Joe Kent: 'Israel Drove This Decision, Not Us'

[00:00:00] Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the At the Waters Edge podcast, where we look for insights beyond the headlines and take a practitioner's view on national security and geopolitics. It's the 9th of July, 2026. Let's get started. Now, as we continue to follow the play-by-play, day-by-day with the war with Iran, it's important to take a step back and try to understand how the hell is it we got dragged into another war in the Middle East after we specifically elected a guy as a country who said, we're not going to do that shit anymore.

[00:00:27] In fact, he's the guy that negotiated a deal with the Taliban to get us out of the last war. How did we get here? And what is it about our political system that seems destined to drag us into conflict after conflict after conflict? What can we do to fix it?

[00:00:45] Well, to help us unpack that today, we have on Joe Kent, forward director of the National Counterterrorism Center and someone who resigned from the Trump administration as a protest over its decision to go to war with Iran.

[00:00:58] I know, somebody in Washington, D.C. making a decision based off integrity and principle. Very rare. Very rare. But he did it. And it's interesting that, you know, someone who spent his entire adult life in uniform, long-distinguished career in special operations, has been all over the world risking his own life for the country. That's the guy that raises his hand and says, no, we can't do this anymore. This is wrong. I'm out.

[00:01:24] Now, why did he do that? What lessons has he learned along the way? And does he have any great ideas on how to keep us from getting involved in this bullshit again? Well, excited to talk to him about that and more this morning. With that, let's get to Joe. Well, Joe, good morning and welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today? Doing well, man. Thanks for having me. Pleasure to have you on. Love all the regalia and the background. It's awesome. Happy to see it. Yeah, absolutely. Yours too.

[00:01:51] Thank you. Thank you. I talked to way too many range regiment guys on this show. I don't know why. It's never about the range regiment. But in my post-military life, I just keep finding bat boys everywhere. There are not enough group guys. It's weird. It's weird. Interesting. Well, I'm kind of a hybrid. I was a pre-911 bad boy and then all my GY time was in group or elsewhere. I forgot about that. So I still haven't broken the curse. God damn it. There's not that many. There's only three ranger battalions. There's not that many of them. I know. Everywhere.

[00:02:18] Yeah. You were in third group, I see? Yes. Yep. Awesome. Yeah. 10th mountain guy before then. Ended up in third group and actually wanted to go to 75th Ranger Regiment. That was my goal as an officer. But my battalion commander at the time said, the soldiers in Ranger Regiment are so good. It's a sham job for officers. So you're not going. You're staying right here. So nobody in my battalion who put in a request to go to regiment got approved by the battalion or brigade commander.

[00:02:46] But you don't need their approval to try out for SF. So that ended up working out. Quite the compliment for the NCOs in regiment there. Yeah. I mean, he's not wrong, but still it would have been a cool job. Absolutely. Yeah. I actually, for my first couple of years in the military, I really didn't, I couldn't have told you really what officers did because I just interacted with so few of them because everything was just so NCO led in battalion.

[00:03:09] Yeah. Well, that was a big thing. Like when I was in the infantry, there was plenty of stuff for me to do as a lieutenant. And then like when I got to SF and was a captain, it's like, they don't actually need me to do anything day to day. Like, okay, how do I provide value here? Like that was a cool problem to have, but it was a weird mind shift shift to realize like they don't actually need me for anything. So how can I still provide value? Yeah, exactly. Mostly just top cover. There was a lot of that. There was a lot of that.

[00:03:37] Well, real quick, I know you're like one of the most infamous slash famous guests in the independent media space right now. But I always ask all new guests to introduce themselves in their own words to the audience. Yeah. Joe Kent spent a little bit over 21 years in special operations. Like we talked about Ranger Battalion, majority of my time though in fifth, fifth special forces group started out as a weapons guy and then was 18 Fox Intel and then a warrant officer. So I maximized my team time because I never wanted to do anything but the operational level.

[00:04:08] And then after that went to one of the special missions units because they were nice enough to accept warrant officers to still go do fun, interesting things. And then CIA paramilitary officer for a little bit. My late wife, Shannon was killed in 2019 in Syria. She was in the military as well. That's why I stepped out of working in the CIA to take care of our sons. Was a glutton for punishment and ran for Congress twice as a Trump supporting Republican out in Washington state. So that didn't go well, but it was a good experience.

[00:04:36] And then I ended up working in the Trump administration as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center. I was DNI Gabbard's chief of staff for a little bit while I was waiting for my confirmation as well. So like as a former intel guy, you're thinking about running for Congress. You're looking at Washington state and you're thinking MAGA Republican. This is the route that is going to lead to success. No, not really. It's just where I grew up. I grew up in the Northwest. And then my seat was contested. The Congresswoman I voted for voted for Trump's impeachment in 2021.

[00:05:06] And that frustrated me. And nobody else was stepping up. So I said, OK, well, I'll at least give it a shot. Nice. So don't want to spend too much time on current affairs. There's a lot to talk about. But news cycle these days. MOU is officially trashed. Debatable how much it was still in place before Trump said it was trashed. But it's weird to understand Iran's logic in attacking a bunch of commercial shipping going through the Strait of Hormuz right now.

[00:05:33] Because ostensibly looking at this, they've got 60 days of runway to come to a deal. They can use that to put whatever agreement they want in place afterwards. It seems weird that they would go out of their way to attack commercial shipping just because it's going through the southern part of the Strait versus the northern part of the Strait. What do you think their logic there is? Do you think they may have overstepped when they pulled the trigger on those strikes? Obviously, I'm not condoning their actions. It's bad to shoot at commercial vessels.

[00:06:02] However, from a logical standpoint, I think they realized that we were up against a pending energy crisis here at home. And President Trump basically even came out and said this, why we signed the MOU. And so I think Iran viewed that they had a good deal of leverage on the MOU. And the MOU was so favorable to Iran. I think the Iranians basically were like, actually, we're skeptical. This thing's going to work out anyways. So let's do everything that we can to test it.

[00:06:30] And let's send a message loud and clear that, number one, we will control the Straits of Hormuz. And then everything else they put in about Lebanon and Hezbollah, that is them exerting their new status as a regional power. And so I think the second that they couldn't extract maximum value and have things go exactly the way they wanted them in the Straits of Hormuz, is they said, OK, let's go ahead and test this because we've got more leverage here. We can endure whatever America throws at us longer than they can.

[00:06:58] I also think they were riding really high after the funeral of the supreme leader who was assassinated. So I don't think you can go through a four-day mourning period of having your supreme leader and members of his family killed. He's both a political leader and a religious figure and not have some kind of a reaction or response, however you want to phrase it, that shows that Iran is still standing strong in the face of this.

[00:07:23] Yeah. Is there any leverage that the U.S. has left as far as prating pressure on Iran to try to get them to negotiate? Because it seems like they don't feel the need to negotiate with us at all at this point. Yeah, and I don't think they view us as negotiating in good faith. We've basically taken every single period of negotiations, even before the war, to buy more time to better position ourselves for more strikes. And so I think they don't believe that we're negotiating in good faith because we really haven't shown them any good faith.

[00:07:52] Even after the MOU was signed, which was favorable to the Iranians, we temporarily lifted sanctions. We then went and cut that other side deal in Lebanon that basically negated what Iran viewed as them asserting themselves as a regional power. So we kind of negotiated against ourselves. But then also, too, I just think domestically within Iran, the more moderates, you know, air quote moderates, these are moderates by Iranian standards who have been advocating for negotiations with the West. Those guys are in political hot water right now.

