over the region.

00:26:59.000 We've got Turkey, we've got Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Israel, Pakistan, we've got troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. 0.83

00:27:06.000 I mean, the idea that Iran is a major threat to our regional interests is.

00:27:10.000 Is vastly overstated.

00:27:12.000 If they get a nuclear arsenal, it's not like they're going to use it.

00:27:15.000 Like I've said before, there's no behavioral indicators in the past that have demonstrated they'd be willing to essentially commit suicide for their nation by employing a nuclear arsenal.

00:27:26.000 And you look at why they're trying to get a nuclear weapon, maybe it's as a deterrent to prevent exactly what you're proposing, which is U.S. regime change.

00:27:34.000 Maybe it's so that they can be more free in the region.

00:27:36.000 Or maybe it's because the only country in the Middle East with a nuclear program is Israel.

00:27:43.000 And I know you've denied this on our last debate.

00:27:46.000 Pakistan. 0.60

00:27:48.000 Pakistan has nuclear ICBMs.

00:27:49.000 Well, Pakistan isn't technically in the Middle East.

00:27:52.000 I mean, sometimes they're considered, but yeah, yeah.

00:27:54.000 But regardless, I mean, Israel, and you can deny it, but it's stated by whether it's the Federation of American Scientists, whether it's Colin Powell, whether it's the Knesset, whether it's former prime ministers.

00:28:05.000 I mean, they all maintain that Israel has an arsenal between 80 and 200 warheads. 0.71

00:28:10.000 And I think if people are really serious about nuclear proliferation in the region, they'd start with Israel.

00:28:15.000 And they'd say, here's a country which hasn't signed the NPT. 0.84

00:28:18.000 Here's a country which illegally annexes territory in the Golan Heights and the West Bank.

00:28:22.000 Here's a country which sponsors terrorism across the region, whether they support the MEK in Iran or they give tacit support to the Al Nusra Front and to ISIS.

00:28:31.000 Here's a region that, or a country that does cyber attacks on Iran.

00:28:35.000 They kill their scientists.

00:28:36.000 I mean, so all the things that we lay at the feet of Iran, this is really, I guess, the big source of contention. 0.95

00:28:42.000 We can say the same thing about Israel. 0.91

00:28:44.000 And so it's just really hard for me to say, well, we should go after Iran because they destabilize the region, they sponsor terrorists, they have a nuclear program, all the rest. 0.92

00:28:52.000 But we give $3.8 billion to a country which does the exact same. 0.96

00:28:55.000 I mean, is there.

00:28:56.000 Maybe you'll come at me with a moral equivalency argument, but I mean, what's your response to that? 0.55

00:29:01.000 Well, I guess for the sake of conversation, because we have to do a lot of things for the sake of conversation, but I think for the sake of conversation, let's assume Israel has a nuclear arsenal, a very effective nuclear arsenal.

00:29:16.000 I would rather have the guys who back us up have a nuclear arsenal than have the people who chant death to America have a nuclear arsenal.

00:29:23.000 And what I would say is the following.

00:29:25.000 When you talk about a rogue regime like Iran, like North Korea, what you're talking about is a case where the playbook is very, very simple. 0.82

00:29:35.000 It's called get a nuke by any means necessary. 0.75

00:29:38.000 If that means you've got to call up 1 800, get a nuke, and you've got to go buy a ballistic missile here and you've got to kind of piece it together as North Korea did, then you do that. 0.86

00:29:47.000 But you get yourself a nuke and then you extort the world. 0.80

00:29:50.000 It's a two step process.

00:29:51.000 And so you go country to country and you say, hey, it would be a real shame if one of these nukes slipped out into.

00:29:57.000 You know, Hamburg was set off, or even a dirty bomb was set off. 0.68

00:30:00.000 So, we're going to need 200 million in humanitarian aid next year, which of course goes straight to the regime to buy their 14th Ferrari. 0.71

00:30:09.000 So, I think this idea that, well, even if they get a nuclear weapon, it's not that bad, I really don't buy into that argument.

00:30:16.000 I think the nuclear weapon ultimately is the Trump card in the back pocket of these rogue regimes that at the end of the day allows them to extort us.

00:30:24.000 You know, why else?

00:30:25.000 You think Trump would be meeting with Kim Jong un if Kim Jong un didn't have nuclear weapons yet?

00:30:30.000 I don't think so.

00:30:31.000 So basically, it's an extortion operation. 0.86

00:30:33.000 And I don't think that we should be extorted by the world's number one state sponsor of terror, which previously was Saudi Arabia and now is, many years ago, Saudi Arabia and now is, without a shadow of a doubt, Iran. 0.94

00:30:46.000 That's their number one export. 0.96

00:30:47.000 They back Hamas. 1.00

00:30:47.000 They back Hezbollah. 1.00

00:30:49.000 They back any number of Shiite militias in Syria, which have resulted in the death of Americans on the ground. 0.53

00:30:57.000 So I just really don't buy this idea that, well, Iran's, you know, maybe they're kind of against our interests, but not that much.

00:31:03.000 I think Iran. 0.98

00:31:04.000 Is the number one threat to the United States right now. 1.00

00:31:07.000 I think Iran is a serious threat. 1.00

00:31:09.000 They say so. 1.00

00:31:10.000 We know they're on their way to a bomb.

00:31:12.000 And it would be really simple. 0.93

00:31:13.000 You know, if Iran wanted to not be invaded, if their regime wanted to survive, it would be very, very simple, very simple for them to prevent that.

00:31:23.000 All they would have to do is they'd have to say, okay, you know, you guys are out of the Iran deal now.

00:31:26.000 And they'd call up and they'd say, you know what, we're going to allow inspectors into our military sites.

00:31:33.000 It would be very simple.

00:31:34.000 They could open up the door, they could say, come on in, check it out, we've got no missiles.

00:31:38.000 But what are they hiding?

00:31:39.000 Why won't they allow international inspectors into their nuclear sites?

00:31:42.000 That's the big question.

00:31:43.000 And they're not hiding ice cream trucks down there.

00:31:47.000 They're hiding nuclear programs.

00:31:49.000 So I think it is imperative, imperative that we remove the regime.

00:31:53.000 And I think that's really the sort of last frontier towards peace in the Middle East. 0.78

00:31:57.000 I don't think that a deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which is a terror organization, is of particular importance when you talk about the broader region. 0.97

00:32:07.000 I think what's important is that you take out the mullahs. 0.98

00:32:10.000 Well, in the first place, about nuclear terrorism, it's an interesting point. 1.00

00:32:14.000 And it's one I think why.

00:32:16.000 It is in America's interest to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, which I am generally for.

00:32:20.000 I think, you know, we can look at the North Korean regime now.

00:32:24.000 We can look at the Iranian regime now.

00:32:26.000 And I would say that these regimes probably would not use nuclear weapons, probably not give them terrorists.

00:32:32.000 But there's no guarantee that they would never do that in the future.

00:32:34.000 So that's why, generally speaking, I think it's against our interests that they have a nuclear arsenal.

00:32:39.000 However, if it is likely that they're going to use their nuclear arsenal or to give them to terrorists, I think it's another question entirely.

00:32:46.000 Would it be worth us to go to war to prevent that kind of a thing?

00:32:49.000 Another question.

00:32:50.000 In the history of nuclear proliferation, never, not once in history, has a nuclear power given fissile material or other kinds of radioactive material to non state actors.

00:33:02.000 Not North Korea, not Libya, not Iraq, not Iran, not even Syria when they had a nuclear weapon.

00:33:07.000 You had, or they were attempting to build a nuclear weapon.

00:33:11.000 North Korea has had nuclear weapons since the early 1990s and they haven't given them to non state actors.

00:33:16.000 North Korea has been threatening this for 25 years and they haven't used them.

00:33:19.000 So, I think that the idea that there's this urgency, there's this really, and I think that's almost what pro regime change people rely on is fear mongering, essentially, is the urgency that, well, if we don't do it, the results will be catastrophic.

00:33:32.000 I think it's a little bit overblown.

00:33:34.000 And then in the second case, with regard to what is the solution to peace in the Middle East.

00:33:39.000 Now, I'll grant you, there's a big proxy war right now going on between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and this is a big source of contention.

00:33:46.000 But the reason that Iran and Saudi Arabia even opened up into this broader proxy conflict and have really engaged with each other is because Iraq was taken out of the picture.

