Title: How Mossad & CIA Recruit in Iran
Show: Jamarl Thomas
Date: 2025-06-30
URL: https://youtu.be/_oVLXe7WG8Q
Duration: 41:00

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[00:00] We have a power show today. John Keryaku. So again, somebody who I always love talking to, um, John Kyako. He's former CIA officer, author, and speaker. His books include the CIA Insiders Guide to the Iran Crisis: The Reluctant Spy. And John, you are also on the show with um Ted Brawl. Please give me the name of that show. Uh, it is called uh what's our show called? Oh, come on, man. It's early in the morning for me. I

[00:31] still have jet lag. Uh, it's uh Yeah, hold on. I I had it up and I just didn't write it down when I was um pulling up information. Hold on. I'll find it for you. I'll find it. I'll find it. There were two The other one's Deep Focus with John Curio. Deep Focus, right? Yeah. Yeah. And the one with Ted R is I'm embarrassed. No, it's okay. It's okay. Like I said, it's early. It's early. Uh, let's see. This one is

[01:06] Oh god, what is the name of that show? Every time I talk to Ted, I'm gonna search for it, too. So, it's on YouTube. Drogram. Drogram. Thank you. Drogram. Drogram. Every time Ted is on the show, I always ask him the name of the show. Um, thank you for joining me, man. I really appreciate it. I always enjoy these conversations with you. That's why I always um I appreciate you that you come come on. Um let's talk about Iran. You wrote the book on Iran. Um

[01:37] I think I told you when you were here last time I was I thought these talks were fake at the very least. I've been saying it for like a month or few months. Um there were a few reasons. The escalating of demands like they I think they broke down what they wanted once. um they were always go with demands that were beyond what Iran obviously was going to accept. Then there was this kind of context of events over the course of 20 years where they've been taking down government after government after government with

[02:08] Iran being the last one standing. I do think Iran thought that the negotiations were legit. Um, and I think you even pointed out that even in the newspaper, Iran was shocked at Whit's openness because at one point it seemed like they had a deal. And when Wickoff got back, oh, they went after him like nobody's business. Yeah. And the the reason why there was no deal was because it was the US that kept changing its demands. Exactly. give me your take on all of this, the

[02:38] 12-day war leading up to like if you had to put this in context in a way that I guess from a CIA viewpoint of this because they were interest in in um they were involved. I mean uh MSA thanked the CIA as Mark pointed out at the end of the process saying hey thanks for all the help and making this happen. Give me your take on this just as a general overview and we can step into it from the overview. Sure. This is exceedingly complicated. First of all, um on the one hand, you've

[03:12] got a president who is beholdened to the government of Israel. Yes. And Donald Trump, frankly, will do most of what Benjamin Netanyahu wants him to do. We shouldn't be surprised by that. At the same time, Donald Trump is has proven to be the kind of guy who very very much wants a great overarching deal. Right? So

[03:42] without having access to the classified um intelligence, I'm going to lay out a scenario which I think is is a possibility, maybe even a likelihood. So Trump has tried to walk this tight rope between Israel and the Arabs. Not the Iranians. I don't think he cares one way or the other about the Iranians, but the Arabs. And he has placed his

[04:13] entire legacy on the line with the Abraham Accords, which fell apart on October 7th a couple of years ago. He wants very much to revive the Abraham Accords. and being the dealmaker that everybody says Donald Trump is. What he's proposing according to Harets, excuse me, over the weekend is this overarching deal. Yes, it is that um Gaza will fall under the

[04:45] administration of Saudi Arabia but will continue to be owned by Israel. The Saudis will spend maybe as much as a trillion dollars on a port, an airport, a water desalination plant, a a sewer system, and an electrical grid. There will be no arms permitted in Gaza. The Saudis would guarantee that. So Gaza would become its own self-sufficient

[05:16] economic entity administered by Saudi Arabia and owned by Israel with the Saudis running the day-to-day governance of Gaza in exchange for that. Wait, wait, John, can I interrupt one second? There's more to that also. Depopulation. I mean, they were talking about kicking. That's that's been pushed to the side. First of all, it's it that that's one of the definitions of genocide. and the the international community won't stand for it, including the whole

