What leads you to that conclusion?

Yeah.

Having had some experience, you know, getting dated, but it doesn't change with covert operations.

You know, I witnessed firsthand what the United States was doing in Afghanistan when the Soviets occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s.

I witnessed the U.S. covert action operation with respect to the Contras and the war against the Sandinistas and the different support we were giving to the governments of Salvador and Guatemala and going after local insurgents.

And then, again, I continue to hold clearances in watching what happened with respect to our invasion of Iraq in 2003.

When you set up a CIA covert operation, the people running it and the people that work for them, their promotions, how you get ahead, whether you get a new promotion, you get to move up a grade, depends on how well you execute that covert action.

Make that make sense for me.

Midterm for Republic, midterms period on the 3rd?

Well, there are actually two big elections this week.

The first in Brazil.

I believe the Brazilian election is this weekend or the first of next week.

So that with Bolsonaro or Lula, we'll see.

So that would have implications for BRICS.

And then the big kahuna.

just play stupid they're like iran contra even part of that money the bulk of it uh was from contraband sold to iran through israel it was not from narcotics like and i looked through that gary webb stuff and i was like yeah i mean you can't say there was no narcotic money there was but that wasn't how they did it it was selling contraband

Do you have any, any insight into what he may be thinking and just, uh, WTF?

No, it's just, uh, uh, in fact, uh, it, it, it's bizarre that he's talking about that at a time when he's appears to be drawing down assets from, uh, that were dedicated toward the Persian Gulf mission.

You know, taking the B-1 bombers out of, uh, England.

Now, that was, y- you know, uh, people say, "Oh, that was a rapid, sudden decision." I, I, I look at the timing.

You had that s- quote, "secret meeting" at Camp David with JD Vance and Hegseth and Rubio and the, Radcliffe and the crew, um, on, on Friday.

And then on Sunday they pull it out.

It, uh, appears to me that the, you know, there was something at that meeting that was decided that made it say, "Okay, we're, we're gonna pull those out." Now, the negotiations, o- one possible explanation was the US did that as a gesture to Iran to say, "Hey, we're serious about our negotiating proposal." The, the only problem there is Iran rejected the latest US proposal on Monday, on Monday afternoon.

Let's distinguish between those two.

Now, you just wrote something on Sonar21 that says, "The Gulf reset trap: Why reopening Hormuz won't end the energy crisis." Why?

Um, cu- several reasons, a- and this is based upon a, a briefing paper put together by Carl Miller.

Carl is, uh, he is an experienced, uh, energy analyst.

He's, he's been a CEO of, uh, couple of different companies, but he does a lot of work in the Middle East, uh, in, in the Persian Gulf in particular.

Uh, number one, the damage that was done from the bombing during the first 40 days of this war, the damage done in the Gulf countries and in I- Iran.

Uh, Iran's not immune from this.

You know, so you've destroyed wellheads.

Yeah.

See you there.

Look, I've told the Russians in my own view, I tell them the story of the frog and the scorpion.

And you may be familiar with that, that the frog is sitting on the shoreline and the scorpion comes up and says, hey, give me a ride to the other side of the river.

And the frog says, well, no, you're a scorpion.

You're going to sting me and we'll die in the middle of the river.

The scorpion goes, no, I'm not.

I'm not going to do that.

10 years and they

But I'd love to get your thoughts on, um, First, how the midterms would turn out in your view, but more importantly, what impact do you think this will have on Trump? The poll numbers, which he always talks about, he always watches, and that Washington Post report.

So when I left Florida on December 5th to come over to Russia, I was paying, we were paying $3.50 a gallon for gasoline.

Diesel was $5.52. My wife, you know, who says, hey, come home, and I will, she just sent me an update.

Our gasoline now is $4 a gallon.

And that's with a discount because we buy our gas at BJ's, which is like Costco or Price Club or whatever.

So it's gone up about 50 cents in two weeks.

A diesel... has gone up a buck.

Which one do you think is more likely? I'd love to get your thoughts on all these developments.

Trump has to walk away or escalate, doesn't he?

But he can try to escalate.

The problem he faces is that the targets he wants to attack were specifically built by Iran.

with assistance from other countries, including North Korea, to withstand a nuclear attack.

So all this will do is further isolate the United States diplomatically in the world, and it very well could trigger responses by Russia and China, who will then identify that the United States is now once again cross the nuclear threshold.

Russia in particular has to be concerned about this because the United States has deployed in Poland and in Romania an air defense system that was on battleships called the Aegis.

Excuse me.

How does it feel to you?

But, uh, again, you, you recently now had a dinner with the Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow, and I was wondering, yeah, what, [laughs] you know, coming from the horse's mouth, uh, what, what, what were your takeaways from your talks with Lavrov in, in terms of, uh, yeah, this conflict, uh?

Yeah, it was a, it, it was a fascinat- you know, we got this, uh, invitation to dinner, myself, uh, Judge Napolitano, uh, John Mearsheimer, Allister Crook, and Allister's, uh, wonderful wife, Ashley.

