Ex CIA Agent: The Real War is Just Beginning - Andrew Bustamante

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I don't think they've played their ace card at all. What is their ace card? That's what we're all waiting to see. I also don't think Iran has played their ace card. I think that they both are retaining options that might be too frightening for any of us to even consider right now. Honestly, I think Trump did this because he was looking for a victory. I think Trump was looking for a political victory in a landscape of recent failures. I believe World War III is already happening.

Because I believe World War III is a proxy war. It is a proxy conflict. I think most people are not understanding the evolution of war. How does the next five years look like? The world was shocked when Israel and America attacked Iran. Do you know who wasn't shocked? The people who watched Trigonometry. So you think they're going to attack Iran? Yes.

Yes, it's a question of when, this side of a US election or after the US election. How close are the Iranians to getting a nuclear weapon? It's more a matter of months than years. Months. We are months away. Unless something can be said or done that interrupts their obvious march towards it. Iran is a very powerful and big country. How does this end? If you think that the head of the snake is Iran, and you really can't solve this problem of the endless war...

Do you have to have America on side? No question about that. The United States needs Israel because Israel is one of the top three wealthiest countries in the Asian subcontinent. They have incredible... trade and buying power for our weapon systems, our technology, our security interests, right? There's lots of reasons why the United States wants and needs to continue being partnered with Israel. final profit emerges once there is um

once justice and equality has been achieved in the world. And the thing that achieves this justice is that the last drop of blood of Israel falls. So the end of Israel brings back the final prophet. So they need to destroy Israel. They need to destroy Israel. Do you want to know what's happening and why? Subscribe to Trigonometry today.

Are you feeling more fulfilled now that you're back to work? This Friday. No, I need a vacation. See the movie that critics are saying is an awesome. Look at that. Crowd pleasing. Fist pumping. All that brawl of a film. You're right about that. They're coming after our family. Go fix this. Oh, my. Nobody 2. Rated R. Only in theaters Friday. Andrew Bustamante, welcome back to the show.

Timing has worked out perfectly, given everything that's been going on in the world. With your CIA and combat background, just delighted to have you here. Talk to us about what's been happening over the last week. What do you see and what hasn't been talked about? You know, the primary thing I think that we're all seeing in the last seven-ish days worth of headlines is the conflict between Israel and Iran.

We all know the kind of dance steps here. Israel launched airstrikes, Iran launched rockets. Israel continued with weakening air defenses, attacking nuclear sites.

brought in the United States asking the United States for help with a very specific piece of ordinance, a bunker buster that was strong enough to go into some of the most secure nuclear facilities, to which Donald Trump ultimately said yes.

and then ran a very successful bombing raid, and then called for a ceasefire between both Iran and Israel. So those kind of major steps are things that we all understand. I think one of the things that people aren't... really recognizing or aren't considering is the fact that both Israel and the United States took preemptive action on Iran.

Iran had not taken any kind of aggression or aggressive actions to cause those initial preemptive strikes. And the United States has a pretty strict no first strike. policy. We don't make the first strike. We try to give countries an opportunity to reach diplomatic ends before we go and execute with our military understanding that we have.

the world's most sophisticated, you know, most well-funded military out there. So it was very, very different, very unique in terms of how this whole thing played out. And the Israeli-Iranian conflict appears to be new to people.

even though we've been watching Israel systematically degrade Iran ever since the October 7th attacks that came from Hamas. So you can really start to see the lack of... understanding the lack of familiarity people have with how Iran executes its conflict and how justified Israel is in taking the actions that they're taking.

Well, that has been fascinating because Francis and I by no means consider ourselves experts, but because of the people we've had on the show, yourself included, like we've had people, we actually put a video out basically showing off and saying, we told you so because...

we had people predicting this was going to happen for months and months ahead of time. But you're right. I think the media narrative is so reactive. People are, oh, this thing happened. And then suddenly people are, oh, why did it happen? And sometimes...

But the question I wanted to ask you is, first of all, you mentioned that this action was unique. And the question, obviously, then, is why do you think President Trump made the decision to go in with the Bunker Busters on that preemptive basis?

Would I be right in saying that it would also be your opinion that while Iran was enriching uranium way beyond civilian use, they did not have like a nuclear bomb with the thing attached on a rocket launcher ready to go, right? Exactly right. And that's the thing that... That's some of the nuance that, in my opinion, isn't very nuanced. That's pretty fucking significant, right? There's a difference between having uranium enriched to 90%.

versus having uranium weaponized for detonation on the end of a delivery vehicle that can be launched anywhere worldwide, right? I mean, we saw this when Russia launched an ICBM, a non-nuclear-tipped ICBM, in a counter-strike against Ukraine. An intercontinental ballistic missile, a missile that can launch itself into the stratosphere and then deliver a payload from space, is a terrifying weapon without a nuclear warhead. But it's years away.

from out of reach for Iran to be able to create both the weapons-grade uranium and the delivery vehicle. That can't be intercepted. Really? Years away? Because it takes... Right now, there are zero ICBMs. in the Iranian inventory. They have medium-range ballistic missiles. Those are the same missiles. That's enough to nuke Israel, right? If they had a nuclear warhead ready to go. And if Israel didn't intercept the missile.

But ballistic missiles are notoriously difficult to intercept, are they not? I mean, except for the fact that they've been getting shot down by both US and Israeli forces now. at a rate of 80% or more. So not notoriously difficult. There's always room for them to get through, right? But now if you think about it, a barrage of 100 missiles, we've been seeing barrages of missiles.

anywhere from 30 to 120 from uh iran at any given time of which two to five get through well if that two to five happens to be nuclear tipped then yes you've got a problem right but the odds are they're not going to be. The odds are that they would launch one in a battery of 50 or so others of which the majority would be intercepted. So now you're playing a probability game. You can see why Israel wouldn't want to take that.

It makes total sense that Israel wants to take zero chances with a threat that is hell-bent on their eradication. Right. So come back to my question about why you think Trump did this.

I mean, honestly, I think Trump did this because he was looking for a victory. I think Trump was looking for a political victory in a landscape of recent failures that were mounting when his entire political campaign, his whole political promise was on being the person who would end Israel, Hamas, the person who would end Ukraine, Russia, the person who would kind of...

bring back American jobs through tariffs. And just systematically, he was losing and losing and losing. He needed victory. I think Netanyahu understood that too. And he gave him kind of an open plate to say, hey, we took out the air defenses. We shut down. their air force we have air superiority all you have to do is fly in a bunch of high-tech stealth bombers

And drop a couple of bombs. That is so interesting that you make that point. Because I had a debate with Dave Smith on the Piers Morgan show. And I kind of said, you know, they were like, well, how do you think this is going to play? I was like, well, Americans love winning and they love bombing shit. So, like, this is...

has the potential, if it goes the right way, to be a huge political win for President Trump. And that's all it is. Really? That's all it is. I mean, the narrative coming out of the United States right now is completely... backwards and upside down. Trump has created a cabinet of people who are loyal to Trump. So they're not going to disagree with him. You saw that with Tulsi Gabbard when she said on the first committee.

that iran was not close to making a nuclear weapon and then a week later she completely changed her stance right that's that's the team that trump has built is this team of people that will do what he says he wants them to do they're protecting their reputation more than anything else there's a very clear

theorem when you go to a war college, when you go to an army war college or an air war college, and there's these competing ideas of limited war versus total war. If I'm taking you down a road that you've heard before, please interrupt. No, carry on. We have learned, the United States has learned, all the way back through Vietnam and Korea, that limited war doesn't work. You don't win a limited war. And a limited war is a war with limited objectives.

You can only really win a total war. And a total war means you are fully committed to destroying your enemy. and resetting their capability. That's what World War II was. That's what Israel is launching against Iran in many ways. They want a total war, right? There's some limitations that make that difficult for them. What Trump did by sending in B-2 bombers to destroy three major well-known...

you know, Iranian enrichment sites, was a limited war move. There's no strategic long-term benefit that comes from that. Especially now that what we're seeing in headlines now is that the enriched uranium was possibly moved out of that location before the attack came. That's a perfect example of the problem with limited war.

Andrew, there'll be people saying, well, hang on a second. I take your point. But what Trump was doing was an actual show of strength to the Iranians to say, look, get in line, get behind the table, or this is going to happen again. I don't disagree that it was an attempted show of strength, but instead I think all he really did was make the Ayatollah look stronger.

I think America's move into Iran made it look like we have fancier technology. And even with our better weapons and even with our better missiles and even with the full fighting force of Israel and the United States. Iran still has the capability to enrich uranium. They still have enriched uranium. And now more than ever, they have justifiable cause to go to their friends, North Korea, Russia, China.

and get the additional weaponry and the additional technology they need to put that combustible warhead on a delivery vehicle. But Russia had been actually pretty non-committal. when it's come to this. I mean, let's be honest. So we've got Putin, he's got his hands full with Ukraine. You look at Xi. I mean, they've condemned it, but there's nothing else that's really come from the Chinese. Do they really care about this? They've got their eyes on Taiwan, surely.

So I think what we're seeing is the public side of diplomacy, not the actual side of diplomacy. You've heard of like the bat phones and the backroom deals and the phone calls that don't get recorded. I mean, those are very important. things. And having Putin and Xi Jinping not say outwardly that they support Iran does not mean that they do not support Iran in some other way. Iran is the breadbasket of the Middle East.