[00:08:21] Like it is not fun to be, you know, a Basarachi or Ghalibov right now because they have an emboldened IRGC and then a populist right now who is like, hey, why are we even negotiating with these people at all? Why are we negotiating with the Americans or the Israelis? So I think that the leverage that we have, it's not militarily at all. I just think that the more that we try to force military leverage in this situation,

[00:08:46] we're going to end up bleeding out in the long run like we've seen in previous conflicts in the region. But I think it will be especially pronounced in this conflict because of the Straits of Hormuz and the energy crisis. Yeah. Is there anything, you know, that America should keep on its list of outcomes to push for and negotiate for? Or is it this we're getting to a point where we just need to end this as quickly as possible and accept the consequences of a failed military operation?

[00:09:14] I think we cut our losses. I mean, look, we've seen the gambler's fallacy, sunken costs, whatever you want to call it, over the last 20 plus years in Iraq and Afghanistan. And again, this one would be just much more pronounced. I think at the end of the day, look, we're back to these military strikes, but we have to remember why we got an MOU in the first place, because the military strikes that we tried at the beginning of the war didn't get the effects that we wanted. And so we signed the MOU, but now we're frustrated with the MOU.

[00:09:44] And so we're back to the military strikes. We basically are doing the exact same thing all over again, hoping for a different reaction. At some point in time, we're going to end up cutting a deal with the leadership in Iran. And it's going to be the leadership that's part of this government. And so I feel like we can either do that now and bleed a lot less, both economically and hopefully in terms of actual American blood, or we can drag this thing out for years, if not longer, as we've seen in previous conflicts,

[00:10:14] and eventually end up cutting a deal in the end anyways. So I think what we're trying to really hold on to right now and deny is that because of this war, basically our entire posture and standing in the Middle East has changed. The Middle East is changing. The Iranians will be a more regional power in the Middle East. So we can either accept that now and try and make the most out of it, which I think there's a lot that we can make out of that, that actually benefits America.

[00:10:41] Or we can desperately try and hold on to this pseudo empire in the Middle East that I would argue really hasn't served the American people at all. I think we should be saying good riddance. Like, okay, our basis ended up being a strategic liability and not a strategic advantage. So we really aren't providing security guarantees the majority of the Middle East anymore. So what? I mean, that really hasn't benefited the American people at all. So, again, I think we should capitalize on that and just say this is a moment where, hey, you know,

[00:11:10] in a very Trumpian political sense, I think President Trump could come back here and just say, look, we accomplished our military objectives. The Iranians take us seriously now. However, you know, all these bases and all these security arrangements we had, other presidents negotiated that. That was all from the Bush, you know, Obama, and even before that era. I'm going to build this back with an even better deal. You know, get our troops out and start to rearrange things in that manner. I think that'd be the most pragmatic thing we could do right now. You know, one of Trump's criticisms of the original JCPOA is that, you know,

[00:11:40] it removed secondary sanctions on Iran but kept primary sanctions. He made this critique about, like, why can't American companies go into Iran and make a ton of money? Do you think something that he could try to sell as a one of the American people is completely stabilize and normalize relationships with Iran and then get access to that market for American companies? Yes, certainly. And even if we don't have direct access to those markets, if that market is opening back up again,

[00:12:07] number one, that takes away Iran's incentive for choking off the Straits of Formulans. I personally think if we left the Straits of Formulans right now and said, fine, go ahead. If you guys want to be basically pseudo pirates of the Straits of Formulans and charge everybody for it, that's going to hurt you in the long run. Or we can take the sanctions off gradually. You guys can introduce your oil to the market. And then it's in your best interest, Iran, to have the Straits of Formulans open.

[00:12:35] So even if we don't directly have American companies in there pumping the oil out of the ground in Iran, the introduction of that new market is going to drive down prices throughout the entire region, which is why, again, that would result in a lot of the reshuffling of the, I think, the power dynamics within the Gulf. And so some of our Gulf allies might not like that as much. But these are things that I think are going to eventually happen anyways, especially with the moves that China and Russia and other countries have made,

[00:13:04] especially since we went and we kicked Russia off the SWIFT system. We thought that kicking Russia off SWIFT and sanctioning their natural gas and oil and energy sector would cripple them. And it really hasn't. So I think if we continue to put up these big blocks from preventing Iran from introducing their oil and natural gas to the market, the market's going to find a way and it's going to find a way outside the dollar system. And if we don't make it so that more people want to continue to use the dollar,

[00:13:32] we are going to be in major, major peril here in the U.S. because of our debt and because our whole system is based on us being the world's reserve currency holder. Yeah. Why do you think it is that folks for so long have really focused on vilifying Iran and making them out to be, you know, the worst country in the world? Because we seem to get along with Russia, China. We even get along with North Korea when we have to. Why is Iran as a nation state so much more challenging for the folks in D.C.

[00:13:59] to find a way to work with productively if with a lot of tension? I mean, obviously there was the 1979, you know, for people that are roughly our age, there's the Iran hostage crisis. I think that's probably one of the big catalysts. And so Iran's always kind of been this strong man, you know, strong country in the region that we have viewed as a threat to us because they've been effectively able to deploy proxies. But really, they've only deployed those proxies against us in the region

[00:14:27] and they've only deployed them against us when we actually went into their backyard. I think a lot of this boils down to the influence of the Israeli lobby. And I saw this firsthand. Iran is a major threat, especially the revolutionary government that's there now. They are a major threat to the Israelis. And the Israelis have also have always rightfully since 1979 viewed them as a major threat because they fund Hezbollah. Hezbollah is a major threat to the Israelis. Same thing with Hamas.

[00:14:53] And so a lot of the wars that we've undertook in the Middle East, I would say the vast majority post 9-11, especially since the Iraq war, have been heavily influenced by the Israelis, the Israeli lobby and their influence, you know, on our leaders and our military industrial complex. So I think a lot of this is framing from the pro-Israel lobby to get exactly this. And you've had, you know, multiple administrations, the Obama administration, the Biden administration, the Obama administration, and even the Bush administration said, hey, the Israelis came

[00:15:23] to us and really lobbied us hard to do this exact operation inside of Iran. And it took them, you know, 30 plus years. But here we are. They finally got the war that they wanted. That does not benefit us at all. But it ties in directly to what Israel wants. So how is it this small country is able to have such an outsized influence on American politics? And I can understand, you know, logically, OK, AIPAC, lots of money. It's foreign policy.

[00:15:50] So small minority with the way we're all funded can have an outsized influence in D.C. and get what they want. No one's really paying attention. But it's fascinating to look at this war with Iran because, you know, you were against it when you joined the Trump administration. I can go down the list. Trump was against it. One of the main points for folks to vote for Trump was a guarantee that we were not going to get into a war with Iran. And if we look back to Trump's first administration, stylistically very interesting.

[00:16:17] But one of the cool things he did was he showed up and said, I'm the president. You generals work for me. I don't care what you say. We're cutting this deal with the Taliban. We're changing our policy here. We're doing this. We're doing that. Whatever. And if nothing else, that seemed like a very healthy reset about reestablishing that we have civilian control over the military. We're not just letting technocrats run the process willy nilly with no supervision. And even that guy got dog walked into a war with Iran.

[00:16:47] And that's where it was just a random chance. Is there something more nefarious going on here? Like that just seems remarkable because I would have bet everything I have that this is not going to happen in this Trump administration. Yeah, I basically did. I didn't think that he was going to fall for this at all. I mean, basically the way that he handled multiple things in the first administration, you know, he wanted to get us out of Afghanistan. I was a big Trump supporter when he tried to get us out of Syria. The generals blocked him.

[00:17:16] I mean, that led to my late wife getting killed over there in Syria. The Qasem Solemani strike. I know a lot of people who are more non-interventionalists like I am. They said the Qasem Solemani strike was a major mistake. I disagree with him on that. I think the way that President Trump handled that was perfect. Solemani and the Iranian proxies killed Americans or killed one American. And Trump said, OK, fine, we are going to actually retaliate and we're going to kill the guy who's been the proxy master here for, for decades, killed him and his deputy Abu Mani Mohandas. You know, guys that were soaked in American blood, killed them on Iraqi soil.