[05:47] of Europe. Donald Trump can't just say, "Look, I'm going to commit this genocide and I don't want to hear any any lip about it." You can't do that. Why can't he? We've been watching it take place for over two years or nearly two years because it's it's one thing to to call this a war or a fight against terrorism. It's an it's an entirely different thing to forcibly lo relocate an entire people. I mean, it's quite literally the definition of genocide. John, I so

[06:19] disagree with you on this. I'm sorry. I do. You can't move two million people. You can't do it. I know, but they've killed 400 more than 400,000 people. I can show you the bodies of children starving to death. I don't disagree with you. I don't disagree with you, but you can't the the world won't stand by as as this becomes a policy by the United States. A policy by Israel is

[06:50] different. The fight is on. But for the United States to say we're either going to kill, starve, or remove every remaining Arab in in Gaza, not a chance. No way. That's what we've been doing. We've been paying That's not what we've been doing. Where where have people look, the Jordanians say not one Palestinian will enter Jordan. It's already 50% Palestinian. The Egyptians closed the border. When Trump floated the idea of relocating everybody to this Indonesian island, the Indonesians said,

[07:21] "Forget it." Then he said, "Albania, we're going to move them to Albania." They said, "Not in a million years." There's no country on earth that is willing to take the Palestinians. I guess what I'm getting at, John, is if we are paying 70% of a genocide, then I I'm missing this great distinction between us paying for it versus us doing it directly. Oh, I think there's a there's a massive distinction. A massive we're supposed to be the good guys. We've convinced ourselves that

[07:52] we're the good guys. and fighting terrorism, which is sort of the line that that successive administrations have used, consider this to be a fight against terrorism. Forcibly removing 2 million civilians is not fighting terrorism. It's genocide. Okay, it it's not even too big anymore. It's like 1.8. Whatever it is, you can't do it. And the world won't stand for it. I mean already Ireland has has

[08:23] recognized Palestine but this is the thing. So the Saudis administer Gaza, the Israelis own it. Um the Israelis uh will concede that at some future date Palestine will be uh recognized as a uh and we've heard that of course since 1948 will be recognized as a as an independent country. But then the Saudis would open an embassy in Tel Aviv. the Israelis would open an embassy in Riad and um and all criminal charges

[08:56] would be dropped against Netanyahu, which which Trump added at the last in a truth social post, right? Yeah. Um now at the same time that they they would bring in the Iranians uh by allowing the Iranians to to um to produce enriched uranium up to I

[09:29] think it was 35% but that uranium would be would be housed and this is unacceptable to the Iranians. Yeah. the uranium would be housed in uh the UAE. Never accept. No, they they've already said flat out not going to happen. At the same time, you know, the Omanis said over the weekend that much to their surprise um the Iranians are are willing to continue talks. Now, the US has said that the talks are going to take place

[10:00] again on Saturday in Muscat. The Iranians say that's not true. They've not agreed to any talks. So, my my guess is there won't be talks in the near term. The funerals for the for the generals, the many generals who were killed um in this 12-day war took place on Saturday. And uh I'll tell you, man, it's rare in any country on earth to see unity like we saw in Iran on Saturday. Right there. If Donald Trump thought that this was going to cause chaos and bring down the regime, man, he doesn't

[10:31] know anything about history. You know what's I spoke to this woman um in Iran over the weekend and I said why I said there's a I was like look the US is full of monsters why would you negotiate with these monsters I was like if you look at what took place in Syria Iraq Afghanistan and she said look we have our own political realities we have to deal with and she said there are political factions that want to negotiate and it it was required that they go through the motions in these negotiations meaning actually have an

[11:02] honest take at the negot negotiations just to show the public that you can't negotiate with the US. Meaning that the unity that came after the fact was on some level politically necessary for them to go through the first negotiation just to show the public we did this in honest faith. They lied. And I'll add too that the Iranians are in a historically strong position right now. Um, first of all, I I agree with Muhammad Mirandi's analysis that that this bombing campaign by the Israelis

[11:33] and by the Americans really did almost nothing to weaken the Iranian government. U, they they withtood it. It it unified the country. It brought everybody together. Generals are very easily replaced. And it's funny too, not funny haha, but funny, you know, interesting that many Iranian generals have said in um interviews that they expect to be killed. You know, they know they're all targets of the Israelis. And so there's a very strong pipeline for people to be