That's something that often gets overlooked. Without Iran, Saudi Arabia doesn't eat. Without Iran, UAE doesn't have fresh vegetables. Even though they have a hostile stance against the policy of the formal government, they still have a carve-out for trade, just like the United States still has a carve-out for Russia, right? Even though we...

have all these sanctions on Russia. And even though we claim that Russia is evil and we don't support them and we want the rest of the world not to support them, we still have carve-outs because we still want Russian cosmonauts and we still want their help in space. So there's all these policy carve-outs and the same thing exists.

in the Middle East. Inside those carve-outs, that's where Iran really has the most leverage. So if Iran makes a backroom deal with China and says, hey, we're going to keep producing agriculture, but we want you to buy it. And then we'll shut off trade to the Middle East. So we'll make them starve. We'll make them pay more money for their basic needs and food because they're going to have to import that shit from the United States since Ukraine can't feed them either.

So there's still options on the table for Iran to cause a lot of pain in its sphere of influence. Because there's a lot of people talking about regime change. And this is the first step in regime change. Obviously, Israel wants regime change. It's not, how can I put it, optimal to have your neighbour calling you a cancer and saying you should be wiped off the face of the earth. But... What's the appetite for regime change? Because although the Ayatollah is who he is...

There's always a risk. Number one, you're going to get someone far worse. And number two, what could actually happen is in the case of Iraq when it descends into civil war. Correct. And these are lessons that the United States has learned. Which is another reason why this bombing into Iran was such a faux pas when it comes to strategic military intention, which is probably what happens when you don't have professionals at the helm in the cabinet, right?

When the United States has learned that regime change at the force of an external enemy... oftentimes doesn't result in a democratic leader being elected. It results in the next strongest or even stronger kind of hawkish leader. being elected and that's true in non uh in transnational threats like terrorist groups or cartels and it's true in governments as well so if the ayatollah were to fall there's a good chance whoever comes in his place is going to be worse

to your point. If the Ayatollah falls and the whole country descends into civil war, a la Syria, a la Libya, now we've just lost a very important element to the survival of the Middle East because the entire country is going to descend into something worse. I think the other thing that's important to note is that there's a difference between what the West is telling the West about Iran versus what it actually looks like in Iran. Most Iranians don't really like being under a theocracy.

But they would for sure like it worse to be under an Israeli shadow government or an Israeli puppet government, right? Remember when all the stories came out after Russia invaded Ukraine and it didn't work very quickly and then everybody was like, oh, Putin. Putin's gonna... There's going to be regime change in Russia. No, there's only dumb people saying that with all respect. But it was all over the headlines. Yeah. Right? We may be in the same place right now.

where the headlines are saying one thing, vocalized by dumb people because it's a very clickable headline. I remember when Putin had brain cancer. Remember that too? I mean, all this shit came out because there's so much appetite to just say something. instead of admit how little we really know. Well, speaking of that... You mentioned the fact that these strikes may not have been as effective as people have been claiming. And Caroline Levitt, the White House press secretary, she came out.

commenting on the story, I think it was published by CNN and the New York Times, suggesting that the strikes didn't fully eliminate Iran's nuclear enrichment program. And she simultaneously said two things that can't be true at once, which is she said, these are leaks. And the person who leaked them is evil. And also it's bullshit by a journalist who's not telling the truth. And you're going, well, it's either leaked or it's bullshit. Yes, it's not real.

You keep mentioning that you don't think they were effective. What are you saying? And why? So there's a couple of things. I'm seeing the same thing you're seeing. I am coming to an assessment. based off of what I'm seeing in open source. The terminology I would use at CIA is I'm reaching an assessment based on open source knowledge that's available to us at the time. You have

formal statements coming from the U.S. federal government that don't make sense and are contradictory. You have totally obliterated targets, and then also people saying that there are leaks, and then the leaks are saying something that's different than an obliterated target, and then you have this idea that...

Maybe they're not leaks at all. They're just totally fabricated, right? Total fabrications. You can't make sense out of those different streams of information. So somewhere in there is something true, but most of what you're seeing is something that's kind of covered up. And then at the same time, there's long been known reports in public databases that Iran doesn't keep their highly enriched uranium at the same facility where they keep the centrifuges.

Because they've learned this is fairly common when it comes to creating any inventory. Once your inventory is built, you relocate the inventory into a deeper bunker, someplace that's more secure, someplace that's more secret. So even if we assume... that the White House is telling us the truth, which it has no incentive to do, even if we assume that the White House is telling us the truth, that

that all three locations were totally eliminated, all centrifuges are down, they have no capacity to enrich uranium any further. Then all of their previously 60% enriched uranium from the last three years, two years... that has been moved, has been moved to another location that we didn't bomb. Unless we bombed a secret location that nobody is talking about. Well, here's the question I have over that.

Which is, I mean, Mossad seems to, like, every second Iranian seems to work for Mossad at this point. Like, they're deep in there. Is that fair assessment? Absolutely. So wouldn't they know if that happened? This is part of why...

I think that Israel is playing a very smart game here. Because Israel chose a conflict against Iran, which is basically the only country in the world that Israel... could choose to execute first strike on and have almost full support even though it wouldn't be stated support from all of the members of the collegiate Arab states.

as well as all the Western states. Flesh that out a little bit, Andrew, because most people think that, oh, like, you know, the Middle East, all the Muslims hate Israel. It's a little bit more complicated. Yeah, exactly. So essentially you have two, if you take away everybody in the world...

except for oil countries. Just erase them from your mind for a second. And you have two competing spheres of influence. You have Iran, which represents Shia Islam and is an oil country. And then you have Saudi Arabia. which represents Sunni Islam and is an oil-rich country. Outside of the rest of the world, these two countries have been in conflict for decades. Regional conflict, ideological conflict.

geographical, military conflict. Saudi Arabia's number one enemy is Iran. Iran's number one enemy is Saudi Arabia. Now, when you layer in everything else, then you see the larger landscape. We're all just kind of, we're side dishes to their main course.

So the United States talks a big game about Iran, but Iran doesn't sit around talking a big game about the United States. Iran sits around making a big deal out of Saudi Arabia because they're trying to build what's known as the Shia Crescent. They're trying to bring back... Shia Islam as a major religion, as a major power player, a theological, political power player in their region. That's the main goal of Iran. Hypnosis gets a bad rap.

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Or stack up and make better use of your space with bins and totes built to last. Whatever your story, we've got the gear to keep it organized and protected at The Home Depot. How doers get more done. So I keep interrupting you, but come back with me. So Israel made a good decision, played it smart, because they attacked the one country that's A, been going at them through these proxies, right? Right. And also that's hated by all its neighbors, basically. Correct, because...

Everybody wants to see Iran weakened. Saudi Arabia wants to see Iran weakened. Bahrain wants to see Iran weakened. UAE wants to see Iran weakened. Israel wants to see Iran weakened. All of NATO wants to see Iran weakened. The United States wants to see Iran weakened. So by attacking Iran, they had the... implicit support of pretty much every wealthy country in the world. And every country in the world understood they didn't have to say shit.

They didn't have to acknowledge or condone it. And even if they did condone it, they could condone it in such a way that wasn't actually going to limit Israel's efforts to reduce that country's capability. And why did Israel do this? I mean, I... My estimation is that Netanyahu has realized he is in a position to have kind of a once in a generation tactical opportunity.

to take an existential threat to Israel and bring it to its knees. He was able to... When Hamas attacked on October 7th, he had an opportunity to bring down Hamas in a big way. And it worked. They've done a ton of damage outside of their target, but they have damaged their target significantly, especially Hamas leadership.

So now Hamas basically can't mount an effective campaign anymore. They might still exist, but their capability for conflict has been reduced. And then they moved on to Hezbollah. And they did the same thing in Hezbollah. And then they saw the fall of Syria. And then they were able to take some opportunity to grow in Syria.

I mean, opportunity is presenting itself as conflict expands. If you're in Netanyahu's shoes and you have the slightest modicum of hope to kind of secure the future of your country for your children, for your wife, for any reason.

You're going to see this as here's an opportunity. I got to take it. Here's an opportunity. I got to take it. Iran was just the next logical opportunity to be able to go in there and even just damage their Iranian capability to enrich uranium. That's a significant win. And let's also not forget.

When all of the conflict ends, Netanyahu's going to have a shit day in Israel because that's when he has to face the criminal charges that have been looming over him for the last seven years. And it's going to be much nicer to sit on that stand when everybody...

who's watching you knows that you've dismantled Hamas, dismantled Hezbollah, brought back security to Israel, and degraded the uranium enrichment capability of Iran. It's going to feel much better to get judgment on that day when justice is served. knowing that the people are probably going to go lenient on you. So how serious are these charges? Because this is something that I've been told again and again. What is Netanyahu looking at in terms of these legal cases? I mean, I...

