Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Rattanti. Welcome back to Going Underground. Broadcasting all around the world from the UAE as the entire world economy has hit as this region is once again ablaze after Washington reinstated the blockade of Iran in the Strait of Hormuz and threatened water supplies. Today also marks the birth of Nelson Mandela, South Africa's revolutionary leader, long designated a terrorist by the apartheid backing usa. And it was Mandela in Tehran who called Ayatollah Khamenei his leader on being freed. That's Khamenei who was of course assassinated in February by Trump and Netanyahu. Mandela also declared our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians. Three decades later, that freedom is nowhere in sight. Israel's never ending genocidal wars rage across Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Armed and funded by Washington on the warpath. The so called U S. Iran ceasefire framework collapsed almost immediately. Exposed as a deception that saw the US seek to carve out a southern corridor shipping corridor through Oman which Trump himself had previously threatened to destroy. This all while brokering Israeli Lebanese deals that contradicted the MOU. Netanyahu is due in D.C. tonight. Washington once again stares at humiliating defeat. Its so called precision munitions squandered. The Strait de Hormuz is de facto shot choking off a fifth of the world's petroleum and so much else needed by humanity as the global economy teeters on the edge of catastrophe. And all that amidst an escalating and connected NATO proxy war in Ukraine. Joining Me again from Fourth Church, Virginia is Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a 31 year U.S. army veteran and former chief of staff at the U.S. state Department.
Colonel, thanks so much for coming back on Going Underground. I said all that in my introduction. Of course things could have changed by the time people are watching this on international television. But I suppose let's just begin with, I mean, I don't know, some people think Trump is an idiot, that somehow the United States being knocked out of the World cup was the catalyst for the resumption in fighting which may have again been in a lull. Just before this interview is broadcast, what about whether the war is actually a war not on Iran, but a war on China, the richest country in the
[00:02:21] Speaker A: world by ppp Let me say first of all that I think there's only one aspect of the Trump administration you can count on constantly and that is making money by any possible means. And he has invented new means even from the presidency.
That's the real reason for Trump's existence I think, is making money. That said, I think we're looking at a situation now, as you just intimated, where we are in fact revealing some of the dark reality behind our strategy, if we have any at all. And I don't attribute this to Trump, I attribute it to those behind him, what we call the deep state, with not so much clarity as perhaps the Turks intended when they invented the phrase.
And that is China, the number one economy in the world. There is no question about that anymore. It is the number one economy in the world. And almost every indicator you want to look at, the latest one being that they now like OPEC, even probably more effective than OPEC's past influence on oil markets and thus oil prices, have a major impact on oil. How you ask, is that because China is such an incredible consumer of the products and has so much else in addition to oil, like renewables, unlike anybody else in the world, like coal stocks, unlike anybody else in the world, that when they go to fill up their strategic petroleum reserve, which everyone is waiting on tenterhooks to see if they do, they actually influence the price of oil and the availability of the oil in the world. That's how big their economy is. All to say, I think this is with the globalists, the neoconservatives and others of their ilk in our country, in America, in the empire.
They're fighting China and they're doing it on two very vivid fronts right now, Ukraine through Russia and in Southwest Asia directly, because that is a place where China is not going to give up on, it's not going to give up on its base road initiative south, if you will, it's not going to give up on Iran. So we are not just fighting Iran, we are fighting China. And some people think purposefully so that and have that as the strategy that they think is being implemented, however imperfectly by Donald Trump.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: I'll get to Ukraine in a little while. But then, I mean, that means that US Soldiers in the theater, in the battlefield right now, quite near the studio, they don't know what they're fighting for. I mean, you're a 31 year old veteran, years of service in the US Armed Forces.
Is that the internal contradiction then between Trump trying to make money all the time and, and the deep state actually having this longer term strategic ambition?
