Google Speech-to-Text API Automatic Transcription (Chirp). Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:00elections, doesn't the
00:00:02of previous 40-day momming campaign tell us that this campaign is
00:00:06unlikely to work as well. there's
00:00:11of another reason to
00:00:12of doubt that this air campaign will work, and it has to do with the three
00:00:16carriers argument. as I said, the clear
00:00:20implication is that once the USS Teddy Roosevelt gets
00:00:23there, that carrier
00:00:25in addition to the USS, George Washington and the USS,
00:00:29George W.W. "bush will give us three carriers
00:00:32which can be used to attack Iran. But if
00:00:36you
00:00:37of actually look carefully of what's happening here,
00:00:40it's apparent that the Roosevelt
00:00:44is
00:00:45of being sent to the Gulf region to
00:00:48replace the George Washington. It's not
00:00:52going to be sent there to work alongside the George
00:00:55Washington, it's being sent there to replace it, further
00:00:59more. pretend that the Bush, pretend that the
00:01:03Bush, the USS, George W.W. Bush, is still in the
00:01:07region. The fact is, it
00:01:09a has left the region and it is now in Thailand,
00:01:13and indeed, there is only one aircraft carrier in the
00:01:17Gulf at this point in time. I shouldn't say in the Gulf, in the
00:01:21Gulf region, because we wouldn't dare put a carrier inside the
00:01:24Gulf, for fear it would be sank almost immediately, so it's in the
00:01:28region, okay? so we only have one carrier there and that of
00:01:32course is the Washington and the Roosevelt once it gets
00:01:36there is designed to replace the
00:01:39Washington. This tells you that we're
00:01:43going to end up with only one carrier in the
00:01:47region, not three carriers. Now you say to yourself, well we
00:01:51could always move two
00:01:52of the carriers back into the region and bring it up to
00:01:56three. I don't think that's true. I think the most you can hope...
00:02:00for as two carriers in the region, but even there you're going to
00:02:04have all sorts of problems and
00:02:05the reason is quite simple: the problem
00:02:09is though that the navy has been, well
00:02:12that the navy has been working
00:02:15of at for months now, is so great that it's
00:02:19put huge demands on the US navy. US naval
00:02:22commanders are constantly saying that
00:02:25of this tempo cannot be sustained over the long-term, we're
00:02:29pushing the... navy to the brink, so the idea that you can bring back
00:02:33three carriers and keep them there
00:02:35of for sustained
00:02:36of bombing campaign, I don't think that's correct. I think
00:02:39of you'd be lucky if you can get two carriers there, and as I said,
00:02:43even if you get two carriers there, just think about what happened with the
00:02:4640-day bombing campaign. Think about the fact that we have a
00:02:50هذا significant shortage of munitions, what are those two carriers going
00:02:54to do to bring the Iranians to their
00:02:57knees? There's another problem you want to... think about, and that
00:03:01is the fact that because we've lost naval bases in
00:03:05the Gulf
00:03:06of region, we are heavily dependent a
00:03:09of supply structure that reaches back to Diego
00:03:12Garcia, which is 2,500 miles
00:03:15away. The logistical
00:03:18of requirements of sustaining three
00:03:20of carriers in the Persian Gulf region
00:03:23are very, very great, very
00:03:27difficult to do. So see, from
00:03:30logistical point of view, and from the point
00:03:34of view
00:03:35of the state
00:03:36of the US Navy
00:03:37a today, sustaining three carriers for any appreciable period
00:03:41of time is going to be extremely difficult
00:03:43of if not impossible, then my final point
00:03:47here is that some might say
00:03:51that there's
00:03:51a simple solution to this problem, John, and that is
00:03:54of that of what we need to do is use that carrier-based air
00:03:58and other air asset.
