3/3/26: Rubio Admits War For Israel, US Embassies Burn, Tucker Claims Mossad Captured In Gulf Countries

16:21Scott Horton:That was not an unfair cut. That literally happened. I watched the entire thing. Not joking. We only spared you about two to three minutes in between Iran and all of that. In addition, by the way, Trump continues this thing where he'll answer his cell phone for anybody who calls. Let's put this up here on the screen from the New York Post, where yesterday he refused to rule out sending U.S. troops to Iran if necessary, saying, quote, I don't have the yips with respect to boots on the ground. Like every president says, there will be no boots. I don't say it, Trump said, after launching strike Saturday to decapitate Iran's military and political leadership.

16:52Scott Horton:I say probably don't need them or if they were necessary. So that is the situation as we currently have it. And Crystal, you know, that Civil War point that we made earlier, at every time that we have to try and launch some insurgency to overthrow or destabilize a government, there are U.S. special forces that accompany them on the ground. And look, no hate to the Kurds. You know, they've been screwed around by the United States now for probably decades. But we did a lot of work together in the counter ISIS campaign. So these forces know exactly how to work together as a base in Erbil, right, you know, where they are.

17:25Scott Horton:And look, it's all ready to go. The weapons are there. They'll be the most well-armed insurgents in history. That's all they need. A little bit of forward deployment from a couple special advisers. It's going to look like the special operations that went in in October 2001 to defeat the Taliban. That's the theory, at least. But that is the recipe for quagmire, for disaster, for civil war, for collapse. And that is—look, if we are to acknowledge this is Israel's war, it is almost irrelevant to what Donald Trump wants. Only he can pull the plug. At least he did in the 12-day war. But, of course, that was just a lead up to this entire thing.

18:03Kat Abughazaleh:It was a pause. Then we tried all of the internal, you know, let's collapse the currency. Let's stoke the protests. You know, let's see if that'll work. And then when that failed, then we're back to a war. And yeah, I mean, you and with all of them, obviously, they all lie. You know, if they're breathing, they're lying. But you can look at what they're doing. And to your point, we see this reporting about, oh, let's let's talk to the Kurds. Let's kill the border guards and, you know, open up that that border so people can flood in. And then you also see in the targeting, they targeted Ahmadinejad, you know, previous president of Iran.

18:35Kat Abughazaleh:They targeted a jailed opposition leader who was under house arrest. So they wanted to make sure that this actually wasn't a regime change, that there was no other person who had any sort of legitimate base of support who could come in and take the reins. Because Israel's goal is regime collapse. They don't want a strong Iran. They want, they don't, I apparently don't believe they can really successfully install a puppet. So they just want it to be chaos, death, insanity, civil war, et cetera, so that they can, you know, extend their regional regional hegemony. With that being said, we've got a lot more to get to and we've got Dr.

19:10Kat Abughazaleh:Trita Parsi standing by. So let's go ahead and bring him in.

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21:16Kat Abughazaleh:All right, everyone. We are fortunate to be joined by a friend of the show, Dr. Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Great to see you, sir. Good to see you, sir.

21:24Krystal Ball:Good to be with you guys.

21:25Kat Abughazaleh:So we just played for the audience, Marco Rubio and Mike Johnson, both saying, no, the imminent threat came from the fact that we knew Israel was going to attack Iran, regardless of whether we involved ourselves. We knew that would put our U.S. service members at risk. Therefore, we felt compelled to strike Iran first. your reaction to those extraordinary revelations.

21:46Krystal Ball:I'm delighted that he has spelled it out, that this is the reason, that at the end of the day, the Israelis have been driving the boat on this one, and that the United States has followed their lead and let them decide when the U.S. goes to war and when it doesn't. This is, at the end of the day, a decision they made. They made a decision to let the Israelis decide, and now they're trying to hide behind that as if that That is some sort of a self-defense. At this point, there's no speculation valid any longer as to whether Israel is the driving force behind this or not. It is coming out of the mouth of Rubio and it's coming out of the mouth of the Speaker of the House as well.

22:21Krystal Ball:It is now clear. This is what they decided. This is not by any definition America first. This is Israel first.

22:28Scott Horton:This is probably the most consequential Kinsley gaffe in American history where they accidentally tell the truth. And this is one where I really don't even know where to go from here. I do think it is worth noting that the administration has laid out the most maximalist goals and is now making a mockery of America first. Let's say put a six, let's say, up there on the screen. I really loved this exchange. So Matt Walsh over at The Daily Wire, he put out a tweet. He's like, I've got some questions about this whole operation. And Press Secretary Caroline Levitt released a statement and said, let me reiterate all of the objectives.

23:04Scott Horton:We're going to destroy the regime's missile, raise our missile industry to the ground. We're going to annihilate the Navy. We're going to ensure the regime's terrorist proxies can no longer operate. We will stop them from making and using IEDs. And by the way, IED literally means improvised. So, okay. Guarantee that Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon. Preventing the regime from threatening America. Killing terrorists is good. And there's a long continued diatribe. I was like, you know, whenever she was meant to address concerns about regime change, this is a regime change manifesto. I don't see any way that there could be a realistic off ramp without effective surrender from the Trump administration.

23:43Scott Horton:Curious for your view.

23:44Krystal Ball:So here's what I think has happened. I think, first of all, you're right. But here's, I think, how we got here. The administration was led by the Israelis to believe that this was going to be a very simple operation. They thought that by Sunday evening, this would have been wrapped up, that the regime would have imploded as a result of the assassination of the supreme leader. That obviously did not work. Twice, reportedly, perhaps even three times, Trump reached out and tried to see if he could get a ceasefire from the Iranians. The Iranians rejected it. and I can go into as to why the Iranians rejected it.

