Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: I'm Afshin Ratansi and welcome back to Going Underground, broadcasting all around the world from Dubai amidst millions of civilians killed, wounded or displaced in West Asia after Trump and Netanyahu began their strategic bombing campaign on Iran and Lebanon. This week theoretically marked the end of Trump's so called ceasefire. But with US Policy in shambles and lurching from one tactic to another, by the time you're watching this, there might either be a peace deal or all out war with mass US Casualties. However, the war ends after Trump's failed blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. To unblock the Strait of Hormuz, billions will have been harmed by the inflation spiral hardship caused by that choke point. James Webb, son of the Pentagon's Navy boss, former Senator Jim Webb senior was senior foreign policy advisor to now Trump cabinet member Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He is an Iraq War Marine Corps veteran and he joins me now from Navarre, Florida. Thank you so much, Jim, for coming on going underground. As I said, we don't know whether the talks properly started in Pakistan, whether Trump renewed the waiver on Iranian sanctions, and we don't know whether the US Navy has fired on Chinese vessels. But what is your hunch about how the US Military performed and how it was able to take orders for a mission with no clear objectives in the first place? The Trump Netanyahu mission
[00:01:32] Speaker A: action. First of all, thanks for having me. It's absolute pleasure to be here. So if we could start from the beginning and work our way up to what's going on right now, is that this, this conflict with, with Iran is something that's very atypical to the way the US Military operates. You have to look no further than the lack of contingencies put in place for, for all the various types of things which have happened in the last month or so, uh, starting with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. If you go back to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 or the Gulf War in the early 90s, the military had staged hundreds of thousands of troops in place to cover different contingencies and to prepare for conflict.
Flash forward to where we are now. There is, the Strait is closed and there's a very, very large data set that suggests that that was the most probable and dangerous course of action by the Iranian government.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: Closed for some, closed for some. I should say close for some, yes.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: Closed for some.
Closed to anybody who has participated on the side of Israel in the United States.
And that was something that the President himself has denied as something that he knew was gonna happen or it was even talked about. And quite frankly, that's a bit farcical.
And in doing such, he has harmed the US's reputation and economic partnerships around the world, and let alone showing the entire world that we have gone to war on behalf of another.
Stated by his own cabinet members in Marco Rubio and the speaker of the House himself, which is very anomalous to the way the US military and the US government operate. And it's very, very, very unpopular at home.
Quite frankly, it's the least popular war in the history of our country.
[00:03:21] Speaker B: I mean, clearly something else that's anomalous. I don't know whether we believe everything in that Swissberg and New York Times report on the events leading up to the assassination of Khamenei and members of his family, including his grand.
What did you, as a military man, make of the fact that Netanyahu was in the Situation Room, certainly during the planning of the assassination of Khamenei?
[00:03:46] Speaker A: So let me start with the assassination itself. I woke up early that Saturday morning on March 1st and looked over at my phone, as is customary these days, and saw the news and was absolutely sick to my stomach. That is indicative of an Israeli planning cycle.
That is not the way that the US military and the US government operated historically. And in fact, assassinating foreign leaders goes back to violate the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia.
Yeah. Pardon me.
[00:04:17] Speaker B: Having said that, we know about the assassination attempts on Fidel Castro, of course, from the Kennedy administration.
[00:04:23] Speaker A: Correct.
Attempts to do so. Right, right. And there's, you know, there are instances where we haven't played necessarily above board or have been in the background doing different things. But to open an entire war and campaign by killing the ayatollah is so beyond the pale. We made a martyr out of him, out of the gate. And it's very clear that there was an Israeli move to effectively bloody the United States and draw us deeper into this conflict. Because when you do such a thing, you not only remove the ability to negotiate state to state, followed by the, you know, the 12 or so officials who've been assassinated since then, but you create essentially a blood feud between the two countries. I mean, any country on earth can have a problem with the United States and seek to undermine, you know, our leadership or insert themselves in the political process. But if someone were to come in here and assassinate the president and then brag about it, you would undoubtedly galvanize the population around the regime we're trying to remove. It's just common sense and it's human nature.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: I Mean, what do you think Netanyahu has on Trump that millions of MAGA voters don't, let alone Megyn Kelly and Trump supporter like Tucker Carlson, who you met recently, you're on his show, and Candace Owen and the like. What does Netanyahu have on Trump?
