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

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Speaker 2: And welcome back to George and along with Robert Young Pelton. Robert,

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Speaker 2: we were talking about the Shah of Iran. He was

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Speaker 2: not a boy scout by any means. We seem to

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Speaker 2: back these people like Bautista, who people just think are criminals.

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Speaker 3: Well, you got to remember the mindset back then and

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Speaker 3: even in Afghanistan, is that we are restoring some kind

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Speaker 3: of royalty which is going backwards, you know, and people say, well,

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Speaker 3: why don't you and like those people in America, why

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Speaker 3: do we have to have these people back in power?

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Speaker 3: So I think we pick what we think is the

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Speaker 3: easiest way to put a ruler in power, but it's

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Speaker 3: not what the people want, and those people usually end

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Speaker 3: up getting kicked out.

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Speaker 2: Prior to the Shah, there was a guy in there

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Speaker 2: named Wasadek that we got that we ousted.

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Speaker 3: What was he like, well, you know, before my time.

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Speaker 3: But most of Deck wanted was a very you know,

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Speaker 3: nationalist person. Socialists wanted to preserve Iran assets and didn't

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Speaker 3: like the idea of them being beholden to British and

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Speaker 3: American oil companies who he felt were just ripping them off,

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Speaker 3: and so when he went to privatize the oil industry,

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Speaker 3: he was overthrown.

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Speaker 2: Was he right?

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Speaker 3: Of course he's right, because the national asset is oil, right,

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Speaker 3: and everybody's done that since where Saudi Arabia, UAE or whatever.

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Speaker 3: They realize that that's there oil. It should be ninety

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Speaker 3: twenty or ninety ten, not ten ninety type of things.

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Speaker 2: And now the Mullas are worse than he was, aren't they.

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Speaker 3: Well, you know, like I said, I wasn't around during

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Speaker 3: most of that. It's a long time ago, but I

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Speaker 3: can tell you that the Mullas are rather incompetent of governing.

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Speaker 3: They're better than they were in the nineties, but nobody

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Speaker 3: is providing them with any sense of education, any investment,

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Speaker 3: any hope. So they're going to be one of the poorest,

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Speaker 3: if not the poorest country on earth, and they're going

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Speaker 3: to have one of the worst, most incompetent governments. So,

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Speaker 3: you know, I don't know how you fix that. I

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Speaker 3: don't know how you go into a country that is

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Speaker 3: that poor. And we tried it with money, it didn't work.

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Speaker 3: We tried it with guns, didn't work. So maybe that's

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Speaker 3: its natural state.

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Speaker 2: I'm going to take calls with Robert Young Pelton next hour. Robert,

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Speaker 2: how concerned are you about domestic terrorism?

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Speaker 3: Well, you know, one of the reasons I picked terrorism

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Speaker 3: as my topic tonight was I don't think people really

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Speaker 3: watched terrorism that much. We saw it in Gaza, of course,

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Speaker 3: we saw a massive uptick and deaths and kidnappings or

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Speaker 3: where we're shocked because you know, since twenty seventeen, terrorist

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Speaker 3: attacks have been going down, so you could statistically say, well,

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Speaker 3: you know, we're past, you know, the bad old days,

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Speaker 3: but the types of terrorism are more and more frightening.

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Speaker 3: And I'm talking about school shootings January sixth, Gaza, lone

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Speaker 3: wolf attacks, you know, things like that. And that doesn't

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Speaker 3: include state sponsored terrorism like you see in Russia, or

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Speaker 3: hacker attacks or poisonings and assassinating. We've entered a whole new,

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Speaker 3: different world is where terrorism is the norm. It's easier

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Speaker 3: to use an attack by let's say Hesbelah than it

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Speaker 3: is for Roan to declare war on let's say Saudi Arabia.

