Col Douglas Macgregor: IRAN WAR U.S. Losing Position in… — Transcript

war with Iran, plows into day four, and the the shots just keep coming, body blows really on both sides. Here you see before you, this is this is almost, it's not live, but it's a very, very current, just happened.

The International Airport in Tehran is absolutely in flames. It is has been struck by the combined US and Israeli side, uh causing significant damage. There is also another body blow for Iran that just happened earlier this morning, just a couple of hours ago.

In the uh result of the Ayatollah being assassinated on the first day of this, uh they were meeting in the holy city of Qom in Iran to elect a new replacement Ayatollah.

They had an interim uh immediately placed in there, and they met with uh this council, I think it was a Guardian Council or something, something like that.

But where they were the guys who were basically meet to select, well, it turns out that the Israeli uh intelligence got wind of it, and they flattened the building.

So you can see that's where they they're in right now. They don't know anything about casualties, we don't know if anybody survived, if everybody died, it's unclear, but this would be another major blow uh for the Iranian side.

Uh and certainly is going to continue to weaken the governing structures and I'm sure that's the exact intent on the uh American/Israeli side. We're going to see what happens from that.

Iran is a very large country, they have a big bureaucracy, uh and a lot of components to its governing facilities and its structure, but that can't help but be really hard.

If that's true, if the reports are true and that's what was in there, uh we'll wait and see what kind of impact that has.

Um, but there's also things going on on both sides of this, but to try to figure out where this war is and most importantly where it's headed, we have back with us today Colonel Douglas McGregor.

Uh Defense and Foreign Policy Analyst, former advisor to the Secretary of Defense and always need to mention a highly decorated combat veteran who understands matters in the Middle East better than nearly anybody.

Doug, welcome back to the show as always.

Hey, thanks very much.

Uh well, listen, let's just start right off the the bat. I mean, what what do you think is the significance uh of uh at least the reports that the uh that uh council that was supposed to select a new uh Ayatollah?

So if the the first one where there was allegedly 40 military and other political leaders that got killed along with the Ayatollah, if this one's according to reports, there were 88 members uh that were part of this council that uh could potentially have been killed.

What what do you think the impact of that might be?

Well, to answer that, I think you have to ask the question, what happens when you fire a CEO of any large international corporation?

You pick a new CEO.

Uh what happened when Field Marshal Rommel was fatally wounded in a car driving through the countryside of Normandy during the invasion of Normandy by US and British forces?

He was replaced.

I think there's an obsession on the Israeli side with killing leaders.

And this passion for assassination has found a home now with the CIA and our president.

But I wouldn't expect much to come from it.

There's an assumption that Iran is some sort of backward tribal society where every time the tribal chief is killed, there has to be a new gathering.

And until that gathering occurs, nothing can happen, and if you kill enough of the tribal leaders, the tribe will disintegrate.

I just don't see any evidence for that.

There's been no slackening in the fire from the Iranians since this war began.

They continue to hit targets all over the region with great effect, especially in Israel now, and I don't see any evidence that that's going to stop.

So I I think this obsession with killing senior leaders whenever you can find them, particularly those people who are religious, is going to do them much good.

If anything, I think all of this galvanizes the population in its determination to resist uh submission to Israel.

Because from the standpoint of the people on the ground in Iran, they know that we are simply doing what the Israelis want.

That we are effectively the force that's being hired on by Israel to do its bidding.

They know the real enemy for them is Israel and that Israel wants to dominate them, wants to liquidate their country, wants to rule the entire region.

That's as simple as it is.

They're not going to submit to that.

Killing any number of mullahs isn't going to make any difference to the outcome for them.

And what do you think, Doug, about those those elements that have uh for decades uh inside of Iran have been very unhappy with the mullah leadership and the Ayatollah and the rules that they have?

And there have been periodically uh protests that had to be put down, et cetera, and so there's definitely some contentious with within Iran that didn't want uh that wanted to get rid of the Ayatollah.

What what are the pros and cons or maybe not that's not the right word, what what is the prospect that these could result in something?

Is this something live, Gary?

Indeed, yes.

All right, yeah, let's let's see what the president said here and then we'll get back to where we were talking a second ago.

those are stationary.

Those were aimed there for a long period of time.

So I think it was rather obvious.

We attacked first.

Uh decimating them.

They're being decimated.

And uh if we didn't if we didn't and by the way, we have massive amounts of ammunition.

