6-17-25 - 8am - Regime Change in Iran is Not Our Fight

We have an opportunity for regime change in Iran. But we don't have to do it. It's not our fight.

Why would any country not named the United States want to create nuclear weapons?

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Michael, just was curious of your opinion. I understand
what you're saying that we shouldn't be involved with any
regime change, but being the big satan that we are,
wouldn't it be in the best interest to maybe be
involved a little bit?

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Anyway, Well, between your talkback, by the way, well done, hey, Rod.
Between your talkback and a text message, I want to
I want to go back just a couple of inches
into the last hour and then drag that across into

(00:36):
regime change, because don't forget how I can't think of
a good analogy, but what you and I see and hear,
don't never forget that what we see in here. In
terms of cable news, I don't care whether it's Fox

(00:59):
or CNN, the MSNBC, or the networks. I don't care
what websites it is that you go to. For that matter,
I don't even care what radio programs you're listening to,
because all I can do is give you my perspective

(01:22):
based on my experience, my research, and my understanding of
how these things work. So I say that not to
pat myself on the back, but to but to say
to you that when when I talk about like I
have a disagreement with Tucker Carlson about and you're going

(01:44):
to hear from Tucker in just a second. It's because
he's been bitten by the dog, and like me, he
has a relationship with Bush and the Bush family and
he sees it. I mean, I look, do I have
disappointment with George Bush. Absolutely, you know, in fact, I've

(02:07):
written a book about it, deadly. In the difference, if
you want to hear about my differences with George Bush, well,
Tucker has the same thing. I think. The difference is
I see that this is not George Bush. If you're
somehow trying to conflate George Bush and Donald Trump, you're
smoking some kind of colorad of weed or maybe maybe

(02:29):
you've graduated to mushrooms now, because that's night and day.
And just like I didn't agree with everything about Bush,
I don't. I don't agree with everything about Trump. But
what I do know about Trump is his single minded
focused on he does not want, he does not want
a forever war, more more of a forever war than

(02:51):
anybody else. And as our former law enforcement officer said,
where's tech do do do do do? Seventy five ninety two, Michael,
you can quote, no more wars, yourself right into more wars.

(03:15):
What does he mean? Well, if you are so adamant
about no more wars, that posture can actually suck you
into a war. Which is the point that I'm trying
to make about Iraq and Afghanistan in our lifetime. I'm

(03:35):
not even talking about the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and
I'm not well. I am still using a raq as
the nineteen ninety one invasion as kind of a good
example because nineteen ninety one, the Gulf War had a
well defined mission. Pushed Sidom Mussein out of Kuwait. Nothing more,

(04:01):
nothing less. That's the mission. So when you tell the troops,
when you tell your commanders, your generals, here's the here's
what the commander in chief wants. The commander in chief
wants you to push Soddim Hussein out of Kuwait and
return Kuwait, Kuwait City, the oil fields, everything back to

(04:21):
the kuwaitis. That's your mission, nothing more, nothing less. So
Schwarzkoff says, Okay, got it. Schwarzkoff takes that and does
it and leaves. Now what I find funny and someone
ironic is that then people, people bought into that mission.

(04:42):
And then when we accomplished that mission and pushed him out,
then people began to second guess it and and say, oh,
maybe we should have gone further. And Bush was adamant.
H W. Bush, No, we're not that that was it.
That was the mission and we accomplished the mission. Can
you tell me what the mission was in Iraq? How

(05:05):
what you to think about it? The W? Bush? My
old boss? What was our mission in Iraq? Post nine
to eleven? Mm? Hmm, Now I know there's off the
stupid things. Oh he was trying to vindicate his daddy.
He had daddy issues. Uh, Okay, cut that bull crap out.
What was the issue? What was the mission in Iraq?
What was the mission in Afghanistan? Well, if you're if