00:04:00in the region to strike oil
00:04:03infrastructure inside of
00:04:06Iran and wreck
00:04:09a in all of the oil infrastructure that Iran has and in effect
00:04:13wreck the Iranian economy for the
00:04:16long-term. The problem
00:04:19of here is
00:04:19that the Iranians have second strike capability. The reason that we have not
00:04:23attacked
00:04:24of Iranian oil infrastructure
00:04:26in any meaningful way up to now, is our... fear that
00:04:30the Iranians will do the same to the oil infrastructure
00:04:34inside
00:04:35of the various gulf states and inside Israel as
00:04:39well,
00:04:40this is major problem, so you want to remember that
00:04:44Iran has second strike capability if you really want to play hard
00:04:48ball and go after its energy infrastructure,
00:04:52so that's the air dimension, now let's turn
00:04:55to the ground dimension,
00:04:59the military...
00:05:00of
00:05:01being brought in for a possible invasion of
00:05:04Iran. I mean, the reason you would bring additional
00:05:08ground forces into the region is because you're going to
00:05:11threaten. to invade Iran, and in fact there is
00:05:15lot of talk in the mainstream media about that, many
00:05:19people see these 10,000 additional forces that
00:05:23are coming into the region top the 50,00 that are already
00:05:27there, as evidence that we're finally getting
00:05:30serious about invading
00:05:34Iran, this is not a serious
00:05:37argument, the thing you want to remember about
00:05:41that number,
00:06:15to fight against Iran on the ground
00:06:19to invade Iran, so what we have to
00:06:23do
00:06:23is we have to look at that number of
00:06:2760,000 and figure out how many of those
00:06:306000 troops are in combat units that can be used
00:06:34to invade Iran. I
00:06:38think
00:06:39that at the most there are...
00:06:427,500 troops at the most,
00:06:467,500 troops that could be used
00:06:50to invade Iran inside that
00:06:5360,000 number. now how do I get to that
00:06:56number? first of all, if you look at
00:07:00these 10,000 troops that are being
00:07:04sent to the Middle East, 10,000 troops
00:07:07being sent to the Middle East, along with the carrier, the USS,
00:07:11Teddy Roosevelt. those 10,000 troops, there are
00:07:15only about 2,200 troops among the
00:07:19two, among the 10,000 who can be used
00:07:23in a combat operation involving
00:07:26invasion of Iranian territory, there's
00:07:30a marine expeditionary unit right,
00:07:34the 13th marine expeditionary unit that is
00:07:38inside those 10,000 troops
00:07:41and that marine expeditionary unit includes
00:07:452,200 troops. the rest
00:07:48the troops, uh, the rest the military
00:07:52forces among that number of 10,000 are
00:07:56sailors on the Roosevelt,
00:07:59sailors on uh, the other
00:08:03ships that are coming along with the Roosevelt. they're not combat
00:08:07troops that could be used to invade Iran. there are only
00:08:102,200 troops. among the 10
00:08:14thousand that can be used for that purpose. now let's talk about the
00:08:1850,00 troops inside the middle
00:08:21east at this point in time before the 1000 additional troops
00:08:25arrive. if you look at those
00:08:2850,000 troops, there's a marine
00:08:31expeditionary unit already there in the middle east, this
00:08:35is the 11th meu, that's another
00:08:382,200. there are approximately.
00:08:42trops there from the
00:08:4682 airborne, and i would guess
00:08:50that there are another 800, there are another
00:08:53800 troops there that have
00:08:57been period of time before the war started, i think they're
00:09:01about 800 ground forces in and around
00:09:04kuwait,
00:09:06so that tells you that in
00:09:07the region you have right now you
00:09:09have 2.2,ous marines. you have
00:09:1320 troops in the 82
00:09:16airborne, another 800 in
00:09:19this military force that's been there for a long
00:09:23time, and then of course coming into the region you have another
00:09:262.2 th00 troops, and if you add this
00:09:29all up, it's slightly under 7,500
00:09:33troops, those are the combat forces that are
00:09:37available for invasion of
00:09:41Iran. Now the question you have to ask yourself is,
00:09:45what can you do with 7,500 troops? I like
00:09:49to say, even if you multiplied that by two and you
00:09:52got to 15,000 uh, or you multiplied
00:09:56it by three, and you're up around 22,00, it
00:10:00wouldn't make any difference, the force would be far
00:10:04too small for purposes of
00:10:07invading Iran. Now, why do I say this?
