Iran War Debate: Nuclear Weapons, Trump, Peace, Power & the Middle East | Lex Fridman Podcast #473

If we want to avoid wars, we have to have serious deterrence because our enemies need to understand we will use selective, focused, overwhelming military power when we are facing threats like an Iranian nuclear weapon. I'm not seeing the peace through strength. I'm saying permanent militarism and permanent war through strength. Do you ever ever hold our adversaries responsible or do you just don't think we have any adversaries? The easiest kind of nuke to make out of uranium is a simple gun type nuke. Are you saying that Mossad fabricated it? That's what you're claiming. Here's the offer. Take it or leave it. Zero enrichment. Full dismantlement. The Iranians told the IAEA, "You can inspect any five out of 10 facilities here. Cart Blanch, go ahead." And they did and found nothing. Experts in in Iran's nuclear program, including David Albbright, who actually saw the archive, went in there, wrote a whole book on it, and there's a lot of detail about how Iran had an active nuclear weapons program called the Mad to build five nuclear weapons. I have to refute virtually everything he just said, which is completely false. I mean, really everything. There was There was not one thing I said that was true. Just one thing. I mean, Iran is a nation over there somewhere. You got that part right. 22 years of working on Iran, and I got that right. But do you know the population of 92 million? Okay, give me a pound, dude. There we go. Agreement. The following is a debate between Scott Horton and Mark Dubowitz on the topic of Iran and Israel. Scott Horton is author and editorial director of anti-war.com, host of the Scott Horton Show, and for the past three decades, a staunch critic of US foreign policy and military interventionism. Mark Dubitz is a chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, host of the Iran Breakdown podcast, and he has been a leading expert on Iran and its nuclear program for over 20 years. This is the Lex Freedman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description and consider subscribing to this channel. If you do, I promise to work extremely hard to always bring you nuanced, long- form conversations with a very wide range of interesting people from all walks of life. And now, dear friends, here's Scott Horton and Mark Dubitz. Gentlemen. All right. It's great to have you here. Uh let's try to have a nuanced discussion slashdebate and uh maybe even steel man opposing perspectives as much as possible. All right. As it stands now, there's a barely stable ceasefire between Iran and Israel. Let's uh maybe rewind a little bit. Uh can we first lay out the context for this Iran Israel war and try to describe the key events that happened over the past two weeks? maybe even the uh a bit of the deep roots of the conflict. Sure. Like first of all, thanks so much for having me on. Great to be on with Scott. I know he and I don't agree on a lot, but I certainly admire the passion and and the dedication to stopping wars. So that's that's something we want to talk about. So let's talk about how we got to this war. So, President Trump comes into office and immediately lays out that his Iran strategy is maximum pressure on the regime and he will not allow Iran have a nuclear weapon and he and he makes that clear consistently. I think made it very clear during his first term made a clear throughout his career and thus beguns this process with the Iranians which has kind of multiple tracks but the one that Trump sees most interested in at the time is the diplomatic track and he makes it very clear from the beginning in a sort of Oval Office remark. He says the Iranians can either blow up their nuclear program under US supervision or someone's going to blow it up for them. And even though, you know, at the time we think Netanyahu is really trying to push the president into a military campaign, well, I'm sure we'll talk about that throughout the podcast, the president authorizes his lead negotiator and close friend Steve Witkoff to begin outreach to the Iranians and and thus begun the Oman round. And it's Oman round because it's taking place in Oman with mediation efforts by the Omanis. There are five rounds of negotiations with the Iranians. And through the course of those negotiations, the US finally puts on the table an offer for Iran. We'll talk about the details of that. The Iranians reject that offer and we're now into the sixth round which is supposed to take place on a Sunday. Uh on the Thursday before the Sunday, the Israelis strike and they go after in a rather devastating campaign over a matter of now 12 days. They go over and go after Iran's nuclear program, the key nuclear sites. Um, going after weapon scientists who are responsible for building Iran's nuclear weapons program, and also go after top IRGC, Islamic Revolutionary Guard commanders as well as top military commanders. And yet, there's still this one site that is the most fortified site. It's called Foraux. It's an enrichment facility. It's buried under a mountain, goes about 80 m deep. It's encased in concrete. It has advanced centrifuges and highly enriched uranium. The Israelis can do damage to it, but it's clear it's going to take the United States and our military power in order to severely degrade this facility. And Trump orders the United States Air Force to fly B2 bombers and drop 12 massive Ordinance penetrators, which are these 30,000 pound bombs on Fordo in order to, as he said, obliterate it more realistically, to severely degrade it. So that happens. Um, and then he offers the Iranians, as he's been offering all the way through, you have an option. You can go back to Oman. I told you Oman and you decided to force me to go to Fordo but now we can go back for negotiations and he forces a ceasefire on the Iranians gets the Israelis to agree and that's where we are today like we're at a as you say a tentative ceasefire that just came into effect and we'll see now if the Iranians decide to take President Trump on his repeated offers join him in Aman for another round of negotiations. Scott, is there some stuff you want to add to that? Sure. Well, he started with uh January, right? Trump's second term here and the maximum pressure campaign. Essentially, as should be clear to everyone now, all these negotiations were just a pretext for war. Trump and his entire cabinet must have known that the Ayatollah is not going to give up all enrichment. That is their latent nuclear deterrent. Their posture has been heavily implied. don't attack us and we won't make a nuke. While America's position was if you make a nuke, if you start to, we'll attack you. So, it was the perfect standoff. But what happened was, and you might remember a few weeks ago, there was some talk about, well, maybe we could find a way to compromise on some enrichment. Maybe they could do a consortium with the Saudis. Maybe there's some way that we And then, nope, the pressure came down. No enrichment. Zero enrichment. But that's a red line. Everyone knows that there's and even now uh it's probably less likely than ever that they're going to give up enrichment. Sure, they bombed Porto, but they didn't destroy every last centrifuge in that place. And the Iranians are already announcing that they're already begun construction on another facility under a taller mountain buried even deeper. And you know, they figured out how to enrich uranium hexaflloride gas, you know, what 20 years ago now. And uh they will always be able to. And this is the slippery slope that we're on with these wars is in fact um I saw our friend here on TV the other day as he almost pretty much just implied there saying well now Trump has to go in. You know we were told it's just Israel doing it. Don't worry. But then no Trump has to hit Fordo or else now they'll break out toward a nuclear weapon. So, in for a penny, in for a pound, in for a ton, and now once we bomb Fordo again and Natans again and the new facility again, then it'll be decided that no, as Benjamin Netanyahu said the other day, you know what would really solve this problem? If we just kill the Ayatollah, then everything will be fine. Then we'll have a regime change. And then what? Then we'll have a civil war with bin Laden again in the catbird seat just like George Bush put them in Iraq and Barack Obama put them in Libya and in Syria and we'll have Azeris and Belooki suicide bombers and Shiite uh you know revolutionaries and whoever all vying for power in the new absolute chaos stand. If you listen to the administration and Mr. to do was they're essentially just implying that like, oh yeah, mission accomplished. We did it. Their nuclear program is destroyed. Now we don't have to worry about that anymore. But that's not true. Now it there's every reason to believe and we don't know for sure. There's every reason to believe that at least is much more likely now that the Ayatollah will change his mind about God changing his mind and we'll say that actually maybe we do need a nuclear deterrent. That's really what it's been for this whole time is a bluff. We have bullets in one pocket, revolver in another. Let's not you and me fight and escalate this thing. It's the same position, by the way, as Japan and Germany and Brazil. Two of the three of those are under America's nuclear umbrella, I admit. But still, where they've proven they've mastered the fuel cycle and they can make nuclear weapons. But hey, since nobody's directly threatening them now, why escalate things and go ahead and make atom bombs? That has been their position the whole time because after all, they could not break out and make a nuke without everyone in the world knowing about it. And that's why, Lex, and I'm sure you can vouch for me on this, if you've been watching TV over the past few weeks, you'll hear Marco Rubio and all the government officials and all the Warhawks say, "Oh yeah, 60%, 60%. What do you think they need with that 60%." Implying that, oh yeah, see, they're racing toward a bomb. But you see how they always just imply that. They They won't come right out and say that cuz it's a ridiculous lie. They've been they could have enriched up to 90 plus% uranium 235 this whole time. The reason they were enriching up to 60% was in reaction to Israeli