Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to another episode of Eyes on Geopolitics.
Speaker 1: I'm here with Jack Murphy and Jonathan Hackett. I would
Speaker 1: say that the two big brains of the group Ivy
Speaker 1: League grads are almost Ivy League grad for John, he's
Speaker 1: getting there. Today's show is gonna be a little bit
Speaker 1: different than the normal show usually. Obviously we do like
Speaker 1: you know, what's going on current events wise, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, week fucking eighteen of the Iran War. I mean,
Speaker 1: this does have to do with Iran, obviously. This is
Speaker 1: more like I guess you can kind of characterize us
Speaker 1: like one of the bigger intelligence stories in the last
Speaker 1: four decades, and how the US is kind of like
Speaker 1: try to understand, like what's going on in Iran, especially
Speaker 1: after what happened in nineteen seventy nine with the revolution,
Speaker 1: and like, you know, our embassies being our embassy was
Speaker 1: a hostage place, a hostage, you know, a home for
Speaker 1: hostages essentially, and like we lost all of our intelligence,
Speaker 1: at least human intelligence inside of Iran after nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: and just leading up to what we're at where we're
Speaker 1: at today, like who we leaned on for intelligence help
Speaker 1: throughout the last four decades. I mean, really it's a
Speaker 1: longer story too, because we talk about like nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: three and stuff like that, Like it's so much, like
Speaker 1: there's so much there and I'm open to talking about that.
Speaker 1: But my thought process was basically starting it off right
Speaker 1: after nineteen seventy nine, after the revolution, and basically us
Speaker 1: trying to having to build back our intelligence apparatus or
Speaker 1: the picture inside of Iran. So I brought our Iranian expert.
Speaker 1: It was John Hackett, and Jack's here, Jacks here just
Speaker 1: because he's cute and I need sex appeal in the episode.
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, like, John, where do you want to start?
Speaker 1: You want to talk a little bit about what happened
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty three and stuff like that, just to
Speaker 1: set the stage for what eventually happened with the revolution.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I can go back a little bit earlier
Speaker 3: than that because it's kind of relevant to like why
Speaker 3: did nineteen fifty three happen at all? So in nineteen
Speaker 3: oh six you had something called the Constitutional Revolution in Iran.
Speaker 3: There was this group called the Kajars, which had been
Speaker 3: ruling Iran for about two centuries. That was the monarchy
Speaker 3: for a while they were this originally Turkic backed group,
Speaker 3: Turkish group, although they they're not Turks per se like
Speaker 3: Turkey Turks. They're a different kind of Turks that were
Speaker 3: ruling the country for a while. And you know, they're
Speaker 3: Persian people are Persian, they're not Turk and that there
Speaker 3: was a lot of friction between that monarchy and the
Speaker 3: Persian people that this Kajar Turk monarchy was ruling over.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of friction there. And leading up
Speaker 3: to that point, you had a lot of British and
Speaker 3: Russian interests in what is now Iran. The Brits were
Speaker 3: interested in the south and the Russians were interested in
Speaker 3: the north. This will come into play later in World
Speaker 3: War Two. Also, especially why some Kurds are pro regime
Speaker 3: and some are anti regime and so are anti other Kurds.
Speaker 3: That had a lot to do with how the Russians
Speaker 3: and the British separated Iran and also separated what is
Speaker 3: now Iraq and Turkey. As far as spheres of influence,
Speaker 3: and if you remember the Pykes Picoa agreement. People have
Speaker 3: heard of this May sixteenth, nineteen fifteen or nineteen sixteen.
Speaker 3: The French, the British and the Russians agreed to split
Speaker 3: up the Middle East into spheres of influence. That's how
Speaker 3: we got the borders of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Lebanon and
Speaker 3: so on. This is obviously before the creation of Israel,
Speaker 3: although it did set things in motion for what would
Speaker 3: today become Israel in nineteen forty eight May nineteen forty eight,
Speaker 3: so a lot of these kind of things, like these
Speaker 3: little balls were getting put in motion and started to
Speaker 3: move around around this time, like after nineteen hundred ish
Speaker 3: to nineteen oh six, skipping a ton of history. Nineteen
Speaker 3: oh six, the Iranian people said, we do not want
Speaker 3: this monarchy anymore, being as oppressive as its being. This
Speaker 3: is the Kadjar monarchy, and so they actually had something
Speaker 3: called the Constitutional Revolution where they actually created eight what's
Speaker 3: now called a Modulse, which is a council. It looks
Speaker 3: a lot like a parliament that did not exist before.
Speaker 3: They basically drew it up from scratch, and they said,
Speaker 3: this is what we want for our parliament. We want
Speaker 3: representation from all of our provinces. There were thirty two provinces.
Speaker 3: We want all these people representing in parliament. The Kajar
Speaker 3: monarchy became very weak because the Russian and British influence
Speaker 3: was poorly managed, just like it wasn't a lot of
Speaker 3: imperial situations throughout South Asia and West Asia at the time,
Speaker 3: and so they basically got what they wanted. The Iranians
Speaker 3: got an elected parliament for the first time in two
Speaker 3: thousand years of history of monarchy, and the British and
Speaker 3: the Russians did not like this. They said, well, if
Speaker 3: that happens, we lose control over this country. And in
Speaker 3: particular they meant the things under the ground, which was
Speaker 3: oil because if you remember, Winston Churchill right before World
Speaker 3: War One, converted the Navy into an oil only navy.
Speaker 3: Before that it was a sale navy. It was a
Speaker 3: coal navy, slow navy. And so the British interests were,
Speaker 3: we need oil to power our ships because we know
Speaker 3: that we're going to be in war. So what do
Speaker 3: we do. We go find oil. There's no oil in
Speaker 3: the UK obviously, and the refinery at Abadon, which is
Speaker 3: where the refinery still is now where most of the
Speaker 3: crude oil from Iran exits. That was a British run
Speaker 3: petroleum situation. So fast forward a little bit World War one, happens.
Speaker 3: There's you know, the Bolshevik Revolution. The Russians have their
Speaker 3: own situation going on up in Russia. The Russians back
Speaker 3: out of the sikes Peco agreement. They actually publicized the
Speaker 3: secret sykes Pecoa agreement that divided up the Middle East,
Speaker 3: and that's how we actually know about the sichs Pecoa
Speaker 3: agreement between Britain and France and why the Kurds don't
Speaker 3: have a state and all this stuff, and so the
Speaker 3: Russians kind of let go of that for a while,
Speaker 3: but then they realize, like, oh, man, actually there's a
Speaker 3: lot of good resources there. Let's return there and actually
Speaker 3: raise a shaw. The first Shaw of Iran in the
Speaker 3: nineteen twenties early nineteen twenties was picked by the British
Speaker 3: out of a Russian backed Cossick brigade. Essentially, it was
Speaker 3: kind of this like irregular force that the Russians were
Speaker 3: sponsoring and let him become the Shaw of the country.
Speaker 3: They kicked the Kajars out and put the shaw in charge,
Speaker 3: Shaw Palavi Raisa Palavi. Right, So then he gets a
Speaker 3: little bit too close to Auto Turk, which was the
Speaker 3: Turkish autocrat that emerged out of World War One, after
Speaker 3: the Automan Empire dissolved. The sex Pico Agreement said there's
Speaker 3: no more Automan Empire. There is now a Turkey, and
Speaker 3: there's an Iran and Assyria and all so on. And
Speaker 3: they didn't like the way that he was aligning with
Speaker 3: Auto Turk. In fact, he was starting to wear the
Speaker 3: same mustache, the same hair. He started banning certain clothing
Speaker 3: that looks like too European. He liked the more fascist
Speaker 3: type clothing because the's a lot of fascism going on
Speaker 3: in the thirties in some parts of all Earth. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's some different varieties of fascism going on. And it
Speaker 3: turned out that Reza started getting a little too close
Speaker 3: to that. World War II happens, and I'm focusing on
Speaker 3: Iran here, So world War II happens, Russia and Britain
Speaker 3: are still interested. They were allies in World War Two.
Speaker 3: Middle East starts getting a little disrupted after World War
Speaker 3: Two because a lot of the way France was ruling
Speaker 3: things got disrupted because of Vichy France, which was the
Speaker 3: Nazi backed part of France. So there's a lot of
Speaker 3: disruption there also in Vietnam, different story, but in Iran.
Speaker 3: Suddenly there are a lot of Kurds that were helping
Speaker 3: the Russians and the Brits against the Nazis in parts
Speaker 3: of the Middle East, because there was a whole part
Speaker 3: of the Nazi situation in the Middle East that you know,
Speaker 3: there were some Syrian groups, there were some Lebanese groups,
Speaker 3: some Vichy French backed groups. You know, through the background
Speaker 3: of the Nazi Party. There very fascinating part of history
Speaker 3: that I think a lot of Westerners don't really understand
Speaker 3: or think about, like what was going on in the
Speaker 3: Middle East during World War two. And so what happened
Speaker 3: was the Russians didn't let go of northern Iran. They said, no,
Speaker 3: we're still interested in Iran. Even after the war ended,
Speaker 3: they said we want this northern part for ourselves, because
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union went all the way up to the
Speaker 3: border there. And so you had some Kurds who said, well,
Speaker 3: we want independence. Then in exchange for US supporting you, Russia,
Speaker 3: and Russia said okay, and so you suddenly got the
Speaker 3: Republic of Azerbaijan, not the country of Azerbaijan today, but
Speaker 3: the province of Azerbaijan and Iran became independent for two
Speaker 3: years backed by Russia, and so did Mahabad, which is
Speaker 3: a Kurdish province in Iran near the Lake Ormea region,
Speaker 3: which is where the Barzani family is from, which is
Speaker 3: now why the Barzanis are not in Iran, they're in
Speaker 3: Iraq because of that exact situation. They actually fled Iran
Speaker 3: for their lives and survived, whereas the other Kurds who
Speaker 3: backed that uprising all were slaughtered by the Shah's son
Speaker 3: who came in after he was the father was actually ousted.
Speaker 3: For a very brief period of time, there was a coup.
Speaker 3: This was nineteen fifty three. So I put a lot
Speaker 3: of spaghetti in that bowl. But all the little threads
Speaker 3: kind of lead to that moment of why did we
Speaker 3: have this coup in nineteen fifty three with the CIA
Speaker 3: and the British backing this guy his son Polavi, And
Speaker 3: that's kind of how we got there. And I can
Speaker 3: talk about like what it was if you want, or
Speaker 3: we can go down different pathways, whatever you think is best.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think I would love to continue with
Speaker 4: the history, but I think to take a quick pause,
Speaker 4: if you could contextualize a little bit of how much
Speaker 4: is the history of this period of Iranian history that
Speaker 4: we're talking about.
Speaker 2: Is it a history of foreign.
Speaker 4: Meddling or is it a history of indigenous power struggle?
Speaker 4: And or is it a confluence between the two, which
Speaker 4: is what it sounds like happened. I mean, what system
Speaker 4: do you think ended up being the defining feature of Iran?
Speaker 3: So the problem in Iran is that the Iranian people
Speaker 3: have not been able to rule themselves ever since Islam arrived, gotcha?
Speaker 3: And this is kind of the narrative that you hear
Speaker 3: a lot of. There's actually a book called Two Centuries
Speaker 3: of Silence, which is by an author named Zarrein Koub
Speaker 3: who wrote this book in Farsi. It's now in English
Speaker 3: as well, I think, But it's basically about when Islam
Speaker 3: arrived in Iran, the Iranians lost control of themselves because
Speaker 3: there were these caliphates from Mecca and from what is
Speaker 3: now Istanbul basically ruling over Iran in various ways, whether
Speaker 3: that's religiously or politically, or a combination of the two,
Speaker 3: in various iterations over those times. Since the ninth century,
Speaker 3: when Iran lost its independence, which was a result of
Speaker 3: the Byzantine Empire and the Persian empire fighting each other
Speaker 3: so intensely in the Middle East that neither of them emerged,
Speaker 3: and both the Byzantines and the Persians lost control, and
Speaker 3: the Islam came in out of nowhere and basically took over,
Speaker 3: which is exactly what happened. That's why Turkey is Turkey
Speaker 3: and you know Rome anymore, and also why the the
Speaker 3: the Iranians don't rule over any part of what used
Speaker 3: to be Persia anymore. There is no more Persia per se.
Speaker 4: And this must be a source of huge consternation for
Speaker 4: the Iranian people, who they're very proud. They see themselves
Speaker 4: as you know, I guess you could say the center
Speaker 4: of civilization in some ways, they some of them see
Speaker 4: themselves as a regional power, if not a world power.
Speaker 4: If you go back into Iranian history, all the way
Speaker 4: back to like Darius and all these other characters in
Speaker 4: the in the historical past, and this must grind pretty
Speaker 4: bad on the on the Persian people and you know, influence,
Speaker 4: you know, their desire for self governance.
Speaker 3: Well, the story of Islam and Iran is a story
Speaker 3: of humiliation for a lot of Persians, because if you
Speaker 3: look back, like you mentioned with Daryush, and Kurush, which
Speaker 3: is Cyrus and English and Greek. They when you look
Speaker 3: at that time period, the things that they invented, it's
Speaker 3: kind of like when you look at the US in
Speaker 3: the nineteenth century, like railways, electricity, telegraph Like that's how
Speaker 3: they look at that time. Because the Kingdom of Lydia,
Speaker 3: which was under Persian control at the time in the
Speaker 3: fifth century, sixth century, they invented coined money. They also
Speaker 3: invented the postal system, They invented passports. I mean, like
Speaker 3: things that are so fundamental to modern society came from
Speaker 3: that empire in like a very short period of time. Really,
Speaker 3: it was about a century and a half to shoot
Speaker 3: century's maximum, and suddenly, like this stuff was just coming
Speaker 3: out of there. I mean, even during the Islamic Golden
Speaker 3: Age the thirteenth century that we think about as like
Speaker 3: Islam kind of being this enlightened period during the Dark
Speaker 3: Ages in Europe, those were all Persian scholars who were
Speaker 3: under Muslim control, you know, like the invention of algebra,
Speaker 3: although the name Algebra is an Arabic name, that was
Speaker 3: a Persian mathematician, you know, And like the list goes
Speaker 3: on and on, like all these inventions, like the concept
Speaker 3: of the zero sipher was invented by a Persian mathematician,
Speaker 3: like all this stuff, so like they're thinking like also,
Speaker 3: so they actually got chess through an Indian intermediaria named
Speaker 3: Bozorgimir who came in the eighth century to Iran and
Speaker 3: delivered it to the shot at the time, which is
Speaker 3: actually in the book called Shahname, which is the book
Speaker 3: of Kings by fer Dowsy, who's a famous Persian poet. Interesting,
Speaker 3: very fascinating. But the word chess actually means SHA's kings
Speaker 3: And when you say checkmate, it's shah mate, which means
Speaker 3: king is dead.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: So like all this stuff is Persian.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yo, John, I read just a little aside. I
Speaker 1: feel like you're very good at jeopardy. Is that true.
