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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on

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Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and welcome back to Coast to Coast Robert

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Speaker 1: Young Pelton back with us has become the inspiration and

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Speaker 1: role model for a new generation of intellectual adventurers. He

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Speaker 1: is an author couple of his books, The Adventurist, Licensed

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Speaker 1: to Kill the World's Most Dangerous Places and Come Back Alive.

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Speaker 1: He's a filmmaker, photographer, adventurer, explorer, expert, philosopher. My gosh,

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Speaker 1: what a list. And Robert his trained Navy Seals and

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Speaker 1: survival participated in secret Special Forces training. And here he

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Speaker 1: is back on Coast to Coast. We missed you, my friend.

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Speaker 1: How are you? I'm being good. How are you doing great?

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Speaker 1: What's new with you? I'm writing in books. I'm still

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Speaker 1: writing my book about Joseph Coney and setting up the

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Speaker 1: interview and celebrating ten years of my knife company, DPX Gear,

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Speaker 1: and outfitting my favorite ODA, my Special Forces ODA, which

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Speaker 1: is how I got into the knife business, to give

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Speaker 1: them decent tools for their work. And I'm just enjoying life.

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Speaker 1: Good for you, Good for you while you're still our

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Speaker 1: world explorer. When anything happens around this planet, we want

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Speaker 1: you to jump on it. And there's so much going

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Speaker 1: on these days right now. Do you get the Philly

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Speaker 1: and Robert that things are under control or out of

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Speaker 1: control worldwide? Well, we had eight years under President Obama

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Speaker 1: in which we took sort of conciliatory steps towards some

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Speaker 1: of the players in the Middle East. So you know,

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Speaker 1: we did deals with Iran to sort of tone things down,

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Speaker 1: and we had Arab spring, and then we had a

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Speaker 1: series of semi democratic leaderships in the Middle East the

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Speaker 1: Mediterranean area, So we had a bunch of crises, but

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Speaker 1: they didn't pop or explode. And when President Trump came

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Speaker 1: into office, we then reversed course. Now, in any political situation,

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Speaker 1: when you reverse course to sort of a period of

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Speaker 1: nothing happening and all of a sudden, things start to

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Speaker 1: speed up. And this summer, what we're going to see

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Speaker 1: is the net effect of reversing our foreign policy. And

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Speaker 1: we're already seeing military offenses in places like Libya and Yemen,

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Speaker 1: in other countries and also Afghanistan. So this summer is

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Speaker 1: going to be very busy with violence. I think so too,

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Speaker 1: and we, of course have seen so much of it

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Speaker 1: over the last couple of months it doesn't seem to

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Speaker 1: go away. I wanted to ask you a question about

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Speaker 1: ISIS because the President did say that ISIS had been defeated.

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Speaker 1: But today a video pops up of a guy that

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Speaker 1: everybody thought was dead. Baghdaggi, who heads up ISIS? I mean,

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Speaker 1: where is this guy? Well? Okay, so ISIS? Isis is metastasizing.

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Speaker 1: You know what that means that when you have a

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Speaker 1: medical condition and you think you have it under control,

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Speaker 1: and you apply some kind of medication or chemotherapy, it

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Speaker 1: actually spreads the disease, it gets worse body. So what

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Speaker 1: most people don't realize is that ever since Baghdaddy made

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Speaker 1: that famous speech in the eight hundred year old Mosk

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Speaker 1: and Mussul, there have been one hundred and forty three

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Speaker 1: attacks in over thirty countries. And what that means is

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Speaker 1: we've been focused on Syria because that was sort of

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Speaker 1: a geographical battle to get rid of ISIS, But we

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Speaker 1: haven't been paying attention to the spread or the franchising

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Speaker 1: of ISIS from everywhere to the Philippines to sort of

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Speaker 1: call them copycat or even inspired attacks in places like

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Speaker 1: France and then even America. Who's financing these people Robert,

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Speaker 1: were they getting their weapons. So it started in Iraq.