00:33:56.000 And the reason you have so many battlegrounds and instability is because Syria has been destabilized as a result of certain policies.

00:34:04.000 And I think you could trace a lot of this destabilizing behavior back to the neoconservatives, the Zionist Jewish neoconservatives in the Bush administration, which is to say that you can bring up how the Iranians killed so many Americans in battle in Iraq.

00:34:19.000 And you could certainly give responsibility for about 6,500 deaths in Iraq to Iran. 0.99

00:34:23.000 And I would say that's probably fair. 1.00

00:34:25.000 But the only reason we were in Iraq in the first place was because of people like Wolfowitz, Bolton, Wormser, Thief, Pearl, and these were all people that wanted us in there to secure Israel's northern border. 0.53

00:34:37.000 The same is true with our support for the quote unquote rebels in Syria.

00:34:41.000 And now the same people that wanted war in Iraq and war in Syria are beating the war drums for war in Iran.

00:34:47.000 And so I think, you know, the threat to America is overplayed, if not an abject lie. 0.76

00:34:54.000 The real threat is that Iran supports Hezbollah, they support.

00:34:59.000 These various groups like Hamas and these Palestinian groups that threaten Israel, but not much else. 0.50

00:35:05.000 Iran has never conducted a terrorist attack on Western soil.

00:35:09.000 They tried, in one case, there was the Ababziar plot, which was foiled, but nevertheless, not a single terrorist attack.

00:35:15.000 Whereas you've had Saudi Arabia that's done terrorist attacks, or Saudi citizens, people that have been in with the Saudi government, ISIS, which has connection to the Saudi government.

00:35:24.000 And so I think we've really just kind of identified the wrong enemy.

00:35:28.000 Are they an adversary?

00:35:29.000 Absolutely.

00:35:30.000 But should we be going to war and there's no way around it?

00:35:33.000 They're the single central threat, I think is disingenuous to say the least.

00:35:39.000 Well, you know, Nick, I do have to believe that you're just. 0.80

00:35:43.000 Misinformed perhaps about the roots of the Iraq war and that you'd like to blame it on a group of conspiring Jews who pushed for it to secure Israel.

00:35:54.000 Because at the end of the day, there really weren't many Jews when it came to the Iraq war.

00:35:58.000 George Bush wasn't a Jew.

00:36:01.000 Congress, who voted for it, wasn't made up of majority Jews. 0.97

00:36:05.000 Condoleezza Rice, sorry, not a Jew. 0.93

00:36:07.000 Dick Cheney, not a Jew. 0.98

00:36:09.000 You like to mention these sort of columnists and opinion writers. 0.94

00:36:14.000 That happened to be Jewish, a nice Jewish foothold in the opinion writing game. 0.63

00:36:18.000 But at the end of the day, the shot callers that made the decision to go into Iraq were not Jewish. 0.86

00:36:24.000 I just hate to inform you, but they weren't Jewish and they certainly weren't Zionists. 0.53

00:36:28.000 In fact, if you look at the Bush administration, this was an administration that was very unfriendly when it came to relations with Israel. 0.71

00:36:36.000 This was an administration that proposed tremendous challenges, just artificial hurdles and sort of endless bogs of bureaucracy and Standoffishness when it came to Israel.

00:36:48.000 So, this idea that, you know, the Iraq war was a confabulation of Zionist Jews who wanted to protect Israel, I just don't buy it. 0.64

00:36:55.000 I know there's a lot of YouTube videos out there and there's a lot of conspiracy theory behind all of it.

00:37:00.000 But at the end of the day, the people that made the call when it came to the Iraq war just weren't Jewish and they weren't Zionists.

00:37:07.000 Well, you know, look, I was skeptical at first as well. 0.73

00:37:11.000 I said basically the same thing.

00:37:12.000 You know, can we really believe that there is this conspiracy to bring us to war in Iraq?

00:37:17.000 You know, I was.

00:37:18.000 Very much anti conspiracy, very much against that kind of speculation.

00:37:22.000 But then I looked at a very specific document and it really changed my opinion, which was the Clean Break Memo, written in 1996.

00:37:29.000 And this is what really changed my mind.

00:37:31.000 Whereas before I said, you know, there was definitely.

00:37:34.000 What's that?

00:37:35.000 You'll have to excuse me for just 30 seconds here to grab a computer for this computer because it's going to just die on me here.

00:37:41.000 And I don't want you to think that I'm leaving you.

00:37:43.000 Just give me one moment, okay?

00:37:44.000 Sure, by all means, go for it.

00:37:52.000 Thank you.

00:38:04.000 Brief intermission for some technical adjustments.

00:38:16.000 Conveniently timed, I should add.

00:38:48.000 Sorry about that.

00:38:50.000 All good.

00:38:50.000 No problem.

00:38:52.000 Anywho, as I was saying, but back to the original point about conspiracy.

00:38:58.000 And I'll agree with you.

00:38:59.000 It may sound speculative, but like I said, I looked at a document called the Clean Break Memo, written in 1996.

00:39:07.000 And the same people that pushed for war in Iraq, consequential people, not people that were colonists, of which you could point to Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer and the usual suspects, but people in the Defense Department, people in the Pentagon, people in the State Department.

00:39:22.000 Who were instrumental in 1996 putting together this memo called the Clean Break Memo?

00:39:28.000 It was written by Pearl Douglas Feeth, it was written by David Wormser.

00:39:32.000 All these people came together in 1996.

00:39:34.000 They wrote this memo for Benjamin Netanyahu, the then Prime Minister of Israel.

00:39:38.000 And the basis of the memo said this Israel has to get away from the strategy of comprehensive peace, of which the 1978 Camp David Accords were a good example, where they made peace with Egypt.

00:39:48.000 They said we have to move towards a more realistic kind of foreign policy for Israel, which is that.

00:39:55.000 We need to secure our northern border by first taking out Iraq and then taking out Syria and then possibly Iran. 0.71

00:40:01.000 You had the Oded Yunnan plan for the 1980s, and that's a little bit different.

00:40:04.000 But in the Clean Break memo, you had people in the Bush administration that went on, that worked in the Defense Department.

00:40:11.000 And in the case of Pearl and Fife, they put together the Office of Special Plans, which fabricated the evidence that Saddam Hussein was linked to Al Qaeda.

00:40:19.000 There was somebody within the Office of Special Plans put together by these people who wrote the memo in 1996 for Israel saying it's imperative for that country that we take out Iraq. 0.81

00:40:28.000 They put together this office.

00:40:30.000 The people working in it were indicted on espionage charges for passing secrets about Iran to AIPAC.

00:40:36.000 And from AIPAC, they were passed on to the Israeli government.

00:40:39.000 It was written about in The Guardian that the Office of Special Plans, overseen by these two Zionist Jews, was facilitating information coming in that was so radical information from the prime minister of Israel's office, who at the time I believe was Ariel Sharon information that was so alarmist and so unsubstantiated that even the Mossad wouldn't have given it to the Bush administration. 0.66

00:41:00.000 So they had to have their office open to Ariel Sharon. 0.65

00:41:02.000 Passing that information through unchecked, unverified, and putting it on the desk of the president.

00:41:08.000 So I'll agree, you know, it wasn't like it was all, it was everybody and all the decision makers, but you look at the crucial decision makers who created the intelligence, who put together the infrastructure, and there is a clear paper trail from when they established it was in Israel's interest to secure their northern border, to take out these three countries, and when they operated in the Bush administration to make it into a plan.

00:41:31.000 And all that is to say, It's not to say Israel's evil or all Jews are bad people.

00:41:37.000 Nothing close to it, not even close.

00:41:40.000 But it is to say that when we hear these kinds of people say that it's in our interest to go to war in Iran, we have to be highly skeptical because we know that it is in the interest of Israel for us to go to war in Iran, not necessarily for us.

00:41:52.000 And so I'm hearing a lot of talk about Iran's on the way to a nuclear bomb and destabilizing the region and all the rest.

00:41:58.000 And I get it to an extent, but I just am not finding where Iran's nuclear program justifies a major war on our part.

00:42:07.000 Sanctions are. 0.81

00:42:08.000 Absolutely.

00:42:08.000 But a war, no chance.

00:42:11.000 So here's what I would say.

00:42:13.000 And I'm not disputing your fact patterns with respect to the memo and the writers of the memo.