Speaker 3: Facts are important?
Speaker 1: Yeah? All right, all right, so where do we leave off?
Speaker 1: We left off you know the.
Speaker 4: Fifty three, you know the the you know subsequent CIA
Speaker 4: and MI six.
Speaker 2: Interest in Iran.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it was called Operation Ajax. And what it was,
Speaker 3: Remember I said the thing about nineteen oh six. It
Speaker 3: was the first time in history that they had their
Speaker 3: own elected government and so on, right, and that was
Speaker 3: destroyed by the British for economic interests for the British. Well,
Speaker 3: fast forward to nineteen fifty two, you have this guy
Speaker 3: named Mohammad Mosadagg who was the first like really truly
Speaker 3: widely elected prime minister in Iran that represented the people
Speaker 3: in a way that was kind of disruptive for the
Speaker 3: monarchy because a lot of the things that he supported
Speaker 3: did not align with the monarchy, which meant remember this
Speaker 3: monarchy was put there by the British essentially, and so
Speaker 3: this guy who's very popular did not agree with the
Speaker 3: things that this British installed monarch wanted. You have a
Speaker 3: friction point. And right after World War Two, you know,
Speaker 3: the world's recovering. You've got Breton woods in Europe, You've
Speaker 3: got a lot of reconstruction going on. There's a huge
Speaker 3: demand for oil and other industrial growth capacity in developing
Speaker 3: countries that are now recently decolonized, including the places through
Speaker 3: the Psychs Pico Agreement like Iraq, like Basara, which was
Speaker 3: a very important Iraqi port that was run by the
Speaker 3: British and Abadon another oil facility. Well, Mohammed Mosadegg nationalized
Speaker 3: Iran's oil kind of like happened in Venezuela and you
Speaker 3: kind of notice this theme of when leaders nationalize their oil, Britain,
Speaker 3: the US, or Russia or a combination of the three
Speaker 3: will enter that country and stop it from happening. Venezuela
Speaker 3: as an example, Libya as another example. This is even
Speaker 3: if they start talking about it, you just see this
Speaker 3: giant influx of Western interest into the country, like you
Speaker 3: will stop that now, or we'll stop you. So it's
Speaker 3: very fascinating. Actually, Egypt, the whole reason we had the
Speaker 3: Suez Crisis in Egypt in nineteen fifty six was again
Speaker 3: because they wanted to nationalize the oil, and so France
Speaker 3: and Britain basically told Israel to invade Egypt and stop
Speaker 3: Egypt from nationalizing its oil. And it wasn't you know
Speaker 3: until later on that the world realized that wasn't Israel,
Speaker 3: that was actually Britain in France doing that through Israel.
Speaker 3: In the States kind of opted out of that right
Speaker 3: and it damaged relations, yes, exactly, and then we had
Speaker 3: the Liberty Incident very you know, around the same exact time,
Speaker 3: June eighth, and you know, one hundred over one hundred
Speaker 3: American sailors were killed by Israeli air force strikes on
Speaker 3: the on the ship, even though they knew it was
Speaker 3: an American ship, but they didn't want a second ship
Speaker 3: collecting on what they were doing, so they killed all
Speaker 3: the Americans on board, which I think Americans like, don't
Speaker 3: realize that was a deliberate strike on an American vessel
Speaker 3: by Israeli Air Force pilots. But zooming back out again
Speaker 3: to Mosadegg, he nationalizes the oil. The British are like,
Speaker 3: no way, because they had the British Iranian Petroleum Company
Speaker 3: and they they said, remember this is like when you
Speaker 3: had shell oil like Royal Dutch Shell and all that.
Speaker 3: There was the British VP, British Petroleum ran abadon that
Speaker 3: the crude oil output platform in carg Island, all the
Speaker 3: stuff we're talking about today, that was all British, you know,
Speaker 3: colonized oil infrastructure. It was like slave like conditions there
Speaker 3: and mosa Egg basically wanted to rest the control of
Speaker 3: that because they were only getting like less than ten
Speaker 3: percent of the oil revenues. The rest was going to
Speaker 3: the British exchequer and so they wanted more. They didn't
Speaker 3: want one hundred percent. Actually, they want to just negotiate. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they want to negotiate. Yeah, because Saudi Arabia actually successfully
Speaker 3: had done so at around the same time, and they're like, hey,
Speaker 3: we want to be like Saudi Arabian and gaging control
Speaker 3: of our sovereign assets under the soil and the British.
Speaker 1: Shop you're not shocking theory, right, want to take control
Speaker 1: of your sovereign assets.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's like China come to the US and being like,
Speaker 3: we're going to take over your oil in the US
Speaker 3: is like okay, take it, you know. Yeah, so it's crazy.
Speaker 3: And then the British basically said, well, we can't do
Speaker 3: it on our own, we need help. Who else can
Speaker 3: help us? Well, Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of President Roosevelt,
Speaker 3: raised his hand, you know, Oss guy now CIA guy
Speaker 3: basically went in there and they came up with a
Speaker 3: plan to put another guy named Zahidi, who was a
Speaker 3: military officer in charge of the country temporarily in a
Speaker 3: coup like situation. They surrounded Mosaegg's house. They like basically
Speaker 3: threatened to blow his house up and kill the guy.
Speaker 3: They captured him. It went south. It didn't go the
Speaker 3: way they thought it would go. I mean imagine that
Speaker 3: this kind of operation if you saw it was very
Speaker 3: complicated and went badly. We have a history of doing
Speaker 3: so in your own like you look at Operation Eagle
Speaker 3: Claw nineteen eighty look at that, and you know, even now,
Speaker 3: things sometimes get out of control there because we don't
Speaker 3: really understand the situation anyways. So mosaed Egg is removed,
Speaker 3: he's kind of like put into disgrace, and they bring
Speaker 3: in rais A Paulavi's son, Mohammed Paulavi, and he he
Speaker 3: becomes the Shah. So they basically destroyed the elected officials
Speaker 3: and the government got rid of all of them and
Speaker 3: put in autocrats that the US and Britain selected to
Speaker 3: rule the country, and they ruled the country until nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy nine. So there was a lot of discontent at
Speaker 3: the time. And even if you talk to some Iranians today,
Speaker 3: some of them that are monarchists don't support Mosaedgg. Now
Speaker 3: they look back and they're like, oh, Mosaegg was terrible,
Speaker 3: he was a tool of the Russians. He's a communist
Speaker 3: who's a Marxist. You hear all this like negative stuff
Speaker 3: because the people who are monarchists really are anti anything
Speaker 3: else than the monarchy. So there's a lot of friction
Speaker 3: there on the outside of Iran when you're thinking about, like,
Speaker 3: why aren't these groups working together to overthrow the current
Speaker 3: regime if it's so bad and they all hate it,
Speaker 3: It's because they they don't all agree with each other
Speaker 3: on what should happen in the country and like what's
Speaker 3: the right government? Which makes sense. I mean, that's what
Speaker 3: democracy actually is, is people all disagreeing about stuff, but
Speaker 3: somehow they all vote and you know, get through it,
Speaker 3: sometimes better or worse. But yeah, so that's what happened
Speaker 3: in nineteen fifty three and kind of like a broad brushstroke.
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Speaker 1: Patreon dot com, slash the teamhouse, thanks guys. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then you saw I mean during that time, obviously people
Speaker 1: were getting fed up with the Shaw and uh, you
Speaker 1: know that's when the first uh, I don't know how
Speaker 1: you come any came off any. Yeah, and uh he
Speaker 1: was exiled.
Speaker 3: He was exiled to Najeff. He was in Nadjoff, he
Speaker 3: was making all these little tapes and stud them around
Speaker 3: with basically his message against the regime or that regime
Speaker 3: the kingdom. And then from Iraq he went to France
Speaker 3: because at the time, France was very socialist. I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't know what they are now, but at the
Speaker 3: time they were very socialist, and there was a lot
Speaker 3: of this, you know, the war in Algeria had just ended.
Speaker 3: They got out of Vietnam, so there's a lot of
Speaker 3: this like anti colonialism going on, anti monarchy going on
Speaker 3: in France with the population. So they're very supportive of
Speaker 3: bringing Hamani into France and giving him basically state protection
Speaker 3: and giving him a platform to send his message instead
Speaker 3: of through tapes with couriers. Now he was able to
Speaker 3: be in the newspaper and on recordings and like really
Speaker 3: made into this legitimate figure of opposition. He made a
Speaker 3: ton of promises. He said like, oh, women will be
Speaker 3: free under my control, and I'll only rule for a
Speaker 3: short time and then there'll be an election. You know,
Speaker 3: women will have not any requirements about what they wear.
Speaker 3: Islam will be an option like all this stuff, which
Speaker 3: actually is still in their constitution now, like women actually
Speaker 3: have full rights in their constitution. But as you can see,
Speaker 3: that is not actually what's going on. So people believed
Speaker 3: him to the degree necessary. And actually there were a
Speaker 3: lot of people from the Mossadeg camp, like the elected
Speaker 3: officials who were kind of now just afloat and not
Speaker 3: really part of the government anymore. They came to see
Speaker 3: him and visit him, and he was saying like, hey,
Speaker 3: I'll let you guys actually come on board. If we
Speaker 3: have a revolution, there's a place for you, right, And
Speaker 3: that's actually how it worked out. In the very beginning.
Speaker 3: Sod Bani Sader, who was from the old government, was
Speaker 3: actually able to be president of the country for a
Speaker 3: short period of time until there were massive assassination attempts
Speaker 3: across everybody in the government. But it wasn't just Ramani
Speaker 3: who was resisting the Shah. You also had the Mujahadini Kalk,
Speaker 3: which was a Marxist organization. You had the fedi Jini Kalk,
Speaker 3: which is an even more Marxist organization. You had some
Speaker 3: people following Ali Shariati, who is a very smart intellectual
Speaker 3: that was also quasi Marxist, talking about how the Shah
Speaker 3: should be removed and there should be this kind of
Speaker 3: egalitarian Islam in the country. You had Kurdish groups as well.
Speaker 3: There were you know, Komala which means hope. Kamala was
Speaker 3: one of these parties, congred Jel which was in Turkey,
Speaker 3: and some other groups as well that now have formed
Speaker 3: two groups we recognize today, like p Jack and those groups.
Speaker 3: Those came from that pre revolutionary period to resist the monarchy.
Speaker 3: And as I said and shows previously, you know, it's
Speaker 3: not that they don't like this government. They don't like
Speaker 3: any of the governments that have been there. They want
Speaker 3: their own ruling situation, you know. And if you've been
Speaker 3: to Syria, you know that there's some Kurds in Syria
Speaker 3: who want no government at all. They want this like
Speaker 3: anarchic egalitarian system that and they've been able to actually
Speaker 3: live it to a degree for some years. But it's
Speaker 3: kind of a challenge for it to belong to the
Speaker 3: rest of the region. Yeah, so you've got all these
Speaker 3: groups there kind of with a unified goal, and that
Speaker 3: goal is getting rid of the current government. But that ends.
Speaker 3: The unification ends there because once the government's gone, they
Speaker 3: are no longer friends. And when the revolution happened, you
Speaker 3: saw that right away with the Muja Dicalc, which is
Speaker 3: still currently the largest opposition to the current government that exists.
Speaker 3: Their headquarters is in Tarana and Albania now, but during
Speaker 3: the revolution they were immediately ostracized because the Ayatola recognized
Speaker 3: that these guys are powerful, they have guns, and they
Speaker 3: don't like us. They didn't like the Shah either, but
Speaker 3: they don't like us, so we're gonna get rid of
Speaker 3: them as much as we can. They executed like three
Speaker 3: thousand of them across a couple of days through hanging,
Speaker 3: so there's like mass lynching going on, and so a
Speaker 3: lot of them went to Iraq where Saddam Hussein protected
Speaker 3: them because remember the Iran Iraq War started as soon
Speaker 3: as the revolution happened. Revolution happened, so these guys went
Speaker 3: over there and Saddam protected them because they knew Iran,
Speaker 3: they could infiltrate Iran and they could help Saddam basically
Speaker 3: doing quasi advance force operations inside of.
Speaker 2: Iran with the origins of Emik.
Speaker 3: This is the mek Mujadini Khalk, which means the People's
Speaker 3: Mujahadeen or the People's Fighters. Essentially. There's another group called Tudae,
Speaker 3: which means the workers. Tuda was an actual communist party,
Speaker 3: like a legit communist party that was like directly connected
Speaker 3: to Russia that was immediately outlawed. They were all executed.
Speaker 3: But the Mujadein actually knew how to fight, and so
Speaker 3: they were a much more difficult problem for the new
Speaker 3: government after the revolution. Well, Saddam, you know, and the
Speaker 3: government of Iran came to an agreement that in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty eighth of the war is over, Saddam basically kicked
Speaker 3: the Mujadini Kalk out of Iraq. There was nowhere for
Speaker 3: them to go. But the US saw them as a partner,
Speaker 3: because remember the US was backing Iran and Iraq at
Speaker 3: the same time in that war, and so the US said,
Speaker 3: these are useful people, let's let's do something about this.
Speaker 3: They actually ended up in Albania and they are there
Speaker 3: now at a place called Camp asharof number three. And
Speaker 3: Asharaf is actually the name of a woman that was
Speaker 3: married to the original founder of the Mujini i Kalk
Speaker 3: and he was in love with her and all this,
Speaker 3: but he actually married somebody else, and she's the one Rajawi,
Speaker 3: Miriam Rajawi is now leading the Muchadin. It's a very crazy,
Speaker 3: interesting cult like situation. But I'll just leave pin in that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but they're in Albania basically leading the resistance from one
Speaker 3: angle against the regime. Now monarchists hate them like they
Speaker 3: are arch enemies of the monarchists because they also were
Speaker 3: fighting the SHA, so it's not like they joined the
Speaker 3: revolution and everything's different. Like they still hate the Sha
Speaker 3: and they hate the current government in Iran. So you
Speaker 3: have this like armed trained organization that hates both resistance
Speaker 3: and the current government that's allowed to operate. And you
Speaker 3: know now today their best friend and trainer is Israel,
Speaker 3: because Israel saw this as an opportunity to balance against
Speaker 3: Iran in the regions. Starting in the nineteen nineties the
Speaker 3: early nineties, especially after the Oslo Accords made Jordan part
Speaker 3: of the alliance, you know, supporting Israel. So when that happened,
Speaker 3: Israel started supporting surrogate forces that were Mujadini kalk And
Speaker 3: forces in Azerbaijan because the Aziris have ethnic Aziris in
Speaker 3: Iran as well. Remember I mentioned there's that separatist group
Speaker 3: that had an independent Azerbaijan for two years inside of Iran.