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Speaker 3: And when an attack happens in Israel, it doesn't affect

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Speaker 3: just Israel. It affects the entire world, the whole economy,

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Speaker 3: the outlook of people shifts dramatically, so we are very

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Speaker 3: much affected by terrorism, and terrorism is back.

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Speaker 2: How many terrorists do you think are out there in

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Speaker 2: the Middle East running around?

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Speaker 3: Oh God, listen, you know what they say, One man's

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Speaker 3: terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. It doesn't take a lot.

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Speaker 3: So for example, if you label Hesbelah as a terrorist organization,

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Speaker 3: you could just say, well, there's sixty thousand members of Hesbela,

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Speaker 3: but that's not the actual number of people who might

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Speaker 3: get up and attack Israel, right, because you've also got

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Speaker 3: Gaza who Hamasa is they have forty thousand fighters. I

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Speaker 3: don't think they have forty thousand fighters. But if not

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Speaker 3: a numeric thing, it's an asymmetrical warfare. You know, you

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Speaker 3: only need one well placed bomb and a bus to

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Speaker 3: you know, basically knock a nation to his knees because

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Speaker 3: the standard sense of security is erased. You only need

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Speaker 3: one airliner shot down for people to just not want

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Speaker 3: to fly anymore. So when Russia shoots down an airliner,

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Speaker 3: that's an act of terrorism that terrifies the entire world,

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Speaker 3: even though it was meant you know in.

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Speaker 2: Ukraine, what's what's happening around the planet. In other countries

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Speaker 2: like Russia, like China, do they have these acts of terrorism.

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Speaker 3: They employ terrorist tactics, And obviously we could argue about

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Speaker 3: whether the nuclear bomb was a terrorist actor, whether.

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Speaker 2: You know, it's certain stopped the war.

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Speaker 3: Right, so when you declare war, Russia declare war on Ukraine.

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Speaker 3: They used both terrorist tactics and also traditional warfare. But

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Speaker 3: if you look at something, let's say like Wagner, you know,

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Speaker 3: the former Wagner Group, they're hiring criminals out of prison,

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Speaker 3: telling them to kill and steal whatever they want, and

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Speaker 3: then those people are coming back into society, and so

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Speaker 3: we're normalizing terrorism. If you look at January sixth, we

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Speaker 3: can say that that wasn't a terrorist attack, there was

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Speaker 3: no organization. But you know, stochastic terror, which is in

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Speaker 3: which somebody calls for something to happen and it happens,

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Speaker 3: whether it's a lone wolf or whether it's a large group,

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Speaker 3: is a very real thing these days because of social media.

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Speaker 2: The guy was the head of the Wagner group that

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Speaker 2: apparently died in a plane crash.

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Speaker 3: Did he Yeah? Well, f Jugen a very interesting guy,

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Speaker 3: and I think I told you he wanted me to

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Speaker 3: make a documentary about Wagner, and I was reticent to

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Speaker 3: do that, but he was trying to legitimize the idea

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Speaker 3: of private military companies. And he was very much dependent

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Speaker 3: on the Russian military for his bullets, his artillery, his food.

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Speaker 3: And that's an incredibly corrupt organization. Russia's famous for corruption,

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Speaker 3: and he got very angry and he went to overthrow

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Speaker 3: the government, and you know, not coincidentally, he fell out

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Speaker 3: of the tallest window that Putin could find, which was,

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Speaker 3: you know, thirty thousand feet up. But the organization still exists,

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Speaker 3: even though they're trying to tear it apart. They're actually

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Speaker 3: assimilating it into the Russian military, and they still function

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Speaker 3: in places like Africa.

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Speaker 2: How much power does Putin control out there, well, in Russia.

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Speaker 3: Of course everything. Yeah, if you even talk, I mean

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Speaker 3: you've seen those people with blank signs protesting get arrested immediately.

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Speaker 3: You've see newscasters even mention the war or the losses.