00:10:11General Barry. Caffrey, four star retired US
00:10:15Army general, who has looked carefully at this
00:10:18issue, maintains that you would need a force
00:10:22of 150,000. combat troops,
00:10:26150,00 combat troops, and you would have to
00:10:30fight somewhere between the to six
00:10:33months just to take over the straight of hormoves. you want to think
00:10:37about that? mccaffer
00:10:38is talking about the number of troops that are required to take over the straight of
00:10:42hormoz, and he's telling you you need
00:10:44150,000 and you're going to fight for three to six
00:10:48months. what do we have? i think we have
00:10:52about 7,500 troops at the most.
00:10:55Maybe if you double that you get up to 1500, but do
00:10:59you really think that 1500, which is 1/10 the number
00:11:03that mcaffry is using
00:11:05is capable of taking the straight of hor moves, and then of course
00:11:09you have to sustain those troops there over the long-term, which is
00:11:13no easy task. Let me just illustrates the problem
00:11:17here, it illustrates the problem here, when the
00:11:21Russians invaded Ukraine in.
00:11:25of 2022, i estimate that the Russian army went in
00:11:29with about 190,00 troops, 19000
00:11:33troops, that was not
00:11:35enough to to
00:11:38take take and keep all the
00:11:41territory that they initially conquered, right?
00:11:4419000 was not
00:11:46enough, and you want to
00:11:49remember that Iran that
00:11:53Iran has twice. the population of
00:11:56Ukraine and
00:11:58the is much more formidable for the invading force
00:12:02than the terrain in Ukraine has been for the Russian
00:12:06attacking forces, so the
00:12:09idea that we can invade
00:12:13Iran or take back the straight of
00:12:17warm with 7,500 troops is
00:12:21simply not a serious argument.
00:12:26points to drive this
00:12:29home, first of all, can you
00:12:32imagine what the public reaction
00:12:36would
00:12:36be in the United States if American soldiers start coming
00:12:40back in body bags in large numbers? the
00:12:43opposition to this war is already great, there was
00:12:47significant opposition to this war as soon as it started,
00:12:51and if anything
00:12:52it is increased with time. if... This point
00:12:56President Trump decides to launch a ground invasion and launch
00:13:00a ground invasion and large numbers of Americans die
00:13:04won't even succeed, won't even succeed, the
00:13:07public outcry would be huge. One additional
00:13:11point, to actually get those marines
00:13:14in those two marine expeditionary
00:13:18units, remember the 13th marine
00:13:22expeditionary unit is coming into the region and the 11th.
00:13:55ships like those amphibious carriers anywhere near the
00:13:58Iranian coast for fear that the Iranians will launch cruise
00:14:02missile and sync the ship. so the question i would ask is
00:14:06how
00:14:07are we going to get those marines who are on those amphibious
00:14:11carriers onto the beaches? this is going to be a
00:14:14formidable problem to put it mildly. but
00:14:18again, even if you get the marines onto the beaches in the
00:14:22final analysis, it's not going to matter. because the fact is
00:14:26we don't have enough troops
00:14:30to invade Iran and win
00:14:33any meaningful way.
00:14:37now let me switch from talking about the military
00:14:41dimension to talking about the economic
00:14:45dimension uh
00:14:49the and start with the claims administration that we are inflicting massive
00:14:52pain on the... and they are about
00:14:56to surrender, there is no question that the
00:15:00United States is inflicting massive pain on
00:15:04Iran, there's no question that the blockade and the
00:15:08best in strategy, and everything we did before this war
00:15:11started has served to
00:15:14punish the Iranian people in
00:15:18significant ways, we have done enormous damage
00:15:22to the Iranian economy. I have no doubt about
00:15:26that, but about that, but the
00:15:30question we have to ask ourselves, that given all that pain,
00:15:34the Iranians are about to throw up their hands.