Speaker 3: Well there's the country of Azerbaijan across the border. They're
Speaker 3: the same ethnic group. So Israel recognized, like, hey, we
Speaker 3: can actually have a pretty poorest border situation if we
Speaker 3: work with the Aziris in Azerbaijan and send them into
Speaker 3: Iran to do things for us. If you remember Ferukzade
Speaker 3: the nuclear scientist that was assassinated with a machine like
Speaker 3: a robot, situation, that was Mujinini khalk and AZII entities
Speaker 3: working together to do that. There wasn't like an Israeli
Speaker 3: operative on the ground with a button that was recruited
Speaker 3: assets that worked from these ethnic groups and these resistance
Speaker 3: groups to do this. And Israel has used this to
Speaker 3: great effect. I mean, a lot of the penetration of
Speaker 3: the Iranian government is through these Aziri and mujahideen people
Speaker 3: that are in Iran. They live in Iran, whether that's
Speaker 3: from the western side of the country crossing over from
Speaker 3: Kurdistan or from Azerbaijan coming south.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, I'm glad you talked about the MKA a
Speaker 1: little bit because they do seem like a little bit
Speaker 1: of a paramilitary force for Israel.
Speaker 4: That are one that's been active in Iran in the past.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure where they are today.
Speaker 3: Jundla, Yeah, so Jundalas and Balochistan in southeast they have
Speaker 3: had their own separatist situation against the regime and actually
Speaker 3: cost some Solamani, the former Kutz Force commander, when he
Speaker 3: was a field great officer, when he was like a major,
Speaker 3: his first combat experience was in Baluchistan fighting Jundala and
Speaker 3: that's where he actually led units for the very first
Speaker 3: time in combat. So he actually ran them out of
Speaker 3: southeast Iran into Pakistan and Afghanistan because there's a triborder
Speaker 3: area there that's known as Baluchistan in all three of
Speaker 3: the countries. The Jindala people wanted to basically have a
Speaker 3: separate Baluchistan country that would consist of parts of Iran,
Speaker 3: parts of Afghanistan, and parts of Pakistan. They were in
Speaker 3: some ways supported by Pakistan against Iran. But as has
Speaker 3: happened with Pakistan numerous times, Pakistan has supported, you know,
Speaker 3: insurgents in another country that end up coming into Pakistan
Speaker 3: and causing problems in Pakistan because they're somehow don't have
Speaker 3: the foresight to think about that. But Jundala has actually
Speaker 3: changed its name into a couple of different groups now
Speaker 3: and so Pakistan that way they can say that they've
Speaker 3: defeated Jundala. It is not defeated. It continues till today.
Speaker 3: And it's actually a huge problem because there's a Chinese
Speaker 3: owned mine in western Pakistan that's inside of Balochistan that's
Speaker 3: been like significantly under attack by is what used to
Speaker 3: be Jundala but now different forces. And this is part
Speaker 3: of China's Belt and Roade initiative in Pakistan. So you've
Speaker 3: got this mine in Buluchistan, and you have a port
Speaker 3: called Guadar which is also in the Pakistani coast, which
Speaker 3: is completely owned by China, and it's owned by China,
Speaker 3: run by China. It's basically China's access to that waterway
Speaker 3: over land if they want to. And that all occurred
Speaker 3: while the US was deployed in Afghanistan. You know, fighting
Speaker 3: the Taliban. Meanwhile, China was in Islamabad negotiating with the
Speaker 3: Pakistani's basically to set this thing up and also gain
Speaker 3: access to all the tritium, which is a special rare
Speaker 3: earth mineral that we need. They paid something like six
Speaker 3: billion dollars for all tritium in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and
Speaker 3: it's worth several trillion dollars in total value. So that
Speaker 3: was a pretty good bargain for them. And actually yeah,
Speaker 3: and actually the government of Afghanistan was great with that
Speaker 3: because they signed the document and then when the Taliban came,
Speaker 3: the Taliban took that document from the government of Afghanistan also
Speaker 3: honored it. So China and the Taliban also, you know,
Speaker 3: or an agreement about the tritium. And of course they
Speaker 3: are with Pakistan too, So that kind of goes to
Speaker 3: the Jundla issue because Junda is looking at that, they're like, hey,
Speaker 3: we have sovereign, you know, ethnic ownership of this area.
Speaker 3: You've got China, Pakistan, Iran like threatening our ethnic homeland
Speaker 3: that we have been in for thousands of years. You know,
Speaker 3: a lot of them are either nomadic or semi nomadic
Speaker 3: in the past, they're a little bit more settled now,
Speaker 3: but they're responsible for a lot of the drugs going
Speaker 3: into and out of Iran because they're getting a lot
Speaker 3: of opium from Afghanistan. There's no border. I mean, if
Speaker 3: you've been to that area, there's literally no You have
Speaker 3: no idea which country you're standing in at that moment.
Speaker 3: And that's happened to me several times. It's just like
Speaker 3: open desert and rock and mountain and you're like, oh,
Speaker 3: did we land in Pakistan or is this Iran or Afghanistan?
Speaker 3: And they're able, they have like complete control over it.
Speaker 3: They move drugs all, like huge amounts of drugs. And
Speaker 3: the other problem for Iran's government is that a lot
Speaker 3: of the IERGC border control guys are like in bed
Speaker 3: with these guys as far as drug movement because they're
Speaker 3: making a lot of money off of it. So there's
Speaker 3: a lot of like interest from Tehran over that southeast
Speaker 3: border with power Pakistan and Afghanistan, like monitoring, counterintelligence, monitoring
Speaker 3: of the IRGC officers that are down there, because they're
Speaker 3: so concerned about the drugs moving into Iran, which is
Speaker 3: a big problem in Iran.
Speaker 2: So I mean, when I listen to you talk about
Speaker 2: this subject.
Speaker 4: What it sounds like is that there are all of
Speaker 4: these different factions in Iran who dislike each other and
Speaker 4: have their own grievances and have their own ideas about
Speaker 4: how the country should be run. Are we in a
Speaker 4: situation where these factions have kind of been tampered down
Speaker 4: by oppressive authoritarian regimes for you know, fifty plus years,
Speaker 4: and if we Americans were to go in and remove
Speaker 4: that regime, it would plunge Iran into civil war, just
Speaker 4: like the Syrians went through a civil war.
Speaker 3: I like to use the example of Yugoslavia actually because
Speaker 3: I feel like there's a lot of similarity there where
Speaker 3: under a particular structure, very specific type of government, the
Speaker 3: people were able to be managed to a degree. You
Speaker 3: remove that person, Tito, and then you've got Bosnia, You've
Speaker 3: got Kosovo, you've got the Albanian conflict, which wasn't part
Speaker 3: of Yugos lobby, but still was on the cusp of it,
Speaker 3: you know, Croatia. And before that, though, the reason Tito
Speaker 3: was able to actually make a country was because of
Speaker 3: British OSS SOOE support. So the US OSS and the
Speaker 3: British SOE sent in very small teams to set up
Speaker 3: drop zones inside of the Balkans, and it was a
Speaker 3: pretty incredible operation that if you're a student of special operations,
Speaker 3: I think like you need to master that that case study,
Speaker 3: because it was probably one of the best ones we've
Speaker 3: had in the past eighty years. That was very successful
Speaker 3: of very minimal Western contact, like you know, US and
Speaker 3: British contact with the Partner Force. The Partner Force like
Speaker 3: owned that conflict and they they executed it really well.
Speaker 3: They actually killed more Germans than the conventional forces did
Speaker 3: in that area, and they were like a huge problem
Speaker 3: for the Germans in the conflict, and Tito was able
Speaker 3: to actually, as partisan leader, bring all those different ethnic
Speaker 3: groups together. So the question is can that happen today?
Speaker 3: Is there is there Tito like figure in Iran today?
Speaker 3: And the answer is no, there isn't.
Speaker 4: John, I'm gonna let you go, but I'm gonna let
Speaker 4: you carry on. I just want to mention to people
Speaker 4: out there, there's someone we interviewed on the show a
Speaker 4: while back, Jassic Walala Luski publish.
Speaker 3: Last name there.
Speaker 4: He uncovered a lot of unpublished information from the OSS
Speaker 4: years in a like museums and archives, and he wrote
Speaker 4: this book he's written a series, but the one I
Speaker 4: read his code named Spike, and it is all about
Speaker 4: exactly this OSS operation into Albania back in the day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a it's a fascinating case study, and especially
Speaker 3: because we didn't really have a special operations unit before that,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean special ops really came out of
Speaker 3: World War Two the way it is structured today, and
Speaker 3: that was during World War Two, we were basically building
Speaker 3: the aircraft in flight in that theater and succeeded where
Speaker 3: we didn't succeed a lot in a lot of other places.
Speaker 3: You know, we was kind of tough. So the question
Speaker 3: I even was speaking to in Iranian this morning, and
Speaker 3: he was asking, like what could we do in Iran
Speaker 3: to actually fix this problem? Like he was asking me that,
Speaker 3: and I said, you need guns. And he was concerned
Speaker 3: because like, okay, he said, what happens if we get guns,
Speaker 3: we take over the government. What happens the day after?
Speaker 3: That's a really important question because maybe the Kurds have
Speaker 3: the guns, the Baluchis have the guns, the Aziris have
Speaker 3: the guns, which we've all just discussed. But those guys
Speaker 3: do not agree on everything. They have some shared interests,
Speaker 3: but they also have their own interests in mind, and
Speaker 3: they've never really wanted to be ruled by anyone else
Speaker 3: except themselves.
Speaker 1: Are they all Muslim, some.
Speaker 3: Are z are Astrian, some are Shia, some are Sunni,
Speaker 3: some are Turkic speaking, some are Persians speaking primarily, some
Speaker 3: are Bachtiari, some are Lure. There are some ethnic groups
Speaker 3: there that have existed far even before Persia was Persia,
Speaker 3: before there were Persians there, like an Ilam province there
Speaker 3: are you know, like the Elamites in the Bible, that's
Speaker 3: Ilam province Iran, you know, like the code of Hamarabi
Speaker 3: was discovered in Shusha, which was the capital of Iran
Speaker 3: at the time. You know, like you're talking about like
Speaker 3: very old ethnic groups. Like it's true that culture is
Speaker 3: not genetic, but it is passed down, you know, from
Speaker 3: person to person, generation to generation, and the people that
Speaker 3: have the culture look back to those things, whether that's
Speaker 3: right or wrong. That is who they are now, that's
Speaker 3: their identity. And especially up in the mountains like where
Speaker 3: that pilot went down. Part of the reason that pilot
Speaker 3: was rescued was because the population there was so against
Speaker 3: the government that they they created ways to slow down
Speaker 3: the process of the government.
Speaker 2: Getting around traffic jams and things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. And these people are like fiercely independent, So
Speaker 3: I mean, if you give them guns, they're probably going
Speaker 3: to just defend the place that they are at, right
Speaker 3: because especially, I mean the two times they had a
Speaker 3: democratic system it was destroyed. They're probably like, well, if
Speaker 3: we do it a third time, probably get destroyed again.
Speaker 3: What we should do instead is consolidate power in our
Speaker 3: local area and rule ourselves, which then again leads to
Speaker 3: that Balkanization problem, like after Tito, that is what happened
Speaker 3: where you had ethnic groups basically roving around and eliminating
Speaker 3: anyone else that wasn't their ethnic group and like controlling
Speaker 3: the territory that they're in.
Speaker 1: Mamea. All right, let's get back to the revolution. I
Speaker 1: guess like the Islamists were the people that like came
Speaker 1: out on top of everything essentially, right, because it's like
Speaker 1: you said, most of these groups probably won't march on Tehran.
Speaker 1: They'll just take control of their spheres like where they're from,
Speaker 1: their local areas, and run it how they want to
Speaker 1: run it.
Speaker 2: And could we talk a little bit about.
Speaker 4: Sort of like the emergence of the fanaticism, Shia fanaticism
Speaker 4: that culminated in the nineteen seventy nine revolution, and you
Speaker 4: hear these stories about, you know, the Iranian students getting
Speaker 4: all glassy eyed talking about the shit about Gomani.
Speaker 2: What was that movement and why did it happen?
Speaker 3: So you remember I was talking about how this, like
Speaker 3: the fascism issue in Europe, was influencing the leaders the Shah.
Speaker 3: So the SHA's son was also doing this westernization push,
Speaker 3: like dramatic push where he was basically subverting the clear
Speaker 3: telling women that you're not only is it optional to
Speaker 3: wear the hitjab, you're not allowed to wear it. So
Speaker 3: there were some people that were already religious and now
Speaker 3: they're being forced to walk out in public essentially naked,
Speaker 3: right as far as they're concerned, and because the king
Speaker 3: says so, which caused a lot of discontent within the population.
Speaker 3: So he was over the you know, twenty years or
Speaker 3: so since the time he came in office in nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty three, he was really pushing this clerical class away
Speaker 3: from the country, like away from him in a way
Speaker 3: that made them upset. And they're thinking about like how
Speaker 3: do we get people to resist this. Well, we can
Speaker 3: tell them how terrible the shaw is, and the shaw
Speaker 3: is going to, you know, make women be exposed to
Speaker 3: the public and like take away your beliefs and destroy
Speaker 3: Islam and et cetera. Because they were bringing in Western clothing,
Speaker 3: they were banning the traditional clothing that people used to wear.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of this like disruptive stuff that
Speaker 3: was very visible in society that a lot of different
Speaker 3: people didn't like. So there were some religious people, it
Speaker 3: was some secular people, but a lot of them just
Speaker 3: didn't like how the Shaw was disrupting society. And people
Speaker 3: were very poor. There was a lot of labor is
Speaker 3: shoes going on. And then amidst all of that, the
Speaker 3: Shah has this two thousand year anniversary of or twenty
Speaker 3: five hundred year anniversary of the founding of the empire
Speaker 3: and brings in all these foreign diplomats, spends millions of
Speaker 3: dollars on Champagne and caviare no Iranians except the government
Speaker 3: people are allowed to come to it. It's widely televised.
Speaker 3: They all see this. They're all very upset. In order
Speaker 3: to counter this, there's a lot of protests against this,
Speaker 3: and in order to counter this, he has this thing
Speaker 3: called the White Revolution, which came right after it, where
Speaker 3: he basically tried to go out into the villages and
Speaker 3: towns and like turn people back toward the government.
Speaker 2: Is this kind of backfire got set on fire.