That's a place where I don't have a deep knowledge, for sure. Because I don't understand Israeli law. I don't know how... Because Israel isn't a country that separates church and state. So... very similar to Iran that doesn't separate church and state. It's very unpredictable. On paper, there's corruption charges. On paper, there's charges of nepotism. There's charges of, I think it's embezzlement. So there's some...

criminal activity that's associated with Netanyahu, but how the court system is going to handle that, I don't know. Very similar to what Donald Trump is facing in the United States. Maybe, I mean, he's tried and convicted in a state, but not at a federal level.

And that conviction at a state level didn't prevent him from becoming president. So it's the justice system as a separate arm of government is outside of my knowledge base. Completely fair. You've said something very interesting where you say... Israel has been tactically sound, but strategically flawed in the way that it's pursued these wars. What do you mean by that, Andrew? I would argue that what happened in Israel or what happened in Iran...

was the right thing at the wrong time. The opportunity to degrade their enrichment facility was one opportunity. But that's not going to destroy the nuclear capability, as we've talked about. The enriched uranium still exists. The weaponization of what... You seem very certain about this, Andrew. Because we've been talking about it for years. For years, there have been reports that...

Ferdot and Natanz, these sites that enrich the uranium do not hold the uranium. The uranium is moved to different, more secure bunkers. I'm just trying to get this logically, but if Mossad knows where all this shit is, because they must do, right? If. But they must do. They're taking people out in the palace, right? They must know. So here's where it gets uncomfortable. Okay. Let's assume that they do know, because I believe it's a safe assumption, that they know.

that the target package they gave the United States wasn't good enough. They know it. Now that's fucking uncomfortable, right? So they just, they essentially would have baited the United States to come in and get a political win. that has no really military strategic value, for what purpose? Why would they do that?

If not just to get the United States involved in a conflict that otherwise the United States wouldn't have been involved in. Because they're still going to have to take independent action against whatever stockpiles do exist. And now they have the opportunity to essentially take that.

action covertly. There's a difference between overt conflict and covert conflict. Overt conflict, you have to brag about, everybody sees there's psychological warfare benefits, right? Well, now that the United States has basically said, hey, this thing is done, there's a ceasefire. It's over. Now if Iran, now if Hezbollah...

If Israel goes in, too many bad guys, if Israel goes in and eradicates, like, sabotages one of these bunkers, these secret sites, or if they go in and they somehow find some way to destroy or dispose of the uranium or even steal the uranium. Now, they don't have to tell anybody, and neither does Iran. And that's something that can actually be done fully covert because it's in neither party's best interest to make it public. If you recall...

When Netanyahu brought to the table the idea of, hey, the United States can drop these bunker busters, he also said, if you don't, we have other options. Well, they still have those other options.

So what were those other options they were talking about? It was never defined. Were there other options even about these two sites? Are there other options still going to be exercised even after the bunker busters happened, right? It was... coded language, but to your point, I think what we've learned with the exploding pagers and what we've learned with drones being launched inside Iranian borders is that Mossad's capability is one that we don't fully understand and can be quite significant.

Do you think that they've kind of played their ace card too early then? I don't think they've played their ace card at all. What is their ace card? That's what we're all waiting to see. I also don't think Iran has played their ace card. I think that they both are retaining options that...

that might be too frightening for any of us to even consider right now, right? For all we know, there's a dirty bomb on a truck somewhere. For all we know, it's already been delivered. For all we know, North Korea isn't holding the uranium. on Iran's behalf, right? We don't have any idea just how nasty this whole thing gets. But what we do know is that the United States' actions have created a sizable narrative.

that iran is always going to be pushed down and pushed back by the west and that was something that i think with the election of um what's their new president peza help me out the new iranian president yeah it's a crazy name yeah pesikotian or something like that but with his uh relatively uh democratic election there was a chance for iran to kind of turn on its own

Well, now there's no incentive for them to do that. Now they can once again kind of say that they're going to be subjected to Big Brother. So the narrative around the Ayatollah and...

I mean, he doesn't help himself, to be honest with Shohei Say. His robust choice of language, particularly when it comes to Israel, is that this guy is an Islamic fundamentalist. He's fundamentally unstable. The regime is unstable. These are the type of people... who would launch a dirty bomb, who would send a nuke into Israel.

We've interviewed Glenn Greenwald on the show, and he's been saying, and his argument is, we say this about every regime. We say this about every regime. Whether it's Iraq, whether it's about Syria, blah, blah, blah. These are standards. I don't think anyone said Saddam was an Islamic.

No, no, no. No, no, not Islamic fundamentalists. I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm disagreeing with Andrew, actually. But yeah. Yeah. So I guess my question is, how much of this is propaganda and how much of this is actually accurate?

I don't want to call it propaganda because propaganda has a very specific term, right? Propaganda has a purpose, and that purpose is to intentionally shape the interpretation of information for a population. I do think that we are in the middle of an information warfare landscape. And that information landscape continues to evolve because different people, different parties have different interests. Yes, you have...

one country and the other country who are trying to shape a narrative in their favor. But then you also have third countries who are trying to wreak chaos or capitalize on some conversation or some topic for their own best interest. And then you have...

for-profit media that's layered in there as well. So the information landscape is an absolute nightmare. But then when it comes to politics, especially in the United States, what we've seen since the 1970s is that politicians have... found that the American voting base is frankly not very intelligent. So they have to deliver messages simply.

And then in the work to deliver those simple messages, they've also discovered that they can basically say any fucking thing they want. And if they say it enough times, their voting base will start to parrot the message that they hear.

That has nothing to do with human intelligence. That has everything to do with human behavior, right? It's a cognitive bias. The thing that you hear the most becomes the thing that you start to believe. So what we see coming out of... out of our senior leadership in the United States, what most countries see coming out of their senior leadership, is less the truth and more the party line that they want the people to believe.

not because they're trying to create propaganda, but because that's just what they're trying to do. So to your point about every regime kind of having this whatever... cloak and dagger, violent agenda, whatever it might be. We say that a lot because it's a very simple message. My concern is that what I have seen...

at CIA is that what we read in our classified traffic is not what the American people are told. What we read in our classified traffic is not what news journalists put out there. Sometimes it's just... two or three days ahead of what the news cycle talks about. Sometimes it's completely different than what the news cycle talks about. Sometimes it's a complete and intentional fabrication because the narrative that's coming from policymakers has to be different than the truth.

Because to tell the truth to the American people would be to tell the truth to all of your adversaries as well, right? So I get it. I get why secrets are important. But the idea that Iran could launch a nuclear... device against Israel to obliterate Israel, that's not a real threat. Why aren't we talking about the actual real threat? The actual real threat would be something like a suitcase nuke that's smuggled through maybe even Turkey.

that's dropped in Tel Aviv and remotely detonated from, who knows, Jordan. Well, this is, I think, what Francis is getting at. I don't think Francis was suggesting that this is a regime that is in the position to launch a nuclear... tipped ballistic missile what he's getting at with you is do you think this is a sort of regime

that if it were in a position to attack Israel with a nuclear weapon of any kind or a dirty bomb or something, that because of their ideology, they would be willing to do so? I don't believe so. Because? Because nuclear deterrence is another topic that's... in a war college, right? Most countries want a nuclear weapon not to use it, but to prevent other people from encroaching onto their own sovereignty. If Iran had a nuclear capability, everybody would have thought twice.

about running a preemptive campaign right north korea has never had a preemptive campaign launched against them since they've possessed nuclear weapons and they can't even deliver their nuclear weapons right so We've already seen how this kind of principle runs true. There are multiple countries in the world. There's only nine countries that are indigenously capable of creating nuclear weapons. But there are 14 countries that actually have nuclear weapons on their soil.

Because nuclear capable countries have given nuclear weapons to not nuclear capable countries in order to prevent against any of these kind of first strike or preemptive strike efforts. It's called a nuclear hedge or a nuclear deterrent. When someone has... a big gun, a big bomb that they can use against you, it makes you think twice before you run, before you violate their sovereignty. Right, but... So why would the Ayatollah choose to launch a nuclear weapon?

A nuclear weapon is not going to destroy Israel. A nuclear weapon is going to do massive damage, but it's not actually going to eradicate the institution of the Israeli government. It's not actually going to eradicate the Jewish people. So nuclear weapons are big, scary things. but they're still just weapons. So in order for the Ayatollah or for the Iranian regime to actually carry out on their promise of making the Jewish faith and the state of Israel extinct, they would need more than...

five nuclear weapons. It would be a very difficult task. It's something that's going to require both military and ideological efforts concerted. The reason I was going to just push you on that is twofold. Number one, as you said yourself, we should be concerned about a suitcase with a nuclear device. But that sounds to me like exactly what I'm saying, which is these people might be willing to do that, right?

But the timing is different. Before a preemptive strike, I don't think they were willing to do it. Because what's the benefit? They have very little to gain and much more to lose. So you don't think they want to destroy Israel? I think that their stated claim is to destroy Israel, but the way to destroy Israel is not with a nuclear bomb. The way to destroy Israel is going to be, it has to be ideological. It has to be fundamental. It will involve violence as well, but it's got to be more...

complicated than that. It's got to be more refined, more sophisticated than just an explosion in Tel Aviv. Do you think part of the way that you destroy Israel is essentially you win the propaganda war? So you see what's happening with Gaza. where people are horrified by the images that are coming out of there, and quite rightly so, it's war, it's awful, children are dying, etc., etc. Do you think that's how they win? By turning an entire generation of kids...

people against the idea of Israel. That is an important piece of it, right? Because if you make your target into a victim, you don't win because the victim becomes the hero. It becomes the one that gets all the support. It becomes the underdog. It becomes the counterbalance. So when we hear this rhetoric from politicians about obliteration and destruction and regime change, we have to understand that...

that just because you change the Ayatollah or the president or the prime minister, it doesn't actually, unless it changes the fundamental makeup of the country, you don't really have a regime change at all. You just have a person change. You have a position turnover, right? It's the same way when it comes to Iran's very nebulous promise to destroy Israel.