[00:17:46] So they were legitimate combatants. But then after he did that, he stopped. He let the Iranians do some really, really, you know, kind of half-hearted retaliation, especially in light of what we've seen, what they're capable of now. And then he didn't take the bait that Bolton and others were trying to get him to take, was getting committed to a massive like regime change war in Iran because he knew that that was a trap. And so it really surprised me in this administration, especially, you know, being where I was, you know, in the Oval Office frequently and the intelligence briefings while I was working

[00:18:14] as a DNI Gabbard chief of staff to see initially at the beginning of the administration, he wanted nothing to do with it, with the idea of us going to war with Iran. He wasn't interested in it. He thought that it was just some BS that BB was spending. But then within a couple of months, it went from being, you know, this thing that he kind of had to brush off and he was very bullish on the negotiations. And so was I. I mean, I think Steve Wyckoff, I personally believe that Steve Wyckoff was, you know, he,

[00:18:41] I think that he had a deal within reach that probably would have been better than the JCPOA. That's why the Israelis rushed to get into the 12-day war. Um, so I, I watched what I described as, you know, the, the echo chamber, the ecosystem, however you want to look at it, um, working in unison. And so like through the official channels, I would see, uh, Israeli officials who we gave way too much access to, they were able to go directly right to principals, whether that

[00:19:08] was the secretary of state, whether that was the CIA director, whether that was at the Pentagon, they could go right to them and say, Hey, you know, we have some new information, we have some new intelligence. And this would be intelligence that they would interject in the system outside the normal liaison sharing channels. So then we would get the intelligence eventually later on, and we'd be able to either debunk it or not necessarily even debunk it, but add some context to it to say, Hey, this is being provided to us to influence us as well as inform us. But by then, you know, the horse had already left the stables because that information had

[00:19:37] gone right from the Israelis to a cabinet member directly to the president to enter, to, you know, affect his decision-making. And then at the same time, you'd have, you know, prominent members of the media, you'd have prominent donors go directly, you know, have closed door, uh, access to the president. And then you'd have the whole media ecosystem that they know the president is consuming, whether it's Fox news, New York times, wall street journal, all saying roughly the same things. This is the technique they use to move the red line to say that, you know, uh, the, the

[00:20:05] Iranians can't have any enrichment. The U S policy is zero enrichment when really the president never said that that was something that Mike Pompeo said in 2018, the president just said, and continues to say, Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. The Iranians agreed and said, we don't want to have a nuclear weapon. And that's why Steve Wyckoff's talks were so productive. And that's why we saw the Israelis jump in and they were able to not just move the red line, but to accelerate things with, with the 12 day war. And so unfortunately, just the amount of access and influence the Israelis had is really what got us into this war.

[00:20:35] Do you think that was an unintended consequence of the Trump administration coming in and gutting so many state institutions and cutting them to the bone and then not really having a robust plan in place to hire back and fill all these roles? Because it seems like there's a big buffer that usually exists around the president. There certainly wasn't the first term. And there was a deliberate effort as it came in this time to get the people he wanted in those positions. But there was never really follow through. I think it's like 20 percent of the positions and top departments around the president have

[00:21:04] been filled and everything else is either in acting or just completely empty. Do you think that those initial cuts to the bureaucracy, as well-intentioned as they may have been at the time, left him more exposed to a dedicated influence campaign by Israel? I would say no. That's definitely something that's interesting that should be explored. But I don't think so. The government is still way too big. The vast majority of people in the so-called IC never even touch intelligence.

[00:21:32] They're just kind of there as middle managers to middle managers and assistants to assistants. Are you saying intelligence gathering is overly bureaucratic and cumbersome? What? That's incredible. And very few of the intelligence officers are touching intelligence or collecting it. So like the cuts we made at ODNI, I cut almost 25 percent of my staff at NCTC. And none of them were actually like intelligence professionals. They were like literally bureaucratic, nice people, but like they were not doing intelligence.

[00:22:01] So I don't think that's the issue. A big issue that I did see was because the president was so reliant directly on a lot of the principal cabinet members who didn't have a background in intelligence, Rubio, Ratcliffe, Hegseth, going directly to them. And the Israelis were able to go directly to them. And we had a really robust debate in the lead up to the 12-day war. We had a deputies committee process. We had an NSC process. And the NSC at the time was light and lean. A lot of it had gotten gutted and cut.

[00:22:30] And I thought it was actually pretty efficient. And the guidance, and I would just say some of the debate, being able to lay out different courses of action that we were providing in those deputies and NSC processes, they were healthy and they were productive and they offered the president options. The problem is none of that got to the president because of the gatekeeping around between the chief of staff and some of the other principals. But the Israelis were able to bypass a lot of that, unfortunately. So at the end of the day, this is President Trump's leadership style.

[00:22:58] He wants people who tell him what he wants to hear. And the people who have consistent access to him are very, very good at telling him what he wants to hear. I'm hoping in the wake of how things have turned out, he kind of sticks his head up and says, well, at the end of the day, I may like these guys. They may make me feel good every day. But the results aren't what they promised at all. And there doesn't seem to be any correction material, any correction maneuvers there. So, you know, I am critical of the echo chamber that was created around the president.

[00:23:26] But at the end of the day, too, the buck does stop with him. And I think for a while there, he did do a good job of listening to everybody in the room, but he didn't seem to notice or care when the room was emptied out and there was only the people that were telling him, hey, go for it, boss. This is going to be super easy, which was against all of his gut instincts. So I think he's got to do a lot of self-reflection there. What are the odds do you think that Iran has a nuclear weapon in the next five years? Because it seems almost illogical for them to not develop one as soon as they can at this point.

[00:23:56] I mean, I can't imagine a world at this point where they don't develop a nuke. And also, like, nukes are old tech. Anyone who wants to develop one and can get the resources, it's inevitable. Yeah, I mean, we basically – this will be a self-fulfilling prophecy, kind of like al-Qaeda in Iraq when we said, like, Saddam, he's dealing with Iraq, and there's al-Qaeda in Iraq, and that wasn't true. But then we went there and invaded, and we basically created al-Qaeda in Iraq by having our presence. Six months later, we found them. We found them. Yeah, exactly. They're there because of us.

[00:24:24] And so this is very much going to be the same story. For a long time, the Iranians, basically since 2003, they made a very pragmatic decision to say, hey, we're not going to actually develop a nuclear weapon. And they didn't do that because they couldn't. Like you said, this is old tech. Persians are smart people. They've also got a lot of money. They could buy one from their neighbor's Pakistan. And I literally actually had this conversation with the president at one point. He said, well, why doesn't Iran have a nuclear weapon? Everybody keeps saying that they're going to break out and they're going to get a nuclear. He's like, why don't they have one?

[00:24:52] And it's like, well, because their policy was based off of how we had reacted to the region. Saddam was like coy about having weapons of mass destruction. He never came out until it was too late and said, like, I actually don't have weapons of mass destruction. And he got regime change. Gaddafi said, oh, man, I saw that. Like, I'm going to come clean. I'm going to give you guys. I'm going to give the international community absolutely everything. I don't have a nuclear program. Well, he got regime changed.

[00:25:17] And so the Iranians had a very pragmatic, you know, Goldilocks breakout theory of the case where they would say, hey, we're always going to. And they still say this. We're always going to retain the ability to enrich uranium. And we're not really going to let you guys push us around and tell us what percentage we can we can enrich it to. But they did have a self-imposed prohibition on basically enriching it up to weapons grade. That way, everyone knew that they could have it if they wanted to, but they didn't have it.