sabotage. First of all, assassinating their nuclear scientists and then their sabotage at Natans. They started enriching up to 60% just like they did in the Obama years to have a bargaining chip to negotiate away. Under the JCPOA, they shipped out every bit of their enriched uranium to France to be turned into fuel rods and then shipped back into the country to be used in their reactors. And so, they're just trying to get us back in that deal. It is an illusion. It is. And I don't know exactly what's in this man's mind, but it's just not true that they're making nuclear weapons. And it has been a lie of Benjamin Netanyahu and his lood party regime and for that matter the Kadima regime of Ahudmer before him that this is a threat that has to be preempted when in fact it never was anything more than a latent nuclear deterrent. Maybe a good question to ask here is what is the goal for the United States in Iran in relation to the nuclear uh Iran's nuclear program? What is the red line here? Does Iran have this uh need for a latent nuclear deterrent and what what is the thing that's acceptable to the United States and to the rest of the world? What should be acceptable? Yeah, L. So, there was a lot to unpack there. So let's sort of just back up a little bit. Let's talk about first of all the regime itself. Islamic Republic of Iran came into power in 1979. Um it has been declared a leading state sponsor of terrorism by multiple administrations dating back to the Clinton administration um by Obama, by Biden, by Trump and it is a regime that has killed and maimed thousands of Americans, not not to mention obviously uh hundreds of thousands of Middle Easterners. Um it is a regime that has lied about its nuclear program. It never actually disclosed its nuclear sites. All these sites were discovered by um Iranian opposition groups, by western intelligence agencies. And the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the UN agency responsible for preventing proliferation, has come out again and again over many, many years in reports, very detailed reports describing Iran's nuclear weapons program. Um, there have been multiple attempts at diplomacy with with Iran. I'm sure we're going to talk about it. Scott mentioned the JCPOA, so we should certainly talk about the JCPOA, which was the 2015 deal that Barack Obama reached with Iran. Um, but multiple attempts to to actually get the Iranians to negotiate away their nuclear weapons program. I mean, it's worth mentioning that if Iran wanted to have civilian nuclear energy, there are 23 countries in the world that have it, but they don't have enrichment and they don't have reprocessing. uh we we sign these deals called the gold standard with the South Koreans, with the Amiradis, with others and we say if you want civilian energy, you can have power plants, you can buy your fuel rods from abroad, but there's no reason to have enrichment or plutonium reprocessing because those are the key capabilities you need to develop nuclear weapons. Now the five countries that have those capabilities and don't have nuclear weapons are Argentina, Brazil, Holland, Germany, and Japan. And I think it's the view of many administrations over many years, including many European leaders, that that the Islamic Republic of Iran is very different from those aforementioned countries, because that it is been dedicated to terrorism. It's been killing Americans and other Westerners and other Middle Easterners, and it is a dangerous regime. You don't want to have that dangerous regime retaining the key capabilities and needs to develop nuclear weapons. But I but I want to kind of get back more to the present mentioned this was around negotiations out of Oman. Scott saying that President Trump had said here's the offer. Take her to leave it. Zero enrichment full dismantlement. Well, in fact, that wasn't the offer that was presented to the Iranians at Oman. The offer was a one-page offer and it said you can temporarily enrich above ground. You've got to render your below ground facilities quote nonoperational and then at some time in the future three four years as Scott said there'll be a consortium that'll be built not on Iranian territory. It'll be a partnership with the Saudis and the Amiradis. It'll be under IAEA supervision and that enrichment facility will create fuel rods for your nuclear reactors. So that was the offer presented to Iran and that offer would come with significant sanctions relief. Billions of dollars that would go to the regime. Obviously the economy there has been suffering. The regime is has not had the resources that it's had in the past to fund its its what I call its axis of misery, its proxy terror armies around the world. And it was a good offer. And I was shocked that Kame rejected it. Um he did reject it. And I think he rejected it because I think he believed that he could continue to do to President Trump what he had done to President Obama, which is just continue to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze the Americans at the table in order to ensure that he could keep all these nuclear facilities, all these nuclear capabilities so that at a time of his choosing when President Trump is gone, he can develop nuclear weapons. Now, it it is a bit interesting to say that Iran has no intention to develop nuclear weapons. and let let's examine the nuclear program and and ask, does this sound like a regime that's not interested in building nuclear weapons? So, they they built deeply buried underground enrichment facilities that they hid from the international community and they didn't disclose. They had an active nuclear warhead program called Ahmad, which ended in 2003 formally when the United States invaded Iraq. And we know that because not only has that been detailed by the IAEA, but actually Mossad in a daring operation in Thran took out a nuclear archive and brought it back to the West. And then the IAEA, the United States and the intelligence communities went after this detailed archive went into it and discovered that this supreme leader Ayatoll had an active program to build five atomic warheads and was a very detailed program with blueprints and designs all of which was designed under Ahmad to build a nuclear weapons program. So again, it's it's interesting to say that he doesn't have the intention to build nuclear weapons when he actually had an active nuclear weapons program. U and we can talk about what happened to that program after 2003 and there's a lot of interesting details. So when you when you combine the fact that he has an active nuclear weapons program, he has sites that are buried deep underground. He has weapon scientists who whose who come out of the Ahmad program and continued to work on the initial uh metallergy work and computer modeling designed to actually begin that process of building a warhead. And all of this has been hidden from the international community. He has spent estimates of a half a trillion dollars on his nuclear program uh in direct costs and in sanctions costs. And one has to ask and I think it's an interesting question to compare the UAE and Iran, right? The UAE signed the gold standard. They said we'll have no enrichment capability or reprocessing. They spent about $20 billion on that and it supplies 25% of their electrical generation. Kame spent a half a trillion and that program supplies maybe 3% of their electrical needs. In fact, they have a reactor that they b they bought from the Russians called Bucher. And there that reactor, it's exactly what you'd want in a proliferation proof reactor. They buy fuel rods from the Russians. They use it and they send the spent fuel back to Russia so it cannot be reprocessed into plutonium. So, I just think it's important for your listeners to understand just some of the technical nuclear history here in order to unpack this question of did Kam want nuclear weapons? What was his goal here? And then we can talk about was this the right operation in order to for the United States to order the B2 bombers to strike these facilities in what again was a limited operation as President Trump has said and in order to drive the Iranians back to the negotiating table and finally do the deal that President Trump has asked them to do since he came into office in January. Yeah, that is one of the fascinating questions whether this operation midnight hammer increased or decreased the chance that uh the Iran will develop a nuclear uh weapon. Before you ask any more questions, I have to refute virtually everything he just said, which is completely false. I mean, really everything. There was there was not one thing I said that was true. Just one thing. I mean, Iran is a nation over right. All right. 22 years of working on Iran and I got that right. But do you know the population of Iran? 92 million. Okay. So, first of all, they were trying to buy a lightwater reactor from the Europeans or the Chinese in the 1990s, and Bill Clinton wouldn't let them. And put tremendous pressure on China to prevent them from selling them a lightwater reactor, a turnkey reactor that produces waste that's so polluted with impurities that you can't make nuclear weapons fuel out of it. By the way, they never have to this day had a reprocessing facility for reprocessing plutonium, even their current plutonium waste for their he from their heavy water reactor at Bucher to make weapons fuel out of that. They have no plutonium route to the bomb under the JCPOA. Iraq, not Bucher. There's a difference between Iraq. Iraq is a Iraq is where they pour concrete into the reactor and shut it down. And the reason they poured concrete under the JCPOA, not they, but the Obama administration, he's right, under the JCPOA poured concrete into Kindria in order to prevent them from using that reactor to reprocess plutonium. So there's a distinction between Iraq and Bucher. Scott's exactly right. Busher is a reactor, a heavy water reactor provided by the Russians, as I described, for the generation of electricity. It's proliferation proof. Iraq has is the opposite. It's a heavy water reactor that was built for a plutonium pathway to nuclear weapons, which is exactly why under the JCPOA, they literally had to pour concrete into the into the middle of it to prevent it from reprocessing plutonia. I think we're going to need uh a