Uh, and, uh, it was sort of, it was the, uh, let's call it the, the North American crew for the foreign ministry.

I mean, Lavrov, uh, obviously he, you know, he hosted.

Uh, he was accompanied by Sergey Ryabkov, the deputy foreign minister.

Uh, I'd previously met, uh, Mr. Ryabkov back in December of 2023, at which point he had lamented that...

He said, "You know, we don't have anybody to talk to in the United States under the Biden administration." Uh, and so I, I asked him this time, I said, "Hey, uh, got anybody to talk to now?" And he goes, "Well, sort of.

... disaster?

Yeah.

Yeah, he's admitted to the massive damage to U.S. naval facilities, which Trump denied.

So right off the bat, he is contradicting.

Here's Trump getting contradicted by that.

Then the inspector general of the Department of War comes out with a report that, yeah, man, we're really short of all these critical missile systems that Donald Trump says we've got plenty of.

So right off the bat, the institution, let's call it the national defense bureaucracy, is completely contradicting Trump right now.

And the situation with respect to the Strait of Hormuz would not be as bad as it is were it not for the United States trying to enforce a blockade and threatening military action.

So that's assuming production capacity at full capacity, et cetera, at the current capacity, because they've increased capacity right now, assuming it's all at full capacity.

You saw Pepe today, yeah? Pepe

and I did a series of interviews together, including General Opti Aludinov.

including Alexander Babakov, senior member of the Duma, Miranda Tauber.

She is a professional tennis player from Moldova.

She did... three months in prison because she was part of a political party that the government decided was no longer acceptable.

And Pepe and I are commenting, the number of people we've interviewed that have had to flee to Russia for political freedom.

And Pepe and I are laughing about this because in the 1970s, well before you were born, The meme was that people fled the Soviet Union to the United States for political freedom.

It could be the last time they use

But yeah, the big news as you know, you probably wanna comment on, is Saudi.

Well, uh, l- let's just note that with this activity in the Strait of Hormuz, and now Bab el-Mandab, that, uh, it is not increasing the supply of oil.

It's having the exact opposite effect, and the price of oil continues to go up, and Trump just lied his ass off today claiming, "Oh, that's 'cause, that's because of, of Ukraine bombing refineries in, i- in, in Russia." Has nothing to do with it.

The, the crack spread was going up well before, uh, Ukraine started bombing any refineries, and moreover, uh, Russia's not a major supplier of global diesel.

I, you know, it's just, uh, the, the refineries rely...

The, the refineries are, they're at the Gulf Coast of America, India, China, South Korea, Japan.

Those refineries are designed to handle, handle sour crude.

... time and time again.

Do you think the Israelis could join the Saudis and support them?

Sure, they've done it before.

And what did it accomplish? You know, they launched bombing raids on Houthi positions and killed a bunch of Houthi civilians and achieved what? More missile strikes by the Houthis in Israel.

Yeah, that's, Israel's air power nonsense.

You know, all they're good at doing is destroying the homes of civilians.

It doesn't significantly degrade military capability.

It just helps expedite genocide.

Nice.

... anything to put the blame on somebody else

What absolute ignorance on the part of Donald Trump.

You know, number one, what is, uh, the shortage of diesel is directly a result of the shutdown of the oil coming out of the Persian Gulf.

The oil from the Persian Gulf is high in sulfur.

That high sulfur content is basically treated in four geographic regions in the world.

The Gulf Coast of the United States, which accounted for about 8 to 10% of the oil that came out of the Persian Gulf, then India, China, and South Korea, and Japan representing, let's call it the rest of Asia.

Uh, that, that sour crude, it has to go through refineries that are specifically designed and built to handle sour crude.

Yeah

Nice.

I'm making a couple of speeches.

I know that Garland Nixon's coming over for one of them.

Cool.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Garland and I will be making presentations at the same event.

Yeah.

Including today.

Yeah, and the United States hasn't responded.

You've got to say why.

Because the United States cannot afford the losses that will inevitably be visited on the U.S. basis.

And then you've got the price of oil going up.

You know, it came down a little bit on the futures market today, but that really doesn't mean anything.

Look at the price of diesel in the United States now.

What did the Pakistanis and Turks say?

That's the argument they've been making for the last few months.

U.S. doesn't have enough naval assets to, quote, capture the Strait of Hormuz.

Whatever naval assets they send into that strait are going to get blown sky high.

They'll be sunk.

And then what does the United States do? Oh, they'll wait six years to rebuild one of the ships they lost? I mean, this is just insanity.

And their efforts with the, quote, blockade, all it's doing is increasing the price now of crude, both sweet and sour.

And that only goes to benefit Iran, not the United States.

And why wouldn't they

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Larry, did George Tenet have reason to believe that 9/11 was going to happen before it happened?

Or with Brandon, we're talking about it.

Yeah, he's delusional.

You know, Americans, excuse my crude language, but they could give two shits about whether Iran has a nuclear weapon or not, okay? What they care about is, why do I have to pay an extra $20 to fill up my gas tank? Why do I have to pay an extra $40 to fill up my tractor? You know, this is real money for people who aren't sitting on a billion dollars like Donald Trump.