00:42:20.000 But what you're pointing out is something that's actually fairly common and at the end of the day, fairly benign, which is the idea that somebody who's producing intelligence, who's putting together reports, who is in some cases making decisions, are influenced by an underlying ideology or bias.

00:42:39.000 The idea that, well, if you have. 0.66

00:42:41.000 Zionists putting together a document, they're going to be influenced by their particular bias or deep seated ideology. 0.81

00:42:49.000 But that goes both ways. 0.70

00:42:50.000 You have people who lean more isolationist.

00:42:53.000 You have people who are from Canada that want to not rough up Canada too much.

00:42:59.000 So you have biases that go both directions.

00:43:01.000 The difference is when you have a particular group of people that call for something that ultimately fails, you don't see their religion being attached to it.

00:43:10.000 You don't see their ethnicity.

00:43:13.000 Being seen as playing a role.

00:43:15.000 For instance, I think we can agree that Hillary Clinton played a large part in overthrowing Libya.

00:43:20.000 But you don't hear people say, you know, radical Christian Hillary Clinton or Christian Zionist.

00:43:26.000 I don't know particularly what her persuasion is. 0.79

00:43:29.000 It seems it's perhaps devil worship.

00:43:32.000 But you don't hear that as an underlying cause.

00:43:35.000 So, yes, were people's decisions perhaps influenced by their bias?

00:43:41.000 I think that's possible.

00:43:42.000 I think it's likely.

00:43:44.000 But it probably went both directions.

00:43:45.000 You probably had a lot of.

00:43:47.000 Young kids who were fresh out of Harvard and their Noam Chomsky lectures who went exactly the other way. 0.98

00:43:53.000 It just so happened that the Zionists and their opinions won the day. 0.90

00:43:59.000 So I don't think that because they won the day, it's sort of confirmation bias, if you will, or sort of type two false negative error, if you will. 0.68

00:44:10.000 But I don't think that it implies a sort of consistent issue of Zionists leading us to war. 0.72

00:44:17.000 Well, to me, it would just be like if we had Iranian Shiites in the Defense Department and they had written something for the Islamic Republic saying, in order to secure Iran, we have to destroy Saudi Arabia and Israel. 0.79

00:44:31.000 And then they wrote that memo for the Iranian government, and then they came into the Defense Department and they said, hey, it's in our dire national interest to destroy Israel and Saudi Arabia, and it's because they'll attack the United States. 0.92

00:44:43.000 I think it would be a fool not to say that they're motivated by an interest other than the national interest. 0.71

00:44:49.000 And that's all I'm saying here, which is, you know, can you tell me, and to get away from the clean break moment, because that's kind of a separate issue, the Iraq war, but I think it is definitely connected. 0.77

00:44:58.000 Can you tell me why it is in America's direct interest, why it would be worth a $3 trillion, 200,000 man occupation to take out Iran if they're on their way to a bomb? 0.74

00:45:09.000 What direct existential threat to America's national security do they pose? 0.92

00:45:15.000 So I want to remove the frame of an occupation because, like I said, I think there's ways of doing it without that.

00:45:20.000 We can go back and forth and debate that point.

00:45:23.000 But your central question, which is why is it in America's interest to depose the Iranian regime?

00:45:28.000 And I would say there's two main points that sort of underlie that thesis fundamentally.

00:45:33.000 The first one is that you can do it now or you can do it later.

00:45:37.000 And once they have nuclear weapons, it becomes a much more expensive undertaking and an undertaking that people are much less willing to go into.

00:45:44.000 I mean, we already can't get our European quote unquote allies to follow us into getting out of a bad deal that's unenforceable.

00:45:53.000 The idea that they'd get into war, particularly. 0.76

00:45:56.000 After Iran has nuclear weapons, I think it is unlikely. 0.52

00:46:00.000 Plus, Saudi Arabia will then pursue them. 0.57

00:46:02.000 They released that statement today Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will pursue nuclear weapons if Iran pursues nuclear weapons, which introduces a number of free radicals.

00:46:11.000 You talk about Pandora's box, the only thing worse than a Pandora's box is two of them.

00:46:15.000 So I think that's the first part. 0.93

00:46:16.000 Second part is Iran is actively targeting Americans in the region.

00:46:22.000 Iran, for the first time ever in the last two years, since about late 2015, has been backing the Taliban.

00:46:28.000 Believe it or not, Iran has been backing the Taliban just for the sake that it creates chaos and results in dead Americans.

00:46:33.000 If an American dies in Afghanistan, they were likely killed by a member of the Taliban. 0.80

00:46:38.000 So Iran's backing the Taliban. 0.75

00:46:40.000 They're backing Hezbollah. 0.52

00:46:41.000 They're backing Hamas, who engage in a great deal of nefarious activities within the United States.

00:46:47.000 Iran is engaging in cyber attacks. 0.87

00:46:49.000 You know, it's funny. 0.88

00:46:50.000 The media loves to talk about Russian hacks.

00:46:53.000 The Russians, the Russian hacks.

00:46:55.000 You hear that constantly.

00:46:56.000 To this day, Robert Mueller or anyone else at the Justice Department has yet to indict a Russian hacker for any sort of role in influencing elections or anything else.

00:47:07.000 Who they have indicted just a few weeks ago, in fact, Rod Rosenstein gave a big press conference.

00:47:12.000 It didn't get Any sort of press attention, of course, is Iranian hackers.

00:47:16.000 The Iranian IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, also known as the Quds, they have a cyber division.

00:47:22.000 They call it, the name escapes me, it's something institute.

00:47:26.000 It's a Farsi word.

00:47:27.000 They've got a whole institute of people that specialize in hacking into U.S. institutions, including universities, research facilities, private companies, and stealing our data. 1.00

00:47:37.000 Same sort of thing that the Chinese do. 1.00

00:47:40.000 So it's a full scale effort by the Iranians to undermine American interests militarily. 0.99

00:47:45.000 Diplomatically, throw wrenches in the works in various negotiations. 0.99

00:47:49.000 And of course, in the cyber spectrum, when we already have a greatly weakened infrastructure when it comes to cyber and our power grid and everything else. 0.91

00:47:57.000 So, Iranians have been indicted for hacking into the United States. 0.89

00:48:00.000 Iranians have been caught dead to rights developing nuclear weapons, and they've been caught supporting America's enemies. 0.95

00:48:07.000 This, to me, is reason enough when you look at the relatively low cost of taking care of this problem now versus the relatively high cost of taking care of it later. 0.87

00:48:15.000 I lean towards taking care of it now.

00:48:18.000 Well, ah, see, here's the trick, though.

00:48:21.000 I mean, in answer to the response, or rather, in answer to the question, which is, what existential threat do they pose to the American homeland?

00:48:27.000 I mean, your answer is, well, we can take them out an hour later, and their threat is that they kill American soldiers basically in their backyard. 0.58

00:48:35.000 They indirectly, by sponsoring groups, that kill American soldiers, which begs the question you know, you have the Mexican government, which sponsors people to come across our borders and kill Americans, or they're in bed with the drug cartels and they kill Americans.

00:48:47.000 There's no call to invade Mexico.

00:48:49.000 You have people in Niger.

00:48:51.000 Who kills Americans?

00:48:53.000 Boko Haram kills Americans in Niger and Nigeria.

00:48:56.000 Al Shabaab kills Americans in Somalia.

00:48:58.000 ISIS kills Americans in America and in Europe, and Israel gives tacit support to them.

00:49:04.000 You have governments like Saudi Arabia and the Emirates and Qatar who give tacit support to them, and we don't hear calls for regime change there.

00:49:11.000 We hear about how Iran is doing cyber attacks and how they're stealing our data.

00:49:15.000 Like I said just a moment ago, The Guardian reported that there were people in the Office of Special Plans and in AIPAC. 0.56

00:49:21.000 Who are passing American classified national security secrets to Israel?

00:49:25.000 Israel conducts, depending on who you ask, the third, the fourth, or the second most aggressive spying operation on American soil, behind only Russia and China, or sometimes Iran.

00:49:36.000 And so, once you bring in those comparisons, I'm not trying to do what about is.

00:49:40.000 I'm not trying to say, well, what about this country?

00:49:42.000 What about that country?

00:49:43.000 I'm simply trying to say, let's enforce the same standard across the board.

00:49:47.000 If these minor acts of revisionist powers pursuing their own interests warrant Armed conflict or a very big war.

00:49:56.000 I just don't understand why.