scientist to come in here and split the difference. Or maybe we need to uh go and look up some IAEA documents cuz I don't believe that Iraq ever had a reprocessing facility for their plutonium waste. And the deal under the JCPOA, the Russians would come and get all their plutonium waste, which the waste comes out all polluted and not useful. You need the reprocessing facility to get all of the impurities to clarify. It could be that I'm wrong about that, but I don't believe that they ever had a reprocessing facility at Iraq that they could use to remove all those impurities and then have weapons plutonium fuel as the North Koreans do. So the Obama administration was very clear under the JCPOA, we are going to pour concrete into the into the Iraq facility as as Scott acknowledged because we are concerned that Iraq can be used for reprocessing plutonium for plutonium pathway to a nuclear weapon can be used but we don't know if it was used. Oh, we know it never was. There never was any reprocessing of weapons fuel there. But there was concrete. I'm I'm happy to there's no indication for your viewers who are interested and not to plug my own podcast so I apologize but it is a very good podcast. I just recently had David Albbright on my podcast who is actually a physicist and a weapons inspector and goes into a lot of detail about the Iranian nuclear program. Please listen to the podcast. Iran breakdown by the way is the name of the podcast. Yeah. And David's the president of the Institute for Science and International Security, by the way, spent decades on this. And to his credit, he was one of the deep skeptics of the Bush administration's rush to war with Iraq. And that's not true. He vouched for claims that there were chemical weapons in Iraq and later said he was sorry for it. Again, I mentioned the Bush administration's rush to war based on their claims that Saddam was building nuclear weapons. He did debunk the aluminum tubes, though. He he he debunked it and he was a deep skeptic again of the of the Russia war in Iraq. You know the argument today, Lex, which I think is the more interesting argument because there are very few people left today who don't believe that the Iranians were building the nuclear weapons capability that gave them the option to build nuclear weapons. I already said that we we can debate we can debate whether they had decided to and and we I'm interested to hear Scott's opinion on this, but the recent intelligence that has come out that the Iranian nuclear weapons scientists have begun preliminary work on building a warhead came out from where this intelligence that came out who put that int Israeli claims not verified by the US and the Wall Street Journal anywhere right let's talk about let's talk about all of my list of reputations of all your false claims can the Wall Street Journal did verify this Lawrence Norman to refute one time. Lawrence Norman actually wrote a piece. This was during the Biden administration. Um because the Biden uh DNI had actually come out and for the first time in their annual threat assessment had removed a line that said Iran is not working currently working on developing any capabilities that would put it in a position to to actually deliver um a nuclear warhead. And what be what became the Lawrence Norman piece in the Wall Street Journal was that there actually was initial work done on metallurgy and on computer modeling. And so those actually were defined terms in section T of the 2015 JCPOA which defined weaponization in that section. And metallergy and computer modeling were some of the initial steps. So that the DNI was very concerned under Biden that these initial steps meant that either Kame had given the green lights or nuclear weapons scientists in order to get ahead of the boss so they could be in a position if he decided to move forward on this were in a position and their timelines were therefore expedited. So it's interesting. I mean, again, you've got the DNI under Biden, you've got the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, you've got Israeli intelligence, you've got the Wall Street Journal, and you've got the IAEA asking questions of Iran on its past weaponization activities. Why are you denying us? Who's the dog that didn't bark there? the current director of national intelligence who issued her threat assessment, Trump's director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who issued her threat assessment in February, that repeated the exact same language that from the national intelligence estimate of 2007 and that the CIA and the NIE, the National Intelligence Council have reaffirmed repeatedly ever since then, which is that Supreme Leader has not decided to pursue nuclear weapons. He has not made the political decision to pursue nuclear weapons. She testified uh in fact in in under oath in front of the Senate in March. And then according to CNN and the New York Times, there was a brand new that uh uh assessment that was uh put together the week before the attack uh was launched reaffirming the same thing. And at least in history, if you read it in Harets, MSAD agreed with the CIA. I'd like to just sort of quote CIA director John Radcliffe because Scott brought brought up the CIA and the intelligence community. I think Radcliffe had a good way of looking at this is and that he said is, you know, when you're in the 99 yard line as a football team, you have the intention to score a goal, quote unquote. And what what he was what he was actually pointing to is let's not talk about this debate about whether Kame had given the order or not given the order because Kame knows that if he gives an order, the US and Israeli intelligence community will pick up on that order and that will be the trigger for strikes. What what Rackcliffe is saying is that Kame had built the nuclear weapons capability, he's at the 99 yard line and both the CIA and European leaders, European intelligence community has said for years that if Iran has that capability and they're on the 99 yard line, at that point it's going to be too late to stop them once that decision is made to to assemble the final warhead, which by the way is the final piece of what you need for a deliverable nuclear weapon. That's not true at all. Right. They have to resort to a crude analogy about football yard lines because they can't say the truth, which is that they had zero weapons grade uranium. They were not producing it. They were trying to get the United States back in the deal that they are still officially within the JCPOA with the rest of the UN Security Council wherein they shipped all of their enriched uranium stockpile out of the country to France to be transferred to fuel rods. their insistence was on their continued ability to enrich uranium. And so this goes to one of the things that uh he at least sort of brought up that deserves addressing. When Trump came into power in 2017, he decided on this Israeli influence maximum pressure campaign and he said the JCPOA was the worst deal in the history of any time any two men ever shook hands and all these kinds of things in his hyperbolic way, which of course made it very difficult for him to figure out a way to stay in the thing or to to compromise along its lines. Uh but the fact of the matter is if he had just played it straight and said, "Listen, Ayatollah, we don't have to be friends, but we do have a deal here, which my predecessor struck with you, but I don't like these sunset provisions, and I want to send my guys over there and see if we can figure out a way to convince you that we really wish you'd shut down commto together or this or that or the other thing." And tried to approach them in good faith. We talk about yard lines and things. We had a JCPOA. Okay. So toward peace, we were past the 50yard line. Donald Trump could have gone to Tyrron and shook hands with the Ayatollah. As Dick Cheney complained that we had cold relations with Iran back in 1998 when he was the head of Allebertton and said, "We can do business with these guys." Um, Donald Trump could have gone right over there and done business and instead he gave into Netanyahu's lies in this ridiculous hoax that they had uncovered all these Iranian nuclear documents, which he pretends is legit, where all they did was recycle the fake Israeli forged smoking laptop of 2005, which they lied and pretended was the laptop of an Iranian scientist that was smuggled out of Iran by his wife and had all this proof of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program on it. But every bit of that was refuted, including the thing about the warhead, he said, was refuted by David Albbright and his friend David Sanger in the New York Times that all those sketches of the uh warhead for the missile were wrong because when MSAD forged the documents, they were making a good educated guess, but they didn't know that Iran had completely redesigned the nose cone of their mid-range missiles and had an entirely different nose cone that would require an entirely different warhead than that described in the documents. and why would they have been designing a warhead to fit in a nose cone that they were abandoning? And so that was refuted. David Albbright completely discredited your claims there, pal. And then uh they later admitted that it was a CIA laptop. There was no laptop. And they later admitted Ali Hinonin admitted uh who was a very hawkish uh uh one of the not director but a high level executive at the international atomic energy agency admitted that that intelligence was brought into the stream by the mujaheden eculk communist terrorist cult that used to work for the Ayatollah during the revolution then turned on him and he turned on them and kicked them out. Then they went to work for Saddam Hussein where they helped crush the Shiite and Kurdish insurrection of 1991 and then they became America. Donald Rumsfeld's and Ariel Chiron's sock puppets and later Ahoud Almer sock puppets when the United States uh invaded Iraq and took possession of them. They're now under American protection in Albania. And these are the same cooks who just a few weeks ago, you might remember said, "Look, new satellite pictures of a whole new uh nuclear facility in Iran." Isn't it funny how no one ever brought that up again? Didn't bomb it. It was nothing. It was fake. Just