(05:28):
you're gonna tell me that the mission in Afghanistan was
to find and capture Osama bin Laden, then why did
we end up with boots on the ground and ended
up with thousands upon thousands of troops? Why did we Now,
in hindsight, I'm glad we built Bagram Air Force Base,
But why did we build this gigantic air We were

(05:49):
looking for one individual that that that's what we have
c I a operatives for. That's that's what we have
clandestine operations for. We didn't need a ground war. In fact,
I would make the argument, I'm not going to go
into it in depth, but I would make the argument
that the ground war in Afghanistan actually prolonged and made

(06:12):
it even more difficult for us to ultimately find, locate,
and assassinate or kill Osama bin Lauden. We'd have been
much quicker and easier had we relied upon our intel
community and their operatives to go in and do what
needed to be done. Now that's all you know in hindsight,

(06:35):
But nonetheless, I do believe that if we had just said,
you know, we're gonna find We're gonna hunt down, find him,
and destroy him, and rather than completely invade a country
that we knew historically for thousands of years had been
invaded and no invaders ever conquered Afghanistan simply because it's

(06:58):
too tribal. You've got and I'm just pulling a number
out of my butt, You've got a thousand different tribes
in Afghanistan and they've always been ruled by somebody out
of Cabal or one of the other cities, and you
just you're never going. That's their culture, that's their way
of life, and you're not going to change that. Same

(07:19):
as truth with Iraq, except I'm sorry with Iran. Except
in Iran, we have the opportunity for regime change, but
we don't have to do it. We don't have to
be the ones doing it. It's not our fight. Tucker Carlson.

Speaker 3 (07:38):
Yeah, Look, I knew Bush.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
I knew George W.

Speaker 3 (07:40):
Bush with you know, family connections to which I knew
Bush personally. I still see Bush sometimes and you know,
of course he hates me, and he does because I
criticized him on Iraq, and that war is the sum
total from historical perspective of his administration. But I knew him,
and he all kinds of plans for the things that

(08:01):
he wanted to do, but one.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Domestically, domestically to improve the country.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
Then you may agree or disagree, but like in his mind,
he wasn't just about the invasion of a rock in March,
oh no. No, he was going to redo social Security
has types something.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
He was going to take care of the entitlements issue,
and he really thought it was gonna work.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
And you could laugh at that or whatever, but the
point is the second you get him meshed in a
real war, not a fake Let's go bomb the villagers
and declare success, though we don't even have a good
track record, Like why the hoof He's still there. So
this whole other question, which is how prepared is the
US military for a real conflict? And the answer is
totally unprepared, scary unprepared. I don't think people understand that.

(08:41):
But anyway, the only reason I'm saying any of this
is because I really really care.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
And he goes on saying that interview with or that
podcast with Steve Bannon, that we could be witnessing the
end of the American Empire. Well, not because of what's
happening in Iran, but because it's a whole matter of
you know, you got two parallel tracks. You've got the
demise of the American Empire, which started long before Donald

(09:11):
Trump came on the scene. In fact, started way back
with Woodrow Wilson, FDR, all the progressive movements that allowed
Marxism to take a foothold in this country. So that
track is moving forward and continues to move forward to
this very day. Trump comes along. He's trying to get
ahead of that track. At the same time, maintaining our

(09:35):
leadership role in the world, which means in it as
I played Nase incessantly every time, not every time, but
as many times until I got tired of it. Of
Trump saying that the Iranians cannot have a new your weapon,

(09:56):
they cannot have a nut your weapon. So how could
you accomplish regime change? Well, the general population of Iran
shows significant dissatisfaction with the current regime and they have
a strong desire for a more open and free society.