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Speaker 3: They go to prison. So he has absolute power. He

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Speaker 3: also is very good at soft power in terms of

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Speaker 3: influencing people to think that, you know, his thinking is

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Speaker 3: the positive with a way for you know, he supports

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Speaker 3: Gosa just like other people do who want to split

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Speaker 3: the relationship between America and Israel. So he's also meddling

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Speaker 3: in other people's politics in Europe and America. So he's

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Speaker 3: quite busy.

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Speaker 2: Did you hear that story in my news segment about

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Speaker 2: Putin and ordering women to have more kids.

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Speaker 3: Well, that's the problems, you know, Russian dying out. And

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Speaker 3: this is one of the problems of Russia is that

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Speaker 3: it was losing men at an astounding rate and now

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Speaker 3: they're incinerating them. I mean there's like a meat grinder,

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Speaker 3: you know, you imagine a sausage factory's I don't know

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Speaker 3: how many, one hundred and fifty thousand or something. They

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Speaker 3: lost ten thousand men in like one week. They lost

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Speaker 3: a thousand in one day. That's a thousand less parents,

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Speaker 3: you know, fathers of kids. So yeah, he's got a

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Speaker 3: real problem.

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Speaker 2: Robert, What does it mean by state sponsored terrorism?

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Speaker 3: Well, there's a couple of ways of looking at that.

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Speaker 3: One is a government can literally just terrorize another nation.

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Speaker 3: Goes back to let's say Genghis Khan. You know, I'm

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Speaker 3: building mountains of skulls. You know, he didn't kill everybody,

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Speaker 3: but he used he projected terror to get other people

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Speaker 3: to capitulate. There's other examples where there are organizations within

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Speaker 3: the government that do terrible things to people and blame

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Speaker 3: it on the other side, or they you know, use

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Speaker 3: it to push people out of areas. You know, for example,

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Speaker 3: the war in Sudan. Now you could argue that the

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Speaker 3: Southern RSF, the Rapid Security Forces, which is essentially a

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Speaker 3: mercenary group, is pushing people out of their land excuse me,

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Speaker 3: by raping, killing, burning. I mean, these are all terror tactics.

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Speaker 3: And you know, I spent a lot of time in

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Speaker 3: warfare and Africa, and that's how they scare people away

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Speaker 3: there and the entire population will flee. So there's very

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Speaker 3: different There's many different versions of it, but it's very common.

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Speaker 2: Is this controllable?

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Speaker 3: Well, I pose a question to you. You know, we watch Russia,

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Speaker 3: we watch what they do to civilians, right, and we

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Speaker 3: don't do anything about it. We have the UN which

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Speaker 3: is basically done as little to no authority, and we

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Speaker 3: just tout about it. But the only way we can

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Speaker 3: stop it is by being more forceful than the person

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Speaker 3: who causes the terror.

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Speaker 2: You know, what's kind of interesting is we go into

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Speaker 2: Afghanistan because of the nine eleven situation. We go into Iraq,

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Speaker 2: nobody stops us. Yet the Soviets go into Ukraine and

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Speaker 2: it's like it's the end of the world and everybody

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Speaker 2: goes nuts. Not to say that it was the right

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Speaker 2: move by any means, but why are we allowed to

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Speaker 2: do these things and other nations can't.

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Speaker 3: Well, okay, so that's a good question, because we went

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Speaker 3: into Afghanistan because it was literally the poorest, weakest nation

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Speaker 3: on earth, so there was nothing to stop us, and

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Speaker 3: we had already set the battlefield as they were the

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Speaker 3: bad guys, we were the good guy. That was an

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Speaker 3: easy one. Iraq was false pretenses. You know, they thought, well,

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Speaker 3: since we're on a roll, we might as well deal

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Speaker 3: with Iraq and Saddam and all this stuff. And they

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Speaker 3: did fight back. You know, there was an insurgency. A

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Speaker 3: lot of Americans died in in Afghanistan. They fought back,

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Speaker 3: Taliban organized themselves, and you know, it's like grabbing a

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Speaker 3: porcupine backwards. It hurts, and finally we just let go.