[00:05:24] Speaker A: Actually. To your comment on soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and others in the armed forces of the United states, not since 9 11. And I go back to a lieutenant who has really suffers from post traumatic stress from Afghanistan and Iraq. And what he said to me, I never knew why I was fighting. I never knew why I was fighting. I think any cogent member of the US Armed forces, and there are quite a few who aren't cogent, I'll admit that. But anyone who thinks at all knows that there is no decipherable purpose behind the wars we're conducting and have been conducting since 9 11, other than the contractors like Lockheed Martin making incredible wealth off of them and others associated with it like the Congress, making incredible durations of their time in the Congress, if you will, because of the money they take from the defense complex. There is no one out there who is a thinking soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, Coast Guardman, whatever, who knows why the hell they're doing what they're doing.
And that is increasingly the case. And it's survivable, if you will. It's. It's a situation that can't be changed or won't be changed easily because we have made quite sure that we now have a mercenary military and Hegseth, in fact has made sure that we have a mercenary military. That is not just that. It is also 11 to 12% mental category four, that is they can't even read their name on a guard roster, another 10 to 20% Christian nationalists in the military in order to fight for Jesus and all manner of other reasons that Hegseth is making sure come to dominate the armed forces of the United States. So that question is a good question, but it's unanswerable in any terms that most people in the world would understand.
These people are not fighting for God and country. They're not even fighting for national security. They're fighting for Donald Trump, apart from
[00:07:30] Speaker B: the ones fighting for God, in fairness, as you say.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: Well, yeah, well to them in many cases he is God, he's Jesus.
They rolled up into one.
[00:07:41] Speaker B: Well, you mentioned Lockheed Martin and since you did, let alone rtx, what have you made about the reporting of the Iranian retaliation and the strikes? Because in NATO mainstream media all we get are pictures from centcom. I mean, do you think that they're more effective than we're being led to believe? And how effective are the interceptions from these rtx, Lockheed? Incredibly expensive munitions and systems that previous obviously there has been doubt about during different Iraq anti Iraq wars, let alone this war in Iran.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: Yes, Lockheed Martin has made sure and rtx, Raytheon before them have made sure that the propaganda is on their side and not on the side of the weapons as it should be. Ted Postal has shown, I think dramatically in a series of videos which I had the opportunity to watch yesterday, that the hit rate for PAC2s and PAC threes, for example, Patriot2s and Patriot threes is probably less than 4%. And the videos I saw, I didn't even see the 4%. And it's not just ballistic missiles that are configured for countermeasures and even submunition delivery. It's ballistic missiles coming in with no countermeasures whatsoever. PAC2 and PAC3 miss most of the time.
And Mr. Zelensky, who is going to get the ability to build them in three years or whatever in Ukraine, ought to be thinking really hard about whether or not he wants to go along with any of that. Because these are not effective weapon systems. Given the state of the art of ballistic missiles and other web missiles and weaponry like missiles, it's just not good. And Lockheed Martin, look at the F35. The F35 right now in all configurations pushed together over a trillion plus dollar airplane. More than that over time.
The F35 is having about a 27 to 28% operationally ready rate. That means it flies one out of every four times you want it to fly. It's a disaster. It's a very capable airplane, but it is so capable. It's a mini awacs, if you will.
It is so capable and so desperately in need of proprietary maintenance in order to maintain it in the air that you only get one out of four hours that it can actually fly for you. And when you put that together, that's not very good at all.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: And we're just going on the procurement issue. On the procurement issue, when you were chief of staff at the State Department, were you aware that the Patriots weren't working as well as they might? I should say. I once interviewed the head of Middle East Raytheon, as it was then in Abu Dhabi and challenged him because there was evidence back there about it. But you must have known, there must be talk at the State Department. Why are we spending billions on these systems if they don't work?
[00:10:31] Speaker A: The talk, mostly that's along the lines of the question you're asking was amongst soldiers, sailors and others who knew about what was called the operation of a test and evaluation agency at the time, Trump and Exev had done away with it, but they were telling us that the tests of these missiles were fixed. That is to say, Raytheon at that time rigged the tests so that the missile was going to. It was going to act like it had hit the incoming missile.