24:14Krystal Ball:So now they're stuck in a situation in which they understand that the Iranian game plan is to prolong this and expand this war and play to what their relative strength is, which is they can withstand this, whereas Trump probably cannot, not militarily, but politically. He cannot withstand this for a couple of weeks. So now the Trump administration is trying to essentially convince the Iranians that no, no, no, no, the United States is more than ready to withstand this for a long time. He suddenly said four weeks. And that now, as a result of the Iranians refusing a ceasefire, he is going even more maximalist.

24:49Krystal Ball:So he is throwing good money after bad money after his first completely unrealistic expectation was not met. And this is the very definition of losing control. We're not even two or three days into the war, and it's already clear they have lost control. Look at how they are grasping for straws, not just to find what objectives they should have, but also how to justify them. And in that effort, they have gone as far as to say that Iran is at war with civilization to actually admitting that all of this was done because Israel decided it was time to go.

25:23Kat Abughazaleh:So I want to go back to why Trump let himself be led around by the nose by Israel, because clearly there was some reluctance from the administration. You know, they were concerned you had the top military brass here leaking to basically every newspaper they could get a hold of to say, this is a real problem. We are not ready. There's an interceptor issue. This is not going to go well. There's tremendous risks here. And yet, in spite of all of that, and in spite of all of the very clear campaign promises that, you know, we're going to play them later, he made, J.D. Vance made, Tulsi Gabbard made, RFK Jr.

25:58Kat Abughazaleh:made, Stephen Miller made, like every top person in this administration said, oh, of course, we're not going to go to war with Iran. In spite of all of that, he still ends up making the decision to do Israel's bidding. Like, what can explain that? Is it just the power of the Israel? Is it Miriam Adelson money? Like, how does this calculation get made when you have so many people from the political people to the military people warning that this is going to be a disaster?

26:26Krystal Ball:It's really difficult to explain and I absolutely cannot claim to have an answer. I think a part of the answer though is he has been lulled into this belief that everything he has done has been an absolutely amazing success and everything he did was in contradiction to the conventional wisdom and their advice. They told him that he can't move the embassy. He did. Nothing happened. They told him that he couldn't recognize the Golan Heights. He did. Nothing happened. They told him you can't kill Soleimani. He did. In his view, nothing happened. They told him that he can't take out Fordow. He did.

27:00Krystal Ball:In his view, nothing happened. And then, of course, he did Venezuela. He's on this massive sugar high, the mother of all sugar highs. And it made it easier for the Israelis under those circumstances to tell him, look, The Iranians are just so weak. All you need to do is push a little bit. You're going to be the hero. You're going to be the president that finally puts an end to this regime. Everyone said that you can't do it. That's precisely why you should do it, because only you can prove them wrong.

27:27Kat Abughazaleh:So what you mentioned, maybe they mocked up a newspaper cover like Azoran did.

27:32Krystal Ball:I mean, they play to his psychology. The Iranians did not.

27:35Scott Horton:Right. Yeah, right. And we shouldn't we should say that as we should fault their negotiating team as well. But now we are where we are. And so, you know, what do you see? You said that the Iranians have rejected two, maybe three diplomatic overtures from the Trump administration. What is the internal logic inside of the regime right now? It seems pretty clear that they expected to take mass casualties at the top. They have decentralized military command. What is their internal assessment right now, from far as you can tell, from how they're doing and for what they're planning?

28:08Krystal Ball:The first thing we have to say to truly understand how they're thinking is that they truly, unlike the Israelis who oftentimes throw out and say, oh, this is existential for them. This truly is existential. And this is why they're making the decision the way they're making it. They believe that a premature ceasefire, one in which after the U.S. has scored a major victory if they were to accept it, all it would do, it would allow the US and Israel to regroup, remobilize, and then six months later, relaunch a war. If there's to be a ceasefire, it has to be a prolonged and durable one. The only way the ceasefire could be durable, they believe, is if this war ends up being tremendously costly to all sides, so that all sides believe it was a mistake to start it, and as a result, believe it would be a mistake to restart it.

28:56Krystal Ball:If they agreed to a ceasefire too quickly without that cost actually being felt. They believe that it will only give the other side, the U.S. and Israel, time to be able to regroup and then once again attack Iran. This is the conclusion they drew after agreeing to a ceasefire in June. Many of them believe that it was premature. Many of them believe that the Israelis were in a very, very bad situation because they had run out of interceptors and it was a mistake for the Iranians to agree to that ceasefire. And they're paying for that mistake now.

29:25Kat Abughazaleh:I mean, that was another incredible moment from Rubio is he also talked about that interceptor. He admitted it. Yeah, he talked about, you know, they've got these drones and they're very inexpensive. And meanwhile, we're shooting all these interceptors. We can't they can make the drones much more quickly than we can make the interceptors. It's like, OK, then why are we doing this? If that's math that you're aware of.

29:44Krystal Ball:And once you're in this situation and you recognize that logic, which they should have recognized before, it actually pushes them to go all out as well. And that is what I think we're going to see in the next couple of days. Trump is going to throw everything he has.

29:57Kat Abughazaleh:Yeah, tell me more about what you mean by that. And just to, you know, as a little preamble here, we can put A9 up on the screen. We now know at least six Americans have been killed in action. At least 18 have been seriously wounded. You have U.S. embassies that are being attacked in a number of countries, both by Iran and also by local people. We know now we have confirmation that U.S. Marines were shooting at civilian rioters at the U.S. Embassy in Karachi in Pakistan. We can put A11 up on the screen. So already the Strait of Hormuz was sort of de facto closed because the insurers pulled the plug on shipping traffic and said, basically, we're not going to insure you.