What does that even mean? Those of us who are not Iranian and those of us who are not Israeli, I think we come up with one image that's different than what Israelis come up with. That's different than what non-Israeli Jews come up with. that's completely different than non-theocritized Iranians, which is, of course, different than the Ayatollah. It's not clearly defined. But again, speaking through a lens of like a professional...

combatant, you can't win a war just by destroying the target. You have to change the mindset somehow, whether you do that by winning hearts and minds or whether you do that by just depressing their hopes and dreams of anything better. Because Israel is in a really tough position because they're fighting a war on all fronts. They're losing the propaganda war in Gaza. Can you actually get rid of Hamas?

Because the more people you kill, the more people you radicalize. Right. The thing that's happening just under the carpet that no one's talking about is all Israel's doing is radicalizing the next generation. of Islamic fundamentalists. It's radicalizing the children who are watching their parents and uncles

die at the hands of bombs, right? They're radicalizing the next generation of Hezbollah. They're radicalizing the next generation of Iraqi militia. They're radicalizing the next generation of Iranians who... aren't going to trust that Israel is a democracy, that Israel is out for peace. And it's fascinating. You talk to many Israeli business owners and Israeli politicians, and they will talk about peace to your face all the time.

But the actions that they carry out are very different. Well, what does that do to the observer? When the observer sees you spouting peace from your mouth and waging war with your hands, what do we always say? We always say actions speak louder than words. So... The truth is, even if Israel does enjoy 5, 7, 12 years of relative safety and peace, then a whole new generation of radicalized Islamists will be of age.

to execute whatever they need to execute if they believe they need to execute anything at all and how are they going to do that now you also lose the opportunity to know how it's going to be carried out think about the destruction of isis right isis was an organized regionally kind of located threat it was eradicated

And then it just transformed. It transformed into lone wolf people who were radicalized over the internet. And now you have lone wolf ISIS operators all over the world just showing up and stabbing some people, blowing some things up, shooting other people. They're still there. ISIS still exists because the ideology still exists. And you can't claim that you have victory over something when the ideology still persists. But is it realistic to think that you could like...

get rid of the ideology behind ISIS? I mean, it's been around for a long time, the idea of Islamism. How do you deal with that anyway? I mean, this is the same argument that we have with Nazism and the same argument that we have with communism and the same argument that we have with... Even some of the really obscure religions that are out there, right? Is it even realistic to think that you're going to eradicate an ideology? Yeah. In many ways, Nazism has been reduced.

so significantly that it's not considered a transnational threat. If it can be done with something that was once so organized that it waged a successful campaign across Europe, then it can be done with anything. But how we go about fighting that battle. World War II was not a limited war.

limited to world war ii was a was a total war well this is what i often think about because i don't think anyone could see the scenes coming out of gaza and not be absolutely horrified especially if you're a parent and you're just watching you know it's awful

But I just think what would have happened if we had smartphones in 1944, 1945? I think the world would turn pretty quickly against the Allies if it was watching from the outside. Yeah, it happened in Vietnam too. That was just news journalists. Right. So that's the thing. So I see exactly what you're saying. But on the other hand, I also think, well, maybe this is a terrible option, but the best Israel has, which is you like secure.

your country for a while, and then you just have to deal with this 10 years from now again. But that's really what has been happening in Israel since its very creation, basically, isn't it? Right. This is why I say it was the right thing at the wrong time. Israel has no way of executing a land-based assault against Iran, right? If it wants what's known as an interstate war, interstate war means one state invades the sovereignty of another state.

If they really want regime change and they really want to eradicate the threat of the theocracy of Iran, they need to have a total war with Iran. That's what they need to do. If they want to eradicate it quickly, if they want to kind of...

hope and dream that, just like we're hoping and dreaming that Putin is going to get uprooted from within by the oligarchs, if they want to hope and dream that the Ayatollah is going to somehow lose favor, they can. We can all kind of twiddle our thumbs and hope for the best in Iran and use sanctions and diplomatic methods that...

you know, have been proven over time not to be as effective as we think they are. But if they really want that change, they would have to wage a land war. Well, they don't have the capacity to land. Like you said, they're fighting on three sides. Plus, there's other countries between them and Iran.

You can't win a conflict with technology alone. You can't just bomb your way to success. That whole idea of bombing people back to the Stone Age, yes, you can do significant damage with air superiority, but... As part of the damage that you do, you are fundamentally altering multiple generations of who people will see as victims and who people will see as the enemy in the years to come.

Right. And that's exactly what's happening in Iran right now. But I'm just thinking like from a military perspective. If your choices are what Israel has, wouldn't the best option be kind of what they're doing now, which is you defang your enemy and you just make sure that they can't attack you in the way that they could prior to that? That is not what I think is the best. What is the best?

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If they were to target and destroy those databases, target and destroy that infrastructure with a Trojan horse, with sabotage, with human penetration, whatever it might be, that would do just as much damage as bombs.

Because now you'd have to essentially replace entire mainframes. You could then attack the supply chain to make sure that they don't get those mainframes simultaneously to doing other covert action that might deplete the uranium supply. All of that without the population even knowing it was happening.

Right? Then you don't have the collateral. You don't have the collateral. You don't have the collateral damage. You don't run the risk of what we're seeing right now in Gaza, where nobody likes Hamas. Somehow the narrative has been, has tied. Hamas and Palestinians together. So now there are places where if you talk about Palestine, people think you're supporting Hamas, right? Like this nasty web of inaccuracy.

The same kind of thing could happen in Iran right now. People could mistake what is theocracy versus what is Iranian, and then there could be support for Iran. for being a victim because everybody wants to vote for the underdog so there's a there's a better way a different way of going about it now it would have been slower or it could have been slower it may not have ever needed the united states

But now what has happened is Netanyahu has gained favor, like we said, across the Middle East and with the West. And America looks strong. Netanyahu and Trump are on the same page again. There were multiple political victories that... aren't necessarily serving the long-term interests of Israel. It's such a good point because one of the problems, and we always talk about this on the show, is one of the flaws with democracy.

Because of the election cycle, is it breaches short-term thinking amongst politicians, leaders, whatever else? And I do think there might be a time with, let's say, 30 years down the line when this younger generation, like the gentes or like the millennials... They get into power. And as president of the US and other countries, they will no longer see Israel as an ally.

They will see them as an aggressor. They will see them in a negative light. And the moment that happens, particularly if it's the United States, that really does put Israel in a very vulnerable position. I would argue that that's already happening now. There are many Americans that don't see Israel as an ally. They don't see Israel as a peer. They don't see Israel as a democracy at all. They see Israel as this mutation.

of promises and actions that don't align, and they see it as abusive, and they see it as manipulative, and again, they don't see the distinction between Netanyahu's government, the Israeli government, and Judaism. There's three very different pillars here at work, but the average American, I would argue, doesn't really see those distinct nuances. And that's because Israel is just one of many things that the average American is focused on.

Absolutely. And I think that what's interesting in this as well is a role of Mossad, because... When people talk about Mossad, there's obviously a lot of conspiracy, understandably so, when it comes to secret services, because they're secret. And when things are opaque, that's where you see conspiracy. But there seems to be more conspiracy around Mossad than possibly even the CIA or MI6. Yeah, I would agree with that. And I think a big part of that is, well, twofold. One...

Of all the secret organizations that do public acts, Mossad is at the top of the list. What MI6 does, they don't make public. What CIA does, they don't... They don't make public. Other people make it public and CIA may comment on it, but they don't release footage of their incredible feats of, you know, courageousness or whatever else. Mossad does that because Mossad understands there's a psychological warfare element.

to being able to claim, hey, those pagers were us, and hey, here's footage of us launching drones inside Iran. They understand that there's an information warfare value there. So Mossad is willing to do things publicly. That other people won't take public credit for. And then on top of that, Mossad is very good about cultivating this idea that they are the best. But then something like October 7th happens. And everybody wonders...

how could this organization that's supposed to be so great fucking drop the ball on that? That's kind of a big thing. And then if you recall in the weeks after October 7th, that's when it started coming out. Like there were actual reports and there were videos of drills that Hamas was running.

It wasn't new information. So how did this happen? And that makes Mossad look bad. It makes Shin Bet look bad. It makes IDF look bad. It makes all the major players in Israel look mildly incompetent at worst.

or fully incompetent at worst, and bureaucratic and convoluted at best. But it calls into question what is their true capability, which then makes it that much more important to run these. Again, another run of daring, high-risk... scenarios like we saw with pagers and like we saw with drones. I would actually argue that that's not the worst case scenario. What is the worst case scenario is what I saw. And people actually kind of respected going, you know what? They let it happen.