like before when they said, "Hey, look, here's a picture of a vault door." And behind that is where the secret nuclear weapons program is. Except turned out that vault door was a stock photo from a vault company. It meant nothing. And they had repeatedly uh you know made claims that were totally refuted. Just like I'm about to refute his claim that they ever were the ones who revealed for example Natants. He was implying that Natans and K were both buried and hidden until revealed I think you said by dissident groups. That is the mek sock puppets of the Israelis. But it was your friend David Albbright, not the Israeli MSAD through the MEK who revealed Natant's facility. Ask him, he'll fist fight you over it. He claims credit. He was first and said, "This is a facility." However, they were not in violation of their safeguards agreement with the IAEA. They were still 6 months away from introducing any nuclear material to that facility. And so when it was revealed, they weren't in violation of anything. And uh and then on comm we had a huge fight about this at the time. The party line came down in from all the government officials and the media that they had just exposed the facility there. Comm is foro same thing. Uh when in fact that wasn't true. The IA the the Iranians had announced to the IAEA that we have built a new facility here and we are going to introduce nuclear material into it within six months. So here's your official notification. and then a few days later they just pretended to expose it when it was the Iranians themselves who had admitted to it in in uh going along with their uh uh obligations under their safeguards agreement. So it's just completely wrong. Why do they bury him? They buried them for protection because clearly the Israelis have indicated since the 1990s that they consider any nuclear program in Iran to be the same thing as an advanced nuclear weapons program. You're hearing that today. for them to have a nuclear facility at all is is equivalent to them going ahead and breaking out and making a nuclear weapon. And so, of course, they know that they have to have it buried to protect it from Israel. That doesn't mean that they are trying to get nukes. It does mean, as I already said, that they wanted to prove to the world that they know how to enrich uranium and that they have facilities buried deeply enough where if we attack them, that would incentivize them to making nukes and then we would might be unable to stop them without going all the way toward a regime change, which they're bluffing, basically betting that we won't go that far considering how gigantic their country is and how mountainous and populous it is compared to Iraq next door. Now, here's some more things that he said that weren't true. So, he said, "Iran has been killing Americans all this time." Well, that's almost always a reference to Beirut 1983, which you can read in the book by Way of Deception by Victor Ostroski, the former MSAD officer, that the Israelis knew that they were building that truck bomb to bomb the Marines with and withheld that information from the United States and said that's what they get for sticking their big noses in. And uh that is in the book by way of deception by Victor Ostroski. And by the way, the Israelis were friends with them at with Iran at the time in uh all through the 1980s. And it was just a couple of years later when Ronald Reagan sold Iran missiles and using the Israelis as cutouts to do so when he switched sides temporarily in the Iran Iraq war. And so that's just and that was in 1983. If Ronald re if Ronald Reagan can sell a missiles a year or two years after that, three years after that, then surely the United States and the Ayatollah can bury the hatchet from that. And no one's ever even, I don't believe, ever really proven that Tyrron ordered that. It was a Shiite militia backed by Iran that sort of proto Hezbala that did that attack that killed those Marines. Um, and if there's some responsibility for then damn them, like if there's direct responsibility for that, not just their support for the group, then damn them for that. But that's still no reason in the world to say that we can't get along with them now when that was in the same year Return of the Jedi came out. Okay. And then uh the other one, and this is always referred to, you'll see this on TV news today. Anyone watching this, turn on TV news and you'll hear them say Iran killed 600 Americans in Iraq War II. But that's a lie. There was a gigantic propaganda campaign by Dick Cheney and his co-conspirators David Petraeus and Michael Gordon of the New York Times, now at the Wall Street Journal, where they lied and lied like the devil for about five six months in early 2007, that every time a Shiite set off a roadside bomb, these new improved copper cord enhanced uh uh they're called EFPs, explosively formed penetrators. Now, anytime that happened, Iran did it, which is what George Bush called shorthanding it. Yeah. In other words, just implying the lie. What they're saying is Iran backed Mktata also also who actually they were fighting the whole war for him. He remains a powerful kingmaker in that country this day. He was part of the United Iraqi alliance. And in fact, as long as we're taking a long form here, he was the least Iran tide of the three major factions in the United Iraqi alliance in Iraq War II. The other two major factions were Dawa and the Supreme Islamic Council and they had been living in Iran for the last 20 years. They're the ones who came and took over Baghdad. Muttad als Shiite and close to Iran, but he's also an Iraqi nationalist and at times he allied with the Sunnis and tried to in tried to limit American and Iranian influence in the country was more of an Arab and an Iraqi nationalist. And the Americans decided they hated him the most, not because he was the most Iran tied, but because he was willing to tell us and them to to get the hell out. And America was betting that if we backed the same parties that Iran backed in Iraq War, that they would eventually end up needing our money and guns more than they would need their Iranian friends and co-religionists and sponsors next door, which of course did not work out. And America's had minimal influence in supermajority Shiite Iraq ever since the end of Iraq War II. And we can get back later in the show to how Israel helped lie us into that horrific war as well. But the fact of the matter is it was not Iranians setting off those bombs. And it was not even Iranians making those bombs. And I show in my book enough already. I have a solid dozen sources. Enough already. Thank you. I have a solid dozen sources including uh Michael Gordon's own colleague Alyssa Rubin at the New York Times and many others where they found these bomb factories in Shiite Iraq. They were being made by Shiite Arab Iraqis. And when they David Petraeus was going to have a big press conference and they laid out all the components, all the reporters gathered around and they started noticing that the components said made in UAE, made in Haditha, that is Iraq. In other words, there was no evidence whatsoever that these came from Iran. And then they called off the press conference and Steven Hadley, George Bush's second secret uh national security adviser, admitted that yeah, we didn't have the evidence that we needed to uh present that. And I also quote two one Marine and one highle army intelligence officer in there uh who were deeply involved in Iraq war uh reconfirming that that there was never any evidence that these bombs were coming across uh from Iran or especially that then even if they were that that was at the direction of the goods force or the Ayatollah. This was all just a propaganda campaign because Dick Cheney and David Petraeus were trying to give George Bush a reason to hit IRGC bases and start the war in 2007. And this sounds crazy, but there's like four major confirming sources for it. Dick Cheny's national security adviser, David Wormser, who was the author of the clean break strategy, which we're going to talk about today. David Wormser in 2007 was saying, "We want to work with the Israelis to start the war with Iran to force George Bush to do an end run around George Bush and force him into the war." And that was reported originally by Steven Clemens in the Washington note, but it was later confirmed in the New York Times and by the Washington Post reporter Barton Gelman in his book Angler on Dick Cheney that there was this huge this was the end that they were going for was they were trying so hard to force a war in 2007. And it was the commander of Sentcom, Admiral Fallon, who said over my dead body, we are not doing this. And then a few months later, the National Intelligence Council put out their NIE saying that there is no nuclear weapons program at all. And W. Bush complained in his memoir lect that in in his story, it's the Saudi king, his royal highness Abdullah rather than um Ahoud Dolmer, but he's saying, "I'm sorry, your highness majesty. I can't attack Iran's nuclear program cuz my own intelligence agency says they don't have a military program. So, how am I supposed to start a war with him when my own intelligence agencies say that? This is what Donald Trump just did. Start it anyway. Had his man Rubio say, "Well, screw the intelligence. I don't care what it says. We can just do this if we want to." So, first, let me say on the cover of Enough Already, devastating. Daniel Ellburg, outstanding. Daniel L. Davis, essential Ron Paul, you are respected by a very large number of people. You have decades of experience in this. Same thing with Mark, extremely respected by a very large number of people, experts. There's a lot of disagreements here. and we're going to unfortunately leave a lot of the disagreements on the table for the uh aforementioned nuclear scientists to to deconstruct later. So let's not like try to every single claim does not have to be perfectly refuted. Let's just leave it on the table the statements as they stand and let's try to also find things we kind of agree on and try I know this might be difficult but to steel man the other side that's the thing I would love to ask you uh maybe give Mark a chance to speak a little bit but to to try to for both of you to try to steal man the other side so people who are