00:00:13.000We are having Mr. Jacob Wolf on to debate regime change in Iran.
00:00:18.000You know the news this week, which is that the Iran deal has been withdrawn from.
00:00:23.000We've seen the news yesterday and today about Israeli strikes, Iranian strikes around Israel and Syria.
00:00:31.000And we are looking at a situation where.
00:00:34.000The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States are being pushed ever closer towards direct military conflict with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
00:00:43.000And here to talk about it with us tonight is Jacob Wolf.
00:00:46.000I'll be bringing him in on Skype right now.
00:03:07.000So, your position, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that we need to implement regime change in Iran.
00:03:13.000And you said things like Jared Kushner should be the Shah of Iran.
00:03:17.000You've said that we should turn Iran into a parking lot.
00:03:20.000And as a shit poster, I recognize there is a quality to this that is trolling, that is a little bit hyperbolic.
00:03:26.000But could you clarify for us what exactly is your position on regime change in Iran?
00:03:31.000So, obviously, some of the remarks you mentioned there are sort of tongue in cheek, partly.
00:03:38.000But here's my position on Iran as I see it.
00:03:42.000And 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.
00:03:52.000And 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.
00:04:01.000I'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.
00:04:27.000I'm glad to see Trump leave the Iran deal.
00:04:29.000And what I believe is we need to bring about regime change in Iran using every tool at our disposal.
00:04:34.000That 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.
00:04:49.000In fact, I was watching today on the floor of the Iranian parliament.
00:04:53.000They were burning American flags and chanting death to America.
00:04:57.000So, in my view, it's time to get that regime out of there as soon as possible.
00:05:02.000And so, just to clarify, you say other means besides military.
00:05:06.000So, are you implying then that military is not your first choice?
00:05:10.000Would 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?
00:05:17.000So, just to be very clear, and I think it's good that you picked up on that, that way there's no confusion.
00:05:22.000I mean, all means, including military.
00:05:24.000So, 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.
00:05:48.000So you say economic, but also, okay, so military as well.
00:05:52.000And I guess my, to begin, if this is the central theme, and I'm glad that we clarified that because.
00:05:58.000You know, there are a lot of different approaches to Iran.
00:06:00.000Some say we should just strangle the regime with sanctions.
00:06:03.000Some say we should just do military force.
00:06:06.000I think the problem is this a war in Iran.
00:06:10.000I 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.
00:06:20.000You've got a nation that is largely desert and mountain, which are among the most difficult kinds of terrain to fight in.
00:06:26.000They've got a population of over 80 million people, much larger than Iraq, and it took us.
00:06:32.000A long time to stabilize, and even then we couldn't even do it.
00:06:35.000So it'd be much more difficult to stabilize that country, to occupy that country.
00:06:39.000You've got a country with a much bigger military than Iraq had in 2003, a much larger population of fighting age people.
00:06:46.000And so I think the proposal of a war in Iran is something that we have to take seriously.
00:06:50.000And 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?
00:07:04.000So, I think you bring up some interesting points there.
00:07:06.000And 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.
00:07:16.000You 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.
00:07:28.000So, 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.
00:07:38.000An enormously difficult, if not impossible, task.
00:07:41.000But I think there's also a number of interesting advantages to going into Iran versus going into Iraq.
00:07:48.000Namely, you have a very young population, which is in many cases increasingly secular, particularly in the urban centers.
00:07:56.000And I say urban centers, you're really talking about Tehran and maybe a few others.
00:08:00.000But you have a young and very secular population.
00:08:04.000And the regime is not popular with these people if you look at many sources of polling.
00:08:09.000And 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.
00:08:21.000Minimal use of boots on the ground, minimal use of U.S. planes flying over Iranian territory.
00:08:27.000And that would be the best case scenario.
00:08:28.000Although 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.
00:08:43.000If you look at Iraq, for example, more people died during the 1990s from economic sanctions.
00:08:51.000We're talking about Iraqi people here.
00:08:53.000Which I do value less than American lives.
00:08:56.000You can hate me or love me for it, but it's the way I feel.
00:08:59.000But more Iraqis died as a result of sanctions on Iraq than died as a result of the U.S. invasion.
00:09:06.000And 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.
00:09:15.000So you can talk about going just economic, you can talk about using military force.
00:09:20.000I think what you need to do is leave all options on the table, including boots on the ground.
00:09:27.000And 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?
00:09:34.000And when I say cost effective, I mean money and lives, way to bring an end to the regime, which I feel is irreconcilable.
00:09:42.000I don't think there's any way that you can bring them back to the table and come up with a better deal.
00:09:47.000I 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.
00:09:56.000But there's just a lot of differences, right?
00:09:58.000The main two that I think are important is number one, North Korea is essentially a satellite of China.
00:10:04.000So it's a lot easier to finagle them given the amount of business that we do with China.