These are people that have to, you know, they live paycheck to paycheck.

And so this is hurting.

And it's hurting them in a very tangible fashion.

And they're supposed to care about Iran? They can't even find Iran on a damn map.

You're waiting for the moment.

Even though the Iranians have threatened they'll strike tanker for tanker, but I wouldn't be surprised if they do more than that.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, my understanding is those missiles that were launched at the destroyer and the aircraft carrier, they actually did what's called an air burst.

So they were not designed to blow up on the ships.

They blew up over the ships in order to send a message, a warning.

And if, you know, clearly the United States is not heeding that warning.

So I think we've also picked up information that North Korea supposedly has supplied Iran with some underwater drone that are more capable than anything that Iran has.

That's not good.

Do I have that correct as to what we heard last night from the foreign minister in his house?

Yeah, no. what uh yeah they they were uh you know he he was pretty clear about that as as as he had been you know i i asked him again uh the to repeat if we had if you and i had correctly understood during our first meeting with him two years ago that uh russia had a deal with ukraine that the united states under joe biden when with the help of boris johnson of the united kingdom blew up that would have been to the war back in uh april uh march april of uh 2022 but instead they interfered and so here they you know they clearly thought that they had an agreement And this is why I think Foreign Minister Lavrov has said in the past that the United States is agreement incapable.

They will agree to do certain things and then do not perform.

They don't do it.

And so that is, you know, that remains a real problem.

for any progress and that's why i think you know they will continue to pull putin will continue to politely receive whitcoff and kushner but president putin's also made it clear in the past that if there's actually going to be some real honest to god negotiations diplomatic solution it's got to go through lavrov lavrov will be the one that heads that up or the one one of the members of his team and and so far that they're not engaged and until until whitcoff and kushner wake up and realize they've got to engage uh with uh lavrov and uh the you know that that's the other part of this diplomatic fabric that has to be built into something

And we very much take very seriously our commitment to get you what you need to get.

clean up an aisle eight correct you know this is they you just you just had a an l a couple of elephants walk down that aisle and and leave a couple of massive piles behind Now, this was outrageous.

Like I hope they're wrong.

Well, again, if they cross that threshold, then it means Iran is open for certain destruction because, I mean, Israel is open for certain destruction.

Iran's just too big.

You know, one nuke, 10 nukes isn't gonna destroy Iran.

But a concerted, sustained missile bombardment on six key targets in Israel would decimate Israel.

Take out the oil refineries, the two at Ashdod and Haifa.

Take out the ports so they can't offload any more oil going down.

But what do you make of the situation now, the tanker for tanker situation? We're seeing every week a new strategy being tried, and now it's the sanctions plus the tanker for tanker strategy.

Uh, so Larry, what, uh, you know, do you know about the stripes? What was hit on each side and how significant was this?

Well, it really didn't make a lot of sense.

Um, Because one, you've got Trump running out every day saying, we've got the Strait of Hormuz is under our full, complete, utter control, total control.

So, you know, you've got that.

Then he's declared the Strait of Hormuz is now the Strait of America.

I guess it's right up there with Ontario now becoming Lake America.

but so you've got to say, okay, if you've got it all under control, if Iran's totally defeated, then why are you hitting the island? Well, the fact of the matter is they don't have Iran totally defeated and certainly do not have control of the Strait of Hormuz.

That's S-E-R-V-A-L dot com slash tickets.

And I mean, what this week we had U.S. Army Secretary resigned.

Yeah, Dan Driscoll and his deputy, Dave Fitzgerald, I think, are both heading for the exits.

The Israeli lobby is pushing like crazy to have the legless Brian Mast put in.

He's what I call the failed bomb tech.

He was an explosive ordnance disposal guy in the U.S. Army.

And, you know, when you blow your legs off because you mishandle an explosive in the field, that's why, because you're a failure.

The successful bomb techs I've known, the legendary, you've never heard the name, a guy named Billy Poe, He was he was the first.

I know I'm in the inner circle when you're in that

What happened then and what did they learn and how did they adjust?

Yes, so back in February of 2021, they launched an offensive that aimed to capture Ma'rib.

And the importance of Ma'rib was that for them it would be the gateway to Yemen's resource-rich areas in Hadhramout that are filled with oil and whatnot.

And there might be some other economic benefits of capturing Ma'rib itself.

But essentially what happened is that, like in the beginning, they did tremendous advances and they were encircling Ma'rib from three different directions.

And they had killed a bunch of the Hadi government's commanders.

But what happened is once they got past the mountains, and they had to sustain a supply line all the way to Ma'rib, they became easy targets for the Saudi Royal Air Force.

So what you're saying is when they crossed, they couldn't maintain the supply line, so they've switched to the drone missile artillery.

That's right.

Okay.

I've got messages from two different Americans that have recently been to Russia.

One just returned from last week.

Drove from Vladivostok.

It was on a trip from Vladivostok out east all the way back to Moscow.

And he said, he said, energy shortage.

Over