concerned about uh Iran developing a nuclear program can you steal man that case and the same the people I did in my opening statement quite frankly I I'm I don't carry any brief for the Ayatollah. I'm a Texan. I don't give a damn about what some Shiite theocrat says about nothing. Right? My interest is the people of this country and its future and what's true. And so I don't mind telling you, even though the Iranians never said, "We're building a latent nuclear weapons capability." That's clearly what they're doing is showing that they can make a nuke, so don't make me make a nuke. That has been their position. Their position has not been, "I'm making a nuke so I can wipe Israel off the map." Their position has been, "Look, if you guys don't attack us, we could just keep this civilian program the way it is." And again, there's always the implication that they're just building up this uranium stockpile, but no, they're not. That was in reaction to one, Donald Trump leaving the deal in 2018. Two, the assassination in December of 2020 of the Iranian uh nuclear scientist Far Cazada or however you say that, and then in April of 21, the sabotage at Natans. And there's a Reuters story that says right after they sabotaged Natans, that's when the Ayatollah decided let's enrich up to 60%. Which why stop 30% short of 90% 235? It's because they're not even making a threat. They're built they're making like the most laten up threat a bargaining chip to negotiate away. They're trying to put pressure on the United States to come back to the table. That's not the same as racing to the bomb. That's why Marco Rubio says never mind the intelligence cuz the intelligence says what I just said. Yeah. Point made. Let's try let's try if possible to keep it to like a minute and two of back and forth. except you know the problem is we're talking about nuclear stuff which is all very complicated and most people don't know much about it which is what the war party is relying on that people just hear nuclear afraid and mushroom cloud and and give the benefit of the doubt to the hawks and so we got to get into the details of this stuff details 100% but I like the tension between two people with different perspectives exploring those details and the more we can go back and forth the better and there's a lot of disagreement on the table I personally enjoy learning from the disagreement I think that was a very long list of claims that he made though where I felt like I had to go down the list as much as I could cuz there was a lot. I think you addressed like maybe one or two claims and it took 15 minutes. So that's what I'm just commenting on. Let's do one at a time. I like the tension of the debate of back and forth. That's that's all. Mark, do you want to do you want to comment on stuff a little bit here? Which pick pick whichever topic you want to go with here. Yeah, there's a lot there. So um just a couple things I think that are worth your viewers knowing because Scott's right. I mean the nuclear physics is complicated and it's also important. Um so the Iranians have assembled about they say about 15 to 17 bombs worth of 60% enriched uranium. And I think it's always understand what does this all mean enriched to 3.67% to 20% to 60% and then to 90% weapons grade uranium like what what does this actual process mean? Um first of all obviously enriched uranium is a key capability to develop a nuclear weapon. It can also be used for other purposes, civilian purposes and research purposes. You can use it to power a nuclear submarine. So let let's just if you don't mind if I could just break it down. That's fascinating. Yes. Yeah. Just just I think it's again important just to understand the the sort of basics before we jump into the the allegations and claims and counter claims. So if you're going to enrich to 3.67% enrich uranium um that's for civilian nuclear power, right? But when you do that, you've basically 70% of what you need to get to weapons grade. Right? So you you've done all the steps, 70% of the steps in order to get to weapons grade uranium. If you enrich to 20%, you are now at 90% of what you need to get to weapons grade uranium. Now why would you need 20%, you may need it for something like a research reactor, right? And so medical isotopes. Iran has correct. Iran has uh a tan research reactor for medical isotopes. Now you can by the way you can buy those isotopes from abroad or you can or you can produce them at home. If you're going to enrich to 60% right then you've done 99% of what you need to get to weapons grade uranium and then n% is quote weapons grade uranium. By the way you can use 60% to actually deliver a crude nuclear device. Um that that has been done in the past but you want to get to quote 90% that's that's weapons grade uranium as Scott's defining it. But just again clarify the these huge stock piles of 60% that Iran has accumulated right this 1617 bombs worth of 60% is 99% of what they need for weapons grade. So I I just wanted to explain that. Yeah. But when you say you're saying if you include the mining, the refining of the ore into yellow cake, the transformation of that into uranium hexaflloride gas, the driving of it in a truck over to the uh centrifuge and then spinning it. This is where we get this 90% number from, right? In in place of 90% enriched uranium or or 80% enriched uranium, it's 90% of the way on some chart that includes picking up a shovel and beginning to mine, right? Like so again, just to clarify, I I just think it's important to understand the definition of terms um to get what once you have 60% enrich uranium, you've done 99% of all the steps, including some of the steps that Scott's talking about. You've done 99% of what you need to have weapons grade uranium. That's just meaningless. Why is that meaningless? Well, as I've already established numerous times here under the JCPOA, they shipped out every bit of their enriched uranium stockpile. The French turned it into fuel rods and then shipped it back. That's the deal they're trying to get the US back into and were obviously clearly willing to do. And again, the only reason they were enriching up to 60% was to put the pressure on the Americans to go ahead and get back into the deal. And bad bet. It gave him an excuse to bomb based on the idea that people are going to listen to him. Pretend that somehow that's 99% of the way to the bomb when you're including Yeah. driving to the mine and mining it and converting it to yellow cake and all these other things. I you have a deliverable nuclear weapon. So you need the weapons grade uranium. And just to repeat, they have multiple bombs worth of the 60% enriched uranium, which again is 99% of the steps you need to take for weapons grade. So they're they're very close to to weapons grade. It's that's 1% more that they need to do to enrich to weapons grade. The second aspect of a deliverable nuclear weapon is obviously the delivery vehicle and those are the missiles. And according to the DNI and and other credible sources, Iran has got the largest missile infantry in the Middle East. um 3,000 missiles before the war began and uh at least the ballistic missiles 2,000 capable of reaching Israel. So there's no doubt that Iran has the ability once they have the weapons grade uranium and the warhead to fix that to a missile and deliver that uh certainly to hit Israel, hit our Gulf neighbors, hit southern Europe. They also have a active intercontinental ballistic missile program, an ICBM program which ultimately is designed not to hit the Israelis or the Gulfies, but to hit deeper into Europe and ultimately to target the United States. So, so let's just understand the missile program. I think it's an important part of it. The third leg of the stool and and Scott has already alluded to this and we've had some debate on this and I think we should talk about it what it really means in detail is you've got to develop a warhead right or a crude nuclear device. And according to estimates from both US government sources and uh nuclear experts, it would take about four to 6 months for Iran to develop a crude nuclear device. Right? This is something that you wouldn't use a missile to deliver, but you would use a plane or a ship. uh and it would take somewhere in the neighborhood of about a year and a half to deliver or to develop a warhead. And that's to affix to the missile. So sort of the three legs of the nuclear stool, right? The weapons grade uranium, the missiles to deliver it, and the uh and the warhead. So I just want to sort of define terms so that when we're having this big debate, your listeners kind of understand what we're talking about. If I can jump in here on this point too and I'll turn it back over to you, but I actually have a bit of a correction to make for anyone who's seen me on Pierce Morgan or Sager and Crystal. I actually oversimplified and made a mistake. I've been off of the Iran nuclear beat for a little while doing other things and um and so I'd like to take this opportunity to clarify and I'm going to try to clarify with them on their shows too was um I have an old friend of mine used to make nuclear bombs, Gordon Prather, and I only just found out that he died two years ago. uh unfortunately he used to write for us at anti-war.com and a brilliant uh nuclear physicist and hbomb developer uh and he had really taught me all about this stuff and um so I'm not correcting anything you said what what he said essentially is right I maybe add a little more detail the easiest kind of nuke to make out of uranium is a simple gun type nuke like they dropped on Hiroshima was a little boy it's essentially a shotgun firing a uranium slug into a uranium target and that's enough they didn't even test it. They knew it would work. Uh it was so easy to do to do the Hiroshima bomb. The Nagasaki bomb was a plutonium implosion bomb. It's virtually always plutonium that's used in implosion bombs. Um and and in miniaturized nuclear warheads that can be married to missiles, right? As opposed to a bomb you can drop out of the belly of a plane. That's what he was saying, right? So gun type nuke, you can't put that on a missile. That is by far the easiest kind of nuclear weapon for Iran to make if they broke out and made one, right? But it' essentially be useless to them, right? What are they gonna