00:49:57.000 Well, I actually understand very clearly why it's applied only to this country, and that's because it serves the interest of a very powerful lobby, of a very powerful group in this country.

00:50:06.000 You know, if we're going to talk about Iran threatening American interests, well, then China threatens America's interests far more than Iran does, and nobody talks about going to war in Beijing. 0.51

00:50:16.000 It'd be more cheap to go to war in Beijing now than it would be later, but nobody's talking about going to war there. 0.54

00:50:21.000 They're building islands in the South China Sea, they're doing cyber attacks. 0.59

00:50:25.000 The same is true with Russia.

00:50:26.000 You know, Russia's building bases.

00:50:28.000 In Syria and Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, I believe, or it's Uzbekistan.

00:50:33.000 They've got their enclave, or rather their exclave in Kaliningrad. 0.93

00:50:36.000 They do all the rest.

00:50:37.000 And so, I guess then, how do you respond to this idea that there's just this complete and utter inconsistency and also failure to demonstrate how that represents an existential threat to people like you and me on American soil?

00:50:50.000 Sure.

00:50:50.000 So, I don't, first of all, I agree with you on a lot of what you just said.

00:50:55.000 For instance, China is a bigger threat than Iran. 0.99

00:50:57.000 They are. 0.99

00:50:57.000 The question is, what can you do about China? 0.99

00:51:00.000 Not much at this point.

00:51:01.000 So, you do what you can and you get by. 1.00

00:51:05.000 I believe Mexico is a great threat. 1.00

00:51:06.000 In fact, people can search my tweets.

00:51:07.000 I've called for drone strikes against the cartels.

00:51:09.000 I think the U.S. military should be used against Mexico.

00:51:12.000 You talk about the number of Americans killed because of drugs pouring into our country from Mexico and people pouring into our country from Mexico, whether it be through disease or whether it be through those people committing crimes or drunk driving and hitting and killing Americans. 0.92

00:51:27.000 I think Mexico poses an existential threat to the United States. 0.93

00:51:32.000 But I also believe Iran poses an existential threat to the United States. 0.80

00:51:35.000 And rather than talking about consistency, and I believe in consistency, but I think that what's more realistic is dealing with each of these threats in a silo. 0.97

00:51:44.000 And asking yourself on an individual case by case basis, what can you do for each of these? 0.70

00:51:48.000 So, we do react to China. 0.81

00:51:49.000 We're imposing tariffs. 0.97

00:51:50.000 We negotiate. 0.70

00:51:51.000 We do things espionage wise in China, as I'm sure everybody knows.

00:51:56.000 And you deal with that threat as it presents itself. 0.84

00:51:58.000 We're not doing nearly enough in Mexico.

00:52:00.000 And that's because Mexico has a very strong lobby in the United States.

00:52:03.000 If you think AIPAC is strong, take a look at some of the Mexican lobbies that exist in the United States.

00:52:09.000 There's dozens of them, and it's a multi billion dollar a year industry.

00:52:13.000 But we need to do more. 0.90

00:52:15.000 To thwart Mexico's aggression towards the United States.

00:52:18.000 It's horrible, and Mexico's been a longtime adversary of the United States.

00:52:22.000 They backed our enemies in World War I, and it's basically been a disaster ever since when it comes to Mexico. 1.00

00:52:28.000 So I agree with you there. 1.00

00:52:29.000 Now, when it comes to Iran, I think what you have to do is look at it on a case by case basis, and you ask again, what's the existential threat? 0.97

00:52:36.000 Well, I would call the backing of terror groups, which are opposed to the United States and opposed to our allies, an existential threat. 0.88

00:52:42.000 I would call the hacking of our power grid.

00:52:45.000 That's potentially enabled through their hacking operations, which have already taken place and I think could be looked at potentially as dry runs.

00:52:52.000 I think that's an existential threat to the United States. 0.93

00:52:54.000 And last but not least, I think that an Islamofascist regime whose central tenet is the destruction of the United States and the destruction of Israel, but we're talking about the United States here, so we'll stick to that, whose central tenet is the destruction of the United States, I think that that country should not be allowed under any circumstances to possess a nuclear weapon. 0.91

00:53:12.000 I don't think they should be allowed to play the get a nuke. 0.96

00:53:15.000 Then blackmail game with us because really that's a game that's hard to fight.

00:53:20.000 Once they grab a nuke, all we're going to be left to do is sort of wet noodle, wet blanket diplomacy with them, which will result in endless loss of money for the United States, potentially loss of lives, and ultimately a big waste of time and focus when our country should be focusing on things like going to Mars.

00:53:39.000 So I think that right now, again, you look at each thing on a case by case basis. 0.74

00:53:43.000 You look at Iran, and I think it sort of presents the United States and our allies.

00:53:48.000 Namely, not Israel, but namely the Gulf Cooperation Council, with a great opportunity to go in and affect change on the ground and end up with something that's better.

00:53:57.000 You could end up with something that's worse.

00:53:59.000 That's always possible.

00:54:00.000 There's risk in these things. 1.00

00:54:01.000 Anybody that speaks about these sort of massive foreign policy ventures and they speak with certainty and they act as if they're Nostradamus and they know the future, I immediately kind of shy away from those people because I think they're morons. 0.98

00:54:13.000 So there's plenty of unknowns. 0.86

00:54:15.000 But I think that the odds are in our favor when you talk about action in Iran.

00:54:19.000 I just think there's a tremendous amount of obfuscation there.

00:54:21.000 I mean, the terrorist groups that they endorse, which you bring up as really the only clear cut example of Iranians killing Americans, they back Hezbollah, they back Hamas, they back the Taliban.

00:54:32.000 But all of these groups, their interests are in the Middle East. 0.65

00:54:36.000 All these groups, their interests are purely regional.

00:54:38.000 They're not in America.

00:54:38.000 They're not global.

00:54:40.000 The Taliban has never conducted a terror attack on the United States.

00:54:43.000 Hezbollah has never done that.

00:54:44.000 Hamas has never done that.

00:54:46.000 I think, well, there was the one in Beirut 38 years ago, but I don't know if that's really comparable to the kind of domestic terrorism that we would see from a Sunni terror group or something like that, where they'd kill us on our soil.

00:54:57.000 It was only because we were in Lebanon in the first place and interfering in Lebanon.

00:55:01.000 And so I would just say that there's just this tremendous amount of obfuscation where.

00:55:06.000 The existential threat is really kind of up in the air and almost entirely hypothetical.

00:55:11.000 And the costs are either being ignored or they're being minimized.

00:55:14.000 And the possibility they could go very wrong are almost completely ignored.

00:55:19.000 And that's exactly what we have going on here.

00:55:21.000 We have a very small and narrow casus belli that I have a hard time justifying.

00:55:26.000 And then if we quantify what would have to happen in Iran to really guarantee that it would be a good regime, it's 200,000 boots on the ground and something like $3 trillion. 0.74

00:55:35.000 And not only that, I mean, you'd like to say, well, we could go and destroy him and come out. 0.67

00:55:39.000 But in fact, the problem would actually get a lot worse.

00:55:41.000 We get a regime that could be worse almost guaranteed, or it could turn into a hotbed for terrorism.

00:55:47.000 Either way, these are not good outcomes for the United States.

00:55:50.000 So it's almost a requirement that we'd have to stay in. 1.00

00:55:52.000 And even if we don't, then it would be a worse outcome than if we just had the Islamic Republic. 0.99

00:55:57.000 And I'll tell you what the alternative is it's exactly what happened in 2015, which is we have diplomacy, we have a deal. 0.99

00:56:04.000 We hype up the sanctions regime, we pressure them into a deal. 0.68

00:56:08.000 And certainly it's different than in North Korea, where they only have one patron stain, and we could essentially just choke that off. 0.87

00:56:14.000 They'll be brought to the table.

00:56:16.000 But you said it yourself the Iranian regime is in a precarious place.

00:56:19.000 It's got a population that's very dissatisfied, that's very restless.

00:56:23.000 And those kinds of sanctions could bring a pressure about on Iran in a different way.

00:56:27.000 And we could pressure Russia and China.

00:56:29.000 We could pressure other regional actors as well.

00:56:31.000 And we could produce something that is similar to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, but something that's ironically a little bit more comprehensive.

00:56:40.000 And you look at that deal and you keep bringing up, well, Iran pursuit a weapons program, Iran pursuit a weapons program.

00:56:45.000 We had that deal in place since 2015.