[12:06] promoted to general. You can kill as many generals as you want. More are going to pop up. You can't just you can't cut off the head of the Israeli uh I'm sorry, of Iranian National Defense. you just can't do it. Yeah. Um there's there's also credible information that the Israelis simply ran out of of missiles. Yeah. They they gave the the Iranians their best shot and the Iranians weathered it. So I think Iran came out stronger militarily and politically. In addition,

[12:40] here in the United States, we consistently underestimate the benefit of the JCPOA to Iran. Whether or not the United States um is involved or adheres to the JCPOA, I think is irrelevant because the JCPOA allowed the whole rest of the world to trade with Iran. And so you've got the British, the French, the Germans, the Japanese, and everybody in between besides the Russians, the Chinese, and the Indians all trading with Iran. Here

[13:11] in the United States, we have a law that says if you trade with Iran, you are subject to sanctions, mandatory sanctions. Mhm. But we've ignored that law because as soon as we pulled out of the JCPOA in 2017, Donald Trump told all of our allies, "Okay, we're out of the JCPOA, so you have to jump out of the JCPOA, too, and sanction Iran." And they said, "Forget it. We're not going to do that. So, what are you going to do? You're going to sanction the UK and France and everybody else in the world."

[13:42] What the Iranians really really needed like on an immediate basis was spare parts for their uh airplanes both military and civilian and they needed spare parts for the oil industry and dredging equipment. And they got it they got it from the Chinese. So they don't really need to have sanctions lifted. it just doesn't matter anymore because Donald Trump handed them this situation on a on a silver platter in 2017 thinking that he was being tough

[14:14] and strong against the Iranians and instead he removed any um any any pressure that the US might have been able to uh to place against the Iranians. You know, I'm curious on something else. Like I I think people, myself included, was surprised that it's almost like Iranian internal security. It's like Swiss cheese where you have a problem. They have a serious problem

[14:44] with espionage in their country. Yes. Why? Why so why is it so well prolific? I I have to keep reminding myself that because I'm on the side of the Iranians in this whole thing, but I have to keep reminding myself that Iran has big problems, too. They're perfectly happy to hang you from a crane by your neck if you say something that the government doesn't like. Okay? It's not all milk and honey over there. Excuse me. They have serious problems.

[15:16] And so um and so this isn't a government that engenders such good will that it can go out and do anything it wants. I see. With that said, then there are people in the country who hate their government and are willing to work against it, risking death. And they already a week ago, they already started executing people just suspected of working for the uh for the Syrians. You know, I I mean

[15:49] for the Israelis, one of the things that the Israelis did last week that was just that was a surprise to me, but was very effective technique. Something that the US did to the Iraqis in 2003 is you start calling people and threatening them. Right? There was a fantastic reporting in the Washington Post of a Mossad a a Farsy speaking Mossad officer calling a an Iranian general and saying, "Look, we're going to kill you

[16:19] tomorrow." Now, we know that they did this to a number of generals. They first they they slipped notes under their apartment doors in the middle of the night saying, "Hey, we're going to kill you tomorrow. This is your only chance. You can come work for us and we're going to kill you tomorrow." Then they called their wives and said, "We're going to kill your husband tomorrow and we may take down the entire apartment building. So tell him to get on the right side of this." And then finally, they called the generals themselves, which is what you heard on that Washington Post um uh

[16:50] recording, saying, "We're going to kill you unless you make a video renouncing support for the Iranian government and announcing support for the Israeli government." Not that that's obviously a death sentence to do something like that. Why would you do something like that? But then they legitimately went out and killed every one of these guys, more than a half a dozen of them. So they've got their cell phones, they have their addresses, they can track

[17:20] their movements. And one of the things about the Israelis too, and we saw this in spades in in Beirut and in southern Lebanon, is if somebody is in an apartment building, somebody who's a target is in an apartment building, they will take down the entire block if they can be sure that they're killing this one person. They'll kill hundreds just to get that one person. That's why the death toll was so much higher. I guess that brings two questions. For one, why didn't Iran