(10:18):
And that's based on actual data. Surveys conducted by the
Gamman Institute provide some of the most concrete insights. They
did a twenty twenty three survey of one hundred and
fifty eight thousand Iranians with forty two thousand in the
diaspora the diaspora diaspora the diaspora meaning forty two thousand

(10:39):
that were living outside the country. They found that eighty
one percent inside Iran rejected the Islamic Republic, with eighty
percent supporting anti government protests and sixty percent explicitly favoring
regime change over gradual reforms. Only fifteen percent support of

(10:59):
these Islamic Republic and just six percent believed in reform
within the current system of the Islamic Republic. Now. That's
also reflected in a twenty twenty two Common survey that
echoed the same thing, with sixty one percent favoring regime
change or transition away from the Islamic Republic and only

(11:24):
eighteen percent wanting to preserve the principles of the Islamic Republic. Now,
those numbers suggests a broad rejection of the theocratic system
and a preference for a democratic, secular government thirty four
percent favor a secular republic, nineteen percent a constitutional monarchy.

(11:47):
From the twenty twenty two pole, there's a movement called
the Woman Life Freedom movement that was sparked in twenty
twenty two by the death of Masha Amani. I forget
how you pronounce her name, Ami Ni Ami Ni go
look her up, and she was killed for refusing to

(12:11):
wear a jab. Go look her up. Protests united all
of these diverse groups like we have here, urban, middle class, poor, youth, women,
ethnic minorities. They all united under demands not just for reform,
they won a systemic change. They had slogans that explicitly

(12:34):
called for the end of the islawmic Republic. And then
in November of twenty twenty two, a federal government and
Islamic Republic survey got leaked. It showed eighty four percent
of Iranians viewed that uprising positively, indicating that there was

(12:55):
widespread support across not just you, but among all Iranian generations.
You can go find people in Iran who have access
to the Internet, who have clandestine if you will, for
lack of a better term, X accounts. They reflect the

(13:20):
same thing with claims that less than ten percent of
the Iranians support the current regime. Now, obviously that lacks
the methodological rigor of a survey, and we ought to
treat that cautiously, but nonetheless, just anecdotally, those who have

(13:40):
access to and can contact the outside world indicate the
same thing that the survey show now, support for a
revolution to restore freedoms. It is clearly evidence, but you
have to admit it's somewhat nuanced. So we talked about
twenty twenty two common survey. Well, in twenty twenty three,

(14:04):
the same survey group noted that sixty seven percent of
those respondents believe the protests could succeed and eighty five
percent of protest supporters endorsed a solidarity council to start
leading a campaign against the Ayatola. The actually, I should say,
not the the Ayatola, yes, but the entire theocratic regime.

(14:28):
But they didn't have centralized leadership. And you couple that
with the regime's brutal repression, you get hundreds killed, thousands arrested,
widespread torture that hindered the momentum. So what would reignite
that momentum? Exactly what the Israelis are doing today now.

(14:55):
A lot of analysts, at least those that I've read,
note that while the movement has revolutionary potential right now,
it lacks the organization and the elite defections that are
needed to topple the regime. So the security forces, what
remain of them, remain loyal because of the high compensation
they get, and because they don't see any viable options.

(15:16):
They don't see an exit. There's no exit ramp for them.
The Israelis and Massade understand that, so they have to
create the exit ramp, and that may well be the
assassination of Iatola Komena. I believe that's where they're headed.
I believe that's where they're headed because they're absolutely assassinating

(15:42):
the entire command and control structure. The general. In fact,
I forget which general it was. It doesn't make any
difference to us. But a general is eliminated in one
of the strikes. The Iotola appoints a replacement, someone that,
remember is not necessarily the most loyal, but is Oh

(16:04):
you're there. I've just got to find a body. I
got to put somebody in that general's chair. So I
put you in. Guess what, three days later, he's gone.
He gets eliminated. So the Israelis understand that regime change
can only occur if there is an exit ramp, and

(16:26):
there is a void, if you will, created that would
allow the elites, allow the youth, allow all across generations,
give them the opportunity to at least start to try.
You see them right now, they can't try right Let
me rephrase that two weeks ago. They couldn't even try.