00:10:38.000And 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.
00:10:46.000So that's kind of my proposal broadly when it comes to what to do with them and how.
00:10:52.000Well, 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.
00:11:03.000I do have a begrudging respect for the tongue in cheek.
00:11:06.000The shitpost, because you do get a reaction.
00:11:08.000But 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.
00:11:20.000And 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.
00:11:28.000We heard almost exactly the same thing in 2011 when we went into Libya during the Arab Spring.
00:11:34.000We 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.
00:11:46.000And 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.
00:11:53.000The next generation was more radical, more fundamentalist, more Islamofascist in your words.
00:11:59.000I wouldn't use that, but in those words, they voted in the Muslim Brotherhood.
00:12:02.000In Libya, we instituted regime change against Gaddafi, and we said we're going to take him out.
00:12:07.000And we would give way to the peaceful protesters and they would decide their own fate.
00:12:12.000And what has happened is Libya is still a failed state.
00:12:15.000And ISIS has taken a major stronghold there.
00:12:18.000And then we talk about military action.
00:12:19.000And 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.
00:12:36.000We saw that the war in Iraq, we heard a lot of the same kind of talk about Iraq.
00:12:40.000We'd go in, we'd take him out, and then we'd leave.
00:12:44.000And it turned out that it was actually quite a different story.
00:12:46.000We went in, we toppled him in a matter of months, but the occupation lasted a long time.
00:12:51.000It was because we didn't get what we expected so much after he fell.
00:12:55.000We got a civil war, a brutal insurgency, and then the rise of ISIS.
00:12:58.000And so obviously it was a big blunder there.
00:13:00.000So the idea we'd go in and get out and that would be the cheap option is a little bit ridiculous.
00:13:05.000It 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.
00:13:14.000And then in the last place about the last major claim about Iran saying death to America, death to Israel.
00:13:20.000This is something that I used to believe a while ago, you know, because it is so overt and explicit.
00:13:26.000And they're not doing themselves any favors by today.
00:13:29.000After 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.
00:13:37.000And I used to think, well, of course they're saying it, it must be true.
00:13:40.000But 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.
00:13:54.000If you look at the Iran Iraq war from 1980 to 1989, they ended it after 10 years.
00:14:00.000After Iraq secured a number of victories on the battlefield, they said, We don't want to bleed anymore, so we're calling the quits.
00:14:07.000After the Cobra Tower bombings in the 1990s, they severely moderated their behavior when they heard that the United States was considering a military reprisal.
00:14:15.000And there's just nothing really that you could point to.
00:14:18.000That demonstrates that Iran is going to make good or they intend to make good on those kinds of apocalyptic statements.
00:14:25.000Well, there are two points you bring up there, and I'd like to address both of them.
00:14:29.000So, the first part is you mentioned the tremendous costs that come along with a potential invasion as you lay them out.
00:14:37.000And what I would say to that is number one, the invasion of Iraq was overwhelmingly successful, the occupation of Iraq was an overwhelming failure.
00:14:48.000And 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.
00:14:59.000And I will concede that there's always that camp of people that say, well, we broke it.
00:15:06.000And those people aren't going anywhere.
00:15:08.000They're present in the White House, they're present in Congress.
00:15:11.000And I think I will fight till my dying breath to oppose those people because it's not my view that our role is to.
00:15:19.000Build schools or donate tractors or teach Western farming methods or set up universities.
00:15:25.000I don't think that that's a reasonable role for the United States to play in the world.
00:15:29.000If somebody would like to do that, I would advise them to perhaps donate to UNICEF or donate to a charity.
00:15:36.000I don't think that's the United States' role.
00:15:38.000I think that we can get in and get out with leadership from the top with Trump.
00:15:44.000I believe that it's important from the very beginning to set a tough mandate.
00:15:48.000Maybe 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.
00:16:01.000So I think you can overthrow the regime in Iran.
00:16:03.000And not occupy the country and end up in an endless insurgency and occupation, which you hope at some point is going to become successful.
00:16:12.000So that's the first thing I would say.
00:16:14.000Now, the second part of your statement is something that has been circulated a lot.
00:16:19.000I 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.
00:16:32.000And yeah, they talk tough and they say these bad things, but.
00:16:35.000They'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.
00:16:44.000Now, I take a lot of issue with that school of thinking.
00:16:48.000The vast majority of the U.S. casualties that came in Iraq were a result of Iran.
00:16:53.000Iran was funding militias and giving them weapons and training them and sending them into Iraq to kill U.S. troops.
00:17:00.000Now, a lot of people say, well, we were foreign invaders, and that's their fault.
00:17:05.000And I just don't buy into that sort of apologist thinking that, well, Iran was right to kill Americans.
00:17:14.000And 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.
00:17:23.000So 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.
00:17:39.000And tongue in cheek, I sort of mentioned Jared Kushner as a Shah, but that might be the best option.