00:56:48.000 And since then, the IAEA has independently verified 10 separate times as recently as February that they were in compliance with the deal.

00:56:55.000 The only party of that deal that wasn't totally in compliance is possibly the United States.

00:57:00.000 Even our intelligence agencies have confirmed that they're in compliance.

00:57:03.000 They're not developing a nuclear weapon.

00:57:05.000 Certainly they have inspected military sites.

00:57:08.000 They've only inspected civilian sites. 0.51

00:57:10.000 You strike a deal with a country that's got a military nuclear program and you agree to in that deal that you can't inspect military sites, it's a disaster.

00:57:19.000 The other thing is the IAEA. 0.56

00:57:22.000 Was in the process of inspecting a military facility near Tehran, which was believed to be sort of the epicenter of their nuclear program.

00:57:32.000 They had an ongoing investigation.

00:57:34.000 It was a massive international undertaking.

00:57:37.000 And as part of the deal, that investigation was quashed. 0.89

00:57:40.000 It was a central demand of the Iranians that that IAEA inspection or sort of investigation, I wouldn't call it an inspection, was quashed, and we agreed to it. 0.92

00:57:49.000 So the JCPOA was a complete disaster. 0.95

00:57:54.000 I guess in your statement, we can sort of boil this down to the central disagreement that you and I have, and I think that sort of the people listening will sort of fall on one side or the other with, which is is a nuclear Iran an existential threat to the United States? 0.97

00:58:12.000 I say yes, and you say no. 0.86

00:58:15.000 And I guess that's what people are going to have to decide for themselves.

00:58:18.000 Do they believe that a nuclear Iran is an existential threat? 0.67

00:58:22.000 And I could go back over the endless number of reasons why I believe that's the case, and you could go over the Endless number of reasons why you believe it's not the case.

00:58:30.000 But ultimately, that's what we're talking about here.

00:58:32.000 That is the game.

00:58:35.000 Should they want to reach that or not?

00:58:36.000 But it's not simply that.

00:58:37.000 And I'll give you the last word after this because it's been about an hour, but it's not simply that.

00:58:43.000 The deal that happened with the JCPOA, I understand the concern about military inspections, but they also gave up 97% of their uranium.

00:58:51.000 They shut down two thirds of their centrifuges.

00:58:54.000 And they basically made it that if they're in compliance with the deal, they've made it impossible for them to develop a nuclear weapon.

00:59:00.000 And sure, the military sites are, it would be ideal to inspect those.

00:59:04.000 Can you really blame them to have an independent investigation agency investigating their military sites where the United States is a big benefactor of those agencies, where European powers are big benefactors and we've wiped out every country you don't like?

00:59:17.000 I think it makes sense.

00:59:18.000 And so I really think it boils down to are we willing to make the same mistakes of the past?

00:59:24.000 It's not a matter, I think a nuclear program would not be in America's interest.

00:59:28.000 It would certainly be less than ideal.

00:59:30.000 But is it the only way?

00:59:31.000 And would it be in America's interest to spend another $3 trillion?

00:59:35.000 On something that we don't even know if it would work in the first place, that the record of history is clear that actually it's probably a 99% likelihood it could go south very quickly and maybe among the worst options.

00:59:46.000 And I guess you're right, we have gone back and forth on these different points and we stated our case.

00:59:51.000 And I'll let you have the last point.

00:59:52.000 You'd have a closing argument here.

00:59:55.000 Sure, Nick.

00:59:56.000 And it's been great so far.

00:59:57.000 I'm glad that we've had the opportunity to do this.

01:00:01.000 But, you know, I'm not going to apologize for advocating a strong interventionist. 0.98

01:00:09.000 When it comes to Iran, there's always been the anti war crowd, the stay out of it crowd, which I think that, Nick, you're a member of.

01:00:19.000 And they haven't won very often in the arguments that policymakers undergo in the United States.

01:00:25.000 But if you look at and you ask yourself, okay, what if the Nick Fuentes of the world and the Noam Chomskys of the world had won the debate and the U.S. had pursued policy that was consistent with those ideas, what would the world be like today? 0.74

01:00:39.000 Well, for one thing, there would be no South Korea. 0.79

01:00:41.000 South Korea would have been taken over by the communists. 0.84

01:00:45.000 Bosnia, a million people would have died in Bosnia because the U.S. would have just stayed out of it and people would have been genocided. 0.58

01:00:52.000 Saddam Hussein would have annexed Kuwait and maybe other Gulf states, and the United States would have stood by and watched him become a very rich man and maybe develop weapons of mass destruction with all of his new oil money.

01:01:04.000 But luckily, the, I would say, more well informed people in the room, everybody who's in those kinds of rooms is.

01:01:10.000 Fairly smart when it comes to IQ, but the better informed people in the room, I would say the wiser people in the room, won out those debates.

01:01:17.000 And Kuwait is not an extension of Iraq today.

01:01:20.000 And Bosnia didn't see a million deaths.

01:01:23.000 And South Korea exists thanks to interventionists, thanks to people that are willing to take the tough tack and say, yes, maybe some people die.

01:01:31.000 Yes, maybe it costs us a lot of money.

01:01:33.000 But thanks to interventionists, the world is a much safer place today.

01:01:36.000 And so I would advise people to really study these things in depth and really understand what the world would be like today.

01:01:43.000 What would the world be like today if we followed the gleeful lead of the anti interventionists?

01:01:49.000 Well, it's been a good debate.

01:01:51.000 I was just about to say that you were very fair, but then that was kind of an unfair closing statement, but that's all right.

01:01:58.000 I think we basically made our case.

01:01:59.000 But thanks for coming on.

01:02:00.000 It was a civil debate.

01:02:02.000 I think it was informative.

01:02:03.000 And I think, as much as I might disagree with your position, I think you are at least a reasonable spokesperson for it.

01:02:10.000 And I think you make a good case for it, even though I think a lot of people watching might disagree.

01:02:14.000 So thanks for coming on.

01:02:15.000 It's been a real blast.

01:02:17.000 Thanks, Nick.

01:02:18.000 It was awesome.

01:02:19.000 Take it easy, big guy.

01:02:21.000 All right.

01:02:22.000 And a fun debate.

01:02:24.000 I enjoyed it.

01:02:25.000 And we'll do our super chats and also our stream labs now.

01:02:30.000 And we'll see what people are saying.

01:02:33.000 We'll see what the reaction is.

01:02:36.000 What are the unwashed masses in the audience saying?

01:02:39.000 I know a lot of people are going to say I wasn't aggressive enough.

01:02:42.000 I wasn't, you know, the usual Nick the Knife.

01:02:44.000 But I got to say, I am always as respectful as the opponent is.

01:02:50.000 Whoops, I'm very loud here.

01:02:52.000 I could probably take this off now, now that Jacob's off the air.

01:02:57.000 I always try to match the level that the opponent is at.

01:03:00.000 And Jacob will say what you will about him.

01:03:02.000 He's very provocative on Twitter, but he came on the show.

01:03:06.000 He was respectful, he was civil.

01:03:08.000 I think there was one or two interruptions.

01:03:11.000 And he made the case, I think, as well as you can, because I think it's a very weak case.

01:03:15.000 But I think he made it as strongly as he could.

01:03:17.000 And there were some tactics in there that I think were deceptive, but that's debate.

01:03:20.000 So it was fun.

01:03:22.000 But we'll see what people are saying about it.

01:03:25.000 Let me jump on the Streamlabs first, and we'll see.

01:03:30.000 Let's take a look.

01:03:31.000 And I ran out of water.

01:03:33.000 I only got a little bit left.

01:03:35.000 We've got Daniel Wall who says, What stops Iran? 0.78

01:03:35.000 Let's see. 0.78

01:03:39.000 From buying a nuclear weapon from Russia with the $1.7 billion in cash Obama gave them.

01:03:45.000 We must remember that Iran is allied with Russia when discussing war.

01:03:48.000 I agree with Jacob on 90% of topics, but does he want World War III? 1.00

01:03:53.000 Yeah, that's true.

01:03:54.000 I mean, look, to say that Russia would sell them a nuclear weapon, I think is a little bit, I don't think that would happen.

01:04:00.000 However, it is worth mentioning that Iran has a nuclear capability in the sense that they have the material, they have the infrastructure, they have the plans, the scientists, it's all there.