do? Drive it to Israel in a flatbed truck, right? They they got no way to to deliver that. They could drop it as a Yeah, they could test it in the desert and beat their chest, but essentially that's all they could do. Or you could drop it from a plane like we did as as Scott said in with Hiroshima Nagasaki. Yeah. Well, very slim chance of Iranian heavy bombers getting through Israeli airspace. But anyway, um, but to make an implosion bomb, they would have to do years worth of experiments unless the Chinese or the Russians just gave them the software or gave them the finished blueprints or something, which there's no indication of that whatsoever. The only people who gave them blueprints for a nuclear bomb was the CIA. Remember Operation Merlin where they just changed one little thing and gave them nuclear bomb blueprints, but the Iranians didn't take the bait. The blueprints were given just just to clarify, it's just interesting just in the terms of the history of proliferation. Um so Iran's initial nuclear program right which is built on centrifuges as Scott and I have been talking about um that was actually given to the designs of that were given to them by Akan who was really the father of the Pakistani nuclear program. Um and he actually stole those designs from the Dutch and handed it to the Iranians. He also handed it to the North Koreans and the Libyans and others. So they were able to illicitly acquire this technology or at least the blueprints for this technology from the father of the Pakistani bomb. So I think that's an interesting point. But if you but it was as I said earlier because Bill Clinton clamped down on the Chinese and wouldn't let them sell or anyone else wouldn't let them sell them lightwater reactors. So then they went to AQCon and bought the stuff on the black market. Yeah. And and they obviously bought heavy water reactors from the Russians which they've been using for electricity. Um I want to just get to the the second thing. I think it's just important for listeners to know and then I want to get to JCPOA. I was in the middle of saying though when you're trying to make a uranium implosion bomb or a plutonium implosion bomb. It's a much more difficult task than putting together a gun type nuke takes an extraordinary amount of testing. And that's why he repeated probably unknowingly some false propaganda about Iran having this advanced testing facility. I think he was implying, correct me if I'm wrong, he was I'm pretty sure you're implying at Parchin that they were testing these implosion systems, but that's completely debunked. It's completely false. What they were testing, what they were doing at Partin with that implosion chamber uh um was making nano diamonds and the scientist in charge of it was a Ukrainian who had studied in the Soviet Union at this uh military university where they said, "Oh, see they study nuclear stuff there." But that wasn't his specialtity. His name was Dan Leno and he was a specialist in making nano diamonds. And that facility was vouched by Robert Kelly in the Christian Science Monitor. told um Scott Peterson of the Christian Science Monitor that that stuff was nonsense that that that facility that implosion chamber could not be used for in testing uh for testing an implosion system for nuclear weapons. And I know from Dr. Pray they're telling me that when the Americans were doing this and the Russians too that they test all their implosion systems outside and you have to do it over and over and over again with lead instead of uranium in the core and then you take all this high-speed X-ray film of the thing and it's this huge and drawn out and incredibly complicated engineering process. And this is probably why the week before the war, the CIA said, "Not only do we think that they're a year away from having enough nuclear material to make one bomb, we think they're three years away from having a finished warhead." That must have been assuming that they would try to make an implosion system that you could put on uh in other words miniaturize and put on a missile as opposed in in other words skipping a gun type nuke that would be useless to them. So it's very important to understand then that if if they have a uranium route to the bomb, if they withdraw from the treaty and kick out the IAEA inspectors and and announce that now we're making nuclear bombs, they can either one race to a gun type nuke that's essentially useless to them or they can take their ponderous as time trying to figure out how to make an implosion system work. First of all, I'm glad Scott knows about what's going on at Partridge because the IAEA doesn't and they've been asking the Iranians That's not true. The Iranians told the IAEA, "You can inspect any five out of 10 facilities here, cart blanch, go ahead." And they did and found nothing. Then they made up the lies about the implosion chamber later. And the IAEA, again, Robert Kelly is the American IAEA guy, debunked that in the Christian Science Monitor. All right. So, uh, I I want to just again just put it out there for your listeners. They they should just Google Ahmad A program and they should learn about the Ahmad program because it's it's detailed in US government documents, experts in in Iran's nuclear program, including David program called the MOD to build five nuclear weapons. But I want to get to the JCPOA because I actually think that's an interesting discussion for Scott and I to have um because I think there are things that we agree on there and things that we disagree on. Right. So this is the 2015 nuclear deal that Obama reaches. Um it's negotiated painstakingly over two years between 2013 and 2015. And it follows the interimm agreement that United States negotiated with Iran. And it's it's it's in that interimm agreement in 2013 where the United States for the first time actually gives Iran the the right to enrich uranium. There were five UN Security Council resolutions passed with the support of Russia and China that said Iran should have no enrichment capability and no plutonium reprocessing capability because of the fears that Iran would turn that into a nuclear weapons program. But in 2013 they give up they give that up. 2015 we reached the JCPOA and under the JCPOA Iran is allowed to retain enrichment capability and reprocessing capability but over time so Scott mentioned these sunsets and just want your listeners to understand what these sunsets are essentially the restrictions that are placed on Iran's nuclear program right and there's some really serious restrictions placed on it especially in the short term and Scott's right the enriched material has to be shipped out not to the French but to the Russians um and there's restrictions on Iran's ability to operate these facilities at ATANS and Foraux. They're not closed. They're still remain open, but they're restrictions on what they can do with it. There's also restrictions on Iran's ability to test and install advanced centrifuges. Now, the reason you'd want an advanced centrifuge rather than the first generation centrifuge that Akan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, gave to the Iranians is you need a smaller number of these centrifuges to produce weapons grade uranium. If it's smaller less, it's easier to hide, right? You can put it in clandestine facilities without this large enrichment centrifuge footprint. So there's restrictions on these advanced centrifuge R&D. And Iran gets significant sanctions relief as part of this. But the whole assumption here from both an Iranian and American perspective is these restrictions are going to sunset. They're going to disappear over time. In fact, 2025 is the year where some of the significant restrictions on Iran's capabilities begin to sunset and all of them are effectively gone by 2031. Okay? So, in 2031, Iran can emerge with an industrial size enrichment capability. They can they can emerge with advanced centrifuges that they can install in as many enrichment facilities as they want to build. And Iran can enrich to higher and higher levels. So, they can go from 3.67 six, seven to 20%, they can go to 60%. Um, there's nothing in the JCPOA that actually prohibits them from going to 90% in Richmondia. And I think at the time, the Obama administration's theory of the case was, yeah, sure, in 15 years time, but in 15 years time, we'll be gone. Hopefully, there'll be a different government in Iran and maybe we can renegotiate a different agreement with that government that will extend the sunsets. So, that that's the JCPOA. The reason that critics of the JCPOA, and I was one of them, we objected to the deal, is not because it didn't have some short-term temporary restrictions that were useful, but that if you got it wrong and there was the same regime in power in 15 years, that regime could emerge with this huge nuclear program with the capabilities to develop nuclear weapons in these multiple hardened sites. Iran, we estimated, would have a trillion dollars in sanctions relief over that 15-year period. And if you got it wrong, that it was the same regime in power as it been in power in 2015, then you had some difficulties. Okay? I just wanted to lay out the case against the JCPO. Now, to steal man uh Scott's argument, right, I think there's a legitimate argument because I actually didn't support the withdrawal from the agreement. Uh President Trump withdrew in 2018. I did a similar version of what Scott was suggesting was I thought that the United States should negotiate with the Europeans, the French, the Germans, and the UK who were part of the original deal, extend the sunsets as an agreement between the United States and Europe, and then collectively go to the Iranians and say, "Let's renegotiate this agreement to extend the sunsets." If you if you don't want a nuclear weapons program, then you should agree that you would you don't need these capabilities and let's extend the sunsets for another 15 20 30 years. President, somebody give me a screenshot of this. Give me a pound, dude. There we go. Agreement. There we go. That makes my heart feel so And I think the hole would have gone for it too. Well, so I'm not sure if he would have, but but let's just a little bit of history. I think it's just useful for the viewers to know again the context, especially when Scott and I agree. Yeah. Um, so