Speaker 3: That was later, that was during the revolution, and nobody
Speaker 3: is for sure who did that. It was very most
Speaker 3: likely the Muccinini Kalk, but we don't know who did
Speaker 3: that and probably never will because there are a lot
Speaker 3: of attacks at that time that just were not attributed
Speaker 3: and we will just never know, you know, who did it.
Speaker 3: And actually the most recent Iatola that was just killed
Speaker 3: in February, he had damage to his arm from one
Speaker 3: of those attacks. He was almost assassinated in the early
Speaker 3: eighties by we don't know who. We think it's a
Speaker 3: moucha Adma, We don't know. But yeah, there was a
Speaker 3: lot of the stuff going on. It's kind of like
Speaker 3: fomenting unrest. And the loudest voice at the time was
Speaker 3: Romani and he was able to unify a lot of
Speaker 3: people that might not have been as religious at first,
Speaker 3: but they started to get more whipped up into it
Speaker 3: because they saw what was going on in the streets,
Speaker 3: this inequality and that this unfairness to them, and they
Speaker 3: were saying, like, maybe we should follow this idea. And
Speaker 3: you know, Shia Islam is a lot about martyrdom and
Speaker 3: kind of like the little guy against the big guy.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's where the idea of Shia Islam separated
Speaker 3: from Sunni Islam, because the Sunnies basically killed the two
Speaker 3: most important figures in Shia Islam, which eventually became the
Speaker 3: two most important figures. And there was this kind of like,
Speaker 3: you know, one hundred of us against ten thousand of them,
Speaker 3: will just all die to the last man. That's part
Speaker 3: of Shia Islam. And there was a lot of that
Speaker 3: rhetoric getting tossed around. And the best way to access
Speaker 3: people's minds in Iran at the time, because there's no internet,
Speaker 3: there's no cell phones, right, the best way to access
Speaker 3: people is through the Friday prayer at the pulpit because
Speaker 3: that's when everybody is in the same room together hearing
Speaker 3: the same thing. And if you're coordinating the messages at
Speaker 3: all those Friday prayers, now across the entire country, everyone's
Speaker 3: hearing the exact same message every Friday. And this is
Speaker 3: a lot of what pushed the religious fervor into high gear,
Speaker 3: because not only were they upset and hearing similar stuff,
Speaker 3: they're hearing the exact same message. So if I traveled
Speaker 3: like eight hundred miles, you would also know in that
Speaker 3: same village eight or miles away what I heard in Tehran. Right,
Speaker 3: So this is like really unifying force going on. And
Speaker 3: at the same time, you had people at universities in
Speaker 3: France to the United States and Britain and some other
Speaker 3: places that were Iranian students that were very intellectual, this
Speaker 3: intellectual group that was ostracized from the Shah, and they
Speaker 3: were thinking about, like how do we fix this problem.
Speaker 3: Like Mustafa Chamran, for example, was at University Berkeley in
Speaker 3: California in the nineteen seventies. He founded a mall in Lebanon.
Speaker 3: Amal became Hesbala eventually has Bulah later on. He was
Speaker 3: the founder of that and he actually came up with
Speaker 3: that idea with a student, an Iranian student group in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy three in Berkeley. And you had a lot
Speaker 3: of the stuff going on in the early nineteen seventies.
Speaker 3: A lot of them were listening to Ali Shariati, which
Speaker 3: is the guy that I mentioned earlier. He was in France.
Speaker 3: He died of a very mysterious heart attack in his
Speaker 3: early thirties. And he had been writing all these tracks
Speaker 3: about how to resist the Shaw and why the Shaw
Speaker 3: was illegitimate, and why there should be an Islamic country,
Speaker 3: you know, and all this stuff and all of this
Speaker 3: stuff is kind of like floating around and Ayatola Hamani
Speaker 3: brought all together. It kind of said follow me, and
Speaker 3: that's and a lot of people did that. They said,
Speaker 3: we will do that because there are various things that
Speaker 3: bother us. It seems like, you know what you're talking about.
Speaker 3: And that's kind of how that unification happened over about
Speaker 3: an eight to ten year period.
Speaker 1: So, John, let me ask you. That White revolution that
Speaker 1: Shaw tried to pull off, it did not. It went nowhere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it affected some areas, but some areas it
Speaker 3: made them even more upset because basically, like if you
Speaker 3: see some of the imagery from it or videos, you'll
Speaker 3: see like women dressed up in like really western military clothing,
Speaker 3: like marching around their village with guns and stuff. And
Speaker 3: people saw that like, what, this is not Persian, this
Speaker 3: is not Iran, this is the West. And in fact,
Speaker 3: there are two people, Ali Ahmad and Ali Shariati who
Speaker 3: I mentioned that used this term garb zadaghi, which means
Speaker 3: West toxification, in other words, being drunk on westernness. And
Speaker 3: this was the thing that that Aatola kept talking about,
Speaker 3: like these people are just drinking the water of the
Speaker 3: West and like getting you know, corrupted by these Western
Speaker 3: ideas and disgusting. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And actually Ramani the
Speaker 3: second one during nineteen eighty eight, when they were deciding
Speaker 3: to end the war, he said, I'm drinking from the
Speaker 3: poison chalice to accept this peace agreement. And that was
Speaker 3: a hearkening back to that idea about like I'm drinking
Speaker 3: this Western poison, you know, right, because I'm making a deal,
Speaker 3: right exactly. So even though it was with Saddam and
Speaker 3: not with the West, but it was because the West
Speaker 3: had supported Saddam Wemya.
Speaker 1: All right, So nineteen eighty nineteen seventy nine happens, the revolution,
Speaker 1: the Shaw's gone, you know, the Islamic Republic is born.
Speaker 1: They CIA in the United States basically loses all of
Speaker 1: its intelligence assets inside of the country more or less.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So what happened is the students there's this, remember
Speaker 3: I mentioned these student groups. There was one student group
Speaker 3: in Iran called the Imam's Line or students for the
Speaker 3: Imam's Line. They were not connected to Hamania at that point.
Speaker 3: They stormed the embassy actually twice. They happened earlier in
Speaker 3: the year that was stopped. They realized that they could
Speaker 3: get through, so they did it again and actually succeeded
Speaker 3: the second time, taking over the embassy. And when they
Speaker 3: got in there, they found all these documents in a
Speaker 3: bunch of filing cabinets that had intel reports and sources
Speaker 3: written on them about like who said what, and basically
Speaker 3: the people the Americans in there try to shred a
Speaker 3: lot of this stuff, but the Iranians actually pieced it
Speaker 3: back together, and they were like these shredded pieces of
Speaker 3: paper glued back together.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming most people watch the movie Argo. There's a
Speaker 1: scene in that when they take over the embassy and
Speaker 1: they're putting together shredded pieces of paper.
Speaker 3: That was real. Yeah, yeah, And that was actually why
Speaker 3: now we used like pulverized paper instead of just shredding straight.
Speaker 3: That came from that situation. And also there are anti
Speaker 3: Terrorism Force protection or AATFP that we have in the
Speaker 3: military and net embassies also came from Iran related terrorist
Speaker 3: activities in Lebanon. So both of those were kind of
Speaker 3: like new moments for us or turning points for us
Speaker 3: in the intelligence community. W we were like, we can't
Speaker 3: just operate with autonomy and countries anymore. We have to
Speaker 3: come up with ways to protect sources, methods and the
Speaker 3: intelligence we collected. And that came out of that embassy situation.
Speaker 3: And when they took over the embassy, Kamani at first
Speaker 3: didn't think it was a good idea. He thought that
Speaker 3: would actually disrupt the revolution, but then he saw the
Speaker 3: media attention they were getting and he reached out to
Speaker 3: them and said, you guys are on board with us
Speaker 3: now and actually supported them. So a lot of people
Speaker 3: in the West think that like that was a Iatola
Speaker 3: sponsored thing, Like it wasn't. It was actually organic. And
Speaker 3: then he took it over and made it look like
Speaker 3: it was his idea and it wasn't. And Mahmud Amani
Speaker 3: Najad was at that embassy takeover, by the way, which
Speaker 3: is a very important thing to keep in mind about
Speaker 3: now when Israel is trying to make Amai Najad and
Speaker 3: of the country again, like that dude was, Yeah, that
Speaker 3: dude was there, right, So yeah, we lost control at
Speaker 3: that time because at the time, our liaison partner in
Speaker 3: Iran was the Savak, which was the SHA's secret intelligence
Speaker 3: service that we helped build. All those Savak guys were
Speaker 3: either executed, exiled, or turned and worked to train the
Speaker 3: new government's intelligence apparatus. So we completely lost control over
Speaker 3: everything going on in Iran at the time. Part that
Speaker 3: actually led to why Saddam Hussein decided to invade in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty because you know, just a few months before
Speaker 3: the country was very powerful, it was a regional actor,
Speaker 3: and now they have no intelligence service, they have a
Speaker 3: disarrayed military, their weapons just kind of floating around like
Speaker 3: Libya for a few months, and Saddam said like, look,
Speaker 3: I've had this issue over this waterway with the Shah
Speaker 3: for a long time. This is my chance to win
Speaker 3: that conflict with the Shah. The Shah is gone because
Speaker 3: the Shaw was still alive. If you remember when this
Speaker 3: was going on, he didn't die yet. He was he
Speaker 3: was almost dead, but we didn't die yet. But he's
Speaker 3: so in Saddam's mind like this wasn't a revolution of
Speaker 3: a new government. This was just like the Shaw is
Speaker 3: absent and so he invaded the country, and that invasion
Speaker 3: really galvanized the Islamist set because now it's like Sunni
Speaker 3: Islam against Shia Islam, the story of Ali and Hussein
Speaker 3: against the evil Sunnis. That's exactly how it was framed.
Speaker 3: And that's suddenly, like you mentioned the glassy eyed talk
Speaker 3: about the Ayatola, that's where that started immediately because they
Speaker 3: were like, now we have one enemy and it's Saddam Husaying,
Speaker 3: it's the Sunnis.
Speaker 1: So that kind of helped, you know, essentially completely set
Speaker 1: in the Islamic Republic's power over the country. Right, you
Speaker 1: have a common enemy, you know, even.
Speaker 3: If really that Saddam Hussein invasion is what made the
Speaker 3: revolution real. Up to that point, it was just a
Speaker 3: disarray of people, different groups against the Shah for various reasons.
Speaker 3: There was no real unification that and I've said this before.
Speaker 3: There were eight different major groups that were against the
Speaker 3: Shah that participated in the revolution. The Islamists were not
Speaker 3: like the the one guaranteed to make it. But once
Speaker 3: they crossed, once the Iraqis crossed into Iran, like that
Speaker 3: was it. It was really that invasion that kicked off the
Speaker 3: cementing of what we have now as the Islamic Republic,
Speaker 3: and that.
Speaker 4: Brought on like, as I recall, there were like human
Speaker 4: wave attacks. They even used children. Suicide bombings became a thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's because they were running out
Speaker 3: of conventional assets to use. Againt Saddam, I mean, Saddam
Speaker 3: was and if you read about the Iran Iraq War,
Speaker 3: it was the longest conventional war in the world in
Speaker 3: the twentieth century. And somebody argued with me once that
Speaker 3: there was a Japanese conflict with China that was longer,
Speaker 3: but it's actually the same, But it was the longest
Speaker 3: in the world. In the first two years Iraq was winning,
Speaker 3: Iran turned the tables, started winning and pushed the Iraqis
Speaker 3: out of Iran completely back into Iraq. And if you
Speaker 3: do like some military strategic analysis of this, that was
Speaker 3: the moment that Iran should have just declared victory and stopped.
Speaker 3: But they got a taste of victory and kept going.
Speaker 3: And this was the big problem because suddenly that's when
Speaker 3: the war became a war of attrition because both sides
Speaker 3: couldn't advance anymore. Now it became like you know, the
Speaker 3: Eastern Front or the Western Front and World War Two.
Speaker 3: These guys are just stuck in trenches. Well, the Iranians
Speaker 3: don't have a ton of equipment and training. They do,
Speaker 3: but they don't know how to use it. They don't
Speaker 3: how to use the equipment. They have a Phantom aircraft
Speaker 3: that the US sent them, they have Hawk radar systems.
Speaker 3: They have all this stuff, but they don't know how
Speaker 3: to use it very well. Because there's a revolution and
Speaker 3: all the all the army people left, so they said, well,
Speaker 3: what else do we have. We have guys in the
Speaker 3: ground that are willing to fight, send them and they did.
Speaker 3: And like you said, human waves, you had kids like
Speaker 3: running over bodies because there were huge minefields and the
Speaker 3: only way to clear the mindfields was to send people
Speaker 3: over them to blow up to clear them with their bodies.
Speaker 3: So you'd have kids, like kids, young kids running over
Speaker 3: the field blowing up and then guys behind them seeing
Speaker 3: that happening and continuing on, which is wild to us.
Speaker 3: But if you believe in what that is, you're going
Speaker 3: to do it. You know, that's the way the human
Speaker 3: brain works. Like, if you believe in this thing, I
Speaker 3: mean that we do that in the military, like in
Speaker 3: fighting Japan and the Battle of Pelulu, guys were fighting
Speaker 3: with Niaves because they ran out of bullets. You know,
Speaker 3: like that's wild and it takes a lot of something
Speaker 3: in your brain to be able to do that, and
Speaker 3: those guys believed in it at that time.
Speaker 1: So in couple go ahead.
Speaker 4: Well, I was just going to say, where did the
Speaker 4: United States fall on this conflict, because I recall reading
Speaker 4: that we kind of backed both sides, like wouldn't it
Speaker 4: be a great thing if they both lost?
Speaker 3: Yes, what the US was looking at this from a
Speaker 3: Cold War angle and seeing that Saddam Hussein had primarily
Speaker 3: been funded by the Soviets, and actually in the seventies,
Speaker 3: Egypt suddenly gained access to a choice do we allow
Speaker 3: primarily US weapons or Soviet weapons in our military infrastructure?
Speaker 3: And the US convinced Egypt, and that's why we got
Speaker 3: Egypt to agree to recognize Israel. That had a lot
Speaker 3: to do with it, or like this triangular agreement going
Speaker 3: on where so suddenly now we got Egypt. The other
Speaker 3: problem is Libya as far as Soviet Union's concerned, and Iraq.