30:37Kat Abughazaleh:We're going to jack up the price extraordinarily. Now Reuters is reporting Iran is notifying vessels. It is officially closing the Strait of Hormuz. If officially closed, 20 plus million barrels of oil per day will be impacted 20 percent of global supply. Qatar has cut off their LNG production. Gas prices in Europe have already skyrocketed some 50 percent. So when you say we're going to throw everything that we have at it and we're going to go big, you know, what does that actually in effect look like?

31:06Krystal Ball:Let me start off by just saying one other thing that I think is important. Just a couple of days, about three days before Trump decided to start this war, I was in a closed meeting with a bunch of former officials, analysts, military people. And the general view in the room was the Iranians would never do this. They would never close the straits. They would never attack the GCC states. It would be too costly for them. And I think it reflected the fact that this had not really dawned upon people. the manner in which Trump is doing this is making a clear signal to the Iranians, this is an existential fight.

31:42Krystal Ball:And in an existential fight, they're not going to think about tomorrow. They're not going to think about what GCC-Iran relations are going to be a year from now. They're going to think about how they survived this war. And as a result, decisions that were perceived to be unthinkable, just empty threats from the Iranians, we are now seeing happening on a daily basis, as you pointed out, the closing of the straits. And again, I think it shows the profound miscalculation, although, of course, those people in the room were not the decision makers. I think it reflects what also decision makers have been thinking about this.

32:15I think what is happening now is that because of this essential, I wouldn't call it panic, but really scrambling to try to figure out a new plan, the emphasis is going to be to throw everything at the Iranians.

32:28Krystal Ball:I think we're going to see significant bombardment. We're going to see an effort to use the Kurds in order to launch attacks in the Kurdish areas in the absence of other ground troops, although I wouldn't be surprised if there may be some Israeli ground troops with the Kurds, although the Kurdish numbers are not very high. It's not so much that this actually would end up becoming like a real invasion, but something that would be further effort to try to cause Tehran to lose control of the larger situation. If the Iranians are trying to expand the theater of war into areas that the U.S. wasn't ready for, the U.S.

33:03Krystal Ball:is responding in kind. But bottom line is we're seeing that the original plans didn't even survive the first five seconds of reality.

33:10Scott Horton:Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean, already this is a full blown regional conflict, which, as you said. And by the way, Trump admitted you don't just have to listen to you. We were surprised that they attacked the Gulf countries. He has caused absolute chaos. The State Department saying this morning all citizens in the Gulf should leave all of them. By the way, good luck leaving. All of the airports are closed. The U.S. ambassador, Mike Huckabee, is putting out guidance about how to get on a bus from Israel to the Sinai Peninsula and then hopefully be able to catch a flight from there to somewhere else before they can eventually get the hell out.

33:43Scott Horton:There's over a million Americans who live in the region. I used to be one of them. But sticking with that, sir, let's put A10 up here on the screen just so you You can already see huge strikes in the middle of Tehran, in the middle of daylight. I mean, God only knows the number of people that have already been killed. But many of the reports coming out of Iran saying that they are, these Israeli strikes are specifically targeting these police stations. As you said, the internal logic right now for the Gulf and for the United States is that this is already intolerable from a munitions depletion standpoint for interceptors, which means that they have to go all out, bombard the country as much as humanly possible, and try to basically erode their capacity to fight.

34:26Scott Horton:This is the North Vietnam bombing strategic logic of many, many decades. Of course, it doesn't work if you have a population and a regime, which is hardened in its belief that it is completely existential. So let's say we do get this massive bombardment, an effective trying to collapse the state. Let's say they do take out the missile launchers. What's next from that point? Because the regime itself will still be intact, and it's not like Trump and Israel can just declare victory.

34:56Krystal Ball:Again, I don't think there is much of a plan. The hope was that now they're targeting a lot of police stations, IRGC headquarters, BASIG headquarters. is the hope is that this eventually will lead to a regime implosion because the repressive capabilities of the state will be eroded and then magically people will rise up and take over. And, you know, there is some basis to believe that something like this could happen. To bet an entire war that it will happen is a completely different story. I go back to what I said on this show several times. I repeat it as often as I could in every interview.

35:32Krystal Ball:Trump has been led to believe that Iran is much weaker than it is. And as a result, he's gone down this path. And now we're discovering that it is not that simple. As you mentioned, the problems for people, for Americans to leave the GCC states, even leaving Israel at this point. I spoke to a friend who was traveling. He was in Dubai, can't get out, had to take a cab all the way to Oman. The border to Oman between the U and Oman was just completely overloaded with people trying to escape Dubai and try to find a flight out of the Arabian Peninsula. Clearly no planning whatsoever from any side for this to be able to happen, yet the writing was on the wall.

36:10Kat Abughazaleh:I mean, we've been listening to Professor Robert Pape, who's an expert on warfare and air power in particular, in 100 years of trying this. There has never been a successful regime change just using air power. We also have the recent example of Gaza, which obviously is much smaller. And where the Israelis, with our assistance, bombed the hell of it, out of it, reduced it all to rubble effectively, and had a ground invasion, and still were not able to dislodge Hamas from power. So the arrogance, the delusion here is just extraordinary to me as someone who was not expert on these things whatsoever.