Because there is so many conspiracies around Mossad, and they've built this kind of mystique about themselves. They've got their own martial art. Do you know what I mean? I mean, what a publicity tool that is. The CIA don't have a martial art, but... But you know, Mossad does. So if they're so good, if they're so powerful, if their tentacles are everywhere, how could they let October 7th happen? It must have been on purpose. Fair.

Yeah, that's fair. That is the true worst case scenario, is that they intentionally let harm come to their own people. I, as a national security professional, can't palette that. I can't conceptually... even give that any sort of gravity. Because it's so antithetical to what goes into committing your life to the service of national security. Letting your own people get hurt.

You can't imagine that. I can imagine it for somebody else. It has to happen because there are Americans who go turncoat on their own country as well. It's just, it's so difficult. The cognitive dissonance for me and being able to say that systematically Mossad would have let something like that happen just to create a series of events in which

they could orchestrate a large-scale attack on Hamas. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense to me because if they wanted to launch a large-scale attack on Hamas, they just could have at any time. They could have trumped up some sort of imminent threat, just like we saw in Iran.

right? Hamas is imminently planning on attacking Israel. Hear the videos of their routines, trills. Let's go and start a war. No, it never made sense to me, not least because we see that the security services in every country fail every now and again. And that's when 9-11, you know. big terrorist attacks here in Britain. But Francis is right in that you do see a lot of people who kind of went full retard over that, you know, thinking that.

So the question, I guess, is based on what you're saying, my sense is you think this has actually been really bad for the security of the region, the entire events of the last week. I think that the conclusion that I would make is that we have given Iran more power than it had before we ever started this. And that's the problem. Two weeks ago, four weeks ago...

There was a stable relationship between the collegiate states and Iran. There was a resounding success against the proxy players fighting Israel. There was decreasing... attention on Israel and what's happening in Gaza. The narrative had switched to tariffs, the narrative had switched to, you know, other areas other than war, which...

meant that there was some reason to believe that there was going to be overall stability in the same kind of direction. But now, in the best interest of a few political points, political points for Israel, political points for the United States... we have created a more unstable scenario that arguably gives Iran the ability to take actions that are justified. Whereas before, if they would have taken any actions against...

the Middle East, against Saudi Arabia, against UAE, against Israel, against the United States, it would have been first strike. It would have been preemptive. If they were to...

choose to shut the Hormuz Straits, if they would have chose to cut off supplies to the collegiate states, if they would have chose to launch more rockets, it would have been them being aggressors. It would have been them stepping outside of line. Now... we have to wonder what will they do and when will they do it and when they do it what are we all going to say in the world are we going to say oh this was unjustified are we going to say this was in response to

the bombing of these nuclear sites. Well, let me present you an alternative argument, because obviously I wouldn't argue with you about your opinion about intelligence or all of that. But from a media perspective and political perspective, the way it looks to me is kind of the opposite.

you said in some ways, whereby Israel was losing more and more and more support from across the board because of what's happening in Gaza. And now they look like the guys who dealt with the threat of nuclear Iran. President Trump, as you say, gets a political political victory. He secured the ceasefire almost immediately, which is holding as we sit here anyway. And so now you might argue Iran has been defanged somewhat.

Maybe not in a nuclear way, but it doesn't have the air defense systems that it had. It's used a lot of its ballistic missiles and had others destroyed, right? Now you could, other countries are talking about joining the Abraham Accords that weren't already on the list, right? So could this not be actually the beginning of...

everybody in the Middle East getting on board with the fact that Israel exists, Iran gets ostracized. And if they start doing other stuff that's on the nuclear end of things, they're going to get bombed again, basically. I mean, it could be that. I agree. It could be that. i would argue that probability wise that's a good question what is the most probable outcome i don't know that we have enough information to really set probabilities yet um i also my

My concern isn't with the near-term benefits. I think that there are near-term benefits. I think you did a good job outlining those near-term benefits. I'm just saying I don't believe that the near-term benefits are going to outweigh the long-term risks because now...

There are phone calls and conversations happening between Iran and all of its closest partners. And the whole world now feels justified in preemptive strikes. So China is now feeling that much more confident in preemptively striking Taiwan. And Russia looks like they were doing the faddish thing when they preemptively struck Ukraine. Now there's a precedent.

that Western democracies, the leading country in the world, is willing to attack a sovereign nation across borders for no reason other than WMD. which we've done before. Iraq fucked this whole thing up. You can just tell, right? That's when the West really lost a lot of its moral credibility. Correct.

Because the thing is, threats will exist that do need to be dealt with. But when you cry wolf a lot, then when the real thing happens, no one believes you. Right. And the circumstances for this particular crying of wolf are rough. You have the DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, saying that they are not close to creating a weapon. And then you see the president tweeting the opposite.

If I can still call it tweeting, I don't even know. And then you see the DNI changing her tone. Well, she did say in her original testimony that they are enriching uranium to like 60%, right? And this was maybe you can unpack this for us because that's always been there of contention for me because I'm like... Look, you say these people are rational and etc. But I'm like, well, they are like, you know, they're very...

wedded to their religious ideology, let's put it as diplomatically as that. They keep saying they're going to destroy Israel, and they are enriching uranium way beyond what its civilian purposes would need. And this is kind of part of, I remember reading a study about why fights between kids happen because everyone perceives the punch they receive as being harder.

And the one that they throw as being not as hard, right? So I'm sure there's a lot of misperception happening. But if I'm sitting in the chair of Benjamin Netanyahu, I'm going, these guys hate us. They want our country destroyed. They've funded terrorists who are destroying our country as best they can. And they're enriching Iran way beyond what's needed for civilian purposes. I have an opportunity here to take that shit out. I'm going to do it. Do you see what I mean?

I see what you mean. So why include America? Because if they have the capability and they have other means, then why include America at all? Well, my view externally was always like, this is Israel's war and they should handle it. And I imagine... dropping the bunker busters was not the only way they could have got to those facilities, as you say. And you know way more about this than I do, right? But as you say, my sense... See, I think there's been this narrative that Israel is manipulating...

the American government, I'm pretty sure that's not how it works, because the American government is the most powerful force in the world, right? I think, yeah, I wouldn't... Donald Trump did this because Donald Trump wanted to do this. Bingo. Right. So it's not him being manipulated by Benjamin Netanyahu. Correct. I think Netanyahu understood that when you put dog food in a bowl of a hungry dog.

The dog's going to eat the dog food. So that's basically what he did. And he was like, hey, what we can do as Israel is eradicate their air defenses. And what we can do as Israel is share our incredible intelligence about what, where, when, why, and how. And we can give that to somebody who has the capability to do what we can't do, or has the capability to do something visually, a visual spectacle that we can't carry out.

And then that still gives us options to do all the other cool shit that we're ready to do. I think he set up the window. He rolled out the red carpet. He timed it at a moment when he knew that the dog was hungry. And he was like, here you go.

But he had a plan for in case Donald Trump said no. I'd imagine so. He had a plan for in case somebody in the United States was like, this is not our fight to have, right? But that's not how it played out. So instead, the way it played out, just like you said, works out politically as...

a big victory for everybody. And do you think that the other Gulf countries are kind of on board with what's happened? I don't know that they're on board with what's happened. I think that they're on board with a depleted Iran. It's just like NATO.

everybody wants to see a depleted Russia. But that doesn't necessarily mean they like the idea that we only support Ukraine a little bit and that we hold back in other areas, right? This is why I make the claim that I believe World War III is already happening. Because I believe World War III is a proxy war. It is a proxy conflict. So wealthy external states are funding internal conflicts.

in poorer countries that really don't have a say. But that's more like the Cold War, isn't it? Because that's what happened all through the Cold War. We kept having, you know, the North Koreans fight the South Koreans and all of that. Africans fighting each other because the communists founded these guys and the Americans founded... Why do you call it World War III? So, partly because...

What you saw in the Cold War was still mainly focused around this question of communism and the spread of communism. North Korea, South Korea was its own war, right? It was the Korean War. And then a lot of- Yeah, but like Soviet, sorry to interrupt, but Soviet pilots were flying the planes on one side and the Americans were flying on the other side. On the other side. Right. So you still had, that's still resources from those countries fighting in a third location.

Yeah, exactly. So true proxy conflict is when an internal conflict is already present and external parties contribute to the internal conflict. without committing their own resources, without committing their own troops, without committing their own weapons of destruction, right? So they can make money off it. Intra-state war, the opposite of inter-state war. Intra-state war is very profitable, right?

boosts economies because you're selling weapons you're signing loans you're getting first rights on the rebuilding of destroyed provinces once they're once the war ends so the warlords that we saw all through africa and the internal conflict that we saw with like the fark and not in america

America, like those were different because those were rebel groups that were trying to find some sort of independence or tribal unity or something along those lines, right? But when you start to actually look at what happened in Syria. and what happened in Yemen, and what happened in Libya. You have major civil wars happening.

where one side is pro-West, one side is not pro-West, pro-democracy, not pro-democracy, if you will, or however you want to look at it, more corrupt, less corrupt, however you want to kind of cut it up. And then at the same time, you're seeing Afghanistan, Iraq playing out during the global war on terror, which in many ways is...

the same kind of conflict, the United States couldn't support conflict in five countries at once, especially not when it was losing ground in Afghanistan and Iraq. So how do you continue to push foreign policy that's in the best interest of the United States? you support proxy. And Iran learned this whole proxy move back in like the 70s and 80s. So they've been doing this for a long time. We've been studying how they've been launching.

proxy conflict for a long time. China was watching us lose the global war on terror and watching Iran carry out proxy conflict, and they were kind of mimicking us in the same way while also paralleling our humanitarian efforts with their Belt and Road Initiative that matched kind of our... various humanitarian efforts as well. So this...

big kind of chessboard of people experimenting with different techniques ultimately ended when we pulled out of Afghanistan and Iraq, but we still continued to support these proxy conflicts. We poured the lend-lease agreements, weapons training. business interests since Ukraine. We chose to start to actually use direct military intervention against the Houthis to support commercial trade because of more than anything what the United States is trying to do is create an economy.