[00:05:45] Speaker A: I wish I knew, quite frankly. I mean, it must be a lot. But more to the point, you know, there are the Epstein files that are out there. I'm sure there's something in there that incriminates not only him, but any number of members of Congress. This was a long standing operation that clearly sought to cultivate influence. It has all the markings of foreign intelligence agencies on the inside. But there's another arc of this which is the influence of money inside the American political system. I've worked inside the US Government, I worked on the Senate and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for a number of years.
And there has always been a push to have a war with Iran.
This predates the invasion of Iraq. It was considered, I mean, the holy grail of neoconservative foreign policy in the United States. So over time, they very clearly co opted any number of members of Congress and the government and placed them at high places. And we're seeing the fruits of that right now, quite frankly.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: I mean, so that's the foreign agent element of it. I don't know whether you saw correct the, I mean, it's out in the open. I mean, the Financial Times had Hegset's broker looked at buying into defense fund in lead up to Iran attack.
I mean, given that you were an advisor on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is it not? I mean, if we take away the millions killed, wounded or displaced, at least isn't it nice there's some transparency about the corruption?
[00:07:13] Speaker A: It'd be a lot nicer if there was action behind it. And what you're seeing is unfortunately a systemic breakdown all across the board, whether it's members of this administration getting rich left and right. That was a big, big, big part of the blanketed sanctions around the world. There was a couple instances where you had a direct line between investments by people on the inside, such as relatives of the President to sanction countries. And then once deals were agreed to in the private sector, those sanctions were released. And I believe Vietnam is actually a very, very clear example of that.
But you have to trace another thread here. The entire system in the United States is being run over at record pace. The war in Iran itself was unconstitutional. We have a very strict process in the US which has been watered down over time. Unfortunately, to go to war, that power is vested exclusively in Congress. It's Article 1, Section 8. They have the power to make war. And in Article 2, the President has the task of being the commander in chief or repelling sudden attack, not attacking.
And even if you take a look at the War Powers Resolution which allows the executive branch to make a common sense decision should there be the imminent threat of hostilities, they can launch an attack for defensive reasons in order to defend our forces or our interests overseas. That didn't apply here at all. We had negotiates going on.
[00:08:43] Speaker B: Not that any president has really abided by that. And of course, even Trump had to use this phrase imminent, perhaps as a nod to what you were just saying, but no one believed it. I mean, do you see all of this as a natural evolution of the Israeli takeover then of US national security after how you personally saw RFK junior Change from anti war to pro genocide in Gaza? I mean, is this just a natural evolution over the past few months that we've been witnessing?
[00:09:13] Speaker A: It's longer in the past few months and witnessing that that's why I resigned from the RFK campaign was when he went on TV and equivocated the IDF's tactics in Gaza to the way that me and my fellow Marines fought in Iraq. It's completely untrue. And it's very clear on that angle in particular, that he somehow was beholden to a power outside of his campaign due to the fact that his fundamental tenet, which is one of the reasons I joined, was de escalation in Ukraine and bringing a war to that end. He was a no new wars kind of guy, just like President Trump.
This is very indicative of a, I wouldn't say a complete Israeli takeover of the government, but their influence is far outweighed by the interests of the American people. And that sentiment is being reflected in polling across the US Right now. The question we have here is can we make a change going forward politically?
[00:10:07] Speaker B: Is it your understanding that RFK Jr. Is still in the cabinet and Col. Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, feel it's more important to be on the inside and therefore exert some pressure, or that they too have been co opted by a foreign power, Netanyahu and the Israeli government?
[00:10:27] Speaker A: I can't speak to that specifically. I don't talk to either one of them on a daily basis or really even at all anymore. But what I can say is that someone like Tulsi Gabbard has a tremendous track record of being on the right side of things. And I think it's a good thing that she's there. Maybe there is a chance that she can help control the damage and help direct the ship. But what I do know is that access is very restricted in the White House to the President. He has been walled off by certain interests who in effect have created an echo chamber of their ideas and how to do things. And that's very dangerous. And you really see it in the conduct of this war.