00:17:45.000It is to bring in a Shah, bring in a puppet dictator to take over the country.
00:17:50.000And the U.S. has done that successfully.
00:17:52.000You know, a lot of people like to point to the failures in regime change.
00:17:56.000But if you look at all of the regime changes that the U.S. has been involved in, many of them have been successful.
00:18:02.000I would point out Egypt as a good example.
00:18:16.000By some very unsavory people that had sort of embedded themselves into the Islamic Spring, the Arab Spring, as some say.
00:18:25.000And we ended up with Al Sisi in charge.
00:18:28.000And Al Sisi has been a very cooperative leader.
00:18:31.000He's done some bad things here and there.
00:18:33.000He bought some RPGs from the North Koreans, and we weren't too happy about that.
00:18:37.000But sort of on balance, Al Sisi's been pretty good.
00:18:40.000And 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.
00:18:49.000Yeah, I have just generally a big problem.
00:18:52.000I think this sounds very good on paper.
00:18:55.000And like I said, I would have agreed with you 15 years ago, but it's not just Egypt.
00:18:59.000I 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.
00:19:09.000And in every one of these cases, there's not a single success.
00:19:23.000I 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.
00:19:38.000And not only that, but to secure the gains of a war in Iran, you're going to have to have an occupation.
00:19:43.000It'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.
00:19:49.000But how does it not end up like a situation in Libya?
00:19:52.000How does it not end up like a situation in Somalia?
00:19:54.000How does it not end up in a situation where?
00:19:56.000The Iranian regime, which comes next, is actually far worse.
00:19:59.000I 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.
00:20:09.000You imagine that you have a very young population.
00:20:13.000Maybe they want to westernize or liberalize.
00:20:15.000What 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?
00:20:31.000Would 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.
00:20:42.000In that case, maybe that's a scenario where a more favorable regime can come to power.
00:20:47.000If 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.
00:20:57.000In the case of Syria, we did our second airstrike in April.
00:21:01.000It actually Rallied support around Assad in Damascus where there had been none.
00:21:07.000And 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.
00:21:23.000We know the costs will be significant in terms of lives, no matter what.
00:21:26.000What comes next is a Pandora's box, and 99% of those outcomes are very, very bad.
00:21:31.000And so I just think that, I mean, you can say, well, Maybe one day we get a Western leader like the Shah.
00:21:36.000Maybe one day we get a leader that's favorable.
00:21:39.000I think that's an outcome, but it's a strongly, strongly, or a very, very unlikely outcome.
00:21:45.000And you bring up the Shah, which is a perfect example.
00:21:48.000We overthrew Mossadegh, and that's not actually totally true.
00:21:51.000Mossadegh 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.
00:22:01.000And it wasn't entirely by the United States that we deposed him, it was actually a lot of people within Iran that.
00:22:06.000Had that had it out for him and they took him out.
00:22:09.000But even in that case, with the CIA going after Mossadegh, we'd installed the Shah and it lasted what, 26 years, 25 years?
00:22:41.000Even 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.
00:22:52.000Well, I think you bring up a couple of interesting points.
00:22:55.000And, 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.
00:23:12.000That there's a lot of uncertainty when you embark on these sort of things.
00:23:16.000But what I would say is, I think the regime is already weakened.
00:23:20.000I think that it doesn't take much to take them out.
00:23:22.000I 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.
00:23:29.000I hope that we have whatever we do requires minimal loss of life, requires no military force.
00:23:35.000In fact, I like to see what Trump's doing with the Arab League, with the Gulf Cooperation Council.
00:23:40.000The 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.
00:23:51.000They can do all sorts of things with cyber.
00:23:53.000They can set the revolutionary guards against the rest of the military.
00:23:56.000There'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.
00:24:03.000And 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.
00:24:09.000If 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.
00:24:19.000And 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.
00:24:27.000And the Arabs lead the military front in an all out effort to depose the regime in Iran and bring about a new regime.
00:24:34.000And I acknowledge there's lots of unknowns.
00:24:44.000The people that said Iran doesn't want nuclear weapons were just plain wrong.
00:24:48.000And I think what was perhaps most fascinating about Netanyahu's speech last week was that the entire thinking about Iran.
00:24:57.000The 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.
00:25:16.000Well, what we've learned is when a rogue dictatorship tells you they want nuclear energy, you need to say no.
00:25:21.000Because what we found out last week from Netanyahu was that their entire operations between 1999 and 2003 and 2004 were a weapons program.
00:25:32.000And then you have Obama trouncing into Iran, basically, and signing an accord which doesn't allow inspectors to visit military sites.
00:25:40.000I 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.
00:25:47.000And we have zero visibility into what's going on in those sites.
00:25:50.000So 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.
00:26:04.000And 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.
00:26:19.000I 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.