a process was begun, I'm loving this by the Trump administration. They, uh, Trump appointed, uh, Brian Hook, or Secretary Pompeo actually appointed Brian Hook, who's the lead Iran envoy, and he began a process of talking to the Europeans. Now, the Europeans actually rejected this idea. Um, and so at some point, Trump said, "Look, if the Europeans aren't prepared to get on side, then I'm out of the deal. I'm out of the deal." And if you're interested, I can talk about why I thought we should have stayed in the deal because I thought you gave us some important restrictions in the short term, certain leverage. But Trump decides to withdraw from that agreement because he recognizes that the fatal flaw of the agreement, the fatal flaws of the agreement are one, giving them any enrichment capability, especially at an industrial size within 15 years, right? and two are these sunsets as Scott said which under which these restrictions are going to go away and Iran's going to end up with a massive nuclear program. So I think that's just important. We can talk about the JCPOA the process and everything else if you're interested. I'd like to go ahead and quickly accuse the FBI and the CIA of framing Trump for treason with Russia and pushing the Russia gate hoax. I'm trying to agree with my friend here because what it is is that that completely ruined Donald Trump's ability to engage in real diplomacy with Russia for his entire first term. Certainly for the first three years of it, he was completely handcuffed. It was it was it was it was terrible as I'm sure you're well aware for the future now our past and current history of Ukraine as well as for this deal too. Why couldn't Trump pick up the phone? I don't know the details here, but I'll take his word for it. That the British and the French and the Germans weren't being nice to Trump. They didn't like him. They didn't want to do it. Why couldn't he pick up pick up the phone and say, "Hey, Putin, I need you to call the Ayatollah for me and tell him, "Hey, you'd like to see him lift these sunsets, too, and this and that." Why? Because they framed him for treason. So, he was completely unable to engage in real diplomacy with Russia. And I bet that he'd agree with me on that one, too. So, next, actually, could I just say one thing interesting? And again, I think it's going to be a later topic and so it it's going to be a provocative statement, but I think let's put it on the table. I absolutely agree with Scott. I mean, I think it was a travesty that the of the accusations against Donald Trump as a Russian agent. I mean, completely debunked, but it it did it I think it paralyzed his presidency for two two and a half years. I I agree with Scott. The idea that you would accuse the president of the United States of being a foreign agent for Vladimir Putin, I think is unfounded and I I I thought at the time disgraceful and I thought it was really important. I think Scott did really good work in in debunking that. I would say that just a couple days ago I was watching a podcast Scott was on and he accused uh Trump of being an agent for Netanyahu and the Israeli government. So I think again the accusations that the president of the United States is a foreign agent for some foreign government. I think we should just put all of that aside in any discussion and just say President Trump makes his own decisions whether we agree with him or agree with him. But he's not working for the FSB and he's not working for Mossad. President Trump makes his own decisions based on American national security. Now I was making a point. That's hyperbole making a point. But he did. In fact, could you Google this for me because I always forget exactly how many hundreds of millions of dollars that he took from Sheldon add who are Americans, by the way, who are Americans who Sheldon Allison said his only regret in life is that he served in the American army instead of the IDF and said America should nuke Iran in order to get them to give up their nuclear weapons. He said, "I have one issue, one Israel." And they gave Trump hundreds of millions of dollars over three campaigns. That's not just a gez. I really hope you'll think of me in the future. Scott, first of all, a couple things. So, one, there's a lot of people that are friends with Trump and try to gain influence. I believe that Trump as an American is making his own decisions. Let's for the purpose of this conversation just focus on that and see what are the right decisions and what are the wrong decisions. And uh maybe I wonder what decisions I could get you to make if I gave you hundreds of millions of dollars. Well, me personally, you couldn't give me It doesn't matter. I couldn't even get you I couldn't get you to drop in on a vert ramp or nothing for 100 million bucks. Nothing. You cannot control my decisions with money. It's the American system, Lex. That's how it works. It's money. They appreciate. Yeah, we can we can go down that. It's the same if we were talking about Archer Daniels Midland Company throwing hundreds of millions of dollars around. They get policies based on their hundreds of millions of dollars. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, right? All that. So, Lex, I think you're right. I mean, I think Elon Mus spent what, $400 million helping Trump get elected. Um, and obviously there a number of philanthropists. I think clearly his son Don Junior has had a lot of influence in who gets selected in these positions in the Pentagon, the NC. I think Tucker Coulson has had a lot of influence. So I think as you say, he surrounds himself with people who have certain ideas, ideologies, policies. The president makes his own decision. I just want to touch on just one thing because I I I don't want to leave this alone. Um just out of respect for for the victims of Iranbacked terrorism and hostage taking and assassinations since 1979. Um, you know, this is the regime that took our took hostages in 79, took our diplomats hostage. Um, Scott says, you know, 83 was really the only thing that happened and and throws out a lot of information. Certainly some some pretty breathtaking accusations that somehow the Israelis knew about this and didn't tell the Americans and and it's an Assad officer's accusation. Yeah, Victor Ostroski is his name. Yeah, I know exactly who he is and and he has been widely discredited um and having an axe to grind with with Mossad. But anyway, um not only 83 but all through the 90s, the 2000s, 2010s, 20120s, um there have been hundreds of attacks, of um assassinations, of hostage taking. Um there are thousands of Americans who have been killed and maimed by the regime. Can you be specific what you're talking Yeah, I mean I I can give you a whole list and Sure. literally I'm happy to pull it up. Lex, I shared it with you. It's a long list of attacks all through the 80s and 90s. Um I mean everything from the you know Kobar Towers Kobar towers was al Qaeda. That was Osama bin Laden and Khali Shake Muhammad. Let him lay it out. All right, let's hear him. Oh, I got my pen in my hand. Go ahead. Yeah. And again, according again, according to US intelligence findings, it was actually Hzbala that worked with al-Qaeda, trained al-Qaeda in that attack in the Cobra Towers. Um they were they were kidnapping our diplomats in Beirut. Um they were they launched attacks against our um our soldiers while in Iraq. The notion that somehow you debunked that. No, I don't I don't think Well, you you say you debunked it. You just made your claim. Um but those were Iranbacked militias. um backed by the by Kasum Solommani who Scott referred to who was the commander of the RGC goods force who supplied them with those IEDs or those EFPs actually those explosive well again this has been all confirmed by why don't you search Alyssa Rubin New York Times EFP factory or you can look in the Christian Science Monitor for Operation Eagleclaw where they found these things you can it's it's easy to find in my book you can flip right to soda straws and EFPs. And you see where I I have all my citations for the solid dozen American newspaper reporters who were embedded with American soldiers who found these factories in Iraqi Shiastan, okay? With Iraqi Arabs working the machines, not Iran. So I' I'd like your viewers to to Google not just a couple of sources, but actually Google the US government reports. They did a whole afteraction report on the Iraq war. all the mistakes were made in the Iraq war and there and there were legion of mistakes made. Um but it was very clear that Iran had actually provided the technology, the training, the funding for these Iranbacked militias to kill Americans. I mean I I could see Scott method from Lebanese Hezbala that got it from the IRA. They didn't even get the technique from the Iranians at all. Yeah. So Lebanese asbal as I'm sure all your listeners know has been trained financed true but they got supported by Iran for the copper core for many years and that design did not come from Persia. Yeah. So again I think we all admit Scott admits as well that Hisbala was trained financed and uh supported by Iran. Hisbala has been responsible for many of these terrorists. Where does Hisbala come from? It's a reaction to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon where they went after the PLO and horribly mistreated the poor local Iraqi Shiites until they rose up and created these militias to fight in self-defense. That's where Hezbollah comes from. Hisbala was actually created by the RGC before the Israeli invasion. This was the CIA's Bin Laden unit. Michael Shyer says it was Osama bin Laden and colleague Shake Muhammad that did the Cobar Towers attack. And who did they kill? They killed 19 American airmen who were stationed there to bomb Iraq from bases of Saudi Arabia under the Israeli insisted upon dual containment policy. Bill Clinton came from Yeetsak Shamir who had who had uh sent his man Martin Indic to work for Bill Clinton and push the dual containment policy is where that comes from in the first place. the main reason al Qaeda turned against the United States and the Kobar Towers attack was bin Laden and he bragged about it himself to um Abdel Bari Atwan the uh reporter from Alud's Alarabi in London and spent days with him and bragged all about it and blessed the martyrs and the rest