36:50Kat Abughazaleh:Last question I had for you is, you know, I was watching that bombardment of Tehran, looking at the fact that they've already targeted some nine hospitals. Obviously, little girls massacred, over 160 of them at a school. Another school, I think a girls' volleyball team, was killed. Are they, since the initial let's try to collapse the regime didn't work out, are they now going to pursue effectively the same strategy they pursued in Gaza?

37:18Krystal Ball:It appears that at least on a couple of occasions that has happened. We've seen evidence of double-tap attacks. There's a video of an Iranian woman who actually doesn't live in Iran. I don't know if she's Iranian-American. who is crying and say that they struck this hotel. When people rushed in to try to help it, they struck again. So evidence of these double taps are now emerging. One thing I have to say, though, and I'm sorry to raise this, but I was on BBC last night and they aired tapes or reconstruction of tapes of three voices from Iran that they claimed to have spoken to, who all were praising these bombings.

37:52Krystal Ball:I mean, one of them was saying that, you know, we're applauding every time we hear a bomb. Without a doubt, I do believe that there is some level of support inside of Iran for this campaign. Certainly, there's a degree of support, although I think it's exaggerated in the diaspora. But BBC aired three voices who all said the same thing, given the viewers the impression that this is a liberation war, that the people inside of Iran are just yearning to be bombed. And I had to call them out on us. This is worse than the Iraq war propaganda that I've seen because you know very well that there's a diversity of views inside the country.

38:25Krystal Ball:Yet you only aired one type of a voice and give people the impression that everyone is welcoming this war, which is absolutely not the case.

38:33Scott Horton:Yeah, that's outrageous. And we've been watching this happen in our own country. There are 92 million people in Iran. 92 million. Did three maybe? Maybe. What about the rest? How do we have any idea and how have we not seen this story? I've seen plenty of videos. I would just stunk. Yeah, I've seen plenty of videos, I'm sure you have too, of like secular looking people who are like, we will stand and fight to the death against the United States and against Israel in the streets of Tehran. Could be selective regime propaganda. I'm not going to take that fully as the only voice. But of course, that voice exists too.

39:07Scott Horton:It's completely irresponsible to say that it doesn't. And at this point, I mean, the history of nationalism, even in countries which are being externally bombed with external pressure to be applied, many are not willing to just play ball with the imperial aggressor, even if they do disagree with the internal politics, which is quite literally the story of Iraq. I mean, I guess the final thing that we wanted to, I guess, wanted to talk to you a little bit about here is with this logic along the escalation ladder, the consuming of the Gulf states. Every story, top Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, is interceptors are running out in the Gulf.

39:45Scott Horton:By the way, even these Gulf, I mean, I'm reading stories. They're shooting Patriot$4 million missiles at Shahhead drones, which cost$20 ,000. They're going to be out within a week, maybe a month. We don't exactly know the number. If that happens and we see a conflagration, already Saudi Aramco is under threat. They're saying that they're going to avoid the Straits of Hormuz, move oil through the Red Sea via a pipeline. Qatar LNG has already shut down. Iran saying this morning they may even attack Europe. When we see a depletion of that and we see this actually globalize into a major war, what does that look like from a global perspective?

40:22Scott Horton:not only impact on the United States, but broadly for a regional and global picture for our geopolitics?

40:29Krystal Ball:We don't know because the planners didn't think this through. I mean, this is truly unprecedented. The Iranians have struck or tried to strike Cyprus, where the Brits have been using a base that was extremely active in the genocide against Gaza, but apparently also had played a role in some of the attacks on Iran. It may also be a retaliation for the Brits allowing Garcia to be used by the United States after first having resisted. The Iranians cannot reach that, so perhaps they struck the Cyprus base short of that. But we also see what is now happening between Europe and Russia. Europe is now putting pressure on the Ukrainians to allow Russian gas and oil to come into Europe, because now they're suffering from an astute fuel shortage that has been made much, much worse because of this war.

41:16Krystal Ball:I mean, life as a vassal is clearly not particularly really easy, since you have put your own destiny in the hands of someone else. But the Europeans chose to become vassals of the United States in this matter and not paying the price for it. Now, will this then eventually lead to a scenario in which the Russians and the Chinese, one way or another, are also dragged into it? The conventional wisdom has always been that the Russians, at least the Chinese, will do everything they can to stay out of this. The Russians are not going to jeopardize their prospects for a deal to end the Ukraine war in order to help the Iranians.

41:47Krystal Ball:But if this expands in an uncontrollable way, then we cannot say exactly what the response of some of these other countries will be. We're also seeing right now other things. We're seeing that in Bahrain, there are riots taking place. There's some reports that the Saudis have stepped in into Bahrain again to clamp down on those protesters, as they did in 2011. Bahrain, of course, used to be Iranian territory. It's majority Shia. So we're already seeing the kind of repercussions that most people thought would only happen in the worst case scenario. We're three days into it. We're already in the worst case scenario in that sense.

42:22Kat Abughazaleh:Unbelievable. Just absolutely unbelievable. Dr. Parsi, thank you as always. Thank you, sir.

42:26Krystal Ball:Thank you so much for having me.

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44:31Scott Horton:Turning now to the Gulf situation, which we just talked about with Dr. Trita Parsi, the entire region in flame and also deeply afraid of what it means if they run out of interceptors. We did want to start, though, with this extraordinary accusation by Tucker Carlson reporting that there were Mossad plots and agents arrested by two different Gulf countries trying to foment terror and chaos in these countries. Let's take a listen.