[00:25:43] And that prohibition, which was issued via a fatwa, had held since 2003. So whenever, you know, people like me bring this up, the detractors will say, oh, do you believe Iranian religious fatwas and decrees? It's like, no, I don't believe religious fatwas or decrees. What I do believe is what we can measure over time and over time, basically since 2003, we were able to measure through, you know, overt and clandestine methods that the Iranians were sticking to this. You had people on Iran who were saying, hey, boss, I think we should build a bomb.

[00:26:12] And they were always getting smacked down by the Iranian chain of command and saying, no, we have our strategy. Our strategy is basically to be a to be a breakout country, but not to develop a nuclear weapon. So I think because now we have gone in and we've attempted a regime change, we've killed the guy who put the prohibition on developing a nuclear weapon. We have basically emboldened everybody who was there of a hard line mentality who said, like, we've got to have a nuclear weapon. Because I think all of them right now, they're pointing at North Korea and they're being like, you know who's not dealing with this crap?

[00:26:42] The North Koreans aren't dealing with this crap because they actually have a bomb. And as much as America wanted to saber rattle and try and push them around and sanction them, at the end of the day, they've never gotten a military campaign thrown their way. Because they actually have the bomb. So I think within the next five years, you know, I'd be shocked if we didn't see, you know, that rapid succession of like they test a bomb out in the desert and then they test another one so that we know that they have two or three or whatever. I just feel like that's probably going to happen here pretty soon.

[00:27:10] You know, that's been a red line for a lot of policy folks for a long time. Do you think what does the world actually look like, though, with a nuclear armed Iran? Is that actually as dangerous as the folks who are afraid of it say it is for the U.S.? I mean, five years ago, I would have given you a different answer. But again, like, let's look at how let's look at their behavior over time. Iran is not a crazed group of jihadis. Do they have fundamental and very, very committed, you know, Islamists to a certain degree?

[00:27:39] Yeah, but it's Shia Islam. And again, we don't have any Shia Islamists that are coming over here, you know, getting on airplanes to come and kill Americans the way we do with selfish jihadis, with al-Qaeda and with ISIS. We have watched Iran over time, especially in this last 18 months of conflict, behave in a very measured and pragmatic way. I mean, starting with when Trump came back into office in January of 25 under Biden, the proxies were attacking American forces. They were able to quell those proxies with the drop of a hat. They stopped the proxy attacks.

[00:28:09] I was surprised by that. I didn't think they were going to be able to raid in the proxy attacks. They did. And then they actually held back the proxies even during the 12-day war. And so I think if we watch the way – and then the way Iran reciprocates whenever we attack, it's usually very incremental and it is usually very measured in comparison to how we responded. Now, the longer these things go on, the harder it's going to be for them to hold back.

[00:28:32] I think at some point they are going to go for – kind of not really go for broke, but I think they are going to start throwing more to try and deter us from continuing to attack them. But if nothing else, Iran has proven to be a very, very logical and pragmatic actor. And if they did have a nuclear weapon – I'm not saying I want them to have a nuclear weapon. But if they did have a nuclear weapon, it doesn't make sense based on anything that we've seen them do that they would act irrationally with it. I mean the North Koreans – like I don't think the North Koreans necessarily are always the most rational people. But the North Koreans have them.

[00:29:01] And they're not just like willy-nilly lobbying nukes at the west coast of America or at Japan. So I think over time we've seen a lot of these different countries obtain nuclear weapons and we've seen relatively pragmatic behaviors from Pakistan. I mean we killed a lot in Pakistan. There's a lot of bad things we can say about Pakistan. However, since Pakistan's had a nuclear weapon, they haven't been a menace to the region. Them and India – and India has nuclear weapons too – they've even traded blows on quite a few occasions.

[00:29:29] And neither side, as much as they really hate each other, has used nuclear weapons. So I do in many ways think in foreign policy circles this is often used as a boogeyman for us to chase to justify wars or to justify more defense spending. One interesting development – and this actually is something I was watching and I talked about a bit with Professor Pape when the war first started – attacks on the homeland. You know, Iran, for whatever else you want to say about them, they do have a robust proxy network.

[00:29:56] They are very good at projecting power through unconventional and asymmetric means. It would not surprise me if they had the capability to launch attacks on the homeland. Do you think that we haven't seen that because they haven't thought it was an appropriate escalation even though we're bombing them? Do you think they lack the capacity to do it? Do you think they lack the intent to do it? Because that seems like that was a likely outcome of an extended war with Iran is that we would have attacks here on the home front. I think we could still see it.

[00:30:26] It wouldn't surprise me, especially now that we've killed – like Trump says, we've killed like one or two layers of different leaders over there. I think under the original leadership, they would have said, no, don't do that. We don't want to open that can of worms with the U.S. The guys that are in charge right now, I mean the IRGC QF, like we've fought these guys before. And so I'm sure that they are offering up that option. And look, we had open borders for several years in this country. This country is not hard to get into. It's also not hard to radicalize people online.

[00:30:55] We already saw a little bit of blowback terrorism from this at the beginning of the war where there was that individual who was wearing the Iranian T-shirt, went into a bar and killed three or four people down in Texas. So I think we will see kind of two different flavors of this. I think we'll see the self-radicalized people. In the last two years, really, since Gaza really kicked off and there was a lot of social media coverage of Gaza, we've seen attacks here in America by a wide variety of different actors, self-radicalized.

[00:31:24] And the vast majority of them have cited grievances from Gaza as what drove them to violence. And so I think we'll start seeing some of that in terms of the homegrown space. But in terms of like Iran's actual proxies, I think it's a potential. I mean, like so far, it's not because they lack the capability. They most certainly have the capability. And again, our country is an open society. It's a free country. It's pretty easy to get here. It's pretty easy to contact people. It'd be easy for them to plan an attack. And so we have to ask ourselves, like, why haven't they done that yet?

[00:31:54] And I don't think that that will always hold. I think if we go back in in a meaningful way with something more than the airstrikes that we're seeing right now, you know, God forbid, if the president does, you know, some ground operations inside Iran or Iran really feels like they're kind of up against the ropes a little bit. I think that we could see attacks here, you know, in America. But again, Iran's calculus, too, would be like, will that make America double down, which I think it would. And I think that's a big reason why we haven't seen the Iranians greenlight any of their proxy attacks right now.

[00:32:24] Again, this is kind of back to like that Persian mentality. I do think they're playing a pretty complex game of chess. And I think they are playing it out in the long run, too, because I think they know that they're also winning the information space as well. Right now it's seen pretty much throughout the world that America and Israel drove this conflict and that we are the aggressors here and Iran is just defending itself. And so I think they're very, very aware of that as well.

[00:32:47] So what do you think, if anything, would trigger a U.S. ground invasion to seize Cargill Island or any other territory or clear out the mountains along the strait? Because Trump just seems to be very hesitant to go to that extent, even though the same people that walked him into this war seem very enthusiastic about taking it to that extreme. What do you think would actually have to happen to trigger the U.S. to respond in such a way?

[00:33:13] I'm afraid that we're actually getting fairly close to it, even though I agree with you that the president is hesitant. I think we probably would have seen something earlier had that pilot recovery not gone so poorly. But luckily, no, everybody got out alive and we didn't actually lose anyone. But it was pretty dicey and pretty touch and go there. And then that showed just how hard it is for us to operate inside of Iran just because the distance, the terrain, et cetera. So I think that actually prevented President Trump from wanting to do ground operations.

[00:33:40] The problem is with the airstrikes that we're seeing right now, those are going to only have limited effects. We're essentially bombing a lot of the same stuff that we had already bombed before. I know now we're bombing some of the infrastructure. We're bombing some of the railways. We're going to try and squeeze them more economically. But look, I believe that the Iranians are willing to endure way more pain domestically in terms of blows to their economy than we are here. So at some point, the president, I think, is going to get frustrated.