01:04:09.000 And even if we did some kind of a military strike, Limited in nature to destroy the nuclear program, the most liberal estimates say that they'd be able to reconstitute their program within five years. 0.59

01:04:20.000 So Iran is basically at the point where they have a breakout capability if they so chose to build an arsenal. 0.71

01:04:27.000 But they haven't done so.

01:04:28.000 Why?

01:04:29.000 Because they don't really want one.

01:04:31.000 And it looks like we've got more water.

01:04:34.000 Excellent.

01:04:36.000 I didn't really need it, but appreciate the interruption. 1.00

01:04:40.000 Miller Turtle Supremacist says, Nick, stop giving this idiot FaceTime. 1.00

01:04:44.000 He talks lies and runs investments. 1.00

01:04:46.000 Scams.

01:04:47.000 Ask him about being banned by the NFA in Arizona for securities fraud or losing investor money in a bullish market.

01:04:53.000 All right, all right.

01:04:54.000 Look, I don't want to get into his personal details.

01:04:58.000 I mean, people can be free to look into that for themselves, but he wanted to come on.

01:05:03.000 He's a provocative guy.

01:05:04.000 He has an opinion, and it's important to have the conversation.

01:05:07.000 I think it is disingenuous.

01:05:09.000 I definitely do, but that's for people to decide for themselves.

01:05:12.000 People can make the judgment. 0.99

01:05:14.000 And I will say, I've debated other Zionists before, and they don't do themselves any favors because they come on, they jump up and down, they scream. 1.00

01:05:21.000 And Jacob does a good chance. 0.99

01:05:22.000 But I still think that when ideas are up against ideas, when the hard questions are asked, even if you don't have somebody coaching you through and telling you what to think and who's winning, and there's an applause line and all that, I think it's pretty clear the case against regime change.

01:05:38.000 But nevertheless, I like the conversation.

01:05:41.000 I appreciated that he came on because he knows it's a hostile crowd and he knows my reputation.

01:05:46.000 But I think in spite of that, he did well.

01:05:49.000 Groyper Neat, do you have the subscribe option enabled for your Twitch so I can support you five bucks a month here?

01:05:55.000 I do have that enabled, but don't subscribe on Twitch because they take half.

01:05:59.000 So wait for me to set up the PayPal plugin and then do the subscription.

01:06:03.000 Because if you do it on Twitch, I'll get half.

01:06:06.000 They get you with half.

01:06:07.000 Super chats, they get 30%.

01:06:10.000 Twitch, they get 50%.

01:06:11.000 It's brutal.

01:06:12.000 So.

01:06:16.000 M103 Heavy donated $10 dues.

01:06:19.000 Thank you, big guy.

01:06:20.000 And let's look at our super chats.

01:06:22.000 We'll see what people are saying.

01:06:25.000 Let me just get it up on.

01:06:27.000 My monitor here.

01:06:31.000 I got to embrace the dual monitor nationalism soon.

01:06:35.000 And let's see what we've got going on.

01:06:40.000 Alphonsus Billingsley says, Hey, Nick, I hope all is well.

01:06:43.000 What's up with the Discord drama?

01:06:44.000 Chief, unban the bros, my man.

01:06:47.000 Anyway, God bless. 0.85

01:06:48.000 Keep fighting the good fight.

01:06:49.000 Well, you know, I love to talk about Discord drama on the show, my favorite subject.

01:06:55.000 The Discord's really just become a headache.

01:06:57.000 A lot of people abuse my goodwill.

01:07:00.000 And they put me in a situation where I'm in jeopardy.

01:07:04.000 And I really don't appreciate that.

01:07:06.000 It's a relationship where it's difficult because you like to be friendly with the fans.

01:07:10.000 But, you know, I think familiarity in many cases breeds contempt.

01:07:14.000 And certainly that's true in the Discord where I try and be nice.

01:07:17.000 I try and take it easy on people.

01:07:19.000 I give people a lot of room to be themselves and speak freely.

01:07:22.000 I put in place a few restrictions don't say this, try to refrain from that so this server doesn't get shut down, so people don't write hit pieces about me, that kind of thing.

01:07:31.000 And people just abuse.

01:07:32.000 They give me the finger.

01:07:33.000 And so. 1.00

01:07:34.000 It sucks. 0.97

01:07:36.000 Enforcer88 says Israel might make a great parking lot as well, but they have nukes. 0.99

01:07:41.000 Hmm, I wonder why Iran would want those. 0.93

01:07:43.000 Yeah, right?

01:07:44.000 Very interesting, huh?

01:07:47.000 Well, that's at the end of the day.

01:07:48.000 The problem is this policy of intervention has in many ways begotten the push for nuclear proliferation.

01:07:56.000 Why would a country like North Korea or Iraq or Libya or Iran desire a nuclear arsenal?

01:08:03.000 It's because they know they are in the crosshairs, and a nuclear shield is the only way.

01:08:08.000 To deter a strike by a much more powerful country.

01:08:12.000 In the nuclear age, that's the only way to achieve parity. 0.87

01:08:15.000 That's the great equalizer on the world stage for a country like Iran or a poor country like Libya or Syria to get those kinds of weapons of mass destruction so that for us to strike would involve massive casualties. 0.90

01:08:28.000 And Israel, by the way, does the same thing. 0.87

01:08:31.000 It's the same logic. 0.75

01:08:32.000 They developed their arsenal in the late 1960s, and it had been underway in the early 1960s in order to deter. 0.94

01:08:40.000 A strike by an Arab coalition.

01:08:42.000 And, you know, ironically, nevertheless, they still got attacked by an Arab coalition in 1973, or there was still a war with an Arab coalition.

01:08:50.000 It's dubious which side started it, but you get the picture.

01:08:54.000 And Israel says, well, there's four red lines you can cross that'll make us use our weapons, which is that if an Arab army penetrates into the pre 67 borders, which is like the 1949 borders, if the Israeli Air Force is defeated, if I think like a major population is hit, or if, uh, Weapon of mass destruction, like a biological or a chemical weapon, is used against Israel.

01:09:15.000 And those are the four options.

01:09:16.000 Or there's the Samson option, where they say that if somebody invades, they will just destroy the world with nuclear weapons or destroy the region. 0.61

01:09:24.000 And it makes sense to them why they have nuclear weapons. 0.73

01:09:26.000 We turn a blind eye to them, but Iran can't have them. 0.97

01:09:30.000 And of course, that's because they're on the other side. 0.96

01:09:32.000 They're a revisionist power Israel factors into, I guess, but they're a very subversive element of the existing order. 0.86

01:09:38.000 But that's at the end of the day why.

01:09:40.000 I got to say, I'm a little disappointed with the numbers.

01:09:42.000 I guess it's JF competing away.

01:09:45.000 People wanted the frame games talk about demographics more than the debate, but that's all right.

01:09:51.000 That's all right.

01:09:52.000 Put together a big debate, put together a big show.

01:09:55.000 I do all the research.

01:09:56.000 People don't watch it.

01:09:57.000 That's all right.

01:09:58.000 I get it.

01:09:59.000 Osiris says, Keep up the great work, Nick.

01:10:02.000 Thank you, my guy.

01:10:03.000 Much appreciated. 0.87

01:10:04.000 Frank Underwood, that's kind of an unfortunate username after what happened, but he says, This guy's a closet Jew.

01:10:12.000 He's not closeted at all, he's very explicit about it. 0.56

01:10:15.000 A war or U.S. invasion will only make the extreme Islamists more popular. 1.00

01:10:19.000 Well, exactly right. 1.00

01:10:20.000 And that's what I said.

01:10:22.000 And that is the case in history.

01:10:24.000 That kind of occupation only breeds contempt with the occupier.

01:10:29.000 We go in, we blow up their country, we blow up their families and their houses and their infrastructure, and they're going to suddenly say, We'd like the U.S. more now.

01:10:38.000 And you look at public opinion polling, which is not reliable at all.

01:10:41.000 He brought up public opinion polling, not reliable.

01:10:44.000 The Iranian government does not allow direct public opinion polling, so the only way to get information is by calling Iranian people directly.

01:10:53.000 And then you have a secret police, so even then it's dubious. 0.62

01:10:56.000 But nevertheless, They like to make the argument that the younger people are more amenable to the West and to the modernists. 0.99

01:11:02.000 Is there any worse way that you could possibly conceive of to bring Iran into our sphere of orbit or into a relationship with us than to bomb them, than to destroy their country, to kill their people and their families? 0.99

01:11:18.000 I don't think there is a worse way. 1.00

01:11:22.000 Benny, 1987, says preserve the orb race.