And that was the real talk of the day among soldiers and others. And that was that we aren't testing these things appropriately. They are not as effective as the contractors are saying. And we're not testing them and we're not proving they're not effective because the influence of the contractor on the Defense Department is so significant and on the Congress too, that they get away with it, they get away with falsifying tests. And this, this included a whole range of missile, not missilery, not just the PAC 2 and PAC 3. It included other missiles that we were talking about, for example, being a part of a new kind of Star wars program if it came to be. And hitting ballistic missiles. In other words, you're hitting a ballistic, you're hitting a speeding bullet with a speeding bullet. And the only way we saw the contractors demonstrating that this was possible was cheating.
They cheated by the telemetry data that they provided to the people on the ground shooting the ballistic missile alternative, the deterrent. They cheated by creating a nose cone on the ballistic missile that actually attracted the killer missile coming up. And we were, we were, we were full of conversation about that. We knew it was going to resound to our but then what, what's been
[00:12:19] Speaker B: protecting us here in durity? What's been protecting us here in Dubai, which bore the brunt of projectiles in the pre MOU period of this war? I actually, I know, we both know of Professor Ted Postal from mit. I thought it was tads that were better than the RTX Patriots. But something must be protecting us because we, I, we could see it in Dubai, the numbers of interceptions.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: Well, I couldn't see it in the videos that Ted Postall had. All I saw was Iranian missiles coming in and either releasing submunitions somewhat above the ground and those submunitions hitting sometimes small submunitions, sometimes submissions as powerful as 155 artillery rounds and nothing being shot down. I saw one missile, one missile shot down by what I think was a PAC3. That was it. So unless Ted is fabricating these videos, you and he are seeing two different things. And these were coming down in Jordan, as I recall.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: Well, there's certainly been a bit of, quite a bit of damage this week. Colonel Larry Wilkerson. I'll stop you there. More from their former chief of staff at the US State Department after this break.
Welcome back to Going Underground. I'm still here with the former chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Colonel Larry Wilkerson.
Colonel, I do want to get onto Ukraine, but still on the Strait of Hormuz crisis. I don't know whether it is a war on Iran.
What about whether the catalyzing of Iran getting nuclear weapons has already happened since, I don't know, back in the June war, let alone this one that started on February 28th. Do you think US intelligence will know about that? Do you think anyone will know about that?
[00:14:11] Speaker A: My experience with the North Koreans is to tell you no, because the North Koreans tested and we didn't even know they tested. We got readout from Geneva and the seismic center there.
[00:14:22] Speaker B: There was an earthquake this week, actually. I mean, low grade, three point.
[00:14:27] Speaker A: That's all you need to mask something if you're trying to mask it. We finally detected the second North Korean test. So, no, it's not infallible that you're going to detect the test. And you make a valid point. Iran could have already made the decision and could be working underground, could have already matched warhead to missile and ready to go whenever they need to go, or it could be pregnant, as it were, and ready to happen at any moment. They decide BB might be contemplating using a nuclear weapon on them.
I think that's the main purpose that the Iranians might have made a decision to do otherwise than their otwah said they would do.
That said, the real issues in this war now are twofold. The rest you can just cast aside. Reparations, lifting of sanctions, all that. The reason Iran has strategic priority, strategic headway over anything Donald Trump does is twofold.
Ultimately, it's the nuclear program, as you just suggested, and two, it's the Strait of Hormuz. And the Omani foreign minister once again has signaled and said explicitly who the real threat in the Strait is. And that's Israel in the region. That's Israel categorically stating that the real problem in the region is Israel, not Iran. I think he's right. And I think Oman holds a key to the continued control of the Strait of Hormuz, such as it is.
And that is their channel, you know, the north channel, the South Channel, and are trying to strong, strong arm Oman into letting us use exclusively that channel, the one Oman has closest to its territory, the southern channel, and thereby negating a lot of Iran's leeway with regard to the straight hormones. But the ultimate leeway, the ultimate instrument here is what you just suggested. It's their nuclear program.
And what's laughable about that, and not laughable, sad about it, is that that's what Donald Trump started out on, and that's what Donald Trump said was his principal focus. Well, he's lost complete focus on that now, unless he's planning on putting land forces on the ground and scouring up their nuclear program as best he can, and that would be disastrous.