[00:34:06] And then the Pentagon is going to do what the Pentagon is going to do and CENTCOM is going to do what they're going to do. And they're going to go to him with a stack of different options. And they're going to say, hey, Mr. President, here is a couple of different ways that we can open up the Straits of Hormuz. And probably the most realistic way of opening the Straits of Hormuz is actually having to seize some of that high ground. It is having to seize some of those islands, in which case I think Iran either they hammer us on the way in or they just let us come in.

[00:34:34] And then they can essentially use insurgent tactics and kind of hold our guys as hostages and then bait us into what has proven to be effective in the Middle East, a long and a prolonged insurgency. So I could see out of pure frustration if the president doesn't have the will to just walk away and say, OK, I'm not going to solve this militarily. I'm not going to get the grand deal and the signing of a treaty that I want. I'm just going to walk away. If he doesn't have the will to do that, I think it's really just a matter of time before he has talked into some form of a ground operation.

[00:35:05] You know, it's interesting how much all this comes back to Israel walking us into situations that aren't in our interests. And it's hard to blame them for it because they're a small country who seemingly can get the big dog to go where it's told. When it comes to Israel, do you think that they're a threat to America or do you think this is just a relationship that we have let get wildly out of control? How should we assess them? Because it's been long known like they're also the number one purveyor of espionage in the U.S.

[00:35:35] Like they do more than China, which is remarkable when you look at the populations and the budgets involved. How should we approach our relationship with Israel? Because right now they've been trying to scuttle our ability to get closer ties with Turkey. And if we want to look, you know, 20 years down the road, that relationship with Turkey seems like it's something we absolutely need to be shoring up while we still can. Yeah, this is on us. I mean, we're a big and powerful country. Like there is no reason why we should be letting the Israelis come and dictate anything to us. But I personally saw it time and time again.

[00:36:04] And I was surprised because I had, you know, like I said in my brief bio there, I had worked at the operational level and then gone from that to being in, you know, in the situation room, honored to be there. But I was really surprised to see just how hesitant we were to tell the Israelis no. Prior to the 12-day war, we knew the Israelis wanted to jumpstart the conflict, to sabotage the negotiations that we had going on.

[00:36:26] And myself and a few others in an NSC process, we basically said we can prevent the Israelis from doing this because the Israelis can't do consistent, sustained operations in Iran without our help. We can take away a few key things from them and then they can't launch this operation. To me, it was like one plus one equals two, right? Like if we don't want them to do the thing, take away the thing that they need to go do the thing.

[00:36:49] When we pitched this to, you know, very senior ranking members of the DOD, you know, it looked like I had just proposed, you know, to invade the moon or something. Like I was crazy. And so consistently, I just saw this lack of ability for us, the most powerful country in the world, to say, hey, no, this little nation that we pay a good deal of money for, you know, even if it is just $3.8 billion, which it's way more than that in terms of what we actually give them.

[00:37:13] And in terms of political top cover, but our lack of will to tell them no and to take things away from them, to prevent them from doing things that are not in our interests, that just blew me away. And I put that on us because if I were them, I would be doing the exact same thing. And they play us very well. I mean, there's a lot of Israelis who are dual U.S. citizens and they speak English just like me and you do. And so they come to us and it sounds like we're dealing with like with one of our own.

[00:37:40] And these guys do a great job from like just an intel human perspective. They do a great job of recruiting us, even though we don't think we're being recruited by them. And the way that we have, I mean, look, you and I both know the Middle East is a hard place to work. We don't speak languages. Even when we spend a lot of time over there, like it's foreign to us. It's not as foreign to the Israelis. And so the Israelis come to us almost as training wheels. And they're like, hey, man, like the Middle East is really tough. We'll help you guys navigate this. Here's all the intelligence that you need. And this has happened over decades.

[00:38:08] And so a lot of our ability to basically check their math, our unilateral collection has atrophied so much to the point where you do have a lot of people who are scared. And I think they're unnecessarily scared. I think they're not putting enough confidence in our own people. But there is some reason to be a little bit apprehensive that they will say if we cut off or even scale back our relationship with Israel, then we're going to be in the blind in the Middle East. We're not going to know what's going on because we just need that Israeli intelligence. And a lot of that I don't think is real.

[00:38:35] I think a lot of that has been a propaganda campaign by the Israelis. They just say it enough over and over again. But you only need the intel if you're doing operations. And if you're only doing the operations because the folks are giving the intel or pulling you into operations, like. Oh, 100%. Yeah, that's it. It's very circular logic. Very circular. And then if we don't have the ability to check it on our own, this would happen a lot. I mean, they would give us something on Iran or it would make it into the briefing book.

[00:38:59] And this is another problem, too, is like if you don't have a background in these things and you don't have a background in intel, you will get intelligence from, you know, whatever. One of the agencies has got an impressive looking sea line. You're like, oh, man, this is American intel. But if you don't know to ask the question of, like, where did we get this and how, sometimes you have to play, like Simon says, like, so where did we get this? How did we get this? Who did we get this from? And then when you run it down further enough down to the source of origin, it's like, well, we got this all from the Israelis. And this would happen consistently over and over again.

[00:39:28] And, you know, a lot of people would get frustrated with me and some other folks because we would really want the president or whatever decision maker was having to make a decision based off whatever intel to understand that, hey, that intelligence, that all came from the Israelis. It might be accurate. I mean, probably 75 percent of it is. But why are they giving it to us now? Like they're trying to achieve an outcome. So at the end of the day, we've just got to reset the way that we deal with the Israelis and deal with them with clear and sober eyes. I think we can have a good relationship.

[00:39:55] I think we're going to go through a choppy period whenever it is that we come out of this. But I think we can have a good relationship with them. We've just got to be more realistic in how we handle them. It's been really interesting this week with the NATO summit in Ankara to watch, you know, BB come on Fox News and CNN and talk about all the things about Turkey that America needs to be concerned about, which is weird because you actually go through every single one of his talking points and you could insert his name there and they all apply equally.

[00:40:22] What is it about Turkey that makes Israel so uncomfortable? Because it almost seems like a weird thing for them to care about. They're both U.S. allies. Turkey's got a large military in the region, but they've never pointed at Israel. They don't even share a border. Like where is Israel's trepidation about Turkey coming from? I think big picture, they don't want any other major power in the Middle East and especially considering Turkey's part of NATO.

[00:40:48] And so that would make it challenging for Israel to actually go and do something against. So they're OK if they're being, you know, a comparable size military force like they have with Egypt. But Egypt, you know, basically we pay the Egyptians not to attack the Israelis. They're OK with that relationship. They don't mind Egypt having a big, you know, standing military because they have good relationships with Israel or with Egypt. But Turkey is a bit of a wild card. It's big. It's powerful. It has, you know, a really strategic geographic position. They're also part of NATO.

[00:41:17] But then I think on the more tactical level, the Israelis are very nervous about Syria. The Israelis basically got us to go in and to take out Assad because after we screwed up Iraq so badly and installed an Iranian-backed government there, the Israelis were like, well, this doesn't work at all, guys. Like we have Iranian control in Baghdad and then all the way over into Damascus with Assad. That is a direct supply route to Hezbollah.

[00:41:41] So we went in and we supported the proxy war, which was predominantly Sunni, which was predominantly led by jihadists, the rise of ISIS, rise of al-Qaeda. The Israelis were OK with that. They were OK with the chaos. But then when Assad fell, the Turks had basically outmaneuvered everybody. They got their guy Shara in. We've now, you know, for good or bad, we've acknowledged Shara as well now as the leader.

[00:42:03] And so there is a contentious relationship there where the Turks are going to have more influence over Syria, which directly affects what happens inside of Israel. And so I think they want to reassert their control over that entire situation. You know, it's interesting to hear about all these errors of judgment and intel failures because you can go back to the beginning of the global war on terror.