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Speaker 3: In the Ukraine, we know exactly what happens if America

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Speaker 3: was to engage with Russia directly. You know, we have

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Speaker 3: the nuclear option, and since the fifties, we've been always thinking, well,

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Speaker 3: what if he pulls the trigger, you know, do we

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Speaker 3: really want to escalate that high? And so we have

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Speaker 3: very very slow We invented this in nineteen forty seven.

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Speaker 3: Our policy is just to frustrate the Russians because they're

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Speaker 3: so incompetent, they're so slow, they're so sort of organically dysfunctional,

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Speaker 3: that if we speed them up, they dissolve faster. So

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Speaker 3: we've just been frustrating them, providing weapons, better and better weapons,

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Speaker 3: more and more money, and at some point the Russians

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Speaker 3: will exhaust themselves.

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Speaker 2: The late General George Patten after World War Two, wanted

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Speaker 2: us to go after the Soviets. Was he right?

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Speaker 3: He was absolutely right, because you know, if you remember,

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Speaker 3: and I've done this for my time, we had initially

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Speaker 3: distrusted the Soviets, we didn't like Stout, but because the Russians,

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Speaker 3: because the Germans turned on them, we thought, okay, let's

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Speaker 3: kill Russians instead of Americans. So we helped him kill Germans.

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Speaker 3: And when the war became sort of towards the end state,

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Speaker 3: I don't think America thought it was worth just killing

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Speaker 3: more and more Americans. They let the Russians take over

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Speaker 3: the rest of those areas, but the Russians kept them.

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Speaker 3: Soviet Union kept all those countries, including Berlin, and Paton

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Speaker 3: was quite right by saying, you can't trust them, we

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Speaker 3: should push him back to their borders.

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Speaker 2: And we had the capability of doing that at that time.

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Speaker 1: Didn't we know?

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Speaker 3: Yes, we did. And you know, it's interesting watching watching

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Speaker 3: how Russians fight and how Westerns fight, and Russians literally

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Speaker 3: throw bodies at bullets. It's almost like an inexhaustible asset

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Speaker 3: they have where they don't really care about casualties, they

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Speaker 3: don't really care about the impact on morale inside the country,

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Speaker 3: but they use waves and waves and waves of people.

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Speaker 3: And when I was in the war in Ukraine, it's

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Speaker 3: just these or Ukrainians are like, why do they do that?

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Speaker 3: Why do they just keep throwing bodies at us? And

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Speaker 3: we just mow them down? And that's just a Russian

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Speaker 3: way of fighting.

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Speaker 2: Warm Are you concerned about China taking over Taiwan?

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Speaker 3: Well, yes, China has pretty much done everything and said

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Speaker 3: it's going to do. It's just its calendar is so long.

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Speaker 3: So you know, as we watch, America's sort of focus

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Speaker 3: shifts away from Asia and sort of focus towards Europe

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Speaker 3: and other things like Africa and the Middle East. You know,

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Speaker 3: China's just watching and they're and they're calculating. At what

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Speaker 3: point does America just shrug THEIRS and just say, oh, well,

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Speaker 3: because you know, you saw with Hong Kong it was

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Speaker 3: a very slow erosion of freedom in Hong Kong until

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Speaker 3: suddenly boom, it was part of China. So I see

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Speaker 3: the same thing happening with Taiwan, and I don't think

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Speaker 3: I don't see it as a huge military conflict because

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Speaker 3: it's so far away and it would be so deadly.

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Speaker 3: And at the end of the day, China is also

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Speaker 3: interwoven with American's financial system, and right now it's not

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Speaker 3: a good time for China to steal anything because they're

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Speaker 3: hurting and they need friends, and they've been going around

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Speaker 3: the world, you know, trying to be friendly with what

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Speaker 3: were once enemies because they need us to be nice

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Speaker 3: to them.