I would argue the United States is trying to create a wartime economy without actually committing troops to go to war. Because a war in the United States can become very unpopular. But a wartime economy in the United States is very popular. Well, that's why I say it sounds more like a cold war to me. Because maybe it's just a terminology thing, Andrew. Clarify for me.

When I think of World War III, I think like Russia and China directly fighting with America. Right. I think that's what most people think of. Yeah. I don't know why people think that. I don't know why you think that. World War I looks different than World War II.

And there was less time between those than there is between World War II and today. And if you look at all the conflicts... They were different technologically. Correct. And strategically. Look at World War I to World War II to Korea to Vietnam to the global war on terror to today. You can see...

an evolution of strategy, an evolution of technology, an evolution of warfare. No, no, that I agree with. But what I'm, maybe I'm just being pedantic, but it's probably worth exploring. What I'm saying is World War I, technologically very different, of course, to World War II, but ultimately...

it's about major powers coming physically together on land, on the sea, and in World War II. With weapons of mass destruction. With weapons of mass destruction, but they're fighting each other. Correct. Interstate. Yeah, World War I, World War II. World War II had only one use of weapons of mass destruction, and it was a completely new weapon at the end that was used essentially to deter any ongoing attack.

The conflict before that was a battle of technology. Right. But my point is that you've got these major powers, the great powers of the world, coming together and fighting each other effectively physically for global dominance. Whereas the Cold War is... powers now in a nuclear world realizing actually we can't fight each other because the world will end so we are going to fund this proxy here we're going to fund that proxy here and those proxies coming together so wouldn't

what we're doing now be more like Cold War II as opposed to World War III? Maybe it is pedantic. I would say, again, the Cold War was a war of ideology. There were some skirmishes. Right. But there was there was unless I am misunderstanding history. Right. There weren't multiple simultaneously multiple simultaneous civil wars.

that were being funded for long-term conflicts by large power brokers. But isn't that exactly what, like, Korea, Vietnam, a lot of the conflicts in Africa... Those are separate wars, right? Korea was separate, Vietnam was separate. But they were proxy wars. They were proxy wars, basically. American troops were actually committed to Vietnam. That's different. That's very true. American troops were committed to Korea, too. Yeah. I see what you mean.

I think what happened... I think you're making my point for me, which is this is more like the Cold War. Again, whether... you want to see it the similarities or whether you want to see it as the next evolution right they could be kissing cousins for all intents and purposes but the main thing that i'm pulling from is that when i went through war college we learned a very important lesson about

The cost of war. The cost of war is significantly higher in limited war than in total war, right? The cost of war, because the cost of war is, yes, dollars today, and yes, lives today, but it's also... future dollars, investment dollars, opportunity cost, and the opportunity cost that comes from lives lost today, right? So the cost of limited war.

is higher than the cost of total war, because in the cost of total war, total war creates a ton of value. It creates an economic engine, it creates an ideology, it creates a, like, that's why we essentially launched a total war against terror.

Because we had learned this lesson that limited war is more expensive than total war when it comes to essentially profit margin. But interstate total war... is the most expensive type because interstate total war now we're invading another country right you're all in right like you're either all in because if you lose

They're coming in and they're taking everything from you. It's like a lawsuit. There's a suit and a countersuit. So we, the United States, try to avoid interstate total war. Well, this is all I'm saying. Sorry if I'm taking loads of time, Francis. And also being, sorry if I'm being anal about it. The only reason I am.

am being anal about it is like in the media now every fucking youtube channel now is like world war three world war three like i think when we had matthew saeed on last week it was like well at that point nobody really knew where it was gonna go right but the way it's I think when you say World War III, what most people imagine is like a guy in Russia going, launch the nuclear missile. And I don't think that's what's happening right now. I agree. That's not what's happening. And I also agree...

That that is what most people think of when they think of World War III. But that's why I'm saying I think most people are not understanding the evolution of war. Okay. Your child is going to grow into an adult that is like you, but not you. Yeah.

right? But they're still going to grow. So they will still be the next Constantine. I guess what you are saying is we're the beginning of something that's going to expand, that's going to get more intense, and conflict in the world is going to grow. That's what you're saying. And this is what conflict is going to look like. Like what we're seeing now. It's kind of better than World War II, right? I would argue that for the United States and for wealthy Western countries...

we should feel safer about our future moving forward. But if you're not a wealthy Western country, you're fucked because you're a playground. Africa is a playground. Latin America is a playground. Central America is a playground. The Caucasus is a playground. The Middle East is a playground. Because big powers are going to play on your turf. And at the time when you are the most vulnerable. The United States got to have our revolution when there was only one other major power, right?

And China got to have their revolution when there was really nobody interested in their revolution. The countries that have been able to find their current footing and become major power players... had the ability to do that without too much interjection from other people, right? It took a long time for France and Spain to support the rebels in the United States. That's not the case anymore. Now it's...

wire transfers and cryptocurrency and weapons being rerouted. And like now, as soon as something nasty cooks up in Uruguay or now that as soon as something nasty cooks up in Armenia or Azerbaijan. the whole world can be like, whoop, here's resources to fund whatever you're doing as long as at the end of the day, you give us this or you give us that. That's super interesting. I guess my question is, America's debt is ratcheting up.

It created a bust up between Elon and Trump. And I look at America and I go, how long can you keep funding this? Because isn't China playing the smart game in a way of kind of not getting involved and thereby watching the events play out and also as well saving a ton of cash? Yes.

I do believe China is playing a very smart game. And I do believe that China's smart game is going to continue to yield dividends in the near future. And that's not just me. That's multiple economists, right? You can... demonstrably see their price parity going up you can demonstrably see their gdp growing up their influence growing they have their own domestic issues of course like all countries do but they're not adding to the plate

challenges like we seem to add with being involved in conflicts that may or may not be our own. However, what the United States has that China doesn't have is the United States is the number one weapons exporter in the world. a large part of our economy is tied to the military-industrial complex. When we build weapons for stockpile...

we don't realize the revenue from those weapons. When we generate weapons for sale for active use in another war zone, we immediately recognize that profit margin, that revenue. So it's better to be creating than producing.

something that other people are actively using because then you can produce more and sell more and whatever else. And debt is really... something that exists on paper more than anything else so you can take credits and you can take loans and you can you can make debt look like it's going away right that's what doge did so there's lots of ways that you can work with debt i am i am

fairly convinced Donald Trump understands that what he needs in the United States is a wartime economy. Because a wartime economy... is our number one industry with our highest margins where we have not only the dominance of manufacturing, because if you control supply, you essentially control demand and you can for sure control revenue.

If we control the supply of the best weapons in the world, then we just keep selling them. We sell them to Taiwan. We sell them to Israel. We sell them to Saudi Arabia. We sell them to UAE. And the only way that people are buying fucking weapons is if they feel threatened.

or if they're actively engaged in a conflict. So it's in our best interest to encourage ongoing conflict because that guarantees us that we're going to keep selling our shit. Number two biggest weapon exporter in the world is Russia. Our weapons are far more technologically advanced than Russia. And as Russian weapons are being used in the field against American weapons being used in the field, we get all the benefit of the R&D.

to see how those weapons are actually being carried out. The fact that Ukraine has innovated their way to a whole new... world of drone development, that funding in large part came from the West. That IP is going to belong to the West or at least be shared with the West. So now we're going to have that head start in developing all new drone technology for warfare and combat in the future.

Because it's really interesting, and people, I don't think, understand this, but the Chinese influence in South America, particularly in Venezuela. It's everywhere. They've completely bedded in. And if you think about that from a geopolitical viewpoint, it's not that far from Venezuela to Florida. It's a three and a half hour flight. and Iran are embedded in there as well. So that's got to be really worrying for the Americans. I think the challenge with the Chinese is kind of twofold. First...

Yes, the Chinese have done a good job of infiltrating across geography. They are engaged with humanitarian efforts. They're engaged in trade efforts. And they present themselves as the pragmatic alternative to the United States. Because the unfortunate truth is if you're going to play with the United States...

you have to adopt American ideology. And that worked for a long time. China has made it so that if you want to play with China, you can still believe in whatever the fuck you want to believe in. As long as you have currency and we have currency and you've got supply and we've got supply, like we'll switch, we'll trade. We're not going to...

police what you do in the bedroom or in the boardroom. We're just going to have a nice, fair trade of goods. The United States is like, we'll have a trade of goods, but you have to...