I don't see any way he's going to affect that. So Iran remains in the catbird seat and they have Russia and China on their side too. And I think China is ultimately on their side, which means they have the number one economy in the world on their side.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: Yeah, at the time of this interview, there aren't any US ground troops, we should say, that have entered the conflict. I mean, there is a lot of strong army tactics, actually.
What would you advise GCC countries at the moment, a divorce from the United States given the current conflagration and a new, new way forward or continued diplomacy as the United States and Israel behind it continues to tell GCC countries how to react in this war?
[00:17:38] Speaker A: Both. But I think the diplomatic instrument is moribund because we have no diplomatic instrument. We have W and Kushner who are making money. That's about the size of it.
The bigger problem I think for anyone in the Gulf is if you go from roughly south of Basra all the way down to Muscat, what, 65, maybe 70 million people used to be there. I think it's probably half of that now and decreasing every day as they find flights or ships or ways to get out, that's depopulating the region. And what we've done is fallen in on that depopulation from Bahrain to Kuwait and put military assets there, mostly Himars and other missilery that we're shooting at Iran. That tells you something about our ability to really impact deeply in Iran now because we're really just the. We're really just striking those points along their part of the Persian Gulf.
So I don't know what we're trying to do other than affect by bombing and missilery what we couldn't affect any other way. And it's not going to work. It's simply not going to work, particularly when you have the depth of the world's largest economy on the other side, and I would say also the depth of the world's most accomplished military right now to include its defense industrial base, Russia on your side.
This is unparalleled in terms of its potential for going much wider, much deeper, much more profoundly, maybe even to nuclear weapons use.
And everyone seems to be sleepwalking into it.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: Well, I suppose some at least were able to fear the consequences of the proxy war in Russia through Ukraine, the war in Europe, let alone leaving West Asia to one side. Do you think Russia may finally be taking the gloves off?
Because there hasn't been much progress, arguably since 2022.
And I understand Russia has embargoed diesel for the whole of this month.
How is Russia now involved in the war in Europe? How is it changing? It's strategic.
[00:19:53] Speaker A: I think it's changing dramatically. I think Russia has put itself in a position now to more or less consolidate and end the, what I would call the conventional war that's going on. Conventional only in the sense that it's not using nuclear weapons. It's using every other type of new technology you can imagine to include the most massive psychological warfare campaign I have ever witnessed in my time associated with the military. And it's being conducted out of Berlin and Paris and London and Helsinki and everywhere along the line. And it's mostly lies.
[00:20:32] Speaker B: And there are Zelenskyy's winning dictators winning.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: Exactly. The lies, of course, are coming back from Russia. The. The campaign is massive. I've seen some of the things that Russia is doing, the gru, mostly, and it is incredible what they're doing in terms of. In trying to influence European governments. But all that said, until we get some new leaders in Europe, we are looking at a true mess that might go incredibly deeper and be more profound before it's over with. And I'm talking about new leaders like apparently Vidal in Germany, if she were now in the AfD, were to replace Merz in Berlin, you'd probably have an immediate accommodation with Moscow because. And I don't mean an accommodation like appeasement, I mean, they recognize that good relations between Berlin and Moscow are absolutely correct.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I should say Western Europeans have ways of preventing information getting through to the population, but. And let alone arrest points. So just. Yeah, apart from France and Germany and maybe some kind of change. I. I should ask you whether the American people know what's going on, because one of our colleagues, friend of the show, Max Blumenthal, the founder of the Gray Zone, he was stopped at Dulles Airport on the way back from reporting from Tehran, from the funeral ceremonies in Tehran. They took his phone and at the time of this recording, they still got it, and they've taken all his laptops. What exactly is going on with the First Amendment in your country at the moment?
[00:22:08] Speaker A: You might as well ask the question, what's going on with the Constitution, period?
This administration has no regard for the Constitution of the United States of America, period, no regard whatsoever in any category. We're killing people on the high seas without due process.
We are a nation of warfare. Now, sanctions secondarily, but warfare primarily. We're a nation that pays no attention to international law. Indeed, Trump has said, international law be damned. We don't care about anything in the world that we crafted after World War II anymore, including our own posture with regard to the law, whether it's worldwide international law or whether it's domestic law. I think we're going to see a real situation develop between now and November in the midterm elections. And when I say a situation, I say it could go anywhere. From another coup d', etat, which Agseth is ensuring the military this time we'll have adequate forces to support, or some kind of civil war that breaks out.