Nobody that I know who has served in the military. Military or is still serving in the military thought this A, was a good idea or B, that we're going about it the right way if we want to win. It seems all very slapped together. We're targeting the wrong things. And we don't have a justification. And we don't have a justification. You don't have a will to fight.
The evidence of that can be shown in the instances with the USS Forward out at sea where they were sabotaging their own ship on the way to the Persian Gulf. And there's a number of reasons that could have happened. Know they've been at sea for effectively a record period of time. And I've just remind us.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: Because we don't know about the sourcing exactly. Just remind us. I mean, they set fire to the laundry on the aircraft carrier.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: Well, it actually started before that. You know, the. There's a big question about whether or not that was due to hostile fire or a bad product put out by our military industrial complex. But on the way back to the Mediterranean from Venezuela, these guys. These guys. So to run this all the way back, they set out to sea a number of months ago, close to a year ago, and floated across the Atlantic into the Mediterranean to support operations off of Israel and to help defend Israel and the region during the. The Operation Midnight Hammer last June. They were then called back to America and participated in the raid which captured Maduro. They were overdue for a home visit at that point, but were once again ordered back to the Persian Gulf to support the buildup for what. What turned out to be a war on Iran. On the way there, there were numerous verified reports that the laundry system, or not the laundry system, the sewage system and the toilets on board ship were being clogged by crew members left and right. Every time they cleared it, they would do it again. That is not something that I'm, I've experienced in the US military at all. You know, you, you may not exactly be happy about being away from home, but you're not deliberately trying to undermine your own mission. That's a, that's a step above Jim Webb.
[00:13:02] Speaker B: I'll stop you there. More from the former senior foreign policy advisor to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. After this break.
Welcome back to Going Underground. I'm still here with Robert F. Kennedy Jr's former senior foreign policy advisor, James Webb. James, at the end of part one, you were talking about the strange stories emanating from one multibillion dollar air carrier. I understand USS George H.W. bush is having to sail the long way around to get to the theater, regardless of where the conflict stands at the time of this broadcast. I mean, is that because they understand the vulnerability of these massive, I don't know how much it costs, a trillion dollars, the USS George, Germany, Bush, do they see the U.S. navy as very vulnerable even against a, a country that according to Trump, has been completely demilitarized?
[00:14:03] Speaker A: They do. So one thing to really put into the equation here are the advancements in drone technology and anti ship missile capabilities.
Really missile capabilities across the board. You've seen the Iranians, the Russians, the Chinese have put a lot of money into the research and development of particularly anti ship missiles and ballistic missiles generally.
And the US Navy has taken note of that. And one thing that we do not have in our military right now is a consistent ability to defend against these types of systems. So really, the only way to be completely safe is to have what you call standoff distance, a tremendous amount of distance away from the shoreline where these can be launched. And it very much limits the operational capability of the planes coming off those carriers because they're designed for a mission where they could get in a lot closer and that's no longer possible.
So I don't think it's exactly Iranian capabilities, but it would be the capabilities that they have passed off to, say to Houthi and other elements around the region that pose a threat to our ships.
[00:15:14] Speaker B: And I suppose it's well known that there's a degree of corruption in the military procurement system that matches perhaps the corruption in Congress. What does it actually mean then for the future of US national security, that you can have anti war personnel like, well, the president before he was elected, RFK Jr. Who you worked for, JD Vance, Tulsi, Cabot, they can all be in the cabinet and somehow they can all take orders from a foreign power and only Joe Kent resigns. What does that signal for the future of US national security? And I should say it's bipartisan because similar choices were taken during the Biden administration, obviously.
[00:15:54] Speaker A: Correct. I mean, you could actually go as far back as Barack Obama, take a look at that. He was an anti war candidate who promised to completely remove us from Iraq and to end the war in Afghanistan. You saw a partial withdrawal from Iraq and then you saw a surge into Afghanistan under his administration. And it's a very confusing thing for a voter, for a veteran such as myself, and for policy professionals who would really like to see a reorientation of our foreign policy away from force and back to diplomacy where we build relationships and focus on trade.
So the confusing thing would be to see the drift. And previously what you had was an over rationalization of why this is happening. It's like, well, perhaps the rise of ISIS actually is a problem that needs to be taken care of. Maybe we can hammer the Taliban into submission and we trust this guy.