44:56Saagar Enjeti:It really, really hurts these countries. And Israel wanted to hurt these countries. That's the point. Wanted to hurt these countries. Wanted to sow chaos and disorder because they are rivals of Israel. So it's probably not hasn't been reported, but it's a fact that last night. in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, authorities arrested Mossad agents planning on committing bombings in those countries. Now, that's weird. That doesn't make any sense. Why would the Israelis be committing bombings in two Gulf countries, which are also being attacked by Iran? Aren't they on the same side? No. No. Israel wants to hurt Iran and Qatar and UAE and Saudi and Bahrain

45:43Scott Horton:and Oman and Kuwait. Extraordinary claim there by Tucker Carlson, obviously highlighting the bigger strategic picture that we picked off our entire show, is this is Israel's war. There's really not a whole lot in here for the United States. We've depleted our interceptor stockpile. We've now made a mockery of all of these Gulf countries. Do you know how many billions of dollars these Gulf countries have spent on US? I mean, it's probably hundreds of billions if you total all of it together, where they're like, look, we buy all your weapons. You get to keep your bases here to support the war in Iraq.

46:13Scott Horton:We get to have a literal monarchy, and it's all cool. And we have a ton of oil, and you buy it. That's it. So it's security in exchange for monarchy. Everybody's kind of done a handshake deal around that. That's all being blown up, their entire vision before the world. Let's go ahead and put some of this VO that we have up here on the screen. In each of these cases, we're showing you the region is literally in flames. So you've got Tel Aviv in the middle of last night. This is all just from last night. You've got missiles that are flying around the screen. You can see some of the interceptors that come, but multiple interceptors that they're having to fire.

46:48Scott Horton:This one was in Doha, Qatar. I mean, this is genuinely shocking. Like, it's crazy. Look at the amount of interceptors and all that that are being fired up into the sky to intercept either drones or missiles that are coming in towards them. These people have never seen anything like this. This was video, which was actually on the border of Saudi Arabia and of Bahrain, where as riots continue to break out in Bahrain, which has a large Shia population, which you can see in front of you, Saudi Arabia is having to dispatch some security forces potentially to try and crush those riots just like they did in the middle of the Arab Spring.

47:23Scott Horton:So your foundation of their society is now in question from Bahrain, which is the home of the Fifth Fleet, tens of thousands of Americans. Kuwait, of course, their long security relationship with the U.S. Iraq this morning, which somewhat allegedly was our protectorate or kind of was whenever we invaded and occupied it for, I don't know, like 20 years, just had to shut down their largest oil field. Saudi Arabia this morning, the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia issuing an explicit notice that they have incoming missile and UAV attacks on Dharan. If you don't know what Dharan is, the home of the Saudi Aramco compound and of the largest oil facility in the world.

48:03Scott Horton:In addition, we had the Saudi embassy, or the U.S. embassy in Riyadh was hit by a drone yesterday, and apparently the roof was caved in. Three different drone attacks that hit the U.S. I mean, do you know how insane a single attack on a U.S. embassy is an international story? The U.S. embassy in Riyadh has now been hit. The U.S. embassy in Baghdad was basically under siege for two days straight. You've got now confirmed reports. We were careful. We talked about this yesterday. The United States military is now confirming by Reuters that Marines fired on people in Pakistan. I'm sure that's going to go over well.

48:37Scott Horton:That's going to go over real well in Pakistan, isn't it? Pakistani protesters, killed by American Marines in the middle of a consulate in a massive protest where people are shooting at each other. This is full-blown chaos all over the entire world. And then bigger, what really belies all of this is this story. Let's put B3 up here on the screen. The UAE and Qatar are urging allies to help Trump find an off-ramp and largely interceptor stocks. Front page of the Wall Street Journal literally this morning is about the number of interceptors that these countries are firing. their four, I mean, just think about the math here.

49:12Scott Horton:$4 million Patriot against a$20 ,000 drone. They say that they might be done in a matter of a week, perhaps days. And then what the hell is gonna happen to the Burj Khalifa or the Queen Elizabeth Hotel or in Doha, I mean, the Ritz-Carlton, all of these famous hotels. What did Professor Zhang say yesterday? Water desalination plants, the dams, which are all over the country for water supply. What about Qatar LNG is already done? Qatar LNG announced this morning they're shutting down all downstream production, not just LNG production of everything that's happening. The Iraq oil field is down. The Saudi Aramco is basically notifying its suppliers that they're going to have to pick up from somewhere else to avoid the straits of war.

49:54Scott Horton:The disruption across the Gulf, it will take them years to recover from this, you know, structurally, militarily. Absolutely. What are they going to do? And then brand-wise, oh, my God. You've got probably a million plus, maybe two million Americans who are now stranded all across the entire Gulf. I mean, these are like very rich people, like oil. I used to live there, I'm telling you. Like, I went to the American School of Doha. Every other kid is like, oh, my dad works at Exxon or whatever. Imagine you've been living there for a decade. You're drinking margaritas at the Intercontinental Hotel.

50:25Scott Horton:And the next day, you are literally trying to get the hell out of the country. But you can't. You literally can't.

50:30Kat Abughazaleh:All the people who go and vacation there, you know, again, very high end luxury. Like, do you think that they're going to be rushing back for their Dubai vacation after seeing luxury hotels going up in flame? And this is what their whole economy and image is built around. So that's why it's so long term devastating to them. To your point, Sagar, about that Wall Street Journal front page article on the Interceptor's math, which again, Marco Rubio himself came out and was talking about quite openly yesterday. Now, Donald Trump put on a Truth Social post saying that we could do war forever and it wouldn't be a problem.