[00:42:25] You know, the intelligence about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction and the sourcing issues on that and pull it apart, you know, 20 years later. Why is it that the foreign policy establishment in D.C., however you want to describe and define it, seems so resistant to actually learning anything from the global war on terror? Because it's like we did 20 years of operations in the Middle East and just mind dumped it the second we left Kabul. And there's been my suspicion.

[00:42:55] Please tell me if I'm wrong. It does not appear to be that any institution in D.C. has seriously examined the lessons of the global war on terror and taken steps to learn from it. That's spot on. I mean, unfortunately, I wish I could tell you that that's not the case because we fought and we bled and we lost so much over there. One of the big fundamental problems that I think we have is that we do not have enough people who put in their time in the Middle East at the boots on the ground nasty level in senior positions.

[00:43:24] I frequently saw that there would be a lot of times where I'd be in a room where very key decisions were being made and I would look around and maybe there'd be a guy or two maybe who had done one tour. But by far, and I think of myself as being pretty average for our community, I was like, well, I'm the guy who actually has the most experience in here on the ground. There was a lot of people who had, you know, very impressive resumes of different things they'd done in the Beltway.

[00:43:49] But it wasn't chewing the dirt in the Middle East and understanding the ground at the, you know, at that level. So I do think we need to do a better job of getting more people who've had those experiences while they're still young or our cohort is still young and capable of doing very important work and getting them in positions where they can help shape a lot of the policy of what we're doing in the Middle East.

[00:44:10] But another part, too, I think that's cultural is we, man, we hate we, the U.S. government, especially in the Beltway, they hate saying we ever got anything wrong, which to me, again, as a guy who spent so much time like at the operational level, like we destroy ourselves in every single AAR that we do. We only focus on what we got wrong. If we got it right, there's nothing to talk about. 100%. And that's the mentality that I had. And frequently, you know, I would find myself saying all the things I thought that we were getting wrong and people were like, well, this guy's not a team player, you know?

[00:44:39] Or being if they like I always grew up to like in the team room where if there was a disagreement, as long as it was a disagreement that was constructive, completely tolerated. You know, we thrived on friction and friction was a good thing in the Beltway. I think just because you've got a bunch of people who are much more politically minded, friction is viewed as a bad thing. And this kind of ties into, too, like why the president wasn't getting, you know, a diversity of opinions is because they didn't want any friction in the room. It's just much nicer when everybody gets along and says the same thing. Well, there's a huge problem there.

[00:45:08] So I think culturally, we would just be much better served if we had more people who've had these experiences, you know, in the military or in the intelligence community where they were on the ground level, where there was a high tolerance for us being critical of our own actions and looking for ways that we can improve them. And people who are good, but they're being friction in every room. Like, give me the pro, give me the con, you know, give me three courses of action. Give me how this is going to go horrible.

[00:45:33] And then when it's done, let's have an after actions review and let's just talk about how badly we screwed this thing up so we don't screw it up again next time. Yeah. One of the most difficult lessons for me to learn when I went into special operations, you know, we go to the cabin's career course for SOF and it's all MDMP, military decision making process. And I thought it was complete crap when we first started doing it. Like, I'm here to be a commando. We have brilliant tacticians and leaders like this staff process is bullshit. Until we actually started going through some iterations and solving real world problems.

[00:46:01] And the amount of buy-in you get from people by going through the process, even if you reach the outcome you already thought you were going to reach. Two huge things from going through the process and going through the friction. One, everyone's bought in because they understand why the decision was made. So even the folks that don't agree with it understand it and they're going to execute as best they can because at least they have participated. Also, when you go to execute and stuff happens because stuff inevitably happens, you already know what your options are. You can adjust quickly on the fly.

[00:46:30] You keep things from spiraling out of control. You get them back on track. But you can't execute smoothly unless you've gone through a brutal planning process. Like, you don't get one without the other. 100%. Yeah. And unfortunately, a lot of that just doesn't happen at the senior levels. There's a lot of like, how is this going to, you know, play in the media? How is this going to look? And then also, too, like, look, a lot of political appointees. And this isn't necessarily a bad thing or a good thing.

[00:46:56] I think there's a lot of value in having political appointees because it does directly reflect the will of the American people. The American people choose the president. The political appointees are there to make sure that the apparatus does what the guy, the people chose, you know, what they're supposed to do. However, a lot of times you get political appointees who just don't have a lot of background in intel and in the military. And so I think you do need, you know, a seasoned cadre that are there to say, hey, like, hey, this is how we are going to do this process.

[00:47:52] You get this self-licking ice cream cone in a way. And again, this is where it comes in, where if you're the guy that's like, hey, I'm going to tell you guys why this didn't work or why we screwed this up, why you become unpopular very, very quickly. But I do think we need a lot more people who are committed to, as cliche as it is, the whole, like, truth to power. And then I think, like you said, explaining, like, hey, this is a process. We didn't just, you know, we're not just trying to sharpshoot. We're not just trying to naysay. This is the process we have for making decisions in the military. This is the intelligence process.

[00:48:20] You know, this is how we actually came up with the things that we're calling intelligence and being able to caveat and explain to leaders. Yeah. You know, we can start talking about this now. You had this amazing career in government, like, especially from the SOC community, like, to die for. Ranger regiment, special forces into a special mission unit, and then CIA. Now you're in the situation room. And you decide to walk away from it.

[00:48:44] You know, one of the really interesting things in special operations that we were always harped on, you need to coach up. You need to drive your boss's decisions. You need to advocate for your organization. And coaching upwards in a bureaucracy is a skill that's really valued in special operations. How did you get to the point where you felt that you couldn't effectively coach up to the president and then decide to walk away? I guess I can say this.

[00:49:11] Is coaching up in special operations the same when you're trying to coach up to the president? Like, at a certain point, does coaching up look different, feel different, stop working? Yeah, I mean, it kind of does. Just because the president gets to choose when he sees people and how he receives them. So I was, you know, sub-cabinet. So I was, you know, working below the DNI. So my ability to affect that battle space. Well, there were some opportunities. It was a little bit more limited.

[00:49:39] But again, the president had really closed the circle off quite a good deal post-Midnight Hammer in regards to what was taking place in Iran. So, you know, had I felt that we were still being listened to post-Midnight Hammer, I think I probably would have stuck around a little bit longer. Once the war started, we went through two pretty heavy weeks of trying to provide different off-ramps, you know, to the president. But I don't think any of those courses of action even really reached the president. I think he was kind of in his bubble, which to me, it appears he's still in.

[00:50:07] Every now and again, we see that, like, the vice president with the MOU can kind of break through. But then he goes right back into it. So I felt like, number one, the information that we were providing just wasn't getting anywhere and that I wasn't being affected from the position that I was in. So, you know, kind of principles of combat 101. If you're not affected from the position that you're in, you need to maneuver. And so part of this was, you know, maneuvering, like, I'm going to resign and say that I am against this. Because, number one, I was very much against this. I was shocked at the way that Israel was able to drive this.

[00:50:36] And I felt that I needed to say that I am not on board with this. And the American people deserve to know that a foreign government had gotten us into this conflict, which I believe is going to have, you know, massive ramifications. And then also, too, just morally, once the bodies started coming into Dover and we started losing Americans, I know people will say, oh, we've only lost, you know, 13 to 15 or so. But, you know, those are families. Those are real losses. And they didn't need to die. This war was not necessary.

[00:51:04] And so for me, I just thought back to when I was, you know, on my third rotation in Iraq when I realized that we had kind of gotten into this for all the wrong reasons that we were lied to. I was frustrated with a lot of the guys who had done hard time in Vietnam, like Colin Powell. You know, I talk about Colin Powell quite a bit because he was the front man for selling the war. But he had, you know, had a really, really successful career as an infantry – as a young infantry officer in Vietnam, worked his way up through the ranks, Gulf War, et cetera. This was a guy who, in my view, should have known better. I think he did know better.