We have uh the high end, a lot of it was given away stupidly by by Biden.

Very stupidly for free.

And I'm all for Ukraine, but they gave away a lot.

Uh as you know, when I give away ammunition, everybody pays for it.

The European Union's paying for it.

They can do what they want with it, but they are giving it, let's say to Ukraine.

And it's okay.

But uh we gave away a lot, a lot, unbelievable amount of of uh ammunition.

Or munitions, as they say, we've given away to uh, you know, the Wall Street Journal.

Incorrectly covered the story.

When they said that it was given away to the Middle East.

Not to the Middle East, it was given away to Ukraine.

Very little was given to the Middle East.

Middle East would buy a lot.

And some of the nations because they're rich, they have a lot.

But it was given away to Ukraine.

And uh it just should have been done.

Look, it's a war that should have never happened.

If I were president, that war would have never happened.

But we have a a tremendous amount of uh munitions, ammunition.

Uh at the upper upper level, middle and upper level.

All of which is really powerful stuff.

Yeah, well, let's let's take a look at that because he's addressing.

There's two things that that that were we were talking about one of them, we'll get to in a minute, but that the second one, I'm glad he brought that up and great timing on that, Gary.

Uh is that there's this claim that, hey, we got to hurry up, we only have a couple of weeks.

And I think you even mentioned, you you thought we had maybe a couple of weeks if from like two or three weeks ago.

That if we started this, we'd only have a couple of weeks at high intensity with these offensive, especially interceptor missiles and we would have to get a resolution or we'd be in trouble.

That's been reported in the Wall Street Journal, uh the New York Times, Washington Post, several people have been talking about that.

The apparently uh General Kane, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Also warned about some of the risks if we go into.

But now then here President Trump is saying again live today, says, yeah, you know what, don't worry about that.

I got plenty of ammunition.

In fact, some categories are unlimited.

What do you make of that?

Always keep in mind that President Trump, whatever else he may claim to be, is a marketing genius.

He's someone who rose to prominence and and became a billionaire because he's very good at marketing himself and whatever the product is that he's selling.

And that's what he's doing in the in the Oval Office right now.

Everyone I've talked to has said exactly what you just repeated.

Uh there is no evidence for the limitless supply of uh high-end missiles that he's talking about.

But he can say it and he will say it because he's trying to sell a war.

He's trying to convince everyone that we are winning and that we are going to win, although he's never really defined very clearly what that means.

What we're implying from his remarks is that a win means the elimination of the Iranian government and its replacement with a puppet that Israel and the United States are comfortable with.

I don't see much evidence that that's going to happen.

And I don't see any evidence that uh his aspiration is going to be fulfilled.

He's also within the last couple of days said that he's interviewing candidates for leadership in Iran.

And some of them are, in his words, really good people.

And this is in anticipation of him installing these puppets once this war ends, which he is making it sound like it's uh imminent.

War is going to end.

I somebody else put something out last night on X, and of course, you got to remember X will put up with anything you put on it.

Who said Israeli, or excuse me, Iran is on the verge of capitulation.

This is all nonsense.

And this is all marketing and this is to boost support for something that a lot of people are asking questions about.

So no.

It's just forget it.

Here's a a little note for everybody, uh I've been receiving information from on the other side and and Department of the Navy and and others that are saying.

Our destroyers at sea, these are the Aegis class destroyers have fired remarkably small numbers of missiles.

In fact, very few have fired missiles at all.

Now, these are the standard missiles, they're designed as part of the Aegis system to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles.

They also have strike missiles that they can fire to land on targets on land.

And they haven't fired any sea sparrows.

And uh I asked, well, this is very odd.

Why is that the case?

Because people have been told to guard their inventory carefully, to manage what they shoot because we don't have inexhaustible supplies.

And remember, you've got to go back to port somewhere to reload.

Where do you go?

Well, we've lost all the ports in the region that we normally use.

Which means in the Med, you've got to go back to Europe or in the Indian Ocean.

We're talking about falling back on Indian ports where we can do it.

And the Indian ports are not really ideally designed for the purpose, but that's where we're talking about going.

So it's back to logistics.

The logistics is a nightmare.

The logistics continues to plague us and I don't see any evidence that that's going to end.

You know, it's interesting.

He he was said there his oft repeated comment about uh the Ukraine Russia war would never have started if he'd been on on uh in elected back in the 2020 election.

But now here he is, he has just chosen to start a war.