Speaker 3: Iraq had the fifth largest military on the planet at
Speaker 3: the time, primarily sourced with Soviet assets. So the way
Speaker 3: the US saw this, and if you look a little
Speaker 3: bit wider Afghanistan on the east side, the Soviets invaded
Speaker 3: Afghanistan because the monarch in Afghanistan was kicked out and
Speaker 3: replaced with the communist leader. The Russian supported that communist leader,
Speaker 3: they invaded Afghanistan. So the war in Afghanistan is going
Speaker 3: on at the exact same time as the Iran Iraq
Speaker 3: war is going on. So the US is seeing this
Speaker 3: from a Cold War perspective that if we can disrupt
Speaker 3: the Soviets and keep them bogged down like Ukraine. Now,
Speaker 3: if we can bleed them but not win, this is
Speaker 3: a victory. And this was the US strategy in the
Speaker 3: Ran Iraq war, and also the British strategy and the
Speaker 3: French strategy was to arm both sides, but not so
Speaker 3: much that they would win. And remember I told you
Speaker 3: the first two years Iraq was winning and then Iran
Speaker 3: pushed them in. Part of the reason Iran continued going
Speaker 3: is because they thought that with the weapons they were
Speaker 3: getting clandestinely, they'd be able to win. And that was
Speaker 3: the plan on our side, was to make them think that,
Speaker 3: even though it wasn't true. So there was this war
Speaker 3: of attrition that started that we wanted, the US wanted
Speaker 3: Iran in Iraq to continue fighting each other to the
Speaker 3: last man. That was the whole goal. And so from
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty three to nineteen eighty eight, that last five
Speaker 3: years of the war, that is what happened. You had
Speaker 3: this massive war of attrition of guys just murdering each other.
Speaker 3: Whether that's civilians, soldiers, does not matter. They were shooting
Speaker 3: ballistic missiles at cities. You had one battle called the
Speaker 3: War of the Cities because they were basically setting up
Speaker 3: launchpads inside of dense urban centers on both sides of
Speaker 3: the border and just firing ballistic missiles into the cities
Speaker 3: at each other for days.
Speaker 2: O Bird was in one of those cities.
Speaker 3: You remember that story, Yeah, yeah, yeah, And that was
Speaker 3: the strategy was just destroy each other. And the US said,
Speaker 3: that's a great thing. We'll support that. So you had
Speaker 3: the US supporting Saddam Hussein on one side and also
Speaker 3: supporting Iran on the other side through israel intermediaries who
Speaker 3: quote unquote did not work for the government. But you know,
Speaker 3: that's how things work in the Middle East. Everything is connected,
Speaker 3: and the US did not want Iran to win because
Speaker 3: of the Russians. They did not want the Russians to
Speaker 3: win essentially, and this was kind of a test of
Speaker 3: you know, who is stronger in the Middle East, Russia
Speaker 3: or the United States. And if you remember we talked
Speaker 3: about the Suez Crisis nineteen fifty six when France and
Speaker 3: Britain supported Israel into Egypt. Well, that was a disaster
Speaker 3: for Britain and France, and that was the end of
Speaker 3: British and French influence in the Middle East. And that
Speaker 3: was the beginning of US and Russian influence in the
Speaker 3: Middle East. So from nineteen fifty six through the eighties,
Speaker 3: you see this like dramatic increase in US and Russian
Speaker 3: contest in the Middle East between which partner is going
Speaker 3: to work with which power. And so that's part of
Speaker 3: what the Iran Iraq War was, was the US exploiting
Speaker 3: that contest to keep both of these countries fighting each
Speaker 3: other until nineteen eighty eight. Because remember in nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 3: that's when Perestroika glasnost which was two policies in Russia
Speaker 3: about restructuring and changing the economy and like becoming part
Speaker 3: of the Western world. And that led to the wall
Speaker 3: coming down and all that, and especially the failure in
Speaker 3: Afghanistan when they had to retreat out of Afghanistan in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty nine. All that was happening at the same time.
Speaker 3: So you have to look at it in that context
Speaker 3: of like, the US was seeing this as a piece
Speaker 3: in a larger play against the Soviets.
Speaker 1: And I know this is like and that's known as
Speaker 1: a part of it's known as I rank Contra. It's
Speaker 1: just like the.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I was.
Speaker 4: That's exactly where I was going with that. That's a
Speaker 4: whole other can of worms. But I think since we're
Speaker 4: into the nineteen eighties we should probably touch upon that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So think about the Iran Contra as just a
Speaker 3: larger zooming out of the same exact contest between the
Speaker 3: Soviets and the United States, because the Contra rebels were
Speaker 3: CIA rebels in Nicaragua that were fighting against the actual
Speaker 3: legitimate government, although we didn't think it was legitimate in
Speaker 3: Nicaragua called the Sandinistas. The Sandinistas were socialists, some would
Speaker 3: call them, or you know, maybe let worse than that,
Speaker 3: they were supported by the Soviets. So the US was
Speaker 3: looking at this as an opportunity to crush a Russian
Speaker 3: interest in Central America while also crushing a Russian interest
Speaker 3: in the Middle East. And so what was going on here.
Speaker 3: You had a group of folks in the National Security Council,
Speaker 3: including all over North, who's a marine that active duty
Speaker 3: at the time, that came up with this idea. They
Speaker 3: knew Reagan wouldn't approve it, so they didn't even ask it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so what they're basically doing was they can't pay
Speaker 3: for weapons in Iran because of the laws that happened
Speaker 3: after the hostage crisis. So they said, well, how do
Speaker 3: we pay for it anyway, Well, we can use proceeds
Speaker 3: from this other clandestine activity to pay for weapons. And
Speaker 3: actually this this whole thing went through I said earlier Israel.
Speaker 3: But there were a lot of intermediaries involved, including folks
Speaker 3: in Lebanon and Hezbolah. And actually it was a Hezbola
Speaker 3: guy that made this public, that published it in a
Speaker 3: newspaper because he was in a set about yes, exactly,
Speaker 3: because they were upset about the diversion of assets that
Speaker 3: they thought they should have because we were pushing all
Speaker 3: these weapons through Lebanon. They were fighting a war in
Speaker 3: Lebanon against the Syrians and the Israelis, and they're like, hey,
Speaker 3: we need weapons too, and the US was like, no,
Speaker 3: we have something more important Iran going on right now,
Speaker 3: and he said, okay, then we're going to publish it,
Speaker 3: and they did, and that's actually how the Iran contra
Speaker 3: affair became public.
Speaker 4: And then you had the plane go down in Nicaragua,
Speaker 4: which was kind of like by now it's splashed on
Speaker 4: United States newspapers because just for folks out there as
Speaker 4: a CIA aircraft and one of their paramilitary guys parachuted
Speaker 4: down and was captured.
Speaker 3: Yep. And we also had Operation Eagle Claw around the
Speaker 3: same time nineteen eighty at Desert One, when I believe
Speaker 3: it was eighteen Americans were killed in the desert trying
Speaker 3: to rescue the American hostages. So there's a lot of
Speaker 3: US activity going on over there trying to kind of
Speaker 3: take control of the situation, and we never quite got
Speaker 3: our hands around it. And that's the reason we have
Speaker 3: JASOK today. It's because of Operation Eagle Claw, where we realized, like, hey,
Speaker 3: we don't work together very well in something like this
Speaker 3: very specialized problem. We need to have a unified command
Speaker 3: that can do this kind of national level activity.
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk a little bit about the proxy.
Speaker 1: As you mentioned a little bit about Hesibel and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Hasbal obviously came up starting in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: two right during the war, you know, in high splod
Speaker 1: being you know, Rand's chief proxy essentially close.
Speaker 3: Yes, is a lot more nuanced than a lot of
Speaker 3: people understand. I mentioned Mustafa Chamaran founding Amal in Lebanon
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 1: In by like going to school in Berkeley, banging co
Speaker 1: Ed's in California.
Speaker 3: Oh for sure.
Speaker 1: You know what, I got a sick idea, dude, that's
Speaker 1: fucking star fuckings.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, let's get some guns.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: He went to Lebanon, and uh, there's actually a lot
Speaker 3: of connected history between Lebanon and Iran, like culturally because
Speaker 3: the Persian Empire used to rule over Lebanon. So there's
Speaker 3: a lot of connection there, right, especially in Jubble Ali
Speaker 3: and Abu Musa, which is a mountain in the south
Speaker 3: of Lebanon. There's a lot of Shia clerics that are
Speaker 3: Iranian that have lived for centuries in South Lebanon. So
Speaker 3: there's already like this deep, deep connection going on there.
Speaker 3: And you remember Israel had been harassing Lebanese territory since
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy eight. Really nineteen seventy five was the first incursion.
Speaker 3: We also had Operation Blue Bat in nineteen fifty eight
Speaker 3: when President I think it was Johnson kimber Wish president,
Speaker 3: but we the United States invaded lebanon nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 3: We sent a bunch of Marines in there to stabilize
Speaker 3: the Christian leadership against Was that Eisenhower, I guess it
Speaker 3: was Eisenhower, Yeah, before Kennedy. Yep. Yes, that was Operation
Speaker 3: Blue Bat. Very interesting thing we don't really talk about.
Speaker 3: So there's been a lot of Israeli and US interests.
Speaker 3: Remember I said after nineteen fifty six, Britain and France
Speaker 3: pulled back and the US came in. That was the
Speaker 3: US coming in nineteen fifty eight, Operations Bran.
Speaker 1: If France leave in the fifties, the US and the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union Russia are like trying to fill the vacuum essentially.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep. And remember the Russians are supporting Syria. The
Speaker 3: Assad family, which just had a coup took over the country.
Speaker 3: In that period of time, so the Soviets are backing Syria,
Speaker 3: the US is backing Israel. It's only a matter of
Speaker 3: time before there is a conflict or you know, a clash.
Speaker 3: And we had already co opted Jordan. There's something called
Speaker 3: No Beef, which was the name of the covert operation
Speaker 3: to recruit the king to become a US asset. That's
Speaker 3: why the king's son is a US citizen. Has a
Speaker 3: whole other story, but that was happening at the same time.
Speaker 3: So the US had already bought Jordan. We were working
Speaker 3: on Israel. Soviets are working on Syria. And there's these
Speaker 3: Lebanese people who are like, stay out of my country
Speaker 3: to everybody. Israel kept coming in nineteen seventy five, nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy eight, the PLO was there. Israel invaded nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: two to come after the PLO. The PLO were gone
Speaker 3: within three months September is when they left to Triple
Speaker 3: or to Tunis. They were gone in Algeria as well,
Speaker 3: and Israel State.
Speaker 1: And they accomplished.
Speaker 3: They stayed. So they actually went up to the Latani River,
Speaker 3: which sounds familiar, and then Ariel Sharon said, well, if
Speaker 3: we've gone this far, we should keep going, and the
Speaker 3: Israeli government said, no, you shouldn't, and he said, well,
Speaker 3: who's in Lebanon, me, not you, And they actually kept
Speaker 3: going up to be Root, and that's how they got
Speaker 3: into Bay Route. So you can imagine some people that
Speaker 3: were pretty upset that this was going on, and they
Speaker 3: saw this as an existential threat to their existence and
Speaker 3: other things as well. And there were a lot of
Speaker 3: different groups that resisted the Israeli occupation, which by the way,
Speaker 3: lasted till the year two thousand, eighteen years. So in
Speaker 3: those early years, one group broke off from Amal because
Speaker 3: Amal was not as violent as some of the people
Speaker 3: wanted them to be. Amal was the main resistance force
Speaker 3: down there, led by Nabi Berry, who was actually still
Speaker 3: the Speaker of Parliament in Lebanon today. This group, called
Speaker 3: Islamic Amal broke off that contributed to what became Hesbala.
Speaker 3: He had another group called Islamic Jihad, which was led
Speaker 3: by Imad Mugnia, who the US and Israel killed in
Speaker 3: Syria a few years ago. These different groups were all separate.
Speaker 3: They were not one group, but they had one common enemy,
Speaker 3: which again familiar refrained. They had a common enemy. They
Speaker 3: banded together. This guy named Musawi led them. Musawi was
Speaker 3: assassinated by Israel in nineteen ninety one, by the way,
Speaker 3: and that's why Hassan Nosrola took over Hesbula. So Musawi
Speaker 3: was leading Hasbola his little organization, which wasn't called Habala yet,
Speaker 3: they didn't really have a name. The Syrians came in
Speaker 3: and they said, hey, we noticed that you guys are
Speaker 3: fighting Israel. We're fighting Israel too, because remember the Syrians
Speaker 3: also invaded Lebanon. Syrian said we will back you. And
Speaker 3: then the multinational force came in there to try to
Speaker 3: stabilize the country nineteen eighty two. Multinational force was the US, France.
Speaker 3: You had some Italians there, and it was the French
Speaker 3: embassy that was actually hit first, the French barracks. They
Speaker 3: also tried to blow up the Italian barracks, but no
Speaker 3: Italians were actually sleeping in the barracks that were sleeping outside,
Speaker 3: so there was no damage there. And they struck the US,
Speaker 3: the CIA compound and the US embassy. This was all
Speaker 3: in opposition to the multinational force that came in there
Speaker 3: to support Israel inside of Lebanon. So Israel asked for
Speaker 3: our help to come in and support their invasion of Lebanon.
Speaker 3: This is why a lot of Shia and Lebanon are
Speaker 3: opposed to the in Lebanon because they see it as
Speaker 3: the US came in there and helped Israel occupy their land. Right,
Speaker 3: and the malt National Force did leave after the US
Speaker 3: embassy bombing nineteen eighty three October. The US was there
Speaker 3: for about a year, but in that period of time
Speaker 3: they felt the US was on Israel side. So they said, well,
Speaker 3: we have one common enemy is the United States. The
Speaker 3: US is supporting Israel in our country and like taking
Speaker 3: away our land and hurting our people and murdering people
Speaker 3: like and it's true, it was happening, and so I
Speaker 3: mean it was war. Plus the Syrians were like telling
Speaker 3: them like, yeah, those are your enemies, and here's some
Speaker 3: weapons to fight them. By the way, so and Iran
Speaker 3: was also coming in there and saying the same thing.
Speaker 3: Because these are Shia people. They're like, hey, we're Shia,
Speaker 3: you're Shia. We had just had a revolution, we got
Speaker 3: this war against Saddam over here. Those guys in Syria,
Speaker 3: some of them are Sunni Saddam Sunni. Those guys are Jews.
Speaker 3: We don't like them either. Here, let's support you.
Speaker 1: There was more nuance to Christians.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, and the Americans were only supporting the Christian
Speaker 3: Lebanese government, not the Sunni or the Shia parts of
Speaker 3: the government. So again it's like this this alien country
Speaker 3: in here, like running around with guns and blowing stuff
Speaker 3: up and like causing problems everywhere. In Israel too, doing
Speaker 3: the same thing. You had the sovereign and Shatila massacre
Speaker 3: where over a thousand civilians were murdered in two days
Speaker 3: by the Israeli controlled U Katab party, which is a
Speaker 3: political party in Lebanon now, but it was called the
Speaker 3: Falangis back then. That Ariel Sharon watched himself. He was there,
Speaker 3: watched it, witnessed it allows it to happen. That was
Speaker 3: just one massacre. There were many massacres in Lebanon all
Speaker 3: the way through the eighteen years. You know. There were
Speaker 3: two torture prisons in South Lebanon, and like so I'm
Speaker 3: just mentioning all this as like context of like why
Speaker 3: do they like people ask like why do they hate us?