00:26:33.000I mean, let's say hypothetically they get a nuclear arsenal.
00:26:37.000I don't think really the calculus on the ground changes very much.
00:26:40.000I mean, perhaps Iran is freed up to be a little bit more aggressive with some of their proxies in Yemen and Syria and Iraq.
00:26:47.000But, 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.
00:26:55.000The United States and Israel and Saudi Arabia have complete hegemony over the region.
00:26:59.000We've got Turkey, we've got Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Israel, Pakistan, we've got troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.
00:27:06.000I mean, the idea that Iran is a major threat to our regional interests is.
00:27:12.000If they get a nuclear arsenal, it's not like they're going to use it.
00:27:15.000Like 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.
00:27:26.000And 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.
00:27:34.000Maybe it's so that they can be more free in the region.
00:27:36.000Or maybe it's because the only country in the Middle East with a nuclear program is Israel.
00:27:43.000And I know you've denied this on our last debate.
00:27:49.000Well, Pakistan isn't technically in the Middle East.
00:27:52.000I mean, sometimes they're considered, but yeah, yeah.
00:27:54.000But 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.
00:28:05.000I mean, they all maintain that Israel has an arsenal between 80 and 200 warheads.
00:28:10.000And I think if people are really serious about nuclear proliferation in the region, they'd start with Israel.
00:28:15.000And they'd say, here's a country which hasn't signed the NPT.
00:28:18.000Here's a country which illegally annexes territory in the Golan Heights and the West Bank.
00:28:22.000Here'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.
00:28:31.000Here's a region that, or a country that does cyber attacks on Iran.
00:28:36.000I mean, so all the things that we lay at the feet of Iran, this is really, I guess, the big source of contention.
00:28:42.000We can say the same thing about Israel.
00:28:44.000And 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.
00:28:52.000But we give $3.8 billion to a country which does the exact same.
00:28:56.000Maybe you'll come at me with a moral equivalency argument, but I mean, what's your response to that?
00:29:01.000Well, 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.
00:29:16.000I 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.
00:29:23.000And what I would say is the following.
00:29:25.000When 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.
00:29:35.000It's called get a nuke by any means necessary.
00:29:38.000If 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.
00:29:47.000But you get yourself a nuke and then you extort the world.
00:29:51.000And so you go country to country and you say, hey, it would be a real shame if one of these nukes slipped out into.
00:29:57.000You know, Hamburg was set off, or even a dirty bomb was set off.
00:30:00.000So, 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.
00:30:09.000So, 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.
00:30:16.000I 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.
00:30:31.000So basically, it's an extortion operation.
00:30:33.000And 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.
00:31:13.000You 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.
00:31:23.000All they would have to do is they'd have to say, okay, you know, you guys are out of the Iran deal now.
00:31:26.000And they'd call up and they'd say, you know what, we're going to allow inspectors into our military sites.
00:31:49.000So I think it is imperative, imperative that we remove the regime.
00:31:53.000And I think that's really the sort of last frontier towards peace in the Middle East.
00:31:57.000I 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.
00:32:07.000I think what's important is that you take out the mullahs.
00:32:10.000Well, in the first place, about nuclear terrorism, it's an interesting point.
00:32:16.000It is in America's interest to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, which I am generally for.
00:32:20.000I think, you know, we can look at the North Korean regime now.
00:32:24.000We can look at the Iranian regime now.
00:32:26.000And I would say that these regimes probably would not use nuclear weapons, probably not give them terrorists.
00:32:32.000But there's no guarantee that they would never do that in the future.
00:32:34.000So that's why, generally speaking, I think it's against our interests that they have a nuclear arsenal.
00:32:39.000However, 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.
00:32:46.000Would it be worth us to go to war to prevent that kind of a thing?
00:32:50.000In 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.
00:33:02.000Not North Korea, not Libya, not Iraq, not Iran, not even Syria when they had a nuclear weapon.
00:33:07.000You had, or they were attempting to build a nuclear weapon.
00:33:11.000North Korea has had nuclear weapons since the early 1990s and they haven't given them to non state actors.
00:33:16.000North Korea has been threatening this for 25 years and they haven't used them.
00:33:19.000So, 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.
00:33:34.000And then in the second case, with regard to what is the solution to peace in the Middle East.
00:33:39.000Now, 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.
00:33:46.000But 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.
00:33:56.000And the reason you have so many battlegrounds and instability is because Syria has been destabilized as a result of certain policies.
00:34:04.000And 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.
00:34:19.000And you could certainly give responsibility for about 6,500 deaths in Iraq to Iran.
00:34:25.000But 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.
00:34:37.000The same is true with our support for the quote unquote rebels in Syria.
00:34:41.000And now the same people that wanted war in Iraq and war in Syria are beating the war drums for war in Iran.
00:34:47.000And so I think, you know, the threat to America is overplayed, if not an abject lie.