51:02Kat Abughazaleh:I'll ask you to, you know, which version you'd believe. But in any case, they quote this expert who says, The intensity of interceptor usage that we have seen over the last couple of days cannot be maintained for more than another week. A week. Probably a couple of days at most. And then they will feel the pain of interceptor shortage. That is from Fabian Hoffman, a missile expert at the University of Oslo. So that's where we're at. And the Iranians, number one, they have an asymmetric interest in this fight. So, of course, they're outmatched by the amount of firepower that we have in Israel and all of our allies, all the weapons we've sold them over the years, blah, blah, blah.

51:41Kat Abughazaleh:But they have one thing going for them, which is that it's truly an existential struggle. This means so much more to them. I mean, how much do you care about this? You just probably want us to end this war, right? They know that this is truly, truly existential for them. We couldn't defeat the freaking Hufis, right? Armed with much cruder arms and much lower level of supply. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, we didn't care enough to be able to, you know, when they saw the fight as more important. We spent 20 years in Afghanistan with all of our weaponry and a ground invasion. And at the end of those 20 years, when we left, guess who came back into power?

52:20Kat Abughazaleh:The Taliban. Why? Because they cared much more than we did. I mean, that's what really has screwed us. That is the lesson that should have been learned over all these many years. When you are attacking people's lives, when you're attacking a government, when you're threatening its existence, they will fight to the death. And the American people are not bought in for this at all. They are not willing to accept any of this pain. Like the six service members who have already been killed in action is six too many. No one, virtually no one outside of this small area and some people in the Iranian diaspora here are really excited and enthused and motivated to suffer in any sort of way for this.

53:04Kat Abughazaleh:And yet we can already see, I mean, Dr. Parsi said it, it is already spiraled out of control. And to go back to Israel's motivation here with allegedly sending Mossad agents in to commit terror attacks, which is not confirmed, but I certainly don't put it past them. the logic of that is that not only do they have an interest in just sowing chaos everywhere we're going to talk to scott horton about how they're now openly advertising like yeah turkey's next you know after iran next threat is turkey um but also they want to they want to create these false flag attacks so that the gulf states are fully bought into the war too that they also want to fully engage so that's what israel is constantly pushing for us and for all of the gcc to be fully in to this war.

53:47Kat Abughazaleh:That is what serves their interest. And so that is what they're trying to foment. Right.

53:51Scott Horton:Put C4 up there on the screen just to highlight, again, the problem and why this has really diminished to the United States. This is from the Middle East. I, U.S.'s stonewalling requests by Gulf states to replenish interceptors. One Gulf state sought reassurances on U.S. commitment to air defense when discussing access to its bases. Again, by the way, Qatar and the UAE highly dispute that original Bloomberg report. They're like, we're fine. We have plenty of interceptors. Apparently that's the new line. Donald Trump actually put out a truth social in the middle of the night. Let me read it to you because this is actually one of the most unhinged dangerous things that he has said.

54:25Scott Horton:Maybe we'll add this in post. The United States munition stockpiles have at the medium and upper grade never been higher or better. Not true. As we stated to me today, we have virtually unlimited supply of these weapons. Not true. Wars can be fought forever. Very successfully. Yes, but not with interceptors. Maybe with dummy bombs, JDAMs, and some bullets. But in that scenario, you're going to be taking a shit pot of casualties. Wars can be fought forever using just these supplies. At the highest end, we have good supply, but we are not where we want to be. Much additional high-grade weaponry is stored for us in outlying countries.

54:58Scott Horton:That's the most dangerous part. Why? Because it means we have to go all in. We don't have that many of these interceptors. If we want to go all in, say goodbye to Taiwan, Say goodbye to Ukraine if you care about those places. Say goodbye to any place in the world which may matter more than this tiny little country the size of New Jersey, which literally produces nothing called Israel. And we are done. That's it. It's over in terms of US geopolitical projection.

55:23Kat Abughazaleh:Aren't they already talking about pulling a sad battery from South Korea? Yeah, from South Korea.

55:27Scott Horton:South Korean state media right now. Yeah, anyone wanna tell me what trading partner South Korea is compared to Israel in terms of its rank? South Korea is one of the most developed economies in the entire world. One of the most important trading partners. Ever heard of this little brand called Samsung or any of these other places? Or, you know, oh my God, I mean, I could go on forever of its importance. Not that anybody in the U.S. apparently even gives a shit. But yeah, fad battery out of that. Against, let's compare threats. One state has one of the world's largest standing armies, a literal nuclear-tipped ICBM capable of hitting the United States and frequently launches missiles against South Korea and Japan.

56:05Scott Horton:two top trading partners, which are vitally important to the security of the US. That's called North Korea. The other one is called Iran. It has short range and medium range ballistic missiles. It doesn't have a nuclear weapons program and it can't hit the United States. And if we'd done a deal with them, pretty much wouldn't have mattered. Which do you think is more important to defend against?

56:23Kat Abughazaleh:And has never started a war, by the way.

56:24Scott Horton:And has never started a war, or at least directly against the United States. So which do you think, would you say, is more important to defend? But we're gonna strip it from there. That's just one example. It's over. I mean, let me read you my interceptor math, because people really do not appreciate how dire all of this is. I have the direct numbers. This is from CSIS. In the 12-day war, the U.S. fired 150 THAAD interceptors to protect Israel. That was 25 % of the whole U.S. stockpile. In the last 48 hours, we have fired, we don't really know. Probably, you know, several dozen at the very least.

57:00Scott Horton:in 2025, how many new interceptors do you think that we got?

57:05Kat Abughazaleh:10.