(16:48):
Two weeks ago. It was so repressive, it was North
Korean style repression that they couldn't even try. Economic hardship,
political repression, cultural stagnation, all of that is fueling this
desire for a change. And then the Iatola's own policies

(17:09):
like the mandatory hijab laws, systemic discrimination against women, minorities,
dissidents that alienates the general population. Now, of course there
is always the fear of instability. Just look at Iraq
and Syria and there's the cultural fragmentation that make some people.
Has it done about a full scale revolution? So now

(17:33):
let's fast forward to just last year. Stasis Consulting did
a survey. It showed seventy eight percent of Iranians linked
the regimes foreign policy to their own economic woes. So
you have the practical grievances that are necessary to effect

(17:53):
a regime change. You just have to be able to
amplify those and in less an anti you get you
the repression. They can't amplify it. So a majority of
Iranians what regime ship. They want a freer, secular society,
and they want support for revolutionary action, particularly among the

(18:15):
urban and the younger population. So what can we do
to help destroyed their nuclear capability? Get out, Beth. The
Israelis finished the job. Michael.

Speaker 4 (18:30):
I don't know if you've ever seen pictures of Iran
in the mid sixties before the joint venture between the
CIA and the Brits. That deposed Prime Minister Masada and
installed the Shah. But it was a shockingly freedom loving,

(18:51):
classically liberal kind of a country back then.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
The Persians have that in their DNA, just like we do,
and that's why I think those numbers are so reassuring.
But during the break a Rod threw this segment into
turmoil because he had what was that? Can you repeat
the question?

Speaker 5 (19:16):
The question was, if you are any country not named Iran,
excuse me, not named the United States, why even bother
to create nukes in the first place, knowing that if
you were to use them, it means obliteration for you
because of what you're destruction, yes, right, obliteration right, So
why any other country make them in the first place?

Speaker 2 (19:38):
Well, then you have to take into two account that.
First of all, you have to accept the status quo
for what it is. You even Kim Jong un, as
backcrap crazy as he is, understands mutually sure destruction. But
he's not a religious fanatic. He's not a religious zealot.

(20:00):
The Iranians, the Mullahs that theocracy wants armageddon. They want
the end of the world because for them that brings
back Allah and allows them to re establish the caliphate worldwide.
They're the rabid dog, as a Rod put it during

(20:22):
the discussion. But insofar as the question of why would
these other nations want study sunny aside the Iranians, why
would any other country want nuclear weapons? Because they feel
that obligation, even though they'll know they'll never use them.

(20:42):
If it ever happens and someone attacks them, everyone tends
to believe that it will be a limited strike. When
Putin draws the red line and says I'll use technical
nukes against the Ukrainians, everyone wants to believe, on the
one hand, that it will be limited to Ukraine, and

(21:05):
that any response by let's say, Germany or the UK
would be limited and it wouldn't spread any further because
everybody will hit on the phones. All the OP centers
in all the world will get together and everybody will
talk everybody off the ledge. Well, that reminds me of
an old movie from nineteen eighty three, he wargan.

Speaker 6 (21:27):
This is a tape that I got from the library.
It's about this guy named Falcon. He was into games
as well as computers. He designed them so that they
could play checkers or poker.

Speaker 7 (21:40):
Yes, well, so great about that everybody's doing that now.

Speaker 6 (21:43):
Oh no, no, no, what he did was great. He
designed his computer so that it could learn from his
own mistakes so they'd be better the next time they played.
The system actually learned how to learn. It could teach itself.
Just get that damn password. I could play the computer.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
That's him, that's Falcon.

Speaker 7 (22:09):
That's him. Wow, he's amazing looking. Can't you write him
or call him somehow?

Speaker 5 (22:19):
He's dead?

Speaker 7 (22:21):
He's dead.

Speaker 2 (22:22):
Yeah. Here, this is obituary.