00:34:54.000The real threat is that Iran supports Hezbollah, they support.
00:34:59.000These various groups like Hamas and these Palestinian groups that threaten Israel, but not much else.
00:35:05.000Iran has never conducted a terrorist attack on Western soil.
00:35:09.000They tried, in one case, there was the Ababziar plot, which was foiled, but nevertheless, not a single terrorist attack.
00:35:15.000Whereas 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.
00:35:24.000And so I think we've really just kind of identified the wrong enemy.
00:35:30.000But should we be going to war and there's no way around it?
00:35:33.000They're the single central threat, I think is disingenuous to say the least.
00:35:39.000Well, you know, Nick, I do have to believe that you're just.
00:35:43.000Misinformed 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.
00:35:54.000Because at the end of the day, there really weren't many Jews when it came to the Iraq war.
00:36:09.000You like to mention these sort of columnists and opinion writers.
00:36:14.000That happened to be Jewish, a nice Jewish foothold in the opinion writing game.
00:36:18.000But at the end of the day, the shot callers that made the decision to go into Iraq were not Jewish.
00:36:24.000I just hate to inform you, but they weren't Jewish and they certainly weren't Zionists.
00:36:28.000In fact, if you look at the Bush administration, this was an administration that was very unfriendly when it came to relations with Israel.
00:36:36.000This was an administration that proposed tremendous challenges, just artificial hurdles and sort of endless bogs of bureaucracy and Standoffishness when it came to Israel.
00:36:48.000So, 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.
00:36:55.000I know there's a lot of YouTube videos out there and there's a lot of conspiracy theory behind all of it.
00:37:00.000But 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.
00:37:07.000Well, you know, look, I was skeptical at first as well.
00:38:59.000It may sound speculative, but like I said, I looked at a document called the Clean Break Memo, written in 1996.
00:39:07.000And 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.
00:39:22.000Who were instrumental in 1996 putting together this memo called the Clean Break Memo?
00:39:28.000It was written by Pearl Douglas Feeth, it was written by David Wormser.
00:39:32.000All these people came together in 1996.
00:39:34.000They wrote this memo for Benjamin Netanyahu, the then Prime Minister of Israel.
00:39:38.000And 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.
00:39:48.000They said we have to move towards a more realistic kind of foreign policy for Israel, which is that.
00:39:55.000We need to secure our northern border by first taking out Iraq and then taking out Syria and then possibly Iran.
00:40:01.000You had the Oded Yunnan plan for the 1980s, and that's a little bit different.
00:40:04.000But in the Clean Break memo, you had people in the Bush administration that went on, that worked in the Defense Department.
00:40:11.000And 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.
00:40:19.000There 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.
00:40:30.000The people working in it were indicted on espionage charges for passing secrets about Iran to AIPAC.
00:40:36.000And from AIPAC, they were passed on to the Israeli government.
00:40:39.000It 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.
00:41:00.000So they had to have their office open to Ariel Sharon.
00:41:02.000Passing that information through unchecked, unverified, and putting it on the desk of the president.
00:41:08.000So 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.
00:41:31.000And all that is to say, It's not to say Israel's evil or all Jews are bad people.
00:41:40.000But 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.
00:41:52.000And 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.
00:41:58.000And I get it to an extent, but I just am not finding where Iran's nuclear program justifies a major war on our part.
00:42:13.000And I'm not disputing your fact patterns with respect to the memo and the writers of the memo.
00:42:20.000But 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.
00:42:50.000You have people who lean more isolationist.
00:42:53.000You have people who are from Canada that want to not rough up Canada too much.
00:42:59.000So you have biases that go both directions.
00:43:01.000The 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.
00:43:47.000Young kids who were fresh out of Harvard and their Noam Chomsky lectures who went exactly the other way.
00:43:53.000It just so happened that the Zionists and their opinions won the day.
00:43:59.000So 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.
00:44:10.000But I don't think that it implies a sort of consistent issue of Zionists leading us to war.
00:44:17.000Well, 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.
00:44:31.000And 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.
00:44:43.000I think it would be a fool not to say that they're motivated by an interest other than the national interest.
00:44:49.000And 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.
00:44:58.000Can 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?
00:45:09.000What direct existential threat to America's national security do they pose?
00:45:15.000So I want to remove the frame of an occupation because, like I said, I think there's ways of doing it without that.
00:45:20.000We can go back and forth and debate that point.
00:45:23.000But your central question, which is why is it in America's interest to depose the Iranian regime?
00:45:28.000And I would say there's two main points that sort of underlie that thesis fundamentally.
00:45:33.000The first one is that you can do it now or you can do it later.
00:45:37.000And once they have nuclear weapons, it becomes a much more expensive undertaking and an undertaking that people are much less willing to go into.
00:45:44.000I mean, we already can't get our European quote unquote allies to follow us into getting out of a bad deal that's unenforceable.