57:05Scott Horton:12. 10 a month. The year before. So 10 to 12 in the last two years. So we fired more than what, triple or, sorry, quintuple in a single, in 12 days. And we acquired in a two year period. It's over. You can't manufacture these things. It costs millions of dollars. The defense supply chain is screwed. And for all the$2 trillion that we spend on this, you know, it's funny. I was listening to the CSIS expert. They go, the NPR person is like, but where does all the money go? And he's like, well, most of the money's on TRICARE, which is like welfare for all of these services and healthcare programs and subsidies.

57:40Scott Horton:It doesn't actually go to a lot of the critical weapon systems, despite the fact that people have been warning about this for years. By Trump's own admission, the Patriot missile battery. They say in there, the UAE and Qatar, they were like, can we get more Patriots? And they're like, oh, we gave them all to Ukraine. Sorry, they're all gone. We literally gave them all away. The Europeans can't give you anything. They shipped it all already for the eastern Dunbar region. It's, this is bad. And it's like.

58:04Kat Abughazaleh:They're messing us up with those drones too. And I mean, that was one of the things Professor Zhang said yesterday is that our military really was built for the Cold War. Yeah, he's right. It was built for flexing. It was built for performance of power. And it really has not been, you know, reimagined for modern warfare. And so, look, the Iranians learned from the 12-day war. They said, okay, we're gonna shoot off our, you know, lower tech missiles and use these drones that can evade, some of them will evade your interceptors. And we're going to bet that we can outlast you. Now, let me tell you the other side.

58:38Kat Abughazaleh:The other side of that is that the U.S., look, they're bombing the hell out of Tehran right now. Their goal is to destroy all of the missiles, destroy all of the missile launchers so that Iran can never make it to that point. Iran is not capable of outlasting because their capabilities have been so severely degraded and destroyed. And that is certainly a possibility. That is the bet that they're making. But look, already, already what Iran has been able to do by saying, basically, fuck it. We're throwing everything against the wall. We are putting all our chips on the table. We are all in the economic damage, the brand damage in the Gulf, the chaos, the attacks on the US, the humiliation, really, truly, of the US.

59:21Kat Abughazaleh:Our fighter jets are flying or dropping out of the sky, which by the way, there should still be a lot of questions about what the hell exactly happened there and whether that was truly friendly fire or not. Because if it was, I mean, the whole, it's insane anyway. But the level of humiliation the U.S. has already suffered here is truly incalculable. And, you know, and the Iranians are like, no, we're not going to negotiate with you. We need to exact some pain because otherwise you will never leave us alone. So we are going to do everything we can to make you suffer. And there is zero appetite for suffering on the U.S.

59:52Kat Abughazaleh:part.

59:53Scott Horton:New update just while we were filming Donald Trump. Their air defense, Air Force, Navy, and leadership is gone. They want to talk. I said too late. Great.

1:00:00Kat Abughazaleh:Oh, yeah. I'm sure we take his word for it.

1:00:03Scott Horton:But no, I'm just like. He's such a liar. Regardless of what is being. Maybe they probably said, no, we don't want to talk at all. But him saying, no, we're not going to talk at all. We're going to go full on. So this is it. I mean. I mean, he's lying.

1:00:14Kat Abughazaleh:They I mean, based on other reporting, they rejected it. And so he's trying. Oh, you didn't fire me. I quit. You know, that's what he's doing.

1:00:21Scott Horton:Yeah, but regardless, the situation is the same. There's only one logic from here. If you know you're gonna run out of interceptors, then you gotta bomb the shit out of the country and to try and flatten and destroy it, collapse it into civil war. Well, okay, well, what comes next? What's gonna happen after that? Massive refugee crisis, huge civil war. It could bleed all into the rest of the Gulf. These drones aren't going anywhere. You've got hundreds of thousands of people with a bunch of guns and military training, and we don't have a ground force there to do anything about it. So what do you think they're going to do?

1:00:54Scott Horton:You think you're just going to take it, sit and lie down? By the way, they just attacked the Iraqi Kurds this morning and turned it to try and preempt some sort of attack by them. So we're already going cross-border.

1:01:03Kat Abughazaleh:Well, and here's the other thing, you know, a bigger picture in terms of the, so we know public sentiment in the U.S. is against this war overwhelmingly. Look, the Republican base is going to go along with it by and large, but the rest of the population is like, what the hell is going on here, right? And you even hear Democrats. the Democratic rhetoric has already shifted from being so extremely lame, especially at the top levels, to now after those Rubio comments, I'm hearing Democrats like Mark Warner saying some things about Israel I never thought I would hear in my entire life. So they are already reading the political writing on the wall here.

1:01:33Kat Abughazaleh:But you also have to think about the populations in the region where, to Sagar's point, these are monarchies. These are not representative democracies. And they've made some noise about, oh, the Palestinians, yes, we support a two-state. But there are populations who, many of whom truly do support the Palestinian cause and truly are disgusted with the genocide in Palestine and the annexation of the West Bank and all of that. They do not agree. They see the fecklessness. They see the game that their leaders are playing. So you also start this war at a moment of a low point in regional public opinion, both about the U.S.