To read trans people on your board. Yeah, exactly, right? So you have to do it with our ideology. So now there's lots of countries in the world that are asking themselves, do I want to keep dancing the American dance to get the deal, or do I want to just... do it with china understanding that chinese goods are not to the quality of us goods that there's that chinese deals are always kind of tricky right like

U.S. deals are at least policed many times by American laws. Chinese laws can change in a whim. So the world is deciding what to do about that. So one problem with China is that we still don't know how people are going to react. Are our allies going to become fully dependent on China? Are our allies going to partially diversify their goods with China? How's all that going to work? And then the second part of that is America's relationship with China is also unpredictable.

Is China cooperating with the United States only because it has to? And as soon as it finds that it has the leverage to muscle its way around, it's going to stop cooperating with the United States? It's going to be less pragmatic? We don't know. And China's been around a long time. And there...

Their mentality, both politically and individually, their mentality about the long game, like the truly long game, longer than any Westerner can really think of, their mentality is one that we can't wrap our mind around. Like... we want to win now, this election cycle, before the midterms. That's a two-year window. They're like, we'll win in 75 years. A win is a win. Yeah. And that's so interesting because...

When you look at everything that's happening in the Middle East, China not getting involved, they must be strategizing, particularly when it comes to Taiwan. I mean, it makes no sense to believe that China is not involved. It makes complete logical sense that China is involved with Iran on some level, sharing intel, sharing insights.

Weren't there a bunch of planes that flew from China to Iran and then disappeared off the radar right before they hit Iran? Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. Right before the strike time? I wouldn't be surprised, and I don't know the answer. But we've seen this multiple times, even with the Assad family fleeing from Syria.

Allies come in and help. So to think that China's not involved at all, I think, would be naive. It's just how they're involved, the public doesn't quite know yet. But I absolutely believe that... What China's getting from all of this is they're learning how Americans do business now. What do we do when Russia invades Ukraine? What do we do when Israel launches an air assault against...

Iran, what do we do in a humanitarian crisis? If anything, they've even learned our playbook now about how we would launch a secret bombing run, right? They've watched us send... some planes in one direction and other planes in a different direction. They watched us launch Tomahawk missiles from an underground submarine. And the United States, I think, intended to be like, look how strong and powerful we are.

not also realizing that what they're also showing is here's our process. Yeah. See, that's why I have to say, I was thinking that I don't want to be wise after the fact, but I watched the press briefing that I think the Pentagon did with Pete Hegseth and they were like, so yeah, we sent it. decoy here. I was like, what the fuck are you doing? What are you doing? It just goes to show that it's not professionals in the cabinet.

Professionals. No, but that was a general doing that, saying that. And very likely, that's what he was told to say. He was told to brief something along those lines. Like, shut up. Yeah, like, explain to the American people how he did this. And I promise you, at some place, he was like, sir, this is methods. and methods and sources are strictly classified no no this is this is going to be fine go ahead

Yeah, that made no sense to me. Please talk about it so that I can send it on signal to my friends. Yeah, like that didn't make any sense to me whatsoever. And I've never seen a press brief like that, a press brief that explained the tactics and techniques behind something. That was fucking weird. Yeah, it was. this Saturday morning a large B-2 strike package comprised of bombers launched from the continental United States.

As part of a plan to maintain tactical surprise, part of the package proceeded to the west and into the Pacific as a decoy. a deception effort known only to an extremely small number of planners and key leaders here in Washington and in Tampa. The main strike package comprised of seven B-2 Spirit bombers, each with two crew members, proceeded quietly to the east with minimal communications.

So you think they're just doing that for political reasons to try and like show off and show that we're capable and show that we know what we're talking about. But focusing on Trump a little bit, here's... The narrative has always been in the media. His unpredictability is a strength. Because if you can't predict an opponent, you're going to be more wary of them because you don't know what they're going to do.

On a geopolitical level, is that actually true or is he just a massive liability? Yeah, and, you know, I would argue the opposite is true about Trump. He is actually very predictable. It's just you have to ask yourself a different question. Don't ask yourself what's good for America. Ask yourself what's good for Trump. If you ask yourself what benefits Trump in any given scenario...

you'll be closer to the right answer than if you ask yourself, well, what's in America's best interest? Because Trump's best interests are consistently the ones that win out. How does he save face? How does he look strong? How does he win his base over? Whatever it might be.

How does he gain leverage? How does he make the other side look bad? How does he come up with the best tweets? Whatever it might be, you can get closer to the truth if you understand that Trump is predictable in thinking what's best for Trump. And I understand... that the majority of Americans voted for Trump and that he was a duly elected president. And that is the position that he sits in. And I want to respect the office of the president. It's a shitty place to be. It's a hard job.

But Trump was running to become president when he knew it was only a four-year term. He was running to become president when he knew that there were presidential benefits and perks that were going to come that would counteract his legal issues. He was running for president at a time when...

The country was largely dissatisfied with the previous president. So there were certain benefits and certain opportunities that he had. Who did they benefit? Him. It doesn't benefit the American people to have a one-term president. It benefits the American people to have a president that has the opportunity to run for multiple terms, to make eight years worth of impact, not four years worth of impact. So you can see in multiple different ways the rise of what I'm calling...

well, I'm not really calling it, other people have called it this, but I can see the rise of the celebrity president, right? Barack Obama was a celebrity and a president. Luckily, he still had some statesmanship in him, right? Then we had Trump come up, pure celebrity, no chops at all for politics. And then we had Biden kind of come back as a... a weird sort of rebound boyfriend yeah kind of still riding obama's celebrity celebrity and now trump's back again like it's oprah next who who is next

And are they going to be qualified to do what statesmen do? And statesmen consider the long-term impact, multi-generational benefits of their state. Yeah, because you saw in Trump in that clip, which everybody's seen when, I mean, viral isn't the word, you know, talking about... Iran and Israel and then going, they don't know what the fuck they're doing. And then what was interesting is he went in harder on Israel than he did in Iran. I think that was us seeing that he...

himself also knows his predictability is being read by true statesmen. Netanyahu is a statesman. Netanyahu, Putin is a statesman, right? Xi Jinping is a statesman. These are people who understand and are invested in the long-term interest of their state. And they're also autocratic in many ways, and they're also authoritarian in some ways, more so with Putin and Xi than with Netanyahu. But these are individuals who understand there is an entire nation.

that can benefit or be harmed by the decisions that they make. So they can play this and they have a circle of professionals around them who are informing their decisions. Trump doesn't have that. He doesn't have that vision. And he also doesn't have that team of people who are hell-bent on the mission of advancing our state. They might be...

Marco Rubio is hell-bent on the vision of becoming a future president, right? Pete Hegseth is hell-bent on the idea of not fucking up a second time, but they're not really focused on how do we make America the strongest country in the world for another... five decades. Do you think he's out of his depth? I would say that he is in a position where he is not... I think he can do the job.

But with the team that he has, he's made the job a whole hell of a lot harder. You know, it's interesting you say that because we have met some of the people, not at the very top, but around who are very professional, who are very patriotic, who are very dedicated. But then I... You know, I've never met Steve Wyckoff, but then I see him being appointed as America's chief negotiator. And then he comes out and the stuff he said about Ukraine, I'm going like...

Mate, you generally don't know what you're talking about. And it's kind of worrying. Do you think that's one of the reasons Trump hasn't yet delivered on Ukraine? that lack of professional advice and kind of having the right people in the right place? Or is there other reasons? Well, I also think that this is Putin outmaneuvering Trump. That's what I think too. And remember, like...

Putin is an experienced KGB operator. He's an experienced strongman operator. He can read Trump. He can read the ego, and he can read the need for victory, and he can... He can play that shell game. That's, I think, in large part, a show of how unprepared Zelensky is compared to Putin for what to expect with Trump, right? Both Musk and Zelensky expected that Donald Trump...

would follow through on his promise. Why would you ever expect Donald Trump to follow through on a promise, right? Donald Trump has his entire career made promises to get people to fall in line. to not follow through on the promise. You know, it's such a good point because...

You know, I'm much happier that Trump's president than the alternative that we had, genuinely. And like I say, there are some people around him that I really like and respect. We've had our friend Seb Gorka on the show, for example. That's what he is. He's a patriot. He wants America to be great, right?

But I did meet someone in New York who used to do business with Donald Trump. And he said, I said, what was he like? And he's like, the only thing you need to know about him is if he owes you a million dollars, he calls you the day or at least due to pay. And he says, I've got 200,000 for you.

Take it or leave it. So whatever you think about, whether that's good or bad or right or wrong or whatever, that is who the man is. So your point is, it's interesting you with your CIA background basically going, stop thinking about like... This from a kind of feelings or morality, that's what he is. Right. And you've got to understand that. And there are smart people in the world who understand it.

uh and there are less smart people in the world who don't understand it there's yeah there's the people who act on rational probabilities yeah and there's the people who operate on irrational hopes and beliefs right And we live in an era right now where you've got to be doubling down on rational probabilities. That's so interesting. You can be wrong, and that's okay. If you gamble enough times in the way that is rational and statistically...

impactful, you're going to have more success than the person who's just constantly duped by believing what they read or believing what they hear or believing what they see. Or believing what they want to believe. Or even worse, believing what they want to believe in a vacuum. Right.