00:15:38and surrender, I don't think so,
00:15:42and I think there are three good reasons that this is not
00:15:46going to work. The first has to do with the historical
00:15:49record. I do not know of a single case in the
00:15:53historical record where you had major
00:15:56war and where one
00:15:59side was able to bring the other
00:16:02side to surrender ths
00:16:06alone. through ins alone, through a
00:16:10blockade alone. There's no question, for example, that in World
00:16:14War I, uh, the blockade by Britain and the
00:16:17United States at the end of World War I, had
00:16:21devastating effect on Germany and its allies,
00:16:24especially Austria-Hungary, and it played role for
00:16:28sure, in causing Germany to surrender on
00:16:32November 11th, 1918. No question, the blockade mattered,
00:16:36but as everybody knows, from August 1st,
00:16:391914, up until November 11th,
00:16:421918, you had huge
00:16:46ground war, not only on the western front, but also
00:16:50on the eastern front, many millions of Germans
00:16:54and allied soldiers died in that
00:16:57conflict, so
00:16:59it wasn't the blockade alone that caused the Germans
00:17:03to throw up their hands, it was the ground war uh that
00:17:06was main responsible, the ground war on the western front, the ground war on the
00:17:10eastern front, we have no ground war here, and I don't even
00:17:14think we have viable air war. uh, so what
00:17:18we're counting on here basically up to this point
00:17:22um is using a blockade plus the
00:17:25besten strategy uh to bring Iran
00:17:29to its knees, but again, there's no historical
00:17:33example that tells us that we should be confident this is going to
00:17:37work. "the second reason it's not going to work in my
00:17:41opinion is that the United States and Israel of course
00:17:44uh present an existential threat to uh
00:17:48Iran. President Trump has recently talked about
00:17:51annihilating Iran, by my count, on at least
00:17:55seven occasions he has talked in effect about
00:17:59annihilating Iran, wiping it off the map
00:18:03the earth. Uh, the Iranian surely
00:18:06understand." that this is an existential threat that they
00:18:10are facing when they go to war against the United States,
00:18:14and if you're facing an existential threat, you fight to the last
00:18:18person. It's hard for me to imagine the Iranians
00:18:22surrendering, even though they are suffering
00:18:25greatly because of US
00:18:28economic policies towards Iran. I fully understand that, but
00:18:32they are facing an existential threat, and again, when you face an existential
00:18:36threat,... "I make the argument that surrender is not an
00:18:40option. My final point is
00:18:44that let's assume I'm wrong. Let's assume that the
00:18:48economic sanctions are so so
00:18:51formidable, so damaging to Iran that it
00:18:55understands that it is at the end of its rope, it it
00:18:59can't go on. What happens
00:19:03then is that the Iranians will escalate. The
00:19:06Iranians have..." a retaliatory option
00:19:09here, they can strike out at the
00:19:13energy infrastructure all across the
00:19:17gulf and in Israel itself, and
00:19:21they have the ability to do enormous damage. further more, they
00:19:25can strike out at the desalination plants all
00:19:28across the region and do enormous
00:19:32damage to countries like Saudi Arabia,
00:19:35Kuwait, and even...