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Speaker 1: Remember we had a huge reconstruction budget. A friend of

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Speaker 1: mine was doing a secret mission over there and they

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Speaker 1: were dropping bombs on banks and I said, oh, he's

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Speaker 1: getting rid of the ISIS money. He said, on its

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Speaker 1: reconstruction money. And the reality is that we pumped billions

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Speaker 1: of dollars into Iraq, which was then shaved off and

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Speaker 1: used by ISIS or in people in the Nbar province

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Speaker 1: to fund ices. Once ISIS gets its tentacles into a

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Speaker 1: town or a region, they begin taxation, so everybody has

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Speaker 1: to pay a certain percentage of taxes from their businesses,

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Speaker 1: their income, like a mob shakedown exactly. Then they're self funding.

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Speaker 1: So when I was in Libya watching our forces kill ISIS,

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Speaker 1: each business had a logo spray painted on it to

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Speaker 1: show that it was paying taxes to ISIS. And of

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Speaker 1: course they didn't. They dragged them out and chopped their

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Speaker 1: heads off or did something terrible to them. So it's

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Speaker 1: a self funding insurgency group and it can go anywhere.

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Speaker 1: There's any kind of infection, any small dispute that one

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Speaker 1: group might have with another. They literally send trainers PROPAGANDIS

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Speaker 1: financiers and trainers to within sort of ninety days have

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Speaker 1: them up and running as isis. And they're up and

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Speaker 1: running and they're doing it. They're all over the place,

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Speaker 1: aren't they. Well, the goal now is not so much

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Speaker 1: to have of real estate. So the caliphate was supposed

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Speaker 1: to be, you know, a huge spread of geographical control.

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Speaker 1: They know that's not going to work. So what they're

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Speaker 1: doing now is they're essentially saying, for example, in Sri Lanka,

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Speaker 1: you know who the heck would predict ISIS attacked in

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Speaker 1: Sri Lanka. So they provide the expertise, they provide the

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Speaker 1: explosives training, and then when they say you're linked to ISIS,

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Speaker 1: you get global publicity for this violent event. So it's

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Speaker 1: it's it's it's the Colonel Saunders of terrorism. You know,

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Speaker 1: it has a much more impact now anywhere in the world.

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Speaker 1: Do you think the burning of Notre Dame the cathedral

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Speaker 1: had anything to do with terrorism or do you think

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Speaker 1: it was indeed restoration problems that happened. Well, so I

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Speaker 1: believe that they're done a study and they said it

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Speaker 1: was caused by a fire. But before that there had

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Speaker 1: been multiple attacks on churches and there had actually been

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Speaker 1: an ISIS inspired plot to light a fire. Now that

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Speaker 1: tells you all you need to know about terrorism, because

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Speaker 1: the embolism of terrorism is more frightening than the actual

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Speaker 1: act of terrorism. So all ices would have to do

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Speaker 1: is claim that event, and then you would have to

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Speaker 1: spend millions of dollars in publicity trying to compete with that.

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Speaker 1: And this is the danger of asymmetrical warfare. I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: throw some countries your way, Roberts, and tell us your

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Speaker 1: views on how we're handling things with them. Let's start,

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Speaker 1: of course with Russia. Um, the you know, the attack

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Speaker 1: on the president and the talk of Russian collusion apparently

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Speaker 1: hasn't filtered out at all, and it filled it petered

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Speaker 1: away actually, And in this particular case, though, what's going

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Speaker 1: on with Russia? What they did they what do you

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Speaker 1: think they actually did? Well? Russia is a very tiny

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Speaker 1: country and it has much more impact than the economics

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Speaker 1: or military head What really happened was that during the

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Speaker 1: lead up to the transition of power between President Obama

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Speaker 1: and President Trump, a number of people were performing diplomacy,

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Speaker 1: essentially trying to unwind Obama's sanctions on Putin and Putin

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Speaker 1: supports oliogarchs, you know, the wealthy who also support him,

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Speaker 1: and this is a very comfortable relationship for a guy

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Speaker 1: that's been running that country since nineteen ninety nine. And

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Speaker 1: so the idea was that let's be friendly with Russia

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Speaker 1: and let's try to get them away from supporting Iran.