Speaker 7 (22:27):
It wasn't very old.

Speaker 6 (22:28):
Well, he was pretty old. He was forty one.

Speaker 7 (22:31):
Oh yeah, oh that's all.

Speaker 6 (22:36):
That's his little boy.

Speaker 7 (22:38):
Oh yeah, this is really sad you as a child
and his mother were killed in.

Speaker 2 (22:45):
A car crash.

Speaker 7 (22:46):
Yeah, years ago, the tragic loss of his family. Doctor
Falcon's health deteriorated is forty five. I remember once he
was really sick.

Speaker 5 (23:06):
We find what was his name?

Speaker 7 (23:09):
My father?

Speaker 6 (23:10):
No, no, no, no, Falcon's kid.

Speaker 5 (23:14):
Hello, I'm gonna ask you that.

Speaker 6 (23:21):
It'll ask you whatever it's programmed to ask you. Do
you want to hear it talk? Yeah, I'll ask it
how it feels.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
I'm fine?

Speaker 4 (23:32):
How are.

Speaker 5 (23:34):
You excellent?

Speaker 7 (23:37):
Fifteen?

Speaker 1 (23:38):
A long time?

Speaker 3 (23:39):
Can you explain.

Speaker 2 (23:40):
Lead removal all the.

Speaker 7 (23:42):
User had Downtown you. In twenty nineteen seventy.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
Three, the Musatoldy died. People who sometimes make.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
Mistakes.

Speaker 7 (23:56):
Yes, they do talk, it's not a real voice.

Speaker 6 (24:01):
This box just interprets signals from the computer and turns
them into sound.

Speaker 7 (24:04):
Shall we a game? Oh if we get missed them?

Speaker 2 (24:11):
Yeah? Weird?

Speaker 6 (24:12):
Isn't it love to know about global thermal nuclear war?

Speaker 7 (24:22):
Liking to you? That's any good game?

Speaker 6 (24:25):
Yes? Later, let's play global phenrmal nuclear.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
All right?

Speaker 2 (24:38):
And what's the answer when they finally gets into Norad?
The only way to win the game is to not
play the game. The problem is we have a rabid
dog in the Iranians. They want to play the game
because they know that they can't win the game, but

(25:02):
that brings about what they want, the destruction of Western civilization.
And the rabbid dog doesn't know that it's rabbit. That
rabbit dog doesn't understand that it's going to destroy, it's
going to die because the dog is rabbit. The dog
is out of its mind. The Mullas are out of

(25:22):
their minds. They're religious, zealous and whatever they do can
do that they believe in their rabbid infected brains that
will lead to the furtherance of an Islamic caliphate across
the entire universe. And at the same time that that

(25:45):
would destroy the very devil, which is you and me,
all the apostates that live in Western civilization. And by
the way, we're not They're only devils. This gets back
to my point about the four D chess. You see,
there are other apostates who hm ironically, also happen to

(26:09):
be Muslim. That's the Saudis, that's the Emirates, that's the Kuwaitis.
For that matter, that's even the Egyptians, all of whom
see the Iranians as a threat to their civilization. That's
why they know the only way to win the game

(26:30):
is to never let them get the nukes, so that
they cannot play the game. And that's exactly what Trump understands.
Trump understands, as he said consistently over and over and over.
And thus you have the divide among the MAGA crowd.

(26:53):
Those like Carlson, who you'll spoke at the RNC, you know,
talks about how much he loves Trump, but how Trump
has lost his way on this issue.