Speaker 1: Yeah? The holdop one day and we're like, you know
Speaker 1: what fuck did yous fucked those Americans too, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, like let's kill them all.
Speaker 2: They hate us, but guys, we're free.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, yeah, yeah. It's really because we were there,
Speaker 3: like shooting people in front of them, you know. That's
Speaker 3: that's where that came from.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: And of course you know times have changed, things are different,
Speaker 3: the world is different, but memories are there. You know,
Speaker 3: Like if you go to Lebanon, like I've been there
Speaker 3: several times, and there are still bullet holes from us.
Speaker 3: They're still bombed out areas that the Israelis bombed out,
Speaker 3: not just the recent ones but the ones from the beginning,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 4: So if you're people in that part of the world,
Speaker 4: they talk about Sych's pea co like it happened last month.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I was in Iraq in twenty sixteen, in Kurdistan
Speaker 3: and I was trying to go to a source meeting
Speaker 3: and I got interrupted because there was this giant parade
Speaker 3: coming down the street of guys crying younger than me,
Speaker 3: carrying signs that said like down with the British, fuck
Speaker 3: sex Pecou, like on the on the one hundred year
Speaker 3: anniversary of sex Pecou insane. And Americans don't even know
Speaker 3: what that.
Speaker 1: Is, right, and it's got it honestly, frankly, like as
Speaker 1: an American, right, we were you know, America was born
Speaker 1: through a revolution and established freedom as shitty as it
Speaker 1: might have become ready. Like the fact is where democracy
Speaker 1: I You can't help but kind of feel for those people, right,
Speaker 1: because they want to be able to self determine their country,
Speaker 1: have self determination, have some self respect and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and not have other outward countries, you know, using them
Speaker 1: as a pawn, whether it's a pawn between capitalism, communism
Speaker 1: during the Cold War or something else, right, Like, they
Speaker 1: want to be able to make their own decisions about
Speaker 1: their country.
Speaker 3: But even in America, like when we were our revolution,
Speaker 3: we only won that because the French came to fight British, right,
Speaker 3: you know, that was a great power competition. We were
Speaker 3: the surrogate force. We happened to have a great success
Speaker 3: later on, but we wouldn't have had the successes we
Speaker 3: had without you know, Lafayette and all these guys like
Speaker 3: coming across and helping us out, with helping George Washington,
Speaker 3: he was like he was the partner for us leader.
Speaker 3: You know, they're training us and we were the surrogates,
Speaker 3: and you know, they were advising and assisting us and
Speaker 3: accompanying us in combat. And that's you know, still to
Speaker 3: this day, very similar happening in the Middle East or
Speaker 3: the British. Yeah, people should really read the Declaration of Independence,
Speaker 3: like the list of things, the litany of problems they
Speaker 3: had with the king, and think about, like people have
Speaker 3: these problems with governments today. You know, you can't just
Speaker 3: be like, well, you guys should just accept our freedom.
Speaker 3: It's like, well, I mean, they might have actual legitimate
Speaker 3: grievances going on here in addition to some stuff that
Speaker 3: might also not be legitimate. But think about like Afghanistan
Speaker 3: when Hamid Karzai came in there and we're like, hey, guys,
Speaker 3: here's your new constitution. Take it. We didn't do that
Speaker 3: for our own constitution, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Yah? All right, So we're in the eighties. Now has
Speaker 1: Belah Syria that fucking you know powder keg? When do
Speaker 1: we start hearing about Iranian nuclear weapons?
Speaker 3: So you had a guy named aq Khan. He was Pakistani.
Speaker 3: He had these centrifuges that he was selling to people.
Speaker 3: And this is important to put in the context of
Speaker 3: Israel's nuclear weapon program, which was older. Israel got its
Speaker 3: first nuclear weapons exposure testing exposure in Algeria from the
Speaker 3: French in the nineteen fifties, and there were some Israeli
Speaker 3: scientists that were there that were invited there to witness
Speaker 3: these nuclear tests. There were some other Israeli scientists in
Speaker 3: the United States that actually took some uranium from the
Speaker 3: United States to Israel and used that as like the
Speaker 3: seed for the Demona reactor in Israel and the weapons
Speaker 3: program as well. There was also the Vila weapons test
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy eight, which was a highly classified detection
Speaker 3: the US had of a nuclear test in the Cific
Speaker 3: Ocean south of Africa. This was and is considered to
Speaker 3: be a South African joint Israeli nuclear weapons test with
Speaker 3: the apartheid government of South Africa testing out nuclear weapons.
Speaker 3: If you remember, South Africa gave up its nuclear program
Speaker 3: after apartheid ended. All their stuff left South Africa. Nobody
Speaker 3: asks where it went. It went to Israel. So that's
Speaker 3: important to know because you have this other country, Iran
Speaker 3: that's looking at Israel like they have a nuclear weapon.
Speaker 3: They have probably one hundred of them, they have a reactor.
Speaker 3: They have not signed the Biological Weapons Treaty, they have
Speaker 3: not signed the Chemical Weapons Treaty, they haven't signed the
Speaker 3: Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, they haven't signed the NPT Nuclear
Speaker 3: Non Proliferation Treaty. Like, this is a country that clearly
Speaker 3: has weapons and intends to use them. By not I
Speaker 3: mean it's indicated by their insistence on not acknowledging them
Speaker 3: and also not signing these agreements. That's like rationally what
Speaker 3: they're thinking. They're like, we need something like that. So
Speaker 3: in the nineties they start doing that, they start researching,
Speaker 3: like can we do this? Well, Ayatola Kamani says like,
Speaker 3: you can do nuclear research, but you can't make weapons,
Speaker 3: and he actually issued a fatwa that said no weapons,
Speaker 3: but research was okay. And this was kind of the
Speaker 3: genesis of that. It was exposed in two thousand and
Speaker 3: three by the Mujadini Kalk. The Mujadini Kalk are not
Speaker 3: intelligence collectors, they're intelligence assets. It was Masad that collected
Speaker 3: this intelligence and then had the Mujinini Kalk announce that
Speaker 3: Iran had a nuclear weapons program. And actually in the
Speaker 3: early two thousands, like two thousand, two thousand and three,
Speaker 3: Meridigan was the Masad director. He was told by Natyahu,
Speaker 3: we're no longer interested in the PLO and Palestinian issues.
Speaker 3: We're now focusing on Iran, has Bulah and Hamas, and
Speaker 3: they shifted their priorities against Iran. Part of that nuclear
Speaker 3: weapons announcement or part of that shift was the nuclear
Speaker 3: weapons announcement that the Mujahideen made. Up till two thousand
Speaker 3: and three, the Mujadini Kalk was a terrorist organization in
Speaker 3: the United States. We had them labeled as a terrorist organization. Miraculously,
Speaker 3: that same month that the announcement was made, we took
Speaker 3: the designation off. That's crazy or coincidental happened. Suddenly they
Speaker 3: started being on our side, and we started giving them
Speaker 3: diplomatic protection and things like this. And now suddenly, after
Speaker 3: two thousand and three, you start to see a lot
Speaker 3: of this stuff released to the public.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, why did it happen in two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: I wonder it.
Speaker 3: So there was this discussion in the nineteen nineties, nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety six. I believe it was when Netanyahu first came
Speaker 3: to power. The very first time, they wanted this idea
Speaker 3: of removing extreme governments from Israel's periphery. So they got
Speaker 3: Egypt in nineteen seventy eight seventy nine with Saddad to
Speaker 3: agree to stop doing that. They got Jordan in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety three. Then they said, well, these other countries are
Speaker 3: just never going to sign a peace treaty, so what
Speaker 3: we need to do is regime change for the really
Speaker 3: serious ones. Those serious ones are Syria, Iraq, and Iran.
Speaker 3: This was part of the push that Israel had with
Speaker 3: the United States, like we need to change the regime
Speaker 3: in Iran, change the regime in Syria, and change it
Speaker 3: in Iraq. And they actually struck the nuclear reactor in Syria,
Speaker 3: they struck the nuclear facility in Iraq. They didn't get
Speaker 3: into Iran because they couldn't reach that far at the time, right,
Speaker 3: so who could do it? Oh U to us could
Speaker 3: do it. So there was this push since the early
Speaker 3: two thousands to convince the United States that Iran was
Speaker 3: part of this problem. And if you remember the famous
Speaker 3: George Bush State of the Union, the Axis of Evil
Speaker 3: that caught the Irunians off guard. They were like, wait
Speaker 3: a minute, we had just given you guys intelligence about
Speaker 3: what was going on with Al Kaida in Afghanistan. And
Speaker 3: they did they had given us, like actual raw intelligence
Speaker 3: from their collection in Afghanistan. They're trying to work with us.
Speaker 3: The Syrians also had given US intelligence after nine to eleven,
Speaker 3: saying like, hey, there's Al Qaida guys here and here
Speaker 3: and here, and you can do what you want with them.
Speaker 3: That shocked those guys, but it was part of this
Speaker 3: push to alienate those countries. And as I said, Israel
Speaker 3: couldn't do itself.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's I wish I could remember exactly where it
Speaker 4: was published, but it was in a memoir They wrote
Speaker 4: about a meeting that happened during George W. Bush's presidency
Speaker 4: where the discussion about invading and doing a regime change
Speaker 4: in Syria came up and Dick Cheney he was the
Speaker 4: only one in support. This was post two thousand and three.
Speaker 4: They had gotten burned by the war in Iraq, obviously,
Speaker 4: and Cheney was all about it, but everyone else in
Speaker 4: the room in the National Security Council was.
Speaker 1: Like, nah, oh sorry, yeah, very Cheney. Thing to do
Speaker 1: is just so be down to go into it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. There also an intelligence assessment in two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven that basically said a US intelligence assessment that
Speaker 1: said that the Iranians were not building a nuclear weapon.
Speaker 3: That's correct. And if you've seen you know that, you
Speaker 3: could probably make a montage of all the clips of
Speaker 3: net Yahoo in the UN holding up a piece of
Speaker 3: paper with a bomb saying like tomorrow, yeah, two weeks
Speaker 3: to exactly. And he's been saying that since that two
Speaker 3: thousand and three announcement. I bet you if you asked
Speaker 3: him now, he'd still say it, even though we've completely
Speaker 3: obliterated all their nuclear materials. But that's part of what
Speaker 3: they want to do, is to change the regime, to
Speaker 3: have control over that regional actor in a way that
Speaker 3: they can they can manage. That's the end state.
Speaker 4: And throughout the two thousands and twenty ten, there were
Speaker 4: all these like American joint American Israeli programs like developing
Speaker 4: new bunker buster bombs and things like this that was
Speaker 4: all specifically targeted for Iran, and there were all kinds
Speaker 4: of plans drawn up that you would have, you know,
Speaker 4: American submarines and Israelis would come in and do this,
Speaker 4: and that basically regime change plans for Iran. And my
Speaker 4: understanding is that Obama had the opportunity that the plan
Speaker 4: was put in front of him and he said no,
Speaker 4: and you know, yeah, and actually.
Speaker 3: The Obama situation. Obama had his idea about Iran was
Speaker 3: to use the diplomatic instrument of national power as the
Speaker 3: number one instrument. And that's how we got to Stucksnet
Speaker 3: because it was a dual track.
Speaker 2: Coviction supporting a diplomatic effort.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, Yeah, So they're putting pressure on the program while
Speaker 3: also trying to negotiate the program. That was the way
Speaker 3: that was working, and it worked.
Speaker 1: Is real way of doing that just murdering nuclear scientists and.
Speaker 3: That came later twenty twelve. They killed six of them
Speaker 3: in one year. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So stucks Net, like as the layman, obviously, I've heard
Speaker 1: of it. I've read about it slightly. My understanding is
Speaker 1: that Stuck's Net was developed by the United States, We
Speaker 1: shared it with Israel, and then Israel deployed it without
Speaker 1: our note, without our Okay, So that's.
Speaker 3: Not exactly accurate. So it's actually called Operation Olympic Games.
Speaker 3: The reason it was called Olympic Games is because there's
Speaker 3: five rings in the Olympics logo. Each of those rings
Speaker 3: was one of the five countries participating in Stucksnet. Israel
Speaker 3: and the United States for two of those five countries.
Speaker 3: There were also three European countries participating as well, and
Speaker 3: the reason all of these countries were participating is because
Speaker 3: they all had some steak in. They had a problem
Speaker 3: with this nuclear program in some way. For example, Germany
Speaker 3: was one of the five and the reason Germany participated
Speaker 3: is because Iran was using the Siemens produced centrifuges and
Speaker 3: they didn't like that. The Germans also provided a ton
Speaker 3: of intelligence on the Semens centrifuges to help the US
Speaker 3: build the zero day attack against the Semens centrifuges. That's
Speaker 3: how we knew how to actually exploit them the way
Speaker 3: that we did, which is very creative. It's because we
Speaker 3: were given the schematics by Germany as a participant in
Speaker 3: this program.
Speaker 4: Siemens has a pretty long history backstory with the CIA,
Speaker 4: I believe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's another episode probably, Yeah.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because actually in the nineties the Germans were training
Speaker 3: the Iranian intelligence on how to do intelops against the West.
Speaker 3: So that's a whole other thing. But they had kind
Speaker 3: of cleaned up their act by the early two thousands
Speaker 3: and they were actually helping us at that point. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it was the B and D. The B and D
Speaker 3: is also the one that owned the curveball asset in
Speaker 3: the nineteen nineties that gave us false information about the
Speaker 3: weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So that's another Germany contribution.
Speaker 1: Home run.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks, No, it's.
Speaker 3: A curve ball, not a home run. Yeah, but uh yeah.
Speaker 3: So what happened was they put they got these zero
Speaker 3: day exploits, which means exploits that you know, the moment
Speaker 3: you use them, they disappear, right, they lose their efficacy
Speaker 3: because they're so bad. They's so they attack of vulnerability
Speaker 3: in such a way that you can only use it once.
Speaker 3: It's like a one shot thing. The US came up
Speaker 3: with a couple of them that were within the chain
Speaker 3: of reactor elements there, so it wasn't just the centrifugees.