1:02:09Kat Abughazaleh:and about Israel, which is why you see multiple of our embassies being attacked. You know, in Pakistan, the fact that U.S. Marines were shooting civilians attacking the U.S. embassy in Karachi. I mean, this in and of itself is just that one thing is an absolutely insane event. And then you've got, you know, mobs at the Baghdad embassy as well. I mean, this is this is a moment when most of the population in the region. Look, they're, you know, typically not too crazy about us. they hate our freaking guts and they hate the israelis and that's the moment when you're going to ask to you know them to bear the pain of their countries getting attacked they're you know the luxury hotels next to them getting blown up and their governments are on board with all of it you're going to have some you know you're going to have some local and we're already seeing that in bahrain which is why the riots are a very significant that's going to be the first one

1:03:05Scott Horton:to fall because they have the shia population but the rest of them i mean look there's some There is a serious social contract, right? You have no rights, literally whatsoever, but you're going to be rich. But those riches come from oil, natural gas, being this global playground, right? All of these Indian laborers. I mean, how many of them are going to stick around? Like money is worth it up to a point before you think you're going to die. And then if you have enough money, do they have enough money to continue paying them? I think I mentioned earlier the U.S. embassy in Riyadh is issuing this imminent threat of a missile attack over Dharan, which is the seat of Saudi Aramco.

1:03:42Scott Horton:This is the lifeblood of these places. The money is the only thing that flattens out all of the tensions in these people's societies. If it dries up, if it dries up by even 30%, it's a catastrophe for these economies.

1:03:55Kat Abughazaleh:Iraq has shut down oil production at the world's second largest oil field, which produces 1.5 million barrels of oil per day amid escalating military activity. And the American government is telling Americans in the region, you should get out, but we're not going to help you. You're on your own.

1:04:11Scott Horton:Can you imagine being stuck in Israel? And you're like, hey, how do I get out of here? And you have to go to the U.S. ambassador's Twitter feed where he's giving you these minute instructions about how to catch a bus to the Sinai. and then when you get to the Sinai, use this link, which you have to pay to cross the border. And then when you cross the border, let's hope that you can, I mean, look, I've only been once, but I'm pretty sure that it's not a very big airport in the middle of the Sinai Peninsula. Are they gonna be, you know, there's 700 ,000 Americans who live in, or at least 700 ,000 American citizens who live in Israel.

1:04:42Scott Horton:Are they all gonna be able to get out? And now imagine Dubai, Doha, what Trita Parsi said there. Do we have that story about Dubai? Yeah, we define it two times. Yeah, let's put that one up there, C5, up there on the screen. Half of Dubai is booking. Expats are driving to Oman and Saudi Arabia to try and to find flights. I said yesterday the going rate for a PJ out of Saudi Arabia right now is$350 ,000 for a single flight to be able to get out of the country. Trump's podcast advisor, Alex Brusiewicz, from the campaign, he got stuck in the Gulf. And he apparently had to talk with a bunch of friends, including like TikTok influencers or whatever, to charter a PJ to Greece to be able to get.

1:05:28Scott Horton:That's the only way out, because you have to be able to get a private jet. That's it. And I bet you the premium is unbelievable. So unless you don't have that kind of money, you're stuck. You're stuck for a long time down there. And they're basically, even the ambassador is saying openly, he goes, flights, even when they do reopen, will be extremely limited and they will be disrupted for a significant period of time. It could be months that these people are completely stuck with missiles flying all over their head.

1:05:54Kat Abughazaleh:Let's just put C7 up on the screen. This was some important reporting from DropSite. We saw Iranian drones, I think mostly, that attacked various hotels throughout the Gulf. And according to, you know, sources that DropSite are in touch with, they say some of the buildings and hotels that were hit were specifically housing Israeli or U.S. personnel or intelligence operations. And that Iran pinpointed the locations has really caught the Americans and Israelis off guard, according to an Iranian official. So, you know, That level of intelligence penetration, too, was apparently shocking to the Americans and to the Israelis.

1:06:37Kat Abughazaleh:And let me say something. The Iranians are obviously attacking civilian infrastructure. They're attacking hotels. They're attacking—two data centers now have been taken out. Yeah, and they're attacking some of the oil infrastructure. They're claiming some of that is incidental or they didn't mean to or whatever. But there is no doubt they're attacking civilian infrastructure. Like we have zero ground. I don't even hear anyone complaining because we have zero ground to stand on zero. And that's the other thing. Like, you know, when you talk about the Pandora's box that was opened by Gaza and what is now on the table, right, is not just confined to us.

1:07:13Kat Abughazaleh:We're not the only ones who are going to take advantage of this new law of the jungle where schools and mosques and hospitals and, you know, water salinization plants and, you know, wastewater treatment plants where that is all on the table. our adversaries are going to take advantage of that as well and that has already already right now in this moment that has put americans at risk and that's part of why they are being urged to flee the region immediately but being given no help no help in order to do that and those six americans you know i think hegseth it's oh they were in a fortified facility no they weren't bullshit we just saw we're in a triple wide trailer that's what they were in they were in a

1:07:51Scott Horton:triple wide trailer with concrete walls that were put in front of them because in their mind, they're protecting against suicide car, like they call VBIDs, like vehicle-borne IED. It's not 2005 anymore. The IED, it comes from the air with a$20 ,000 drone, which crashed directly into it. It's called a Tactical Operations Center, also known as a TOC, and they all got blown up. Imagine that. Temporary trailer, totally unfortified. There's now an investigation as to why there weren't proper troops or there weren't proper air defenses or any of that put around them. Sitting ducks. It's, I mean, it's beyond comprehension.

1:08:30Scott Horton:These are six guys, their family. I mean, what are you gonna tell their families? Who did they die for? What did they die? I hate to talk to that way. I really do. But I do think, you know, we have to say it viscerally in the middle of a conflict. Otherwise we're gonna get caught up in this Iraq war, freedom isn't free level bullshit. And no, we're not doing that this time around. We're not gonna let them do that to us because that's how we lost thousands, tens of thousands who were maimed as well. It really is just absolutely sickening. Okay, we've got Scott Horton standing by. Let's get to it.

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