We're already killing people now at a rate that's just astronomical. Not just on the high seas or their military, but also inside the United States with ice.
I don't know what we're looking forward to in the fall, but I don't think it's going to be very positive.
[00:23:33] Speaker B: Yeah, the ICE killings are on hold, as far as I understand it at the moment. You've got your computers at the moment, though I, I do hope they're not taking anything from you. I just, I must ask you once.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: I'm waiting for the knock on the door.
I'm waiting for it.
[00:23:51] Speaker B: A former former State Department Chief of Staff, 31 year is in the army. I'm not sure. Surely I do know that you sat at lunch with Turki Al Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence, and you've written about it before and he's a staunch supporter of mbs. He's at the moment recently being used by MBS for negotiations in Afghanistan. Is it your understanding, you think that all the things we've talked about in this interview are the things being discussed by, say, Saudi Arabia intelligence, Chinese, Russian, Indian, they are discussing this strategic model of how we can understand the Trump, Netanyahu Epstein war rather than listening to the newspaper, listening to the television or reading the newspapers?
[00:24:39] Speaker A: Well, I think they're doing both. They would be brain dead if they weren't. I think the Chinese in particular are very, very concerned about where the empire is right now because they know, as Ricardo Alacon told me one time about Cub, a dying elephant can thrash a lot of grass and the Chinese don't want their grass thrash. They're doing well. They're winning the overall competition in the world, economic, cultural, you name it, military, they're winning. They don't want that to be derailed and a war with the United States in your face. War with the United States would do that. They'd win. They would ultimately win. But it would be a Pyrrhic victory in many respects, given their progress right now.
So it's a difficult thing for other people in the world to deal with. 60% of the world, 60% of the GDP, hates our guts.
And they would have an audience, if you will, immediately if they took us on. But they don't want to because they're winning. And if they're winning, why should they want to derail that to a certain extent by taking us on directly?
They're going to have to if we persist in this kind of strategy. But I think they're crafty enough to figure out a way to deal with this otherwise, and they will do that.
[00:26:00] Speaker B: Just finally and briefly, people are forgetting, arguably, about the Gaza genocide, that six Hiroshimas and Nagasakis combined so far, the level of TNT dropped on Gaza. How soon do you think we can expect before Israel uses an actual nuclear weapon and then perhaps the United States?
[00:26:20] Speaker A: Well, you've brought up the issue that haunts everything that we talk about at the Eisenhower Media Network and elsewhere, and that is that everyone's forgotten, apparently, about the Palestinians, except the Iranians. The Iranians seem to be the only people. And the Houthis. The Houthis, they seem to be the only people that for whatever reason, and I think some of it is basically fundamental, that is to say, it's not just self interest.
Everyone's forgotten about the Palestinians, and that's what the Israelis want, and that's what Donald Trump wants. That's what we want, apparently, as an administration.
We do not want anybody to remember the Palestinians as they disappear into that dark night underground under rubble, to be soon turned into whatever it is Jared Kushner and his boys have plan for them, but we've all forgotten about that. And that is fundamentally evil that we have done that. This. This is not the equivalent of Hitler's Holocaust, but it's very close.
And if it keeps on at the present rate, and it really is 250 to 300,000 Palestinians under that rubble, and I think Ralph Nader's right about that, I think it is, then this could match that. I mean, this could match anything that's happened in the last, you know, century, really, in terms of Miles purges and Stalin's purges and Hitler and all the rest of the things that have happened that were so heinous that we thought we had left behind and built a body of law and rules to negate. It's coming back. It's coming back with a vengeance. And Israel's leading the way.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Colonel Larry Wilkerson, thank you. Surely, that's it for the show. Our condolences to all those of you bereaved or affected by Washington's wars of aggression. We'll be back on Monday with a former United States presidential special assistant. Until then, keep in touch via all our social media, if it's not censored in your country. And head to our channel, goingundergroundtv onrumble.com to watch new and old episodes of Going Underground. See you Monday.