You flash forward to today, a lot of people are very much taking note out in public. The American public has very much had enough of these wars of choice and wars of aggression. So moving forward, I think we're going to hopefully see a changing of the guard inside both parties. If you look at the polling data, people my age and younger in particular are extremely negative about our relationship with Israel. They have never liked these wars. I mean, we've been the ones out there fighting. And what ends up happening is when you have people like Joe Kent, who I have the utmost respect for, who finally get into, you finally have a peer who gets into a position where he can make an impact and then you see he's minimized and then he is forced to resign in protest because he, with his expertise and his life experience can't make an impact. You know, that's, it's a huge wake up call to everybody else. And I'm hoping that we are at a fulcrum where we can actually start applying that mindset and understand that we are being blocked out effectively through a glass ceiling, come together and make a change.
[00:18:04] Speaker B: Joe cant, of course, the former Trump head of counterterror, who Trump then later said didn't know anything about national security. But then does that mean that even under the Trump administration, let alone in the next generation or the president after Trump, the US Troops will leave this region? Certainly we don't know about NATO. I mean, there are headlines about NATO struggling to survive even in so called mainstream media. There's the New York Times. NATO struggles to survive. Trump directs anger at allies because they didn't jump in to assist. Are we going to see the policies that you wanted enacted perhaps under a Kennedy presidency enacted? They will leave this region. The troops and troops from Europe we'll see.
[00:18:50] Speaker A: So there's, there's both. There's the intentional and then there's the unintentional consequences of how our president right now is acting.
He could have very intentionally fulfilled his campaign promises, and I still hope he does, because removing troops from the Middle east is a key component of the Iranian asks in these negotiations. And if he wants to have any kind of political viability heading into the midterms, it would be a very good move for him to withdraw our troops and effectively, in Trump style, declare victory. Whether or not that's actually the case, the unintended consequences are how he is running around like a bull in a China shop, insulting our allies left and right. And NATO is actually preparing for a, a future without us. If you go over to Asia, the South Koreans, the Japanese and the Australians, among other countries who are treated allies of the United States, are struggling mightily economically due to his actions in the Middle east and particularly the, the blockade of. The blockade in Hormuz. But Hormuz being effectively closed, you know, this impacts their, their, their economies just in ways that the American population cannot comprehend. We've got five or six dollar gas here now, but when you're taking a look at a place like Australia where they only have a number of days before they have to ration their fuel, you know, this is going to force their leadership and leaders around the region to take a different look about who they associate with in order to maintain the stability of their own societies.
So could we see the intentional removal of U.S. troops and a realignment? I would hope so. I would hope so. And it would be for the right reasons that we need to focus on other things, stop spending money and stop launching wars of choice.
But should we continue on this continued trajectory, there may be an unintended consequence where we are left alone with the bag in our hand trying to figure out a way forward. And the ramifications of that could run all the way up to, and include the US Dollar no longer being the global currency, which would be catastrophic for the United States and including the future of my kids.
[00:20:59] Speaker B: Yeah, the petrodollar, of course, another dimension to this. But I know that you've described previously a kind of class system that is the power dynamic here.
Just describe how it works that the rest of America, children of veterans on one side and then these powerful oligarchs and the dynamic between them. Because, I mean, in a way you've expressed in this interview a certain optimism about certain polling numbers that show the United States people do want America first, they don't want Israel first.
How does that class system work and function? And how is it that you're hopeful that the ordinary American, the working classes of America, can. Can get that country back?
[00:21:44] Speaker A: So first I. I have to state that I prefer to always look on the sunny side of life. To quote Monty Python. You know, it's despite my own private cynicism about things, but the caste system we have here, or the class system is unspoken, but it shows up in the data.
I'm a third generation in a row Marine. My family can trace their lineage fighting in American wars going back to the French and Indian. It's what we do. We're citizen soldiers. It comes out of the American tradition of having a militia.
[00:22:16] Speaker B: You got to work for American royalty. In fairness, Kennedy.
[00:22:21] Speaker A: I did. I did. I mean, my dad was, you know, my dad and my mom were the first college graduates on. On, you know, out of our family. My dad's family's been here since the 1600s. My mom's family came over from Eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century, so. But they use the military to elevate themselves out. And really what you have with my dad and myself is what happens when you give a hillbillian education. But the fact is, is that you don't have the kids without the draft here. It's all voluntary. You don't have the kids of people who are in power or who are well moneyed at risk. When they make these decisions, it's always somebody El pulses kids who go.