00:19:39again, the Iranians, if they're pushed to their
00:19:42limit, will retaliate, and if they retaliate, they will do
00:19:46enormous damage, not only each of those
00:19:50countries that they target, one could argue that if they after Saudi
00:19:53Arabia
00:19:54is oil infrastructure, and it's desalination
00:19:57plants, they can basically ruin Saudi Arabia as a functioning
00:20:01society, but it's more than that, the consequences for the
00:20:05international economy of Iran launching a full-scale
00:20:09attack on energy infrastructure and desalination
00:20:12plants all across the middle east or all across the
00:20:16Persian Gulf region would be
00:20:18devastating, so I
00:20:21think that we should probably hope that we don't
00:20:25end up pushing Iran to the point where it
00:20:29turns to that Doomsday
00:20:31response. Now let's talk a little
00:20:35bit about what's happening on. side the equation,
00:20:39because you want to remember the economic argument has two dimensions to it, one
00:20:43is that we are throttling the Iranian
00:20:46economy, pushing the Iranians
00:20:48to the point where they just have. to quit, that's the first part, but the second part
00:20:52the argument is that we are doing very well, and in fact, as I
00:20:56said before, if you look at the amount of oil
00:21:00that's coming out the gulf, we're basically approaching
00:21:04pre-war levels, and if anything, the situation just gets
00:21:08better with time, this is the conventional
00:21:10wisdom. Two points on
00:21:13this: number one, you want to understand
00:21:17that the Iranians...
00:21:21are not just sitting there and letting this happen,
00:21:24and in fact there's a piece on the wall street journal
00:21:28today that says, this is the headline in the wall street
00:21:32journal, new straight attacks
00:21:36threaten oil flow, and what the wall street
00:21:39journal says in the story is
00:21:42that the Iranians have adjusted to the existing
00:21:45situation, and you're getting new attacks and more.
00:21:50sophisticated and more effective attacks by the Iranians
00:21:54and the flow of oil is beginning to slow
00:21:57down to take this a step further, as everyone
00:22:01knows, there is the war involving Iran on one
00:22:05side in the United States on the other side, but there's also
00:22:09a war between Saudi Arabia
00:22:11and
00:22:14the Hutis are attacking oil installations inside of
00:22:18Saudi Arabia and "there were reports
00:22:21in today's
00:22:25newspapers that the Saudis, excuse me, that the
00:22:28hooties have hit the oil
00:22:30pipeline that Saudi Arabia depends
00:22:34heavily to get oil out
00:22:38to the red sea and out into global
00:22:41markets, and further more, there are all sorts of
00:22:45Saudi installations, oil
00:22:48installations. that are big fat vulnerable
00:22:52targets that the hoothies can go after, and they may very
00:22:56well go after, because the war between the Hutis and the
00:22:59Saudis is heating up, so if you think
00:23:03about the flow of oil out the Gulf, which is
00:23:06admittedly moving at rates
00:23:10that are not that far away from what the rate was on February
00:23:13207th, you see that we are probably
00:23:17headed back in the other direction because the fact that the
00:23:21Iranians are becoming more effective at cutting down the flow of
00:23:24oil out the Gulf, and the Hutis are threatening,
00:23:28critically important targets in Saudi Arabia that will
00:23:32reduce the Saudi's ability to export
00:23:35oil. It's hard to say exactly where this situation is
00:23:39headed, but there's no reason to think it's
00:23:43going to remain as favorable down the road as it
00:23:47is today. But even if it
00:23:51does not change much at all, and lots of oil
00:23:54continues to come out the Gulf as it's been happening for
00:23:58the past two or so weeks. Is this really going to
00:24:02matter? I'm not sure it is. If you look at
00:24:06inflation rates around the world, especially the
00:24:10reports that are now coming out on inflation rates in Europe,
00:24:13if you look at oil prices in the United States and other
00:24:17places, if you look at bond deal. right,
00:24:21if you look at the cost of diesel, if you look at the
00:24:25cost of getting a mortgage here in the United States, if you look at all these
00:24:28economic indicators, all the evidence is that even though
00:24:32oil has been flowing out the Gulf, we are still, we are
00:24:36still in deep economic trouble, and there's hardly
00:24:40anybody I see in the media arguing that all these
00:24:43problems, or most these problems are going to be solved anytime
00:24:47soon, all of this is to say, "the
00:24:51western economies and not only the western economies,
00:24:54economies and countries in Asia, even more so, are
00:24:58in deep trouble as result of what's happening in the Gulf,
00:25:02and there is no evidence that this restoration
00:25:06of oil flows out the Gulf to
00:25:10levels that approximate what we had on February 27th, have
00:25:13done much to solve the
00:25:16problem uh."