01:11:25.000 What is the orb race?

01:11:26.000 I don't know what you mean. 0.99

01:11:28.000 Rick Smith, gradually I began to hate them.

01:11:30.000 Don't know what you mean by that.

01:11:32.000 Somebody just retracted a message.

01:11:35.000 They sent in a super chat but retracted the message.

01:11:37.000 That's all right. 0.85

01:11:39.000 Zach N says a nuclear Iran is an existential threat to a U.S. that involves itself in the Middle East.

01:11:46.000 It's not a threat to a U.S. that refrains from meddling, even meddling on behalf of other states in the Middle East. 0.98

01:11:52.000 That's basically true.

01:11:53.000 That's basically true.

01:11:54.000 And even with other Arab countries, why do you think there is such great antipathy towards the United States?

01:12:01.000 In the region at large, not just amongst the people, but amongst the regimes. 0.83

01:12:04.000 It's because of our support for Israel. 0.92

01:12:07.000 It's because of our meddling in the region. 0.98

01:12:09.000 It's not 100%, but that's a big part of it. 0.53

01:12:12.000 And you look at Osama bin Laden, who has said on many occasions, whether it was his fatwa declaring war on the United States in the late 1990s, whether it was comments he made about the war in Israel, or rather the war by Israel in Lebanon and how they attacked the buildings in Beirut.

01:12:28.000 Osama bin Laden says his inspiration for the World Trade Center bombings was the United States' support for Israel.

01:12:34.000 And for Israel doing these atrocities.

01:12:36.000 The World Trade Center bomber in 1993, it was 91 or 93, I think it was 93, the original World Trade Center bomber said that the reason he did his attack was because of our support for Israel. 0.63

01:12:49.000 You look at a lot of the regimes in the region, and they say the same thing, and the people say the same thing too.

01:12:55.000 And so this relationship has come at a tremendous cost to our country.

01:13:00.000 And the reason why we have bad relationships, not just with Iran, but with Syria and others, is because of. 0.72

01:13:05.000 Are meddling.

01:13:06.000 And so it's not a good policy.

01:13:08.000 You talk about America first.

01:13:09.000 That's not America first.

01:13:12.000 Frederick White, Nick, please unmute me on Twitter.

01:13:15.000 No, no.

01:13:17.000 People get nasty on Twitter, they get banned.

01:13:20.000 People are annoying on Twitter, they get muted.

01:13:23.000 And I've basically constructed a perfect timeline.

01:13:25.000 I feel like Thanos in a way.

01:13:27.000 I've achieved perfect balance.

01:13:29.000 I've gathered the blue check mark, I've gathered 20,000 followers, I've gathered mutuals with some key people.

01:13:37.000 And so I have the Twitter infinity gauntlet.

01:13:39.000 I've snapped my fingers and I've blocked, I think, 1,300 people and I've created a perfect timeline.

01:13:45.000 I was on the timeline the other day, scrolling through, and I was thinking, I love everyone on my timeline.

01:13:52.000 I love them.

01:13:53.000 I love their content. 0.91

01:13:54.000 I'm really feeling the homies tonight. 1.00

01:13:55.000 And I thought, this is because of my brutal but necessary approach to just banning and muting as many people as I should, as liberally as possible. 1.00

01:14:06.000 And so I refuse to unmute or to unban.

01:14:10.000 And it's so funny, too.

01:14:10.000 People are like, Nick banned me on Twitter.

01:14:14.000 Triggered much?

01:14:16.000 And then they talk about it for months and months and months and months.

01:14:19.000 I'm the triggered one, but they can't get over it.

01:14:22.000 I get people saying, can somebody at Nick and tell him to unblock me?

01:14:27.000 I go and I check sometimes because I'll see people are tweeting and I see people tweet about me every day after they get blocked.

01:14:34.000 And so I say, I think I make the right choice. 0.86

01:14:38.000 Jose Antonio says, covert Jewish warmonger spokesman. 0.85

01:14:42.000 I don't know if I'd go that far, but certainly I think he's got a vested interest. 0.99

01:14:47.000 You know, I think all Jewish people do.

01:14:49.000 I don't think that's a bad thing to say.

01:14:51.000 I think that's a true thing to say.

01:14:53.000 You imagine that.

01:14:55.000 Israel is the Jewish state, the homeland, the eternal homeland of the Jewish people.

01:15:00.000 And you're telling me that Jewish people do not have a vested interest in seeing that country survive and thrive?

01:15:06.000 You're telling me that I'm a bad person for thinking that?

01:15:09.000 That there's a double allegiance there? 0.99

01:15:12.000 If you said something similar about an Arab, a Russian, a North Korean, a Chinese person, it's standard fair. 0.93

01:15:19.000 It's standard fair to talk about Chinese students on university campuses who are literal spies for the government, who report back to the government. 0.94

01:15:27.000 It's standard fair to talk about. 0.98

01:15:29.000 Council for American Islamic Relations, how they're a fifth pillar or a fifth column, rather, not a fifth pillar, fifth column for the Saudis or the Wahhabists in Saudi Arabia. 0.70

01:15:40.000 It's standard fair to talk about how Jorge Ramos and these other Mexican activists are fifth columns for Mexico, but to talk about how Jewish people might have some vested interest in Israel's interest being actualized, ooh, be careful, be careful.

01:15:56.000 You'll either get killed or you'll at the very least get blacklisted, but you're not allowed to say it. 0.81

01:16:01.000 I don't know why. 0.96

01:16:01.000 It seems obvious to me. 0.96

01:16:03.000 Seems obvious to me. 0.81

01:16:04.000 Is it because they look like us?

01:16:05.000 Is it because they sound like us?

01:16:07.000 It's hard to distinguish unless they want us to distinguish.

01:16:09.000 But I think it's one of those things.

01:16:09.000 Who knows?

01:16:12.000 And that's not to say to invalidate what they say, but it is to take with a grain of salt what they say.

01:16:17.000 You know, and he'll say, oh, it's conspiracy theories.

01:16:19.000 It's conspiracy theories.

01:16:21.000 The very people that wrote the memo on Israel's foreign policy then go into the American government and they execute Israel's foreign policy.

01:16:30.000 And they do so while passing along intelligence to the Israeli government and receiving bogus intelligence from the Israeli government.

01:16:37.000 It's You can't make this stuff up.

01:16:39.000 Frederick White, what can I do to get unmuted?

01:16:42.000 Nothing, nothing.

01:16:43.000 It's permanent.

01:16:44.000 It's like hell.

01:16:45.000 I don't know.

01:16:46.000 Make a new account and don't be annoying.

01:16:49.000 But it looks like those are all our super chats.

01:16:52.000 Let me check back or check back on the Streamlabs.

01:16:56.000 Reagan says Jacob is wrong, but he was an honorable opponent.

01:17:00.000 I think despite his challenged height, he would make a fantastic Marine if we ever need boots on the ground in Iran.

01:17:07.000 Jake, hit me up if you ever need enlistment advice.

01:17:09.000 I know people are going to be upset that I didn't ask them that, but to me, look, this is going to be an unpopular opinion.

01:17:16.000 But we have an all volunteer army.

01:17:19.000 And I think at this point, should we be spending money and people should be bleeding in countries for no reason?

01:17:25.000 Of course not.

01:17:26.000 It is immoral that that happens.

01:17:28.000 People should be held accountable for that happening.

01:17:31.000 However, it's an all volunteer army.

01:17:34.000 If you get involved in the army after Iraq, After Afghanistan, after Libya, and like you volunteer for it, can you really be surprised that you're deployed in Iran? 0.63

01:17:46.000 Can you really cry foul if you're in that situation? 0.95

01:17:49.000 Say, I didn't sign up for this.

01:17:51.000 Well, but you kind of signed up exactly for that.

01:17:54.000 It's been 25 years of that, unmitigated, perpetual, with no end in sight.

01:17:59.000 And so I'm not saying it's justified.

01:18:02.000 I'm not saying it's moral.

01:18:03.000 I'm not rationalizing it in any way.

01:18:06.000 I'm simply saying for people that say, will you advocate for war in another country?

01:18:09.000 Well, it is an all volunteer army.

01:18:12.000 And they volunteered to serve in that capacity.

01:18:15.000 So it's a bad thing.