And I spoke about this a little bit before through the specter of Joe Kent, and I think that's a really good way to take a look at it, where if you garner life experience and you pay your dues and you implement policy and you have a brain and you want to get into positions of power, you had better echo the sentiments of those on top. And not to throw a tremendous amount of shade at a guy like J.D. vance, but you see exactly that with him. You know, he is from the working class, but his perspectives are not as such, and he seemed to abandon those along the way. And lo and behold, he ends up Vice President of the United States. What we need to have here is a full return to a meritocracy where it's about what you do, about who you are as a human being, and about the fact that you represent the views of your fellow citizens. And without that, we can. We can't have a truly functioning representative government in this United States. And I'm. I will say I'm optimistic for the first time in a long time, despite how badly things are going, that people are finally starting to really see that. A lot of people that I know voted for Trump.
But if you look at the data, the people who voted for Trump also voted for Obama.
They want change. There is a number of white working class districts all over the United States. You can take a look at that. Voted for Bush, then Obama and then Trump because they were tied into the initial messaging of no more foreign wars and that America would be put first. And another important asterisk to put on that data is that encompasses all of the highest casualty counties in America from the global war on terrorism.
So the people want it. The question is, will we find a way to leverage people with experience coming up from those classes, which is fully in the American tradition up to this point, and to step forward and once again lead this country?
[00:25:06] Speaker B: Well, just finally then, let's talk about the Joint Chiefs of Staff chair, Dan Kaine, four star general. I mean, you've compared the assassination of Khamenei to assassinating the Pope during Lent. And of course there's been no apology for the mass killing of schoolgirls that have been abschooled from the United States. What do you make of Dan Cain and how he manages to still be in position and doesn't feel that the orders he's taking from his commander in chief are not only illegal but immoral?
[00:25:41] Speaker A: Well, I'd like to start with, you know, it's been US Policy, at least during my experience up to and including my experience which didn't end all that long ago, that when there is a, an accident on the battlefield you generally like. Not generally. I was never around the deliberate killing of civilians ever. And I was, I fought in some very violent, violent areas to include Ramadi, Iraq at the height of the insurgency. And the like, bad things happen and it pains any member of the military to see somebody who is caught in the middle of one of these conflicts have to pay for it.
It's absolutely heartbreaking because they want nothing to do, generally speaking, with either side of it. But the targeting of that girl school and the lack of apology is absolutely abhorrent in my opinion.
It's beyond any type of logical thing that I could think of. And what you have on the back end of it is actually defiance about it. They ignore it and they say, oh, well, bad things happen in war. But, you know, that does not build a rapport with anybody in the other country, nor does it around the world. It sets a horrible example and Quite frankly, it stains the honor of the people who fight, fight these wars. My peers who are, who are all, to my knowledge, very, very good people wanting to do the right thing on behalf of their country. Now, one thing I hope with King is that he is hoping once again, like Tulsi Gabbard, that he can manage this process to a conclusion. If you go back to some of the articles prior to the emergence of hostilities, a lot of his sentiments just somehow ended up in the media and they were pretty negative, speaking to, in effect, how we don't want this war and we're really probably not prepared to go fight it. And that's a big statement. Generally speaking. However, you know, it's, I, I'm sure his conscience is pretty heavy right now, and he's probably weighing a couple different things. And really what it comes down to is, you know, whether or not he thinks him being in the room to, to guide this into a position which does minimal harm to the United States and the soldiers out there doing it, versus does he need to make a statement in order to bring this to a close?
Because if he did resign over this, it would be a massive splash.
[00:27:59] Speaker B: Well, no, no sign of him resigning yet, but Jim Webb, thank you.
[00:28:02] Speaker A: Not at all.
Thank you very much.
[00:28:06] Speaker B: That's it for the show. Our continuing condolences to all those bereaved by today's NATO nation wars of aggression. We'll be back on Saturday for continuing coverage of the Trump Netanyahu war on Iran. Until then, keep in touch via all our social media, if it's not censored in your country. And head to our channel, goingundergroundtv on rumble.com to watch new and old episodes of Going Underground, see.