That's so interesting. And that was the thing with Steve Witkoff that really struck me because I'm going, I know that the people who are sitting across the table from him, they're like Russian guys who've been studying this shit for 30 years. And they've been trained from the age of 18 to understand all these things. And you've got a guy who may be super talented. He may be great at everything, but he doesn't.

He doesn't understand the subject matter well enough. And that's kind of worrying to me. So at CIA, we would often participate in giving briefings to staffers. Senate staffers and congressional staffers. And we would brief them on something. And I don't know if you know what a staffer looks like in Washington, D.C. They're about 25. Holy shit. Yeah. Right.

They're all dressed to impress the opposite sex. Yeah. They're very smart. Very smart. But they're 25 years old. And it takes an army of them to brief one congressperson. So we, CIA, brief the staffer.

the team of staffers, they all take their separate notes and then they compile those notes to give a boiled down briefing to their... representative and then that representative takes that series of notes to their subcommittee and it goes on and on so whatever we give has been watered down five times before it actually gets to a policymaker and that's how the process worked

when it was still like a policy of professional statesmen that earned their position through a voting process by an informed public. Now what we have is a celebrity effort. where celebrity wins you more power than actual informed performance. And then in addition to that, you surround yourself by people who have no experience in the facility of the secretary office that they're in, and then they're shaping the information they get.

Right. Like it's it completely turns the whole thing upside down. And that's assuming CIA is still briefing staffers and the staffers are still being selected based off of their qualifications. And the whole process is still working. If CIA itself is gutted.

Or if CIA itself no longer feels the need to even try, it feels like they're wasting their time, those meetings right now might look, they might just look like donuts and coffee and flirting across the table. All right. So how does the next five years look like? Shit. And I like this man. He spent three days in Britain, he's already fully British. If anybody's expecting the next five years to be good...

I don't know why you would think that. So what do you flesh it out for us? So Israel and Iran is not over, not by a long stretch. The conflict either goes covert. and there's more covert action between the two, or it continues to fester as on and off overt activity, right? But Israel needs to stay embroiled in conflict.

Donald Trump is benefited by Israel being embroiled in conflict. And the only way Israel is going to win back the support of collegiate Arabs who are staunchly in support of Palestine. The only way Israel builds back... That relationship is by continuing to have conflict with Iran or ending their conflict in Gaza. Which one are they going to choose of the two of those, right? They're not going to stop their conflict in Gaza just to win back the support of...

of collegiate Arabs in the Arab airport. I mean, they've got to stop at some point. They've got to stop at some point, but... There's not going to be that many buildings left in Gaza. Well, it also... The end goal was never defined. No. So how do we know? They've got to stop at some point. This would be a great time to stop because what they've done is they've kind of distracted the world from the horror that's happening there.

and get to look like the good guys, this would be like exactly the time to stop. Except when they stop, there's more bad news after that. Because now... Now it's actually counting the bodies and seeing the true devastation. But they've got to stop at some point. They have to stop at some point. I don't disagree with you. But what I'm saying is right now they have a choice. Do we win back favor with the Arab community by...

by helping Gazans or by continuing to put pressure on Iran. It's way easier to win that support by putting pressure on Iran. But he is... Again, it's just me testing your argument. But the problem is that President Trump has been very successful with his base by... claiming a quick rapid victory and then there's a ceasefire which is i believe why he was so pissed off when the ceasefire was immediately violated if this goes into

anything that looks remotely where like the people on his right can go forever war, forever war. That's a very bad look for him. So isn't he going to apply a lot of pressure to Netanyahu to kind of calm down? This is, again, this is the Ukraine-Russia argument. Donald Trump understands that sitting on his pedestal, he can say, I need the two of you to get along. And when the two of you don't get along, he can say, you guys aren't listening.

I'm no longer part of this. That's exactly what he did in Ukraine and Russia. So he can come in, he can say, I need Iran and Israel, you two need to stop this. I've done my part to end this. Now you two just need to be adults. And then when they don't, he's like,

Not my problem anymore. But I'm going to keep selling weapons to Israel. Right? And that what Donald Trump's base doesn't want is for America to be in a war. They love it. when america flies a bunch of bombs and like especially after a big army parade and hey and the pictures look great right you got all these stealth bombers flying in formation on the map which is not how they actually fly in a combat situation but it looks great

That's what his base wants. His base wants, like, oh, we're in the headlines again, and Trump's in the headlines again, and America's strong. They just don't want American troops involved. They don't want American troops dying. If a B-2 would have been shot down, that would have been a bad day. If a plane wouldn't have come back, that would have been a bad day.

If we would have missed the target, that would have been a bad day. It's why it's so humiliating when DIA comes out and says, we actually weren't as successful as we thought we were. And then Trump's like, DIA doesn't know what they're talking about. They're the defense intelligence agency. They know exactly what they're talking about. And their job is to tell you the truth, Mr. President.

Well, before we ask you the final question, you've got a book coming out in September. We're both super forward, super looking. We're looking forward to reading it. Tell everybody a little bit about it and where they can get it. Yeah, absolutely. So my book is Shadow Cell. operational CIA memoir for my time at CIA. It's been four years in the making.

because CIA tried to block it from publication. So one of the things that we have in the US that you don't have here in the UK is First Amendment rights. So our First Amendment right protects American agents from being able to talk about our operations as long as we don't... go into classified information. So CIA deemed my operational history and my wife's operational history, my wife is the co-author for the book, also a CIA officer, former covert officer.

CIA tried to block it because it said that the entirety of our operational history was classified. We worked with them to try to show them that that wasn't necessarily the case. And after three years of what was...

Continually being more hostile collaboration, we just decided to retain an attorney and threaten to sue. And if we would have sued, then it would have taken the entire book project into the public justice domain. And they didn't want to do that. So instead, they allowed us to publish our... story. So Shadow Cell, our CIA memoir, talks about things that nobody's ever heard spoken about before. We talk about modern tradecraft. We talk about...

terror tactics that CIA pulled from terrorist elements and that we adopted to new operations. It talks about a mole in CIA that's never been disclosed, and it's all within the last 12 years. So it's one of the most modern CIA memoirs ever written. Looking forward to it, man. Sounds awesome. Thanks guys. Final question is always the same. What's the one thing that we're not talking about that we really should be?

Before Andrew answers the final question, at the end of the interview, make sure you click the link in the description. Head over to our substack where you'll see this. Is it true that the CIA and intelligence community in general is actively trying to undermine Trump's presidency?

What exactly is the West, and mainly the US, doing to figure out exactly how close Iran was to getting a bomb? How do Air Force pilots safely and reliably fly missions like this, which have a 30 plus hours duration? I think that the biggest... conversation topic should really be Europe and nobody's really talking about Europe. It's across Europe that I see the next 10 years of democracy really being tested.

Parliaments are dissolved and prime ministers and presidents are voted in and not voted in as Europe struggles with breaking away from the United States in terms of building their own. strength and power base in a future NATO or in a future union altogether. I really think that the future of democracy is going to be defined here in Europe more so than in the United States. And yet people don't talk about Europe.

Tell me more about that. What do you mean exactly, the future of democracy? So consider what happened in Germany where the chancellor wasn't immediately ratified. How does that happen? How does a country vote for a chancellor? And then the officiating body doesn't go in line with the people they're supposed to be representing. Wait, I didn't follow this. I must have missed this, genuinely. So, what was it, four months ago? Four months ago, I think it was, the new chancellor was...

supposed to be sworn in, but the representatives didn't vote unanimously, didn't vote to a majority to actually swear in his role as chancellor. So they had to go to a re-vote. Do you recall this, Francis? So this is Germany, one of the strongest economies and strongest democracies in Europe, right? The same thing happened in France, right? Macron dissolves Parliament. And then you have people in Portugal and you have...

Romania, you have Hungary, you have these other states as well, where the politicians aren't identifying themselves based off of their political stance. They're marrying their political stance to being pro-Trump or anti-Trump. You're also seeing it in Canada, and you're seeing it in Australia as well. So the celebrity activities in the United States are becoming like a topic of policy.

for European leaders to get voted or not or get voted out. That's not democracy. Democracy, again, statesmanship should be about the state. And there are some countries that are making it about the state, like Spain, refusing to meet the minimum payment. that's been forced on them by NATO, saying we'll commit 2.5% of our GDP to military spending, but not the 5% that's been assigned to us. So states are starting to determine what's best for them in a way that's unique.

But again, I don't think people are talking about this. The whole German chancellor thing was back page news at best. And it's there if you look at it. And if you watch the unsteady kind of evolution of Europe, I don't think Europe is headed in a downward spiral, but I do think it's realizing it's been led by the United States. And it no longer wants to be led by the United States, but who the fuck's going to lead it? And what does that mean for a European Union or a European or a union at all?

Andrew, thanks very much for coming on. Head on over to Substack where Andrew's going to answer your questions. And talk about how shit Britain is. How do we capitalize on this opportunity that some describe not only as historic but biblical, he says, to reshape Iran and not blow it a la Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan? What a great question.

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