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Speaker 2: Now, we had the atomic bomb, Robert five years before

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Speaker 2: the Soviet Union developed THEIRS. Why didn't we stop them?

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Speaker 3: At the time, Russia was not a threat to us.

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Speaker 3: They were a threat to Europe. They were stealing Europe.

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Speaker 3: They were you know, unbolting all the factories and shipping

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Speaker 3: everything back to Russia. It was clear what they were doing,

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Speaker 3: but it didn't really affect us. You know, our job

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Speaker 3: was to get Hitler gone. And then it was only

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Speaker 3: I think what four or five years later that we

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Speaker 3: came up with the Marshall Plan and decided that we

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Speaker 3: were going to help Europe get back on our knees.

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Speaker 3: That was our battle with Russia. By the way, it

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Speaker 3: was the Marshall Plan.

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Speaker 2: Paint a picture of the world for me five ten

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Speaker 2: years from now.

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Speaker 3: Well, man, I'm going to sound dark here, but well,

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Speaker 3: five years is not a long window. But let's say

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Speaker 3: five to ten years. I see the erosion of state powers.

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Speaker 3: I think people are distrusting governments more and more. I

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Speaker 3: think governments and international institutions have less and less impact

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Speaker 3: and reach. And I think small violent groups see opportunities

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Speaker 3: that they can seize, negotiate some kind of deal, and

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Speaker 3: start shaping how the map was drawn. And I have

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Speaker 3: to say, Goz in Israel is a perfect example of

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Speaker 3: where I mean. Godz is what two miles long or

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Speaker 3: something like that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's nothing.

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Speaker 3: The entire world focus is on that conflict, and you

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Speaker 3: have sort of an unsolvable, repeatable problem that is worrying

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Speaker 3: the entire planet because it's at the future right there

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Speaker 3: is how do we deal with angry, poor people that

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Speaker 3: don't want to be kept in certain conditions. Whether you're

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Speaker 3: talking about me and mar whether you're talking about Venezuela.

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Speaker 3: You know, we're seeing migration where people just can't live

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Speaker 3: anymore and they just start moving into the countries. So

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Speaker 3: these violent events create and trigger other things that are

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Speaker 3: even bigger and even more dramatic. So I see a

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Speaker 3: lot more chaos, and I see a lot with governmental

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Speaker 3: positioning like we're going to stop this. And you know,

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Speaker 3: for example, today the US is absolutely terrified of engaging

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Speaker 3: in combat in a foreign country. We'll do it with

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Speaker 3: special forces teams, you know, we'll do it with proxies

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Speaker 3: and things like that. But the idea of troops getting

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Speaker 3: on aircraft and parachuting into a country to wipe out

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Speaker 3: bad guys has vanished.

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Speaker 2: Did we do that though with Afghanistan when we sent

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Speaker 2: one hundred thousand troops?

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Speaker 3: Well, okay, so remember I've been there many times, and

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Speaker 3: I was an advisor for the four star, so I

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Speaker 3: was there for one hundred thousand and I was there

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Speaker 3: when there was only like a couple of dozen people, right,

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Speaker 3: the couple a dozen people actually won the war. It

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Speaker 3: took two or three weeks, but those advisors and the

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Speaker 3: CIA teams used very little violence pushed the Taliban to defeat.

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Speaker 3: And then the State Department stepped in and said, oh,

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Speaker 3: let's rebuild this country. And we were saying, like, well,

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Speaker 3: it actually never was built, you know, other than areas

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Speaker 3: around Kabble and Kandahar. But they decided that this was

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Speaker 3: going to be a great social experiment and we were

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Speaker 3: going to pump millions of dollars into Afghanistan. And we

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Speaker 3: did it in the fifties and it didn't work. You know,

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Speaker 3: people forget that. So the point was that there's two wars.

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Speaker 3: There's the war we won and the war we lost.

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