00:45:53.000The idea that they'd get into war, particularly.
00:45:56.000After Iran has nuclear weapons, I think it is unlikely.
00:46:00.000Plus, Saudi Arabia will then pursue them.
00:46:02.000They released that statement today Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will pursue nuclear weapons if Iran pursues nuclear weapons, which introduces a number of free radicals.
00:46:11.000You talk about Pandora's box, the only thing worse than a Pandora's box is two of them.
00:46:56.000To 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.
00:47:07.000Who they have indicted just a few weeks ago, in fact, Rod Rosenstein gave a big press conference.
00:47:12.000It didn't get Any sort of press attention, of course, is Iranian hackers.
00:47:16.000The Iranian IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, also known as the Quds, they have a cyber division.
00:47:22.000They call it, the name escapes me, it's something institute.
00:47:27.000They'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.
00:47:37.000Same sort of thing that the Chinese do.
00:47:40.000So it's a full scale effort by the Iranians to undermine American interests militarily.
00:47:45.000Diplomatically, throw wrenches in the works in various negotiations.
00:47:49.000And 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.
00:47:57.000So, Iranians have been indicted for hacking into the United States.
00:48:00.000Iranians have been caught dead to rights developing nuclear weapons, and they've been caught supporting America's enemies.
00:48:07.000This, 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.
00:48:18.000Well, ah, see, here's the trick, though.
00:48:21.000I 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?
00:48:27.000I 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.
00:48:35.000They 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.
00:48:53.000Boko Haram kills Americans in Niger and Nigeria.
00:48:56.000Al Shabaab kills Americans in Somalia.
00:48:58.000ISIS kills Americans in America and in Europe, and Israel gives tacit support to them.
00:49:04.000You 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.
00:49:11.000We hear about how Iran is doing cyber attacks and how they're stealing our data.
00:49:15.000Like I said just a moment ago, The Guardian reported that there were people in the Office of Special Plans and in AIPAC.
00:49:21.000Who are passing American classified national security secrets to Israel?
00:49:25.000Israel 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.
00:49:36.000And so, once you bring in those comparisons, I'm not trying to do what about is.
00:49:40.000I'm not trying to say, well, what about this country?
00:49:57.000Well, 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.
00:50:06.000You 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.
00:50:16.000It'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.
00:50:21.000They're building islands in the South China Sea, they're doing cyber attacks.
00:50:37.000And 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?
00:51:07.000I've called for drone strikes against the cartels.
00:51:09.000I think the U.S. military should be used against Mexico.
00:51:12.000You 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.
00:51:27.000I think Mexico poses an existential threat to the United States.
00:51:32.000But I also believe Iran poses an existential threat to the United States.
00:51:35.000And 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.
00:51:44.000And asking yourself on an individual case by case basis, what can you do for each of these?
00:52:29.000Now, 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?
00:52:36.000Well, I would call the backing of terror groups, which are opposed to the United States and opposed to our allies, an existential threat.
00:52:42.000I would call the hacking of our power grid.
00:52:45.000That's potentially enabled through their hacking operations, which have already taken place and I think could be looked at potentially as dry runs.
00:52:52.000I think that's an existential threat to the United States.
00:52:54.000And 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.
00:53:12.000I don't think they should be allowed to play the get a nuke.
00:53:15.000Then blackmail game with us because really that's a game that's hard to fight.
00:53:20.000Once 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.
00:53:39.000So I think that right now, again, you look at each thing on a case by case basis.
00:53:43.000You look at Iran, and I think it sort of presents the United States and our allies.
00:53:48.000Namely, 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.
00:53:57.000You could end up with something that's worse.
00:54:01.000Anybody 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.
00:54:15.000But I think that the odds are in our favor when you talk about action in Iran.
00:54:19.000I just think there's a tremendous amount of obfuscation there.
00:54:21.000I 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.
00:54:32.000But all of these groups, their interests are in the Middle East.
00:54:36.000All these groups, their interests are purely regional.
00:54:46.000I 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.
00:54:57.000It was only because we were in Lebanon in the first place and interfering in Lebanon.
00:55:01.000And so I would just say that there's just this tremendous amount of obfuscation where.
00:55:06.000The existential threat is really kind of up in the air and almost entirely hypothetical.
00:55:11.000And the costs are either being ignored or they're being minimized.
00:55:14.000And the possibility they could go very wrong are almost completely ignored.
00:55:19.000And that's exactly what we have going on here.
00:55:21.000We have a very small and narrow casus belli that I have a hard time justifying.
00:55:26.000And 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.
00:55:35.000And not only that, I mean, you'd like to say, well, we could go and destroy him and come out.
00:55:39.000But in fact, the problem would actually get a lot worse.
00:55:41.000We get a regime that could be worse almost guaranteed, or it could turn into a hotbed for terrorism.