01:18:18.000 It's a blot on our history.

01:18:19.000 It's shameful.

01:18:20.000 But I just simply don't know what the expectation is.

01:18:22.000 Do you go in with the expectation that it's going to be?

01:18:25.000 I don't know what.

01:18:27.000 But he's actually tall.

01:18:29.000 I'm pretty sure Jacob Bull's actually tall, but he was a good opponent.

01:18:32.000 He was definitely a respectable, a civilized opponent, and we disagree, but that's all right. 0.73

01:18:38.000 Alpha Omega Golf says Is Europe on board with Iranian regime change? 0.98

01:18:45.000 I hear the friggin' dog barking. 0.99

01:18:48.000 I love the dog. 0.97

01:18:50.000 Love the dog so much.

01:18:52.000 You know, the dog's a great idea.

01:18:54.000 When this is cute and oh my god, and they're taking pictures of it, it's all fine and well then.

01:18:59.000 But then you sit down on the couch and you stand up and there's a carpet of hair on your back and it's barking at 7 a.m. or at midnight or it's throwing up on the area rug and ruins the carpet.

01:19:13.000 You know, then it's a different story.

01:19:15.000 Then it's a little bit of a different story.

01:19:18.000 So, and I said that from the beginning.

01:19:20.000 I said there's a very specific kind of.

01:19:24.000 Tone.

01:19:25.000 There's a very specific kind of feel in a house where there's a dog.

01:19:29.000 And you always, as a non dog owner, as somebody who's a little bit OCD, I always knew it.

01:19:33.000 You knock on the door and you'd hear the dog yelling, screaming, running to the door, clawing at it.

01:19:40.000 Just a very unpleasant thing.

01:19:41.000 Who wants that?

01:19:42.000 What a raucous.

01:19:44.000 And then you open the door and they're all, oh, I'm so sorry.

01:19:49.000 He's jumping on you.

01:19:50.000 Get down, get down.

01:19:51.000 Oh, it's so obnoxious. 0.98

01:19:53.000 And they're licking and they get your clothes all dirty.

01:19:56.000 And then they're a big hassle when you're over.

01:19:58.000 You know, they don't leave you alone.

01:20:02.000 And they poop everywhere.

01:20:03.000 I was going to say something else.

01:20:04.000 They poop everywhere.

01:20:06.000 And it smells like dog.

01:20:08.000 You go in a house, it smells like dog.

01:20:09.000 There's hair everywhere.

01:20:11.000 It just really sends.

01:20:12.000 For me, I've always been kind of a populist, but also somewhat elitist.

01:20:16.000 Maybe it's not elitism so much as it is OCD.

01:20:21.000 But I've always been like, oh, wow.

01:20:23.000 Okay.

01:20:24.000 So we're going to have one of those encounters.

01:20:26.000 Anyway.

01:20:28.000 But no, Europe is not on board with regime change in Iran.

01:20:32.000 France, the UK, and Germany all came out with a statement saying they were disappointed that we withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal.

01:20:39.000 And, well, France originally opposed the war in Iraq because they understood very clearly it would create a power vacuum.

01:20:47.000 France, contrary to popular opinion, they didn't oppose the war in Iraq because of the United Nations or international law or humanitarian law. 0.85

01:20:54.000 They said that if we took out Iraq, it would open up a vacuum for terrorism, which is what it did. 0.89

01:21:00.000 And.

01:21:02.000 That's basically the problem.

01:21:03.000 You try regime change every time it fails.

01:21:06.000 You either get a worse dictatorship or you get terrorists.

01:21:09.000 No way around that.

01:21:11.000 Derek Wengard, will you ever accept sponsors?

01:21:14.000 I have a watch business and I would like to sponsor a great show like yours.

01:21:18.000 Cheers, big fella.

01:21:19.000 Well, thank you.

01:21:21.000 I don't know.

01:21:22.000 I don't know.

01:21:22.000 I've thought about that before.

01:21:25.000 The only trick with sponsors is, of course, with sponsors, it does bring into account this idea.

01:21:34.000 Dependency, where I would never want my revenue to be totally dependent on sponsors because what happens inevitably is people call up the sponsors and they say, Oh, Nick said this, Nick did this, Nick is this way, Nick is an anti Semite, Nick is a whatever, and then your money's gone and it's a problem.

01:21:52.000 I don't know, I mean, I'd have to think about it.

01:21:55.000 I got somebody who emailed me recently about it and I haven't responded because I've had to think about it a lot.

01:22:01.000 I like the idea of being dependent on the viewers, you know, and right now I'm making okay money with the super chats and the stream labs, I was doing very well on maker support.

01:22:08.000 And I like that because I'm only accountable to you guys.

01:22:12.000 And if I'm not making good content, then you don't support.

01:22:16.000 But it's not like you won't support me because Jared Holtz said I'm a bad guy, right?

01:22:20.000 So I'd have to seriously consider it.

01:22:23.000 I never rule it out, but I'd have to think about it.

01:22:25.000 Let me take a look at our.

01:22:27.000 Oh, boy.

01:22:29.000 Somebody says.

01:22:33.000 Oh, boy.

01:22:34.000 Somebody's telling me all kinds of things in the Twitch stream.

01:22:37.000 I don't know if they're being serious, though.

01:22:38.000 Somebody says, why do you hate Israel?

01:22:40.000 I don't hate Israel.

01:22:41.000 But let's take a look at our super chats. 0.61

01:22:45.000 No more super chats.

01:22:47.000 I guess we had a big enough week for the past two days, but.

01:22:50.000 Finally, I guess I could get off the air, right?

01:22:52.000 I mean, it was an hour and a half show Monday, an hour 45 minute show the other day.

01:22:56.000 So we're going to call it a night, a fun debate.

01:22:59.000 Very exciting with Jacob Wolf on Iranian regime change.

01:23:03.000 I thought this was going to be a big debate.

01:23:04.000 I guess people don't want to see it so much.

01:23:06.000 That's okay.

01:23:07.000 My feelings aren't hurt.

01:23:09.000 I guess one more super chat from Leo the Great.

01:23:12.000 Would you debate Theodore Shubat on nationalism?

01:23:14.000 I don't know who that is.

01:23:15.000 I don't know.

01:23:16.000 Maybe.

01:23:17.000 But that's going to do it for us here on the show tonight.

01:23:19.000 Remember to subscribe to the channel if you like what you saw.

01:23:21.000 Give us a big thumbs up.

01:23:23.000 Leave a comment.

01:23:24.000 Nothing nasty.

01:23:25.000 Somebody posted last night a big, long comment, very nasty, very rude, and I'm sure he spent a half hour writing it.

01:23:33.000 I read the first sentence, I deleted it.

01:23:35.000 So, who really gets the last laugh there?

01:23:37.000 So, leave a comment, be nice.

01:23:39.000 Click the notification bell to get notified every time we go live.

01:23:43.000 We're on the air Monday through Friday, 7 p.m. Central, 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

01:23:47.000 I'm Nicholas J. Fuentes.

01:23:48.000 This was America First.

01:23:50.000 Remember, on Friday, we have a regular show, and then our Fortnite stream at 10 o'clock should be very fun, casual, and exciting.

01:23:58.000 All the rest won't be here tomorrow.

01:23:59.000 I'll be at the Trump rally, so I return on Friday.

01:24:02.000 And I'll tweet about that as well to let everyone know.

01:24:04.000 But that's our show.

01:24:05.000 Thank you so much for watching.

01:24:07.000 Thank you to our Streamlabs, our Super Chatters.

01:24:09.000 Thank you to Jacob Wool for joining us and being an honorable opponent.

01:24:13.000 We appreciate that.

01:24:15.000 It was a good time, just like last time.

01:24:16.000 So maybe we'll have him again.

01:24:18.000 Who knows?

01:24:19.000 But that's our show.

01:24:20.000 Remember, we will not be here tomorrow.

01:24:21.000 We'll be back on Friday.

01:24:23.000 So until then, have a great rest of your evening.

01:24:25.000 Have a great Thursday.

01:24:26.000 And we'll see you on Friday.

01:24:27.000 Take it easy.

01:24:34.000 Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo.

01:24:41.000 It's going to be only America first.

01:24:46.000 America first. 0.99

01:24:50.000 The American people will come first once again. 0.99

America First - Nicholas J. Fuentes - May 09, 2018

The Regime Change Debate feat. Jacob Wohl | America First Ep. 161

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