I mean, do you think uh or better question, how how hard would it be for Iran to keep that?

That headline that Gary put up there is just kind of justifies and validates what you were just saying there.

The Iran strategy is to expand the war, increase the cost, and then outlast Trump.

Whether that's with missiles or anything else.

Do you think that Iran can outlast us and and meaning that those strikes and those body blows that we talked about at the top of the show.

Are real and continuing on, can they sustain those shots and spread this out that long?

Well, I think body blows have been delivered to all sides.

Uh I think that we're finished in the region now, these bases are all destroyed, they're not going to be rebuilt, we're not going to be invited back.

Uh I don't know that the Emirates and Saudi Arabia will have the same governments they had the day in the future.

And the populations in those countries are not blaming Iran for this.

They're blaming us.

We're the problem, that's the way it's being viewed by the people that live in the region.

And the people eventually are going to count.

Thus far, the ruling elites in the peninsula have been able to ignore the populations.

I don't think that's going to be the case anymore.

Now, I I don't know that bombing Tehran's airport is a body blow.

Uh I think that's unfortunate.

But when you see these kinds of things happen, especially when a place like that doesn't necessarily have much military utility.

Since all the aircraft there are commercial, unless you think you want to destroy the radars.

In which case, you don't have to destroy the whole airport.

But I think what we're beginning to see is frustration on the part of the airmen.

Remember, the Air Force has targeteers, they normally have six levels and they study all the potential targets very carefully.

And they get guidance that they have to have military utility.

And they usually discover that they run out of so-called useful military targets pretty quick.

Either they run out of them or they they attack them, but without effect.

And so then the decision is, well, if we can't affect these targets that we thought were important.

Let's bomb the airport, uh let's bomb the universities.

Let's bomb the desalinization plants, uh on and on and on.

That's what I saw happen during the Kosovo Air War.

The inability to make the air campaign work led to massive destruction all over Serbia.

Far beyond Kosovo and far beyond anything that was military.

I think we're going to see some of that now.

And it's interesting that it's already begun this early.

You know, especially when you look at the murder or destruction of these 150 plus uh girls at the school in uh Iran.

Although it perhaps that was intentional.

I have no idea.

But it certainly wasn't intentional if we did it because I know that we avoid those things as much as possible.

So, you know, the bottom line is you're going to get to this point where everything is going to become fair game.

And that happens because people are frustrated.

It's not working.

Now, there's one thing we didn't mention that is already being worked on very seriously.

And that is that we're trying along with the Mossad and of course, the CIA is right in there, trying to organize the Kurds.

That are in Syria and in Northern Iraq to persuade them, the MEK and others, to join together in a joint invasion on the ground of Northern Iran.

Now, this is a very dangerous thing because if there's one thing that the Iranians and the Turks can agree on.

100% is that they don't particularly care to have an Israeli puppet state called Kurdistan.

Set up at the expense of their specific uh countries.

So at this point in time, I think that's a very dangerous development.

And it's the kind of thing that is going to drive the Turks and the Iranians together.

Now, that's not to say that the Turks are not already concerned about uh Iran.

Because they know that if they stand around and watch while Iran is destroyed and if it is destroyed.

And it does descend into chaos, they think that they're next on the menu.

And they're probably right.

Because we've talked about that, we had Naftali Bennett and then eventually Netanyahu both say, Turkey is at least as dangerous, maybe even more dangerous.

To Israel than Iran.

So if you if you look at this, what's going on, why would they be trying to put together a ground invasion?

I think it's very obvious.

Because we can't do it.

We can't move those troops and today is very different from the world that you and I were in in 1990.

Today, if we tried to land large numbers of troops in a place like Al Jubail on the Saudi coast, that would be targeted and utterly destroyed.

And if they're smart, they would wait until we're just disembarking and pulling off equipment.

Don't destroy the place.

Let us show up.

Then you get two for one.

You destroy the troops.

And you destroy Al Jubail.

And we've seen that our Patriot batteries, however good they may claim to be, and they may be very good.

Cannot defend these places from Iranian missiles.

So the the idea is, well, we can't send anybody over there.

They'll never come ashore.

They'll be destroyed.

So what do we do?

Well, let's go back to the Kurds because the Kurds want their own state.

That means part of Turkey, part of Iran, promise the Kurds that you'll give them their state.

If they join you in trying to bring down Iran.

And if this materializes, as I think they're trying to make it materialize.

I don't think the Turks will just sit on the sidelines and watch.