Speaker 3: It was other stuff in there as well, in natons,
Speaker 3: And what they're able to do was actually slow down
Speaker 3: the centrifuges on demand using this kind of program sequence
Speaker 3: on these things called programmable logic controllers or PLCs, and
Speaker 3: it would basically speed them up and slow them down
Speaker 3: and degrade the process of enrichment, but not destroy it
Speaker 3: and also not let it happen perfectly. It was like
Speaker 3: the perfect gray area in between where it was just
Speaker 3: enough to degrade the activity. It was pretty brilliant and
Speaker 3: it was done with these zero day exploits. The real
Speaker 3: win there is not the zero days, because there are
Speaker 3: zero days everywhere. It was that they were able to
Speaker 3: jump an air gap, which means the reactor system was
Speaker 3: separate on it was not on a network that was
Speaker 3: attached to anything. They were able to actually jump the
Speaker 3: air gap between a computer attached to the world and
Speaker 3: a computer not attached to anything. This was the pure
Speaker 3: stroke of genius in stuck snet.
Speaker 4: And is there any idea how they did that? Did
Speaker 4: they have somebody like put a USB stick into it?
Speaker 4: How did that come about?
Speaker 3: That's exactly what happens. So there's actually a control laptop
Speaker 3: in there in the in the reactor sub bay where
Speaker 3: you know it's it's this computer that's hooked up because
Speaker 3: program will logic controllers use machine language to work, and
Speaker 3: that laptop has to kind of work with the machine language,
Speaker 3: you know, without getting too technical, it's basically like a
Speaker 3: way for the human to interface with the machine language.
Speaker 3: And that gentleman did go in there with a USB
Speaker 3: thumb drive that gentleman was unwitting to what he was doing,
Speaker 3: put the thumb drive in there and was able to
Speaker 3: deliver the exploit package to the reactor system.
Speaker 1: And this is all don't take don't leave your laptops,
Speaker 1: your USB's around hot ladies, guys, just remember that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Actually we had a problem. I was at NSA
Speaker 3: at this time, and we had a problem because we
Speaker 3: had USB's also in our computers back then, and as
Speaker 3: soon as the exploit was getting developed, all of us
Speaker 3: in the whole NSA enterprise had to switch out our
Speaker 3: laptops and change everything, and all the USB imports were
Speaker 3: disabled because there was a counter intelligence concern that once
Speaker 3: we use this zero day it will be understood and
Speaker 3: will immediately we'll all be exploited.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's just so much more, like, so much
Speaker 1: to cover, you know, in conjunction obviously with stucks net,
Speaker 1: you know, we do. Obama or administration was trying to
Speaker 1: made it happen. It took a few years to get
Speaker 1: the JCPOA together. Let's talk a little bit about that
Speaker 1: and how it came, how it came up, how it
Speaker 1: was established.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so basically what you had was these five countries
Speaker 3: plus Germany, so the five countries of the National Security
Speaker 3: Council or the UN Security Council representatives and Germany P
Speaker 3: five plus one is what it was called. And they
Speaker 3: all had the shared interest of basically using kind of
Speaker 3: an atoms for peace approach, which is the Eisenhower idea
Speaker 3: of how countries should have nuclear programs, like let them
Speaker 3: have it, but let us participate in it. That was
Speaker 3: the kind of concept that was there. So they're trying
Speaker 3: to like make it a new way to do that
Speaker 3: where instead of obliterating their nuclear program, because if you
Speaker 3: tell people they can't have something, they tend to go
Speaker 3: want to get it. So instead, let's actually participate in
Speaker 3: their nuclear program. And this is Russia there also in China,
Speaker 3: so like there are actors who are actually aligned with
Speaker 3: the Iran that were willing to come in there and
Speaker 3: help out to make sure that Iran could have a
Speaker 3: peaceful nuclear research program but not weapons. And the best
Speaker 3: way to know that is to be really close to
Speaker 3: the program and see it and observe it and know like, okay,
Speaker 3: they're not enriching past x percentage. And so John Kerrey
Speaker 3: actually went there and met with Mohammed Zarif in Switzerland
Speaker 3: numerous times. They had laid hours and hours of time
Speaker 3: together talking about this and actually like really working this
Speaker 3: out all in secret, Like the world knew the negotiations
Speaker 3: were happening, but we didn't know what the substance of
Speaker 3: the negotiations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we weren't screaming that stuff on like Twitter or
Speaker 1: anything like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So in twenty fifteen, we finally reached that agreement.
Speaker 3: The thing was, this was a nuclear agreement, not a
Speaker 3: comprehensive treaty with Iran or something. So it was missing
Speaker 3: the ballistic missile component, it was missing the surrogate force component.
Speaker 3: This was where a lot of the backlash came to
Speaker 3: this agreement because people said, well, this isn't covering Hasbola,
Speaker 3: it's not covering ICBMs, And the thing was like, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's not what this is about. This is about nuclear
Speaker 3: research and nuclear weapons specific. It's very specific, and if
Speaker 3: you read the JCPOA, it's extremely specific. It's just the program.
Speaker 3: And it was a victory in its own, like, it's
Speaker 3: amazing that we even got to that point because we
Speaker 3: disagreed in a lot of things as country I mean
Speaker 3: five countries, Russia and China agreed in this thing with
Speaker 3: the United States. That's amazing, not just the Iran that
Speaker 3: Iran agreed, but that those two countries agreed. Right, So
Speaker 3: we had that twenty fifteen, and Trump, when he was
Speaker 3: elected in twenty sixteen, immediately began saying that they were
Speaker 3: going to withdraw from it. And so twenty seventeen the
Speaker 3: withdrawal threats grew louder and louder, and the twenty eighteen
Speaker 3: he finally withdrew and also kicked Iran out of the
Speaker 3: Swift banking system. Swift is the system you used to
Speaker 3: actually have, you know, finance transfers across the world, so
Speaker 3: that means Iran was cut off from the world banking system.
Speaker 3: We ramped up sanctions, we pulled out of the nuclear agreement,
Speaker 3: and instead of Iran like immediately going and building a
Speaker 3: nuclear bomb, they stayed on the diplomatic track and tried
Speaker 3: to slowly, slowly get back to the plan. They said, look,
Speaker 3: we're going to do this ratcheted program where if you
Speaker 3: don't agree by this point, we're going to do this thing.
Speaker 3: If you don't agree on the next thing, we're going
Speaker 3: to do this thing, and they actually laid it out
Speaker 3: and they did that. They ratcheted up in Richmond, for example,
Speaker 3: very slowly. You know, they said, okay, next time.
Speaker 1: There was a bunch of other countries involved in this.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just US in the It wasn't by lad.
Speaker 3: Or right right. The problem is it was an executive
Speaker 3: action on the US side. It wasn't a treaty, which
Speaker 3: means that any president, as the executive has the ability
Speaker 3: to pull out of it. There's nothing wrong with that, Like,
Speaker 3: that's how it's designed. That's supposed to be that way. So,
Speaker 3: you know, because we in the US knew. I remember,
Speaker 3: if you remember, this was a Republican controlled Senate when
Speaker 3: this thing was first thought up, and Republican controlled Congress
Speaker 3: who did not agree with the JCPOA from the very beginning.
Speaker 3: So you know, Obama knew that, like, hey, I can't
Speaker 3: make this into a treaty. I have to do an
Speaker 3: executive agreement instead, because Congress will never approve they have
Speaker 3: to ratify a treaty. They'll never approve it.
Speaker 1: Why would they? Why would they do that? Right, a
Speaker 1: treaty to stop the enrichment of uranium and to not
Speaker 1: have another country that is looked at as a belligerent
Speaker 1: country to you and says, get a nuclear weapon. Why
Speaker 1: would Congress ever act in the interest of the world
Speaker 1: or the United States? It's wild to me.
Speaker 3: Well they thought it just you know, it's missing Hesbola
Speaker 3: and the ICBMs.
Speaker 1: And that's that's the problem. I get it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what fast forwards. Can we be honest?
Speaker 3: So we fast forward and Trump has now made Iran
Speaker 3: the most sanctioned country on the planet. This was twenty
Speaker 3: eighteen when Pompeo was the Sex State and all that
Speaker 3: before he was CIA director, and that was his plan
Speaker 3: was basically like, hey, instead of like negotiating with them,
Speaker 3: let's sanction them into submission. And I've said this before.
Speaker 3: Sanctions are perfectly designed to hurt a capitalist economy. They're
Speaker 3: terrible on an authoritarian government because authoritarian governments already have
Speaker 3: their own access to assets. They don't care about the
Speaker 3: regular economic system enriching them. They don't care if the
Speaker 3: people are harmed and starving. And so we had over
Speaker 3: seven hundred and fifty sanctions on them after twenty nineteen,
Speaker 3: and it actually made them richer. And there's a graph
Speaker 3: that I have in my book that you can look
Speaker 3: at where it's like an upward pointing arrow. As soon
Speaker 3: as we pulled out a swift, pulled them out of swift.
Speaker 3: As soon as we sanctioned them. Every year they're riches
Speaker 3: of that small group of elites running the country doubled.
Speaker 3: It made them extremely wealthy because now no Iranian can
Speaker 3: participate in the banking system, even regular ones. So guess
Speaker 3: who controls the banks in the country. The IERGC now
Speaker 3: controls the entire black market, and they're taxing you and
Speaker 3: charging you. If you want an iPhone and Iran you
Speaker 3: can have it. It's just four thousand dollars and all
Speaker 3: that overhead money goes to the IERGC. So it basically
Speaker 3: served to enrich the government and the people that run
Speaker 3: the government and their families and all that. They're super
Speaker 3: wealthy now because of how we exited the JCPOA.
Speaker 1: And as we're exiting the JCPOA, and that's you know,
Speaker 1: beginning to slowly fall apart, well least on our end
Speaker 1: after sanctioning them and all that. Our intel network inside
Speaker 1: of Iran was compromised twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, so we had a lot of human recruited
Speaker 3: assets inside of Iran that we were meeting with inside
Speaker 3: of Iran, not just CIA, but also some dd very
Speaker 3: specialized collection entities working in there, and they were using
Speaker 3: certain ways of communicating that got compromised. Once one of
Speaker 3: those was compromised, the regime was able to analyze that
Speaker 3: and look for patterns and how that communication happened across
Speaker 3: the Internet, and they were able to identify many, many
Speaker 3: recruited assets that also used that communication method. And the
Speaker 3: truth is, we got kind of complacent with our covert
Speaker 3: communication methods and started using the same ones over and
Speaker 3: over with multiple assets, which allowed them to be compromised
Speaker 3: once that communication method was discovered. And so what the
Speaker 3: regime did was they let the meetings go on for
Speaker 3: a while, and they actually let they capture some of
Speaker 3: the recordings of those meetings and then publicize them, kind
Speaker 3: of what the Cubans did in the nineteen eighties when
Speaker 3: they there's a bunch of double agents in Cuba, very
Speaker 3: similar thing. The Russians actually released video of US dead
Speaker 3: drops and stuff like that with sources inside of Cuba.
Speaker 3: So the Iranians did that. They capture a lot of
Speaker 3: these Iranians that we're working with. The US executed them.
Speaker 3: So then we're left with no assets in Iran almost
Speaker 3: like let's say almost none. Well, who still has assets
Speaker 3: in Iran Israel? So now the US has to rely
Speaker 3: on Israeli gathered intelligence, like filtered through Israeli intelligence systems
Speaker 3: and released to us what they have proved to be
Speaker 3: released to us. That's the intel that we now have
Speaker 3: on human intelligence in Iran. We still have signals, intelligence
Speaker 3: and other mechanisms, but the human is now reduced to
Speaker 3: a third country providing it to us. Every country has
Speaker 3: their own interests, every country, Even when we share intelligence
Speaker 3: with the British or whomever, we have decided what we
Speaker 3: will share and how we will share it for our
Speaker 3: own interests. It's not because we love them, right, and
Speaker 3: Israel is the same way. I'm not making it, I'm
Speaker 3: not defending them, but I'm just saying, like, you cannot
Speaker 3: expect them to share the raw stuff because that's just
Speaker 3: not how it happens. Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. So that
Speaker 3: means that we probably got some biased intelligence about the
Speaker 3: situation on the ground in Iran.
Speaker 1: So I mean we had like the National Assessment intelligence
Speaker 1: assessment that was obviously flying in the like you know,
Speaker 1: going up against what Israel was giving us and telling
Speaker 1: us over the last like year or so, or obviously
Speaker 1: probably before June or twenty five after when we hit
Speaker 1: the nuclear reactors, saying that they weren't I mean, they
Speaker 1: had enriched geranium so sixty percent, but they weren't actively
Speaker 1: going at it. And the weaponization part was still like
Speaker 1: a year or so away, And particularly after the bombing
Speaker 1: in June of twenty twenty five, when we obliterated quote
Speaker 1: unquote their nuclear program, you know, there was no indication
Speaker 1: of any enrichment whatsoever anymore. So why don't we go
Speaker 1: into Iran this time?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So there's these deeply buried facilities that Jack was mentioning.
Speaker 3: We had this whole program about like how do we
Speaker 3: penetrate these deeply buried assets and how do we use
Speaker 3: either weapons to do that or how do we breach them.
Speaker 3: There's like a whole you know, package designed for these
Speaker 3: types of activities. There's a whole element within Jaysock that
Speaker 3: does this. And the reason they had designed that is
Speaker 3: because they thought that that threat was real. Right. Sometimes
Speaker 3: when you have a tool, you want to use it.
Speaker 3: And when someone comes to you and says Hey, that threat,
Speaker 3: that thing you have that you can use, that threat exists,
Speaker 3: you should use it. And I'm not I'm kind of
Speaker 3: oversimplifying here, but that's kind of how the case was
Speaker 3: made to the United States that you have an opportunity,
Speaker 3: You have a one time opportunity. Right now. The regime
Speaker 3: is weak, their air defenses are poor. We have we
Speaker 3: can create air superiorities that you can go in there
Speaker 3: and destroy this and you can have a win, just
Speaker 3: like you had in Venezuela. This is how it was
Speaker 3: framed and it was believed. And again, we don't have
Speaker 3: human assets in Iran the way that we used to,
Speaker 3: so we couldn't really verify even if we wanted to,
Speaker 3: We couldn't easily verify that that was true. Like to
Speaker 3: be able to know what's going on in underground facility,
Speaker 3: you can't really rely on segant, Right, these are deep things.
Speaker 3: You cannot even if someone brought a cell phone in there,
Speaker 3: the cell phone won't work because it just can't. There's
Speaker 3: no transmission between that person and outside the facility.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: If you've ever been in a tunnel that you know,
Speaker 3: you understand how this works. That means you need a
Speaker 3: human source to go in there, or use measurement and
Speaker 3: signature intelligence or Amazon't to measure soil movement density, the
Speaker 3: weight of vehicles, did different things like that, But that
Speaker 3: can only give you inferential information. You can't make deductions
Speaker 3: based on mazont alone. You have to have human to
Speaker 3: corroborate the Mazon't. Well, Israel's the human. We have the Mazont.