[17:51] reciprocate? And two, how and let me ask the first the second one first. How do they go about recruiting spies? I mean, I would imagine there would be some Assad agent who would try to get close to somebody. Hey, I'll give you money. I give you because they it ended up having a lot of Afghans and a lot of Indians and correct me if I'm wrong on this they found were working with the Israelis not to mention you know groups like MK or whatever right that were internal yeah this is mostly refugees

[18:24] this this intelligence network that they have inside Iran you know the conventional wisdom Jabarl is that the Israelis recruit Iranian Jews there are more Jews in Iran than any other country. I'm sorry. Yeah, that's right. There there are more Jews in Iran than any other country in the Middle East outside of Israel. Wow. And so the conventional wisdom is, oh, they just recruit these Iranian Jews. Not true. Iranian Jews are loyal to the Iranian government. In fact, many of them volunteered

[18:56] uh for the military just to fight the Israelis. But Iran has struggled for decades with a refugee crisis. Millions, literally millions of Afghans and Pakistani beluch have crossed into Iran since 1979. They're not eligible for Iranian citizenship. They're not eligible for Iranian government aid because they're not Iranians. And so if you are desperate and hungry

[19:28] and have no alternative, that is a vulnerability that the Mossad has been able to exploit. So if you're if you're some penniles refugee from Afghanistan in Tehran and they give you the Israelis give you $500 and say, "Get me the addresses of these five generals or 10 or 20 generals." by God, you're going to do it and you're going to transmit it back to them. How do these refugees get into the

[19:58] country in general? I mean, this may be a stupid question. That's a good question. The border is absolutely massive and it's unprotected. It's just too big and it's too rough and it's too mountainous. And I'll give you an idea of this. In 2009, when I joined the staff of the uh Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry, who was the chairman at the time, told me that he wanted to reach out to the Iranians. So, I sent a letter under his signature

[20:31] to the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations and I said, "We wanted to meet." So, I went up to New York and I met with the Iranian ambassador secretly and I said, "Senator Kerry is interested in improving relations with Iran." This is before the JCPOA was even proposed. Yeah. Kerry was really gung-ho about trying to make things right with the Iranians. And the Iranians said, "That sounds great. We want weapons. We want

[21:02] night vision goggles. We want secure communications with encryption. we want ammunition. And I was like, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what I'm I'm not here to talk about that." Right. Right. Lawyers. It's because they simply can't control the border. And remember, this is how all that Afghan heroin gets into Iran, too. The border is just so big and so rough and so mountainous, they just can't control it. Interesting.

[21:34] Oh, that's so interesting. I guess and to bounce back to the other question, why don't they reciprocate? I mean, Israel had no issue murdering civilians. They didn't have no issue taking down apartment buildings. Why does Iran hold itself to some weird standard when they're dealing with monsters that don't have those standards? That is a very good question. And as as background, I'm going to say notice the difference in the death tolls

[22:05] in the two countries, right? Four, five, six times the number of people in Iran were killed than were killed in uh Israel. Not because the Iron Dome protected them, but the Iranians legitimately attacked military and economic targets. Of course, there were a couple of errant missiles that that hit, you know, apartment buildings, but the Israelis actively target civilian residential areas.

[22:36] They want that big death toll. They want to kill that one general, even if it means killing 200 other people in the building. And the Iranians didn't do that. They they took the high road. And that was a policy decision they made. I'm not sure why they did. I think they did it to be on the right side of international law. Frankly, um, one of the things that the Iranians have have shown the rest of us in two gorounds now with the Israelis is that the Iron Dome isn't so vaunted

[23:07] as it's been cracked up to be. You know, if those slow motion drones can get through, and remember in the first go round, seven drones got through, right? Seven. That's a lot. That tells me that that the Iron Dome doesn't really work like they say it works. And then enough missiles got through to actually do damage. Iran is a gigantic country. It has 92 million people. And just in terms of area, it's massive. And what does Israel

[23:39] have? 8 million, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. So Iran can, you know, take a licking and keep on ticking as the old Timex commercial used to used to say. Oh, your point is Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were still going. Your your point is effectively they willingly absorb knowing for Yeah. I guess this is the argument I used to make too that if it's pound-for-pound, even if Israel condition out three times more, Israel is going to get crushed again. Going to

[24:09] get crushed. The Israelis, the Israelis would have to use nuclear weapons. And to do that would be I think it would be the end of Israel. Why do you think it would be the end of Israel? Because the West with the United States aside, because we're, you know, beholden to the Israelis, I think the West would walk away from Israel if they use nuclear weapons without having nuclear weapons used on them. But now, but see, this is the part that that gets me, and I guess this is where my main disagreement goes with this.