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Speaker 1: And this is an agenda that they have. So the

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Speaker 1: collusion was almost farcical, you know, it was like dancing

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Speaker 1: at the high school prom where people were putting out

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Speaker 1: feelers and people were trying to chase those down. But

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Speaker 1: there never was any Clinton dirt. There never was any

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Speaker 1: real collusion. But the Mula report was triggered by a

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Speaker 1: sense of espionage that there must be some Russian espionage

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Speaker 1: going on, and there was some meat or some fire

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Speaker 1: where there was smoke. It didn't help the president. Trump

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Speaker 1: kept kept romancing with the Vladimir and asking him to

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Speaker 1: hack look for emails and things like that. But at

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Speaker 1: the end of the day, it was an investigation. Mueller

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Speaker 1: did a good job. He found many other things. He

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Speaker 1: has fourteen other cases that have to be resolved. But

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Speaker 1: Trump feels vindicated. But it should be a warning to

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Speaker 1: us that Russia is actively involved in influencing elections. What

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Speaker 1: about our relationship with Iran? Why can't we get a

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Speaker 1: better relationship with them? Are they that bad? No? But

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Speaker 1: you know this starts in nineteen seventy nine. You know,

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Speaker 1: two things started in nineteen seventy nine, which was the

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Speaker 1: Soviets invading Afghanistan, when we began to create essentially the

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Speaker 1: Jihadis by funding extremists, and also when you had the

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Speaker 1: revolution in Iran in which they threw out demand that

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Speaker 1: we had installed as shah. So we have a long

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Speaker 1: history of antagonism with the current Mullas because of obviously

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Speaker 1: the embassy kidnapping and a history of supporting terrorist groups

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Speaker 1: and violent acts against the US. It's changed romatically in

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Speaker 1: the last few years because if you look at a

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Speaker 1: map and you look at where Saudi Arabia as oil is,

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Speaker 1: it's right on the coast across from Iran. And the

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Speaker 1: biggest threat to Saudi Arabia would be the complete elimination

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Speaker 1: of their dictatorship by Iran by taking over their oil.

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Speaker 1: So we have a thing called nea coons, you know,

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Speaker 1: and these are people that believe in the sort of

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Speaker 1: troika of Israel Arab nations and sort of a fundamental

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Speaker 1: union between Christians and Jews and Muslims, and we have

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Speaker 1: created this new axis of I don't know what to

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Speaker 1: call it, but we are working actively with Saudi Arabia

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Speaker 1: and the UAE to support Israel's goals, which is essentially

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Speaker 1: to push back on Iran, because that's Israel's biggest fear.

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Speaker 1: Now has Iran declared war on us? Have we come

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Speaker 1: to blows with Iran? Yes, we've We've pushed our luck

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Speaker 1: and they've pushed their luck and we're literally bookending them

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Speaker 1: in Iraq and Afghanistan. So they feel threatened and that

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Speaker 1: is going to be a flashpoint. So ever since yeah,

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Speaker 1: sure is in sixteen, they have been working with a

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Speaker 1: number of groups to come up with some kind of

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Speaker 1: false flag operation, which ideally would be in Lebanon or Syria.

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Speaker 1: It would be started by somebody at Iranians attacking some

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Speaker 1: Western element and then Israel would begin and then we

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Speaker 1: would chime in and then that's our war. Most Iranians,

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Speaker 1: i am told, love the Western way of living. Do

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Speaker 1: you agree with that? Yeah, because that's where the culture

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Speaker 1: comes from. But they don't forget there at the crossroads, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean, they're literally in the Middle of Asia and

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Speaker 1: the West, and they are more than able to appreciate

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Speaker 1: not only their own culture, but obviously you know, the

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Speaker 1: things that come from Asia and the thing that comes

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Speaker 1: from America. Right now, they live in a repressive, somewhat

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Speaker 1: restricted environment because we keep turning the screws on them,

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Speaker 1: and the Mullas want to have sort of the throwback

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Speaker 1: environment in which yes you can be educated, and yes

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Speaker 1: you can get married, but you can't sort of be

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Speaker 1: your own person. So anybody that travels to Iran will

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Speaker 1: tell you that they had a great time and that

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Speaker 1: people are wonderful, and isn't it sad that they know

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Speaker 1: they're so poor and that they're so repressed. If the

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Speaker 1: Mullers disappear, Iran would just be a modern Middle Eastern nation. Yeah. No,

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Speaker 1: I think you're absolutely right. Listen to more Coast to

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Speaker 1: Coast AM every weeknight at one am Eastern and go

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Speaker 1: to Coast to Coast am dot com for more