Speaker 3: We can see that earth has been moved. We can
Speaker 3: see that very heavy vehicles that are heavier now than
Speaker 3: they were when they got there have left. So we
Speaker 3: can see that something has happened here. We need to
Speaker 3: fill in the blanks. Well, Israel says, We'll fill the
Speaker 3: blanks in for you. They're enriching uranium.
Speaker 2: We know it.
Speaker 3: Here's what we've collected and it was believed. And it's
Speaker 3: hard because we can't just go recruit an asset today
Speaker 3: and be like, hey man, can you go check that
Speaker 3: out for me and let me know if that's true. Right,
Speaker 3: It's super tough to verify this stuff. And we've talked
Speaker 3: about this with battle damage assessment. Even during the war,
Speaker 3: we don't really know if we've destroyed that transporter erector
Speaker 3: launcher really until it fires another missile because we say, oh,
Speaker 3: it wasn't actually destroyed, because you could blow up the tires,
Speaker 3: you could damage the erector, you could damage part of
Speaker 3: the tail fin. The thing's still going to go. You know,
Speaker 3: It's really tough unless you have a guy there saying
Speaker 3: like it's actually destroyed, or I'm the guy that operates it.
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna hit the button because you're paying me
Speaker 3: not to hit the button. Like that's human, right, So
Speaker 3: there's like two different ways you could go after that.
Speaker 3: We don't have any of that. In January, when this
Speaker 3: delegation came to convince our country's leadership to go do
Speaker 3: this operation, I.
Speaker 1: Hear you, right, and like you obviously know that, and
Speaker 1: that they're that their human intelligence that they would be
Speaker 1: feeding us would be tainted or biased. Why didn't How
Speaker 1: didn't they know that? Like how wasn't that taken into
Speaker 1: into the assessment? I guess generally it was right, because
Speaker 1: like the actual national intelligence assessment was like they're not
Speaker 1: doing it, but in the room, like you know. That's
Speaker 1: why I wanted to talk about the intelligence that led
Speaker 1: up to this, because it seems kind of sort of
Speaker 1: like Echoes of Iraq, but in a different type of
Speaker 1: flavor and maybe a little like turbo charge a little bit.
Speaker 1: But you know, and it's it's wild to me because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of smart people out there doing this,
Speaker 1: and how we can continue to make the same mistake
Speaker 1: over and over and over again because we knew how
Speaker 1: it would play out. Maybe we didn't know that they
Speaker 1: would bomb the region. You know that all the all
Speaker 1: of our bases and all of our allies in the region.
Speaker 1: We knew that they would close the straight off hor moves.
Speaker 1: We knew it.
Speaker 4: Well, you are a policy decision that's already been made
Speaker 4: in search of a WMD crisis to justify it, and
Speaker 4: humans are.
Speaker 1: Not mystic Iraq, go ahead, I'm sorry, Joe.
Speaker 3: Well, humans are just so optimistic, like we see a problem,
Speaker 3: we're like, no, it has to be the best outcome.
Speaker 3: And it's very hard for us to like wind ourselves
Speaker 3: down and be like, wait a minute, it might not
Speaker 3: actually work out the way we hope it does. Like
Speaker 3: look back to Desert one, nineteen eighty Operation Eagle Claw.
Speaker 3: You know when they're briefing that to the president, that
Speaker 3: is a wild operation. Like if you look at like
Speaker 3: how it was designed, like this is crazy that you
Speaker 3: guys have all these like logistics hubs and FARPs and
Speaker 3: like there's no way, like even like getting to the
Speaker 3: desert was incredible that they even got to the desert,
Speaker 3: Like the desert was supposed to be a refueling point
Speaker 3: where they continue to terran like hundreds of kilometers north
Speaker 3: like you kidding me, But like people look at that
Speaker 3: and they're like, this could work, guys, this could work,
Speaker 3: you know. And it's very similar like when you all
Speaker 3: want the same thing, it's like you don't need very
Speaker 3: much pushing to go do it, you know. And and
Speaker 3: Trump has wanted this, the people in National Security Council
Speaker 3: have wanted this. Rubio, even though he probably doesn't like
Speaker 3: the way the war is going, he's from a Cuban
Speaker 3: family that fled from an authoritarian state, Like somewhere in
Speaker 3: his soul he's like, we need to get rid of
Speaker 3: these authoritarians like other bad guys, and oh there's a
Speaker 3: threat right now, we should go do something about that,
Speaker 3: you know. So and I think there was only what
Speaker 3: eight guys in the room on the US side when
Speaker 3: this was briefed, Like there weren't experts sitting there to
Speaker 3: like say, hold on guys, have you thought about this?
Speaker 3: Or guys that at least had served in Sentcom during
Speaker 3: the Gulf War and they were like, hey, we remember
Speaker 3: this back. You remember back at their tanker war nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty eight when we had Operation Praying Mantis and we
Speaker 3: had to like try to reflag the Kuwaiti vessels and
Speaker 3: protect them in the straits of Horror moves and that
Speaker 3: didn't work out very well, and we accidentally shot down
Speaker 3: a civilian aircraft with one of our aircraft carriers, Like
Speaker 3: you remember, you remember that? Like there wasn't anyone in
Speaker 3: the room to like bring that up and like remind
Speaker 3: them of this. These were civilian leaders, which is how
Speaker 3: our government designed civilian leadership. Sitting there without any expertise.
Speaker 3: There wasn't like the depth of bench of National Security
Speaker 3: Council advisors in there that you would expect. It was
Speaker 3: people that just don't understand the problem. Hearing people that
Speaker 3: the trust as experts, which is the Israeli briefers, telling
Speaker 3: them like this is real. You guys can probably win
Speaker 3: pretty good chance, you know, and even with intelligence, like
Speaker 3: it's never one hundred percent, even if we have great,
Speaker 3: great data, you still never know, Like there could always
Speaker 3: be some black swan event that comes up and like
Speaker 3: disrupts this whole thing. You know, I mentioned the Tito's Partisans,
Speaker 3: like they luckily succeeded. Wasn't necessarily going to be that way,
Speaker 3: you know. So these guys went in there and basically
Speaker 3: convinced some layman with a lot of power to do
Speaker 3: something that was probably a bad idea.
Speaker 2: And where does that leave us today?
Speaker 4: That it seems like I know, people are maybe allergic
Speaker 4: to the term forever war, and maybe I don't want
Speaker 4: to go that far myself, but it does seem like
Speaker 4: a war that has as of now, no end state,
Speaker 4: there's no strategic end goal. And is it just going
Speaker 4: to continue on until the next administration when they negotiate
Speaker 4: some sort of settlement. I mean, what do you how
Speaker 4: do you see this playing out over the next couple
Speaker 4: of years.
Speaker 3: The way it's right now, it looks like the regime
Speaker 3: is going to be stronger than it was when the
Speaker 3: war started. But before the war started, I mean, and
Speaker 3: that's a result of how we are handling the situation.
Speaker 3: We the West, we the United States. There's still opportunity
Speaker 3: to turn things around if we had the political acumen
Speaker 3: to do so, but it seems that we're not willing
Speaker 3: to use that acumen. Instead, it's it's very hard for
Speaker 3: us to admit that we might have been wrong about
Speaker 3: something we did and turn left or turn right and
Speaker 3: go the other way. Instead, we're kind of digging our heels.
Speaker 3: And I, like I mentioned, I was talking about Iranian
Speaker 3: this morning and he was he was talking about the war,
Speaker 3: and I was telling him, like, you haven't heard them
Speaker 3: mention the Iranian people recently, have you? No, it's about
Speaker 3: the straits of Hormus. Suddenly, wasn't it about the ballistic
Speaker 3: missiles at the beginning, wasn't about the nuclear program? Like
Speaker 3: what happened to all those objectives? It was so hard
Speaker 3: to even hear what the objectives were in the beginning,
Speaker 3: and now it's like the objectives are just a new
Speaker 3: set of objectives.
Speaker 1: There weren't very many objectives either. I remember when they
Speaker 1: first we first started bombing them in February twenty eighth,
Speaker 1: like we didn't know what the plan was. There was
Speaker 1: no plan, there was no actual I guess like they
Speaker 1: had targets. And I think what they're doing is cherry picking,
Speaker 1: like Sandcom, Like what Sandcom's picking to kill and being like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's our that's our strategy. Inst like we're blowing up
Speaker 1: ballistic missiles or we're blown up where they build ballistic
Speaker 1: missiles on the ground or navy ships. So we took
Speaker 1: out their navy. We took out their ballistic missiles. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: we have it, you know, at least like they've reconstituted it.
Speaker 1: You know, we've got nowhere and we see plus stuck
Speaker 1: in this escalation spiral.
Speaker 3: That's the other problem is at Sencom, Like you've got
Speaker 3: these spreadsheets with targets on them, right, some of those
Speaker 3: targets were put on that spreadsheet in like nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: three and they haven't been validated, and they just like
Speaker 3: get turned over and turned over, and these spreadsheets are
Speaker 3: just like continuing through like this is how targeting works.
Speaker 3: You're like, Okay, what's the great coordinate for this location?
Speaker 3: Is that still valid? We think so, like it's still
Speaker 3: physically there. I can see it on the imagery, like
Speaker 3: let's blow it up. But you have no idea if
Speaker 3: that thing is still what you think it was back
Speaker 3: then when you put that on the spreadsheet.
Speaker 1: Blew up that that girls' school.
Speaker 3: I mean you can even see the satellite imagery of
Speaker 3: that school, like in the past five years, how it's
Speaker 3: been built up around that facility that we were trying
Speaker 3: to strike, and like we just didn't have We didn't
Speaker 3: use that imagery. We used a spreadsheet that said this
Speaker 3: is an IRGC target, and we struck on Google.
Speaker 1: It actually says something whatever school, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but we don't use Google. We use our own
Speaker 3: proprietary you know stuff. And the way it's literally a
Speaker 3: spreadsheet that has like the targeting on it. It's got
Speaker 3: the MGRS, the tended to grid on it, and like
Speaker 3: some other stuff on there, and you're like, this looks
Speaker 3: like a target. And we did the same thing in
Speaker 3: Operation Allied Force in nineteen ninety nine. We bombed the
Speaker 3: Chinese embassy by accident because we had a grid that
Speaker 3: we thought was an enemy grid and it was wrong.
Speaker 3: It was it was like a number off and we
Speaker 3: didn't validate the target. We just blew it up.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I don't know. I didn't even think
Speaker 1: about an ending to this show.
Speaker 3: But uh, well there is no ending, just like the war.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's still going. We're actually on day six now
Speaker 1: of continuous bombing every night by the US into Iran
Speaker 1: and Iran shooting and missiles at you know, our allies,
Speaker 1: our bases and stuff. I mean I I in a
Speaker 1: few years from now, when this actual comes out, like
Speaker 1: the actualist battle damage assessment comes out, I would not
Speaker 1: be surprised if it was like twenty or thirty billion
Speaker 1: dollars worth of damage like on our radar systems and
Speaker 1: everything like that. And around the area. Our fifth Fleet
Speaker 1: HQ is essentially fucking abandoned. You know, our aircraft carriers
Speaker 1: are hanging out like three hundred and fifty miles into
Speaker 1: the Gulf of Aman. Yeah, you know they're not We're
Speaker 1: not exactly showing our you know, walking around. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: not strutting around at all. We're at a safe distance.
Speaker 1: And it's it almost makes you think, like, what's the
Speaker 1: what's the actual point I know, not just of our
Speaker 1: aircraft carriers, but in terms of like projecting power in
Speaker 1: any way.
Speaker 4: Right, Yes, we've got the Navy can't secure freedom of
Speaker 4: navigation through the strengths of her moves.
Speaker 2: It's like, why do we have a navy? Explain that
Speaker 2: to me, especially aircraft carriers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, makes no sense. It's just a big target. It's
Speaker 1: a big target. It's a big target that's got probably
Speaker 1: thirty billion dollars of hardware on it, plus five thousand people.
Speaker 3: But hey, it gave people jobs in Virginia to manufacture it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pro economy, it's pro business. Good god, guys,
Speaker 1: I never feel good better about these ever. I think
Speaker 1: I'm done. I think I'm gonna quit this show. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do like a good news show. We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about like dogs getting adopted and shit like that, or
Speaker 1: like a cancer or like cancer research that's working out,
Speaker 1: and like people you might cure cancer because this this.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't even know how you guys worked
Speaker 1: in this fucking business, to be honest, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fucking crazy, all right, So obviously we'll keep
Speaker 1: our eyes on it like that. There's so much more
Speaker 1: we could get into. Obviously, we like basically just uh
Speaker 1: gol aw still over most like of this fifty or more,
Speaker 1: you know, one hundred year history.
Speaker 4: Thanks thanks, John, I mean you covered a lot of
Speaker 4: ground in an hour and a half here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry for all the tangents, but I think the
Speaker 3: context is super important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right. Yeah, the context is extremely important. You
Speaker 1: guys want to read more. John's book Iran Shadow Weapons Incredible,
Speaker 1: really goes into and shows you just you know, the
Speaker 1: Iranians are working on a pretty They're pretty sophisticated bunch.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie to you know. So for us
Speaker 1: to like underestimate them, which is what we've seem to
Speaker 1: have done, has seemed to be a huge blunder, a
Speaker 1: huge blunder, of course, Jack Murphy, The Most Dangerous Man
Speaker 1: book is out now on Amazon, New York Times bestseller.
Speaker 1: We can hope, no, no, we just once you say it,
Speaker 1: it's true, so manifest.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I'm a former New York Times bestseller, so
Speaker 4: I can legitimately say so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not even lying, Yeah, Jack, New York Times bestseller.
Speaker 2: But not this book as far as I know.
Speaker 1: The new book is called The Most Dangerous Man. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun, It's incredible. Check that out and
Speaker 1: do us a favor and go to our Patreon Patreon
Speaker 1: dot com Slash the Teamhouse you get both Eyes On
Speaker 1: and Teamhouse episodes, ad Free and Early. Of course, Jack
Speaker 1: has the High Side with Sean Naylor where they do
Speaker 1: a deep dive, investigative articles, incredible stuff. All those links
Speaker 1: are in the description. If you want to DM the
Speaker 1: guys and tell them you love them, you can go
Speaker 1: to the links and do that. Don't DM me because
Speaker 1: I don't love you. All right, A pleasure, guys, as always,
Speaker 1: Thank you, all right, Thanks.
Speaker 3: Guys, See you guys. Thanks, Hey, guys.
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