[00:51:34] But he wanted to be, you know, what was viewed as, you know, a good team player. And he wanted to keep his positions. We helped sell the war. And I was very frustrated, you know, 20-plus years ago that no one with those resumes was speaking out, you know, kind of on behalf of the guys we're actually having to go and do the fighting. So, to me, I was like, I'm not going to play this role. Like, I've already – I've done my time. I've definitely proven myself. And I'm not going to continue to salute and move out and do what I'm told anymore. So that was kind of how I reached the decision.

[00:52:04] You know, when did you first have a thought, I need to resign? And how long from that first thought to when you actually submitted your letter? I mean, definitely thought about it in, like, the 12-day war and Midnight Hammer. I thought about it a little bit then because I was just like, I can't believe the Israelis are forcing us into this. But we didn't take any casualties. And the president's plan was just, you know, do Operation Midnight Hammer and we'll be done with it. I was still skeptical. I thought the Israelis were going to come right back.

[00:52:35] And I hope that we are going to steer away from that. But I had said, you know, that summer I was like, you know, if this actually ends up being a full-blown war with Iran, I'm not going to stay here for it. And then once the war started, you know, I told my immediate staff, I just said, hey, look, I want us to get out of this. I'm going to try and work so that we can get out of this. But I'm not going to just go along with this. So it was probably about a two, three-week time frame because the war started on February 28th and then I resigned on the 17th.

[00:53:03] So within pretty short order, I had my mind made up. That's a pretty short window to end. But, you know, most people in our community would be incredibly envious of the career that you've had. That's a very short window to walk away from that. Yeah. I mean, for me, it was just very clear when the casualties started coming in. And I wasn't going to be a part of it.

[00:53:25] And I wanted to work from the outside to try and prevent any more people from dying in the war, any more of our, you know, brothers and sisters in uniform from getting marched off to yet another war. And then also, like, to try and reach the president. I don't think it's been successful. But I think I'm able to influence things more now speaking freely than I could from the inside just because that our ability to affect things and to coach up, so to speak, had really been limited from the inside.

[00:53:53] At the end of the day, we were continuing to go through all the motions of having deputy committees, national security process, and all that. But I just knew it wasn't going anywhere. So it's like we're just talking to each other at this point. If I can leave and speak freely on the outside, then maybe I can influence things, you know, that way that gets us out of this war suit. When you, you know, started sharing with your staff that you're going to resign, did anyone try to talk you out of it or advocate for you staying on to be a voice inside the administration?

[00:54:22] Yeah, there was definitely folks who said, you know, you could stay, you know, maybe you'll be more effective here and there. But I think at the end of the day, most of them understood. I mean, I had, you know, put people around me that I'd served with before, so they understood where I was coming from. Yeah. What advice do you have for folks, though, that are participating in this operation? They read the news. They listen to podcasts like this. They're aware of what the history of us getting into this conflict is.

[00:54:46] What advice would you have for them as they continue to try to serve in their capacity but also deal with the reality of the situation? Yeah, I mean, I think if you're in the military, it's different. I mean, you've got to do your best. You've got to follow orders. I think if you're, especially if you're in the military, I would just worry about bringing back the guys on your left and right because that's your number one job and responsibility.

[00:55:10] But if you're not in the military and you're in the civilian ranks, you know, I would take a good hard look and say, do you support this? Is this something that you're going to be good with? And just, you know, think about it in the big picture. I mean, have we had more people walk away at the beginning of the Iraq debacle, you know, once we knew that we were in the meat grinder in Afghanistan? Is it possible that having a lot of people leave government would have, you know, affected it differently, especially when we have elections coming up and people can speak out more? There's social media.

[00:55:39] People can speak out. So that's a decision that people have to make and weigh on their own. At the same time, too, like I have friends that stayed in the government and they said, hey, I think I can be more effective here within the government. And there's nobility in that as well, as long as they're able to continue to speak truth to power and they're not just being told, hey, we're going to we're just going to go along with this. So that's an individual decision people have to make. But I would I think people should reflect heavily on it and see what where their heart is and where their moral compass is.

[00:56:10] As you, you know. Sit on the outside of the administration now and you've had a chance to talk to more people and read the temperature in different rooms. What has surprised you the most about the way the American public has perceived this war and reacted to it? Because you've gotten quite the case study of being inside the administration, having operational experience on the ground. And now you're on the outside advocating for your position.

[00:56:34] What would have surprised you the most as you've gone around in the the non-military, the non-DC space and talk to people? I think just DC is so disconnected from reality. I think the vast majority of Americans did not understand why we got into this war. And then once we got in, they they wanted us out of it. I mean, President Trump will selectively post different polls. But when the MOU came out, he was like, oh, 70 percent of the American people love the MOU. And it's like, I don't think 70 percent of the American people read the 14 point MOU.

[00:57:03] You they were just like, we got a deal and we're out of this. Sweet. We support this. I mean, if you look at polling throughout the years, and this was the same in the G-WAT, the vast majority of Americans are against us taking, you know, getting involved in more wars, especially in the Middle East. And so I really think Iran came out of left field for most people, especially when you start talking about like, but Iran has weapons of mass destruction. I mean, everybody starts thinking like Iraq. And so the war is just simply not, you know, very popular.

[00:57:32] But also Americans have a lot of common sense. They don't understand how this affects their daily lives, the struggles that they're facing, you know, at home, et cetera. So I've been, you know, pretty I would say it's refreshing to get out and talk to regular people because they they don't understand all the different policy nuances we've discussed. They don't understand, you know, the intelligence cycle, et cetera. But they are like, what are we even doing here? Why don't we just get out of this? You know, this doesn't pertain to my daily life.

[00:57:56] But then because of, I think, just social media, podcasts, et cetera, like the younger generation, Gen Z, that basically they don't even touch Fox News or New York Times, et cetera. Getting out and talking to them. I mean, they are highly informed. This younger generation, I think, that's coming up. And they've seen nothing in their lifetime but institutional failure. And so they do not blindly trust the institutions at all. So I think it's been it's been really refreshing to see just how skeptical they are of what what the government says, especially when the government says, trust me, just one more war.

[00:58:26] It's going to be great this time. Seeing that level of skepticism from the younger generation, I think, is it's quite refreshing. Yeah, it's you know, I would have said that there's no way we would have gotten into a ground war or into a war with Iran a few years ago. And obviously, it's completely wrong about that. But so now I'm curious, I'm trying to think, OK, what needs to change in American institutions so that we don't get pulled into these conflicts?

[00:58:55] And thinking back, you know, you mentioned Colin Powell. One of the interesting things that he did post Vietnam was how he helped design the all volunteer force, this professional military. And one of the concerns at the time was if we had an all volunteer military, it would be used very aggressively overseas and become disconnected from the American public. There would be no public check on the use of military force.

[00:59:17] And they made a deliberate decision at that time to take all the logistical capacity of the army and stick it in the reserve units so that the active duty army was physically incapable of doing combat operations without calling up the reserves. And that was their check to try to pull the American people along and prevent the military from being used poorly. We have three case studies now that not working to deter the use of American force. So good idea, but that work. Not great.

[00:59:46] And I'm not advocating for, you know, a draft or anything like that. The all volunteer military is wonderful. It's the greatest military on the planet. We should cherish it. It's amazing capacity. But then I'm stuck trying to figure out, OK, what do we need to change in our institutions at a granular level so that we don't have round four and we're not just trusting the political discretion of particular executive branch leader to avoid getting into a war? I don't know.