00:25:20bottom line: the bottom line is this propaganda
00:25:24campaign is not going to work. again, the propaganda campaign has
00:25:28two dimensions to it, one is the military dimension, and as I made
00:25:32clear, we are not going
00:25:36to be able to bring the Iranians to their
00:25:39knees with the addition of a US
00:25:43aircraft carrier in the region, even if we
00:25:47end up with three carriers there, which is... highly
00:25:50unlikely, the idea that we're going to be able to
00:25:54bring the Iranians to their knees with a land
00:25:57invasion is, I think it's fair to say,
00:26:01laughable argument. "this is not going to happen
00:26:04uh, it's hard to believe that President Trump would be foolish enough to launch a
00:26:08land invasion, but if he does, he's not going to
00:26:11succeed, and it's just going to make his situation worse,
00:26:15all this is to say we have no military option here, we have no
00:26:19military option today, and we're not going to have a military option after the
00:26:23mid-term elections. there's no question, the
00:26:26administration can spin a story that says we will have
00:26:30that option, and there's no question of..." "the mainstream media will play along
00:26:34with that, but facts are
00:26:36facts and uh, the fact
00:26:40is here, we don't have a military option. with
00:26:44regarding, with regard to the economic side the
00:26:47equation, again, there's no question that the United States is
00:26:51inflicting massive pain on the
00:26:53Iranians, but as I said, there's no evidence that
00:26:57that has brought them to the point where they're close to
00:27:00surrendering, there's nothing. historical record that makes us think
00:27:04that should be the case, and if I'm wrong,
00:27:08and it does become the case, and they feel like they're about to go off
00:27:12cliff, they'll take everybody off that cliff with them, and that will
00:27:16be disastrous for the international economy, it'll be
00:27:19disastrous for President Trump, and in no way will he be able
00:27:23to say that he won. The bottom line
00:27:26again, is that the facts tell
00:27:30us that this propaganda? campaign is not going
00:27:34to work uh that you cannot
00:27:36bamboosle the Iranians uh
00:27:40at this point in time they're just too smart, they're too knowledgeable, they're
00:27:44too experienced in dealing with the United States uh to
00:27:48allow themselves to be conned into thinking uh that we
00:27:52have the upper hand,
00:27:54that they're on the verge of defeat, and therefore it's time for them to throw up
00:27:58their hands and
00:27:59surrender.
00:28:33نحن الحمد لله بنصبر ابنائنا
00:28:36بنصبرهم على ان شاء الله بنقول لهم يما بصير
00:28:40مستقبل قدامكم احسن من هذه الحياه اللي نحن
00:28:43عايشينها بس نحن لازم نصبر على هذا
00:28:47لانه هذا بلاء والحمد لله من رب العالمين بدنا الصبر
00:28:51نصبر عشان ان شاء الله الاحتلال مش
00:28:54حيدوم 15 times
00:28:57honestly
00:29:00what
00:29:01it means to be displaced 15 times. "the problem with western feminism I think
00:29:05is more that it doesn't link the struggle of for
00:29:09example Palestine, Iran, wherever, to the fight
00:29:13against imperialism, and if you don't fight against
00:29:16imperialism, then um, you're not really
00:29:19tackling the root the problem, tackling the root the
00:29:23problem."
00:29:58This our stop headlines: Iran slams Trump's claim about
00:30:02an attack on the American soil saying US leaders
00:30:05conjure up an imaginary enemy to frighten their own
00:30:08people. Despite
00:30:12earlier denials, the Pentagon admits that the number of troops killed in the
00:30:16aggression against Iran is higher than previously reported with
00:30:19nearly 900 injuries. And
00:30:23finally, new poll shows the French president's popularity has fallen to the
00:30:27lowest level since 2017, amid violent protests and
00:30:31cost of living.