00:55:47.000Either way, these are not good outcomes for the United States.
00:55:50.000So it's almost a requirement that we'd have to stay in.
00:55:52.000And even if we don't, then it would be a worse outcome than if we just had the Islamic Republic.
00:55:57.000And I'll tell you what the alternative is it's exactly what happened in 2015, which is we have diplomacy, we have a deal.
00:56:04.000We hype up the sanctions regime, we pressure them into a deal.
00:56:08.000And certainly it's different than in North Korea, where they only have one patron stain, and we could essentially just choke that off.
00:56:16.000But you said it yourself the Iranian regime is in a precarious place.
00:56:19.000It's got a population that's very dissatisfied, that's very restless.
00:56:23.000And those kinds of sanctions could bring a pressure about on Iran in a different way.
00:56:27.000And we could pressure Russia and China.
00:56:29.000We could pressure other regional actors as well.
00:56:31.000And 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.
00:56:40.000And you look at that deal and you keep bringing up, well, Iran pursuit a weapons program, Iran pursuit a weapons program.
00:56:48.000And since then, the IAEA has independently verified 10 separate times as recently as February that they were in compliance with the deal.
00:56:55.000The only party of that deal that wasn't totally in compliance is possibly the United States.
00:57:00.000Even our intelligence agencies have confirmed that they're in compliance.
00:57:03.000They're not developing a nuclear weapon.
00:57:05.000Certainly they have inspected military sites.
00:57:08.000They've only inspected civilian sites.
00:57:10.000You 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.
00:57:34.000It was a massive international undertaking.
00:57:37.000And as part of the deal, that investigation was quashed.
00:57:40.000It 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.
00:57:54.000I 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?
00:58:15.000And I guess that's what people are going to have to decide for themselves.
00:58:18.000Do they believe that a nuclear Iran is an existential threat?
00:58:22.000And 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.
00:58:30.000But ultimately, that's what we're talking about here.
00:58:37.000And I'll give you the last word after this because it's been about an hour, but it's not simply that.
00:58:43.000The deal that happened with the JCPOA, I understand the concern about military inspections, but they also gave up 97% of their uranium.
00:58:51.000They shut down two thirds of their centrifuges.
00:58:54.000And 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.
00:59:00.000And sure, the military sites are, it would be ideal to inspect those.
00:59:04.000Can 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?
00:59:31.000And would it be in America's interest to spend another $3 trillion?
00:59:35.000On 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.
00:59:46.000And I guess you're right, we have gone back and forth on these different points and we stated our case.
00:59:57.000I'm glad that we've had the opportunity to do this.
01:00:01.000But, you know, I'm not going to apologize for advocating a strong interventionist.
01:00:09.000When 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.
01:00:19.000And they haven't won very often in the arguments that policymakers undergo in the United States.
01:00:25.000But 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?
01:00:39.000Well, for one thing, there would be no South Korea.
01:00:41.000South Korea would have been taken over by the communists.
01:00:45.000Bosnia, 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.
01:00:52.000Saddam 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.
01:01:04.000But luckily, the, I would say, more well informed people in the room, everybody who's in those kinds of rooms is.
01:01:10.000Fairly 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.
01:01:17.000And Kuwait is not an extension of Iraq today.
01:01:20.000And Bosnia didn't see a million deaths.
01:01:23.000And South Korea exists thanks to interventionists, thanks to people that are willing to take the tough tack and say, yes, maybe some people die.
01:01:31.000Yes, maybe it costs us a lot of money.
01:01:33.000But thanks to interventionists, the world is a much safer place today.
01:01:36.000And so I would advise people to really study these things in depth and really understand what the world would be like today.
01:01:43.000What would the world be like today if we followed the gleeful lead of the anti interventionists?
01:03:54.000I 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.
01:04:00.000However, 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.
01:04:09.000And 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.
01:04:20.000So Iran is basically at the point where they have a breakout capability if they so chose to build an arsenal.
01:05:14.000And 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.
01:05:22.000But 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.
01:05:38.000But nevertheless, I like the conversation.
01:05:41.000I appreciated that he came on because he knows it's a hostile crowd and he knows my reputation.
01:05:46.000But I think in spite of that, he did well.
01:05:49.000Groyper Neat, do you have the subscribe option enabled for your Twitch so I can support you five bucks a month here?
01:05:55.000I do have that enabled, but don't subscribe on Twitch because they take half.
01:05:59.000So wait for me to set up the PayPal plugin and then do the subscription.
01:06:03.000Because if you do it on Twitch, I'll get half.
01:07:19.000I give people a lot of room to be themselves and speak freely.
01:07:22.000I 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.
01:07:48.000The problem is this policy of intervention has in many ways begotten the push for nuclear proliferation.
01:07:56.000Why would a country like North Korea or Iraq or Libya or Iran desire a nuclear arsenal?