[24:41] Intellectually, I would hope that to be true, but by the same token, I never thought I'd watch a genocide take place in real time. Like, meaning I never thought I'd watch kids walking around like skeletons. That is mind-blowing. I've never seen that. Nor did I think I would ever see that. Have you ever been like to the West Bank or Gaza? Yeah, Bethlehem. That's a Christian That's a Christian town. Have you been like to Nablus, let's say, or No, Jamar, it is

[25:13] it's like walking from the from the first world into the into the fourth world. It's the biggest prison on earth, the biggest open air prison on earth. You know, my mom said to me one time in 2008, my dad had died and she wanted to travel. So, she called me one day and she said, "I think I'm going to go to Ireland with your sister." And I said,"Ireland?" I said, 'What do you want to go to Ireland for in February? You know how cold and

[25:44] rainy it is in Ireland. I said, 'The priest at my church is taking a group to Israel, Mom. You should go to Israel. And she's like, "Oh, that's a great idea." So, she and my sister went. My mom had zero political perspective. Didn't know anything. Wasn't really interested in politics or foreign affairs. She came back as a 100% Palestine activist. She said to me, she was so sweet about it. She

[26:14] said, "Did you have any idea how those Israelis treat the Palestinians?" And I said, "Of course, like my whole adult life I've been watching the way they treat the Palestinians." And she said she cried a couple of times. She cried at a roadblock one time. They had a Palestinian Christian Greek Orthodox driver for their little, you know, their little van that that held 12 people. Oh, this happened to me, too. Go ahead,

[26:44] please. And she said the guy was a professional driver and he would drive them to Bethlehem and drive them to Nazareth and just sit in the van. So they come to an IDF roadblock and the guy's reading some some pulp fiction, you know, novel while everybody's inside the church taking pictures and an IDF soldier grabbed the book out of his hand and opened it up and said, "No picture of Arafat on this page." And tore out the page and threw it at him. No picture of Arafat on this page. And he tore

[27:17] clumps of pages out and threw it at him. And the poor driver just sat there and took it. Yeah. And she said to him, "Why do you allow them to treat you like that?" And he said, "Madam, the alternative is that they shoot me." Yeah. And then she said, as if that wasn't bad enough, as they're entering the West Bank, there are these 30foot walls with barbed wire on the side um or on the top rather that the Israelis said were to keep the

[27:48] Palestinians out of Israel. And she said, "They're not. They're to keep the Palestinians or sorry, to keep the Palestinians in Palestine in cages. It's a prison." And I said calimera, it's something the Greeks say. Good morning. Like you just woke up and realized that this is the reality in in Palestine or occupied Palestine, which is what the West Bank is. So I think part of our problem here in the United States is most Americans either don't know that or

[28:18] refuse to acknowledge it. You know, I taught years ago at Liberty University, an evangelical university. I'm not evangelical. I have nothing in common with them, but they offered me a teaching position and I accepted it. And for whatever reason, I'm still on the list serve of professors. And I mean, I taught there in 2011. Yeah. Um 200 2011. So I'm still on the list serve. And the the the ugly

[28:48] viciferous hatred that I see for Palestinians on this list serve is disguised as support for Israel and opposition to terrorism. Well, none of these people have ever met a Palestinian. None of these people have ever been to Palestine or to Israel. They're just going by what they see on Fox and the One America Network and what they hear, you know, in their Bible beating uh evangelical churches.