of that and uh is widely uh discredited the claim that it was Iranianbacked Shiite Hezbala that did the Kobar towers attack. That was what the Saudi government told the US. In fact, there's a great documentary about John O'Neal, who was the head of FBI counterterrorism, who told Louisie Free, "Boss, the Saudis are blowing smoke up your ass about this Hezbala thing. It was Al Qaeda that did it." And then Louis Free got all upset cuz he used the a word. Um he was a very conservative Catholic guy, Louis Free, and then uh refused to listen to another word from John O'Neal about it. So, what we know now from Scott, because he's he's given certainly a lot of context to how he actually sees things, is um here's who lies to you and here's who doesn't. Um, US government lies to you. Israeli government lies to you. Uh, the Israelis clearly lie to you. Menacious bunch. Saudis lie to you. Um, you know, but you know who doesn't lie to you? Actually, doesn't lie to you. Al-Qaeda doesn't lie to you. I didn't cite al Qaeda or I himself and the Iran. I cited Michael Shawyer, the chief of the CIA's Bin Laden unit, didn't make it clear here. The Iranian trusting Hezbollah, Scott, straight up, I hear you, but you're interrupting. And like, please just honestly, it's not about the content, but like honestly, how come you're not saying him? Isn't that weird that you just said he trusts Hezbollah even though he didn't say anything about trusting Hezbollah? I'm not calling out the content. I'm calling out the interruptions. He hasn't interrupted you. It's great. I'm loving the back and forth. It's great, but just a little less talking over each other, that's all. Yeah. So I mean again the the sort of view of the regime in Iran and and I think Scott wisely said at the beginning of this discussion like what did you say? I I don't have any love for the Ayatollah. I'm a Texan. I don't have any love for the Ayatollah in Iran. And yet despite the fact Scott doesn't have love for the Ayatollah and I I agree with him and I think he's being sincere in every discussion that we've had on every topic. It's always about everyone's lying except the Ayatollah in Iran. He's not lying about having a nuclear weapons program. He he didn't actually support all of these terrorist organizations that he founded, financed, and supported to kill Americans. It wasn't the Ayatollah and Iran. He's he's not lying about his um his deception campaign against the United States. He's not lying about negotiations with the Americans. It's Americans fault all the time. So he he's presented all the time in Scott's conception here as a sincere actor who doesn't want to develop nuclear weapons, who doesn't actually want to kill Americans. He is just always a victim of American and Israeli aggression. I I think it's an interesting conception. I think let's talk about it. And I I mean I'm I'm fascinated by the conception because it it's very contrary to mine. Obviously, it's very contrary to, I think, decades of overwhelming evidence that the Islamic Republic has been war with the United States since 1979. And, you know, I I don't take too much stock in what people say. I take stock in what they do. So, you know, death to America, death to Israel could just be a slogan. It could be just propaganda. But when it's actually operationalized, then you start to ask, well, maybe it's not just propaganda. Maybe it's intention operation operationalized into capabilities. You know, we what we're forgetting here and again it's it's this causal relationship. It's we aggress against Iran and the Israelis aggress against Iran and Iran is always reacting. I mean, let's give the Iranians their due because Comedy made it very clear when he established the Islamic Republic that there will be a revolutionary and expansionist regime and they will expand their power through the Middle East. And so he built and to his credit was very successful until October 7th. This axis of resistance as he calls it which are these terror proxy armies, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Iraqi Shiite militias, the Houthis in Yemen that and certainly supporting the Assad regime in Syria. He built a very very impressive and deadly axis that he turned against the United States and against Israel which saw its culmination on October 7th. I think after October 7th that was a huge miscalculation for Kame and we've seen the results of what's happened to his axis of resistance through quite devastating Israeli military capabilities over the past number of months but he has an ideology and I think where I agree with Scott is I'm not sure if Kam would actually use a nuclear weapon against Israel the United States because I don't think Kame is suicidal but I think what Kame wants is he wants a nuclear weapon as a backs stop for his conventional power. Right? He's it's very the it's very much the Kim Jong-un model of North Korea, right? I'm going to have nuclear weapons with ICBMs to threaten America, but what I'm actually going to do is threaten South Korea with having massive conventional capabilities on the DMZ that I could take South Korea in a week. I could destroy in a week. So, you the United States and South Korea have no military option. That's Kame's view. he can actually building up this massive ballistic missile arsenal that he's unleashed in the past 12 days that according to again the US and Israel was going to go from 2,000 to 6,000 to 20,000 that from Kame's perspective he didn't need to drop a nuclear bomb on Tel Aviv. What he needed to do was use the threat of nuclear escalation in order to use his conventional capabilities his missiles to destroy Tel Aviv. And you've already seen the damage from just uh a few dozen ballistic missiles getting through the kind of damage that he's wrought on Tel Aviv already. That is the conception that Kame has. It's a revolutionary regime. It aggresses and I I do think it's interesting and I think we should talk about it. Actually, that's a good cue. Take a bath. Let's take a bath. Okay, we took a quick break and now uh Scott. Yeah. Okay. So, a few things there. First of all, uh on Ahmad, the pre203 nuclear weapons research, um the CIA estimate in 2007 concluded that all research had stopped in 2003 and Seymour Hirs reported that the reasoning behind that was uh mainly that America had gotten rid of Saddam Hussein for them. Now, in Gareth Porter's book, Manufactured Crisis, he shows that the major conclusion that the uh DIA had made, that the Iranians were researching nuclear weapons was based on some invoices that they had intercepted for some dual use materials, some specialty magnets and things that they thought, boy, this looks like this could be part of a weaponization program, a secret program here. And you know, Gareth Porter, who's a really great critic of all of these policies and claims, says, "Hey, this was a good faith misunderstanding by DIA. They were doing their job." But it turned out the IAEA later when America gave them that information, the IAEA went and verified, oh, there's the magnet and there's this and there's that and all those dual use items actually were being used for civilian purposes. And so then um as Gareth writes in his book, the only real reason um that the NIE said that they even had a program before 2003 was essentially because they didn't want to dispute their last mistaken conclusion. So they said, "Okay, well that was right up until then." But that was when that changed. And then the other half of their reason for accepting that there ever was a nuclear weapons research program uh in the country before 2003 was the smoking laptop. And I'm sorry, I think I misspoke earlier when I said that the laptop was in 2005. That was just the Washington Post story that had a bunch of stuff about it. That was in 2003 as well or 2004 possibly. So this was why the um but it was still all again forged by the Israelis and funneled through the MEK cult um but was obsolete essentially and had nothing in it. At least the accusations and it weren't past 03. And so there's really no reason to believe that there was actually a nuclear weapons research program even before 03 which then again the National Intelligence Council says ended in 2003 and hasn't been restored. A question just not a comment by me but a question just your perspective. So just so I understand this. the the the nuclear archive, this this massive archive that the Israelis were able to take out of Tyrron, bring to the United States, bring to the IAEA, which is very detailed blueprints. It's just the alleged studies documents again. It's the same stuff from the smoking laptop. Yeah. So, let me just ask you because it's it's it's huge and it's very detailed and it shows clearly that the program certainly until 2003 and then we can have a discussion about what happened after that. Are are you suggesting that that's all been forged by by Israel? Yes. Nothing in this smoking lot held up. Not not the laptop, but this entire archive that they pulled out with this you're you're thinking of like the big photo op with all the do all the full documents behind I've seen it. I've seen many many of the documents. There's thousands of pages. I'm asking this is not what I'm claiming. Is that all forged by Israel? Is that not all about the uranium tetraflloride and the warhead that David Albbright debunked and all the same claims that were in the smoking laptop from the Bush years? David David Albbright actually wrote an entire book. It's a very detailed book. Your listeners should Google it's it's David Albbright and the archive where he goes in he went in in detail and he confirms the information in that archive that Iran had an active program under something called Ahmad to develop five atomic weapons. So again, you and I can debate this all day, but now this would have been before Natans was even dug and before a single centrifuge, right? Got all that. I'm just making sure everybody understands assuming that was true. We were talking about a piece of paper. But you you it's not a piece of paper. It's a massive archive. I'm just asking the question. You you believe Mossad fabricated all of this as a lie to deceive the United States, the IAEA, and the international community? That's just my question. My understanding is that…

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