[01:00:13] Have you spent any time thinking about that or do you have any thoughts? No, I've thought about it quite a bit. But first off, I think without drastically changing our system, getting a lot of the foreign influence just out of politics. I mean, APAC and the way that all these different dark money groups can come in, you know, defense industrial base, the military industrial complex, the way they can come in and they can influence politicians. I think that that is just incredibly dangerous for our country in general. I don't know exactly how we do that.

[01:00:42] I think a big thing is education and the way that a lot of different politicians now are having to stand up to the scrutiny of, you know, social media and saying, hey, this is where this guy is funded. APAC tracker is probably the most notorious one that documents how much money all these different representatives have taken from APAC because now by now everybody started to understand APAC. But they're just the tip of the iceberg. There's so many other groups out there. So I think that type of education and having people understand that, like, if you continue to vote for people who've taken this money, they are going to not be beholden to the voters.

[01:01:11] They're going to be beholden to these special interests and in many cases foreign lobbies. But your idea or just the general thought of, like, the all-volunteer force, is it good or is it bad? You know, when I was in the military, I'd have been like the all-volunteer force is the best because I only want to serve with volunteers, especially being in special operations. I only want to serve with guys who volunteered multiple times, for gosh sakes. You know, I don't want to deal with some kind of conscript or draftee. That's like some third-world European crap.

[01:01:37] However, the way that our professional military has become a warrior caste, completely disconnected, and we're both part of it. I mean, my late wife, my wife now all served in the military. Most of the people I know served in the military. But you go to most places in Main Street America and very few people actually know anyone in the military. And that's given our political leaders, who are beholden in many cases to foreign governments and special interest groups, that's given them the ability to just constantly deploy us off to all these different wars.

[01:02:06] When you look back at, like, the last time that we called up a draft for the Vietnam War, the only reason the Vietnam War ended is because it became so politically unpopular at home because of the draft. So I do think there's a lot to be said for us, you know, at least looking at some kind of compulsory service, not because I think everyone needs to go and join the military right away, but have that as a check on these endless wars. I mean, it's not like a complete thought. I wouldn't come out and say, like, I support the draft.

[01:02:33] I think it should definitely be explored, though, because it's safe to say at this point our, you know, highly professionalized military has basically been abused. And the results have been, you know, horrible for the all-volunteer force, but also it's been horrible for just the stability and the security of the United States of America. I think a forcing function, though, will be how much money it costs to pay out pensions, to pay out VA benefits.

[01:02:59] We see this quite frequently come up when they're like, well, why is the VA paying out all these guys for 100% disability? You know, why are guys drawing pensions at age 38? And I'm like, yeah, those are very good questions. Maybe we should do some burden sharing, perhaps. If you want to reduce the level of VA benefits being paid out, if you stop breaking people by sending them overseas and putting them on, like, nonstop training cycles, you can actually reduce the amount of injuries that folks have. There's a direct, I remember the Washington Post article came out about that.

[01:03:29] Like, yeah, since 2001, the rates of 100% disability claims being paid out has risen exponentially. It's like, I fucking wonder why. Yeah. So I do think that, unfortunately, I wish we would have the conversation ahead and figure out a way to fix this and a way to kind of rein in the never-ending wars. But I do think that spending is going to become a forcing function where we say, hey, is there a better way that we could do this? You know, could we have people come in for a shorter period of time, give them benefits for a shorter period of time?

[01:03:58] I think we're always going to need an all-volunteer, like, cadre of special operators, aviators, you know, a lot of leadership roles. But then I think having more of a National Guard reserve model where there is participation from the vast majority of the country, I think that would be much more sustainable in the long run. And the second there's, like, a new great war, you would automatically see protests crop up everywhere because it would disrupt everyone's lives in America and would actually make us have a national conversation.

[01:04:26] And then if we did go off to war, it'd be like, well, the American people actually supported the war. It was sold to them properly. Yeah. You know, Tucker Carlson and Amartya Taylor Greene have commented recently about, you know, supporting the creation of a third party. You know, you've previously run for Congress on a hopeless cause ticket, just given where you're at. So, you know, do you think that there's room for a third party in America? Do you think there's efficacy with that idea? Are you going to throw your hat in to run again for Congress with a new political organization?

[01:04:55] I don't think I've run for Congress again. I've moved around too much, so it's kind of hard to say, like, where I'm from at this point. And that didn't stop Hillary Clinton from being a senator from New York. So I'm just saying, no, I don't see how these guys do it, man. It's tough. Like they must have all that money in the back and the bank from all the special interest groups must help. But in terms of a third party, you know, it's interesting when Americans are polled, this is consistently most Americans. If I think it's like 60 to 65 percent, they will say, I'm an independent. Now, independents always end up choosing one way or another.

[01:05:25] They lean left. They lean right. But they self-identify as independents. And so I do think, like, our two-party system is very, very broken. I mean, there's no political parties that are written about, like, in the Constitution. But the reality is our system basically for the last 100 years has been a two-party system. And as we saw with most recently with RFK, it's even tough for a true independent to be able to even just get ballot access in all 50 states. So I do think the system is bad.

[01:05:53] So going into, like, 28 or even, like, 32, I don't know how viable a third party is. But right now, I can just say as someone who's now been in Republican politics deeply since 2020, the Republican Party is broken. I mean, it's incredibly broken. And we're going to need to have another revolution within the Republican Party to be able to fix that.

[01:06:13] And so what third parties have been able to effectively do is they have been able to champion different issues and different causes that either one party or both parties pick up. And I think we're going to see something like this in 2028 because the issue especially of, like, our support for Israel and more foreign wars, that's becoming a major issue for establishment Republicans and establishment Democrats. So I think in 28, when you see two open primaries, it's going to be an open ticket. There's no incumbent.

[01:06:40] I do think you're going to see a big fight on both sides about this key issue of support for Israel and more foreign wars. Now, a third party could come in and say, hey, we're building a coalition. And then that would then wield political power to be able to, you know, either play kingmaker or to get a candidate on a ticket. I think that's a potential, too. Yeah, DSA has been surprisingly effective. You know, Manami got all the credit in New York City, but they've actually won a lot of local elections across the country, and they're making a big push.

[01:07:10] It's been interesting to watch that. It has been. And this is, you know, people on the right always freak out anytime DSA wins anything for good reason. But if, like, on the Republican side, like, our answer to that was supposed to be MAGA. It was supposed to be America first. But then the way the Trump administration has governed in the last 18 months, we've destroyed that brand name. And so if we don't figure out a much more populist candidate, a much more populist platform, we're going to lose to the DSA.

[01:07:38] I mean, there's a lot of people in Republican establishment politics right now who think, like, once Trump goes away, we'll just rebrand, you know, the Marco Rubio neocons of the world as America first, MAGA. And that will then garner the 77 million votes that President Trump got. Like, I don't think that's the case at all. I think we're in the hole in terms of, like, the big trust deficit that we've built up.

[01:07:58] And if we don't correct course with better candidates who actually have a track record, and if we're not talking about the things that matter to Americans, you know, like the cost of living, like health care, these types of issues, if we're not speaking in that language, then we're going to lose. And we're not going to lose to Nancy Pelosi. We're going to lose to DSA socialists. So I think on the Republican right-leaning side, we've got a lot of work to do. Yeah. Well, really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us today.

[01:08:24] Before we go, is there anything that, you know, I haven't asked you about that I should ask you about? No, I think we covered a lot. I think we had it all. I'm sure the second we get off, I'll think of something. Well, you can always come back on. Happy to have you back anytime. Really appreciate what you did. For someone like you with the career that you've had to set the example of resigning on principle, regardless of the other circumstances involved or the policies involved, it's healthy to know in a country that people still have that level of integrity.

[01:08:52] So thank you for taking a principled stand when you did. Thank you very much.