[29:21] So, a lot of this is a result in the United States as a result of ignorance, in many cases, willful ignorance. And I think that as things continue to get worse and our European allies become more vocal in their opposition to what we're seeing today, starving, literally starving children, I think they're going to begin to drag Americans with them in that direction. Mark, I I mean, I'm sorry, not Mark. Um, John, I I don't I I got to be honest. I

[29:54] don't see it. I You know, stuff like this is just every day. No, that's just daily. Just children as skeletons. Yes. And you see like when I was in Bethlehem, it was never that bad. Like Oh, no. Ever. I remember they pulled my van driver out because apparently he didn't have some kind of identification. Took the man to jail somewhere. And in perfect English, hey, um, another driver will come in a moment to take you to wherever you're going.

[30:25] And you know it's like you see that stuff like you when I remember when we got into LA looks like little America and then when you cross into Bethlehem you're in like Yeah. It just too different. Different different country. Yes. It is bizarre. Yes. And you know you get back to the States. My ex-wife I remember the first time she went to Israel with me and she didn't understand why I was being a bit of a dick. Right. Because for one I didn't want to be there at that point. What was this? This was maybe four or five years ago.

[30:57] Recently. This was recent. She didn't She didn't get it cuz she's not really political in that sense. And I remember when we were leaving, she says, "You know, I was at the museum." She says, "It dawned on me if Israel, if all of these Israelis came here, who was here for, you know, when they got here?" And she's like, it kind of dawned on her like, "Oh, that's why all of these people are in um van in these places with guns. That's why they were running around with all of the military. That's

[31:27] why meaning it took her a while to click of who was here before these people got here. It it is it's just it is a wild it is an alternate reality. It is bizarre." And Americans have no idea. The last time I was there, I was in Jerusalem. This is 2022. I was actually there to cover the Israeli elections for Sputnik. Yeah. And I remember this. I remember them sending you I'm sorry. I remember sending you.

[31:59] There were two things. One, I I would see these signs everywhere, billboards, banners. We are with you, America. I'm like, on what? You're with us on what? We don't want to be with you. Like, what are these stupid billboards? That was the first thing. The second thing, it was my last full day in Israel and I had to do actually I had to do your show. Um, you were early in the morning.

[32:31] Was it 7 to 10, I think, uh, Eastern. Okay. So, so Israel was seven uh, seven hours ahead and I was going to be on at 8. So, I had the day free until 3:00 p.m. until I had to get on your show. And I hadn't yet gone to the Mount of Olives and I wanted to see the Garden of Gethsemane and the Virgin Mary's uh you know, tomb and stuff like that. So, I went in the morning and I I went to the Mount of Olives and then I thought,

[33:01] "Okay, I I'm going to go back into the old city of Jerusalem and buy a souvenir." So, I'm on the Mount of Olives. You go down into the valley and then back up to get to the old city. And to tell you the truth, I was 115 pounds heavier at the time. And it was faking hot that day. So when I get back up to the old city, I'm winded. So I sat on a bench like 20 feet outside the iron gate,

[33:34] which is one of the gates of the old city. Mhm. And there's a woman sitting there and she says, "Hi." And I said, 'Hi.' And she asked me where I was from. And I said, 'D, where are you from? Oh, I'm from Brooklyn. Isn't this city amazing? Yeah, it's amazing, but I can't believe how they treat the Palestinians, etc. So, we're just sitting there chatting and as I'm talking to her, I'm watching again from 20 feet away. I'm watching the actual entrance to the uh I'm the

[34:04] the iron gate, which isn't iron. It's stone. But anyway, um there were three IDF soldiers standing in the iron gate and they're just standing there milling around and it's this hustle and bustle of Palestinians holding, you know, crates of fruits and vegetables, dates, and they're they're going about their day trading, buying, selling. There's this one Palestinian guy who's kind of milling around.

[34:35] One of the IDF soldiers went over and he was about 10 ft away. Went over to ask him, "What are you doing?" And as the soldier went over there, he pulls out a knife and he stabs the guy twice. He stabs the soldier twice in the stomach, right underneath the the bulletproof vest that he was wearing. Immediately, one of the other soldiers put up his gun and shot him and killed him right there in front of my eyes.