Speaker 4 (27:04):
Now.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
I find it interesting because even everything I've talked about
presupposes that Trump's only talking about a well defined, narrow
mission bunker buster bombs to take away their capacity to
build nukes, and then everything else is left up to

(27:27):
the Israelis and for that matter, the Iranian people. But
somehow they've they've made the leap that doing that leads
to a forever war. Let let's play a what if game.
If post nine to eleven, we knew the mountain, we

(27:52):
had actionable intelligence, not chatter, actionable intelligence confirmed by human
intelligen legence, signal intelligence, all of the things that pinpointed
Osama bin Laden in that compound outside that military base
in Pakistan. That's how we discovered him. Because of our
human intelligence, Pakistan intelligence, our electronics signals intelligence, we knew

(28:17):
precisely where he was. But let's say rather than being
in Pakistan, he was in Afghanistan, out in some remote
area somewhere out in one of the provinces, in a cave,
as we you know, originally suspected, but we knew he
was there, and so rather than invade the country, we

(28:38):
launched a B one or a B two whatever we
needed from uh, well, let's just say from Qatar, where
we where we have a base or from Turkey or Germany,
and we flew it in, refueled in air, flew into
Afghan airspace, dropped that bunker busting bomb right where Somema

(29:02):
bin Laden was. The plane turned around, came right back, landed,
Mission accomplished. Done. Would we have been there for twenty
more years? No? I don't believe so. But we were
there for twenty more years because we approached the hunt,
and we approached the mission entirely the wrong way. Trump's

(29:25):
not going to make that mistake, but somehow some people
in MAGA are concerned or firmly believe, like Tucker Carlson,
that he will make that mistake. I happen to disagree.

Speaker 3 (29:36):
Michael loved the Wargames movie, seen that many times. Love
the action, love the storyline, and also the celebrity crush
on Ali.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
She doesn't hurt either.

Speaker 7 (29:46):
Now I gotta go watch it again.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
Thanks well, And I wanted to find that that was
the trailer for it. But here's the end where they're
in the bunker playing the game, Joshua.

Speaker 7 (30:05):
Strange strange game.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
The only winning move is not to play. The Generals
were the fuddle.

Speaker 4 (30:18):
From that time.

Speaker 2 (30:19):
Nice stay in the advert you now the other option
that the Israelis have. Remember stuck Snip, that highly sophisticated

(30:44):
computer worm, first discovery back in like twenty ten. It
was used to exploit vulnerabilities in industrial control systems. Specific
it's specifically targeted even Step seven software, which was being
used to control the centrifuges at the TANS facility, the

(31:08):
one that's now deep down in the bunker, and they infiltrated,
they targeted, and they sabotaged. It was introduced into TANS,
likely through a USB drive carried by an insider, possibly
an Iranian engineer, that was recruited by Dutch intelligence at

(31:29):
the behesta of the CIA in the Masade. It was
highly effective in disrupting their nuclear program, but it was
temporary rather than permanent. And now because they're they're creating
so many more centrifuges, the enrichment is getting such so
much closer. And as now, I'm not obviously a nuclear scientist,

(31:52):
but some people told me that you don't necessarily need
enriched uranium to create a nuclear bomb. Well, if that's true,
then that gets right back to the point that you
have to completely destroy their capability and that's what Trump
keeps saying they cannot develop the weapon period. Now, I

(32:18):
guess my question is outlining it, outlining it the way
I imagine it, the thinking going on in Trump's head
and understanding how we can do it in connection with
the Israelis and in and out operation. Why do we

(32:41):
make the leap and how do you make the leap
that it would lead to a forever war or, as
Tucker says, the demise of the American Empire, which I
certainly think is hyperbole. But I'd be curious, Michael Brown
at iHeartMedia dot com, if you disagree and you think

(33:03):
that even the limited, very specific assignment that I'm talking about,
the very specific mission, and you think that's going to
lead to a forever war or even worse, the demise
of the American Republic. I think we get a lot
worse things. But I'd like to know what your reasoning is.
I'd like to know what your logic cues, what your
rationality is, because I've tried to step in those shoes

(33:27):
of Tucker Carlson, and I cannot make that lead rationally. Oh, irrationally,
I can make it, but I can't make it rationally.
If you think you can help me make it rationally,
I'm welcome to your argument.