01:08:03.000It's because they know they are in the crosshairs, and a nuclear shield is the only way.
01:08:08.000To deter a strike by a much more powerful country.
01:08:12.000In the nuclear age, that's the only way to achieve parity.
01:08:15.000That'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.
01:08:28.000And Israel, by the way, does the same thing.
01:08:42.000And, you know, ironically, nevertheless, they still got attacked by an Arab coalition in 1973, or there was still a war with an Arab coalition.
01:08:50.000It's dubious which side started it, but you get the picture.
01:08:54.000And 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.
01:09:16.000Or 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.
01:09:24.000And it makes sense to them why they have nuclear weapons.
01:09:26.000We turn a blind eye to them, but Iran can't have them.
01:09:30.000And of course, that's because they're on the other side.
01:09:32.000They're a revisionist power Israel factors into, I guess, but they're a very subversive element of the existing order.
01:10:24.000That kind of occupation only breeds contempt with the occupier.
01:10:29.000We 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.
01:10:38.000And you look at public opinion polling, which is not reliable at all.
01:10:41.000He brought up public opinion polling, not reliable.
01:10:44.000The Iranian government does not allow direct public opinion polling, so the only way to get information is by calling Iranian people directly.
01:10:53.000And then you have a secret police, so even then it's dubious.
01:10:56.000But nevertheless, They like to make the argument that the younger people are more amenable to the West and to the modernists.
01:11:02.000Is 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?
01:11:54.000And even with other Arab countries, why do you think there is such great antipathy towards the United States?
01:12:01.000In the region at large, not just amongst the people, but amongst the regimes.
01:12:04.000It's because of our support for Israel.
01:12:07.000It's because of our meddling in the region.
01:12:09.000It's not 100%, but that's a big part of it.
01:12:12.000And 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.
01:12:28.000Osama bin Laden says his inspiration for the World Trade Center bombings was the United States' support for Israel.
01:12:34.000And for Israel doing these atrocities.
01:12:36.000The 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.
01:12:49.000You look at a lot of the regimes in the region, and they say the same thing, and the people say the same thing too.
01:12:55.000And so this relationship has come at a tremendous cost to our country.
01:13:00.000And the reason why we have bad relationships, not just with Iran, but with Syria and others, is because of.
01:13:54.000I'm really feeling the homies tonight.
01:13:55.000And 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.
01:14:06.000And so I refuse to unmute or to unban.
01:14:55.000Israel is the Jewish state, the homeland, the eternal homeland of the Jewish people.
01:15:00.000And you're telling me that Jewish people do not have a vested interest in seeing that country survive and thrive?
01:15:06.000You're telling me that I'm a bad person for thinking that?
01:15:09.000That there's a double allegiance there?
01:15:12.000If you said something similar about an Arab, a Russian, a North Korean, a Chinese person, it's standard fair.
01:15:19.000It's standard fair to talk about Chinese students on university campuses who are literal spies for the government, who report back to the government.
01:15:29.000Council 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.
01:15:40.000It'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.
01:15:56.000You'll either get killed or you'll at the very least get blacklisted, but you're not allowed to say it.
01:16:21.000The very people that wrote the memo on Israel's foreign policy then go into the American government and they execute Israel's foreign policy.
01:16:30.000And they do so while passing along intelligence to the Israeli government and receiving bogus intelligence from the Israeli government.
01:17:34.000If 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?
01:17:46.000Can you really cry foul if you're in that situation?
01:18:54.000When this is cute and oh my god, and they're taking pictures of it, it's all fine and well then.
01:18:59.000But 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.
01:19:13.000You know, then it's a different story.
01:19:15.000Then it's a little bit of a different story.
01:19:18.000So, and I said that from the beginning.
01:19:20.000I said there's a very specific kind of.
01:20:28.000But no, Europe is not on board with regime change in Iran.
01:20:32.000France, the UK, and Germany all came out with a statement saying they were disappointed that we withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal.
01:20:39.000And, well, France originally opposed the war in Iraq because they understood very clearly it would create a power vacuum.
01:20:47.000France, contrary to popular opinion, they didn't oppose the war in Iraq because of the United Nations or international law or humanitarian law.
01:20:54.000They said that if we took out Iraq, it would open up a vacuum for terrorism, which is what it did.
01:21:25.000The only trick with sponsors is, of course, with sponsors, it does bring into account this idea.
01:21:34.000Dependency, 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.
01:21:52.000I don't know, I mean, I'd have to think about it.
01:21:55.000I got somebody who emailed me recently about it and I haven't responded because I've had to think about it a lot.
01:22:01.000I 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.
01:22:08.000And I like that because I'm only accountable to you guys.
01:22:12.000And if I'm not making good content, then you don't support.
01:22:16.000But it's not like you won't support me because Jared Holtz said I'm a bad guy, right?