[35:07] This woman I'm with screams and I said, "We better get the hell out of here cuz they're going to lock it down." I took off. I was directly across the sidewalk, the walkway from the back entrance to the um the um the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum. So I ran that way, came out on the other side, went to my hotel and called Sputnik, and she ran the other way back to the Mount of Olives. They locked down the entire old

[35:37] city of Jerusalem. And if I hadn't been able to run like that, I would have been caught up in all that hell. I mean, within minutes, helicopters flying around, everything's locked down, armored personnel carriers entering the old city. It was, it was awful. And then I put on the Israeli news, the English language Israeli news, just to see what they were saying about

[36:07] this. And it was, "They hate us more than they love life itself. It is only by the grace of God that our man wasn't killed. You can see that they have only murder in their hearts. It's like, are you [ __ ] kidding me? It's like they don't see it. They just don't see it. It's the most bizarre thing. I remember I was having a conversation. I was interviewing um I guess it was a debate with Benjamin Netanyahu's press guy once and to me the

[36:40] most rational thing in the world is do you understand that because of the way you treat them you're creating your monsters they don't get it completely over completely over it's you know I I gave a I gave a talk to um to the Canadian Foreign Ministry on Thursday last week big big thing I had 125 people show up for the Zoom Zoom call and um one of the very first questions they asked me was how do we get out of this this constant cycle of terrorism and

[37:13] war? And I said, you know, this was one of the very first lessons that I learned when I was the the head of counterterrorism operations in Pakistan for the CIA. I said, we started capturing al-Qaeda fighters immediately as soon as I arrived. we would just bust down the door and grab these guys. And the shock for me was that to a man, they were all children, 18, 19, 20 years old, and they all told exactly the same story. They

[37:44] were from isolated villages in their home countries all across the Middle East. They couldn't read or write. They had no job skills. They wanted to get married, but no man would let his daughter marry some kid who can't read, can't write, and doesn't know how to do a job. So, the local imam said, "Why do you want to stay in this village? You should go to Afghanistan and make jihad against the Americans, and we'll give you $300 a month, and if

[38:15] you're martyed, we'll give your parents a $500 martyrdom bonus." Wow. And I said, "These guys couldn't find the United States on a map. They had no idea what US policy was. There was no inherent or intrinsic hatred of the United States. It's that they were poor and they had no hope." So I said, "If you want to know how to get out of this cycle of violence and terrorism,

[38:46] education and economic development." Yeah. And I would tell the Israelis exactly the same thing. You can't kill everybody. You may think you can, but you can't. And the only way to get out of this is you have to give people a reason to want to lay down their arms. You have to allow them self-determination. You have to allow them to develop their economy. You have to allow them to raise happy families. Give them something to

[39:18] live for. You can't just occupy their land, steal their homes, starve their children, shoot their fathers, blow up their hospitals. That's not tenable. But the Israelis don't want to hear that. No, they don't. John, always appreciate you, man. My pleasure. It's good to see you again. One last thing. What do you think happens from here? I think they they've never accepted a ceasefire. Um Yeah. And they but oddly

[39:51] enough and and I guess there are two parts to this. One, they've never accepted a ceasefire meeting. They're bombing Lebanon today. They've been killing people left and right. That's right. Um you know, and that's another thing that hasn't quite made the American media. They're bombing the hell out of Lebanon the last couple of days. Nobody's paying any attention. It's an untenable situation. You know, it's funny. We talk a lot about the 67 war, the 73 war. We don't talk so much about the 82 war where the Israelis got

[40:23] their asses kicked in Lebanon and had to withdraw. We we don't talk about the first and second inifatas where the Israelis got their asses kicked again. And so, you know, they're going to have to they're going to have to come up with some sort of proposal or maybe have a proposal imposed on them because you and I, Jamar, are not the only ones watching this news footage of starving children. We're not talking about Yemen here or Somalia. We're talking about Israel, a

[40:53] first world country, and they are consciously and purposefully starving children to death. It's untenable. John Kuryaku. John Kuryaku. He is there we are. Former CIA um officer, author, speaker. Um books include the CIA Insiders Guide to the Iran Crisis, The Reluctant Spy. Also, you can find John on two shows. Please give us those two

[41:24] shows, John. Uh Drogram, that's along with Ted Raw. And the other is called Deep Focus with John Kuryaku. Deep Focus. John, thank you for this, man. I really appreciate it. Thank you, buddy. Good to see you. Be safe. Okay. Have a good one. All right.
