Title: John Kiriakou On Venezuela, The Maduro Trial, And More (The Talk Spot)
Show: U Cast Studios
Date: 2026-02-05
URL: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/ucaststudios/John_Kiriakou_On_Venezuela_The_Maduro_Trial_And_More_The_Talk_Spot.mp3?dest-id=966392
Duration: 50:00

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[00:08] Hi, welcome to the Talkspot. Today I'm trying to get by John Kurakawa. John, thank you so much again for coming on. That's good to be back with you. So since the last time we spoke, there's been a number of things that have happened internationally, including the Maduro ousting and that whole operation of taking him, arresting him. I guess one of the first questions I have with that is maybe we could first start with the smaller aspects of the, maybe the bigger aspects of why this happened, but just from the element of America going into another country and

[00:39] arrest, because officially that's the story, as America went in there, and we arrested him. There was a warrant for his arrest and we arrested him. Yeah. Is there much precedence for that in American history? There is. In the late 1980s, I guess it was early 1990s, Manuel Noriega was the president of Panama. He was a military strong man, long-time CIA source, who then fell afoul of the CIA. The CIA always looked the other way when he

[01:10] was trafficking drugs, like he was a major international drug trafficker, but he was our drug trafficker and so we just let him do his thing. And then he kind of became anti-American, and so the George H.W. Bush administration had him charged with international drug trafficking and we initiated an invasion of Panama. We didn't use a lot of troops. It was about 10,000 troops. We invaded Panama. We occupied Panama City. He fled into the Vatican Embassy in Panama City. We surrounded the Vatican Embassy and

[01:48] began playing death metal 24 hours a day, as loud as we could get it. Finally, the Vatican ambassador asked Noriega, just go. Just give yourself up. We can't do this anymore. And he walked out. We snatched him, put him on a plane, brought him back to Miami, sentenced to life without parole. We ended up releasing him into French custody. I think is what it was. And that was kind of the end of it. He did easily 30 years in a federal maximum security penitentiary.

[02:22] Now, there are two aspects to this that I think are important. First of all, it is a violation of international law, as you might imagine, to just send troops into another country, snatch its leader and take the leader back to the United States. That is clearly a violation of international law. It is not a violation of U.S. law. U.S. law coming out of the Kiki Camarena case in 1985 to 1986 allows us to do exactly that, to cross borders,

[02:52] to essentially kidnap and render people back to the United States who have been charged with a felony in the U.S. So Kiki Camarena was a DEA agent in Western Mexico. He was outed to the cartels at the time that was called the Guadalajara cartel. He was outed to them and he and the Mexican drug agent that he was working with were kidnapped by the Guadalajara cartel. He was tortured mercilessly.

[03:23] They tortured him for a month, and then they finally killed him and just dumped his body in a tarp on the side of the road. So Congress very quickly passed a law that President Reagan signed, allowing us to cross borders into any country we want, grab whomever we want, and then bring them back to the United States to face trial. And so that's that's what allowed them to to go grab

[03:54] President Maduro. And now a word from our sponsors. Pursue the real you at Moor Park College. Career education for anyone who wants to find new career opportunities, high school students and transfer students seeking a technical career, adults and working learners looking for real-world skills, veterans seeking a way forward, discover more at moorparkcollege.edu forward slash CE. Accelerate your college education while still in high school. With Moor Park College's dual enrollment program, you can start your college education early.

[04:26] Dual enrollment puts you on the fast track to your college and career pathway. Discover more at moorparkcollege.com forward slash dual enrollment. And with that whole operation, I mean something I've been thinking about too is okay, so we take them and we bring them to New York City. I mean is this like let's say the case happens in the fall, you know, I don't know, maybe that's literally maybe it'll happen next year, but let's just say the same thing if argument happens September, October. Are there going to be just regular Joe's that live in New York City? They're going to be on that trial.

[04:58] Yes. Yeah, he gets to face his accusers in a court of law and be judged by a jury of his peers. And his peers are in this case the the men and women of New York City. Well, and you know just from a political aspect, I mean New York City is a very liberal city. I could see the jury, you know, saying, hey, this is a big F you to Trump. I'm not gonna convict him. I mean, what happens if he's found innocent or is there? Well, see, I would expect that if he had been charged in the federal district for the District of Columbia,

[05:32] there's not a chance he's going to be convicted. But in New York, it's kind of funny if you if you draw a comparison with other major international drug trafficking cases, you know, we had the president of Honduras that we snatched a couple of years ago and and brought him back. Trump pardoned him, but compare that and, you know, the John Gotti case and, you know, any of the big, the big high profile mob drug cases, the jurors that come out of that jury pool take this all very, very seriously.

[06:08] And even when there might be a threat associated with a conviction, they still convict. So I think that the Justice Department is confident that they're going to convict him, even in New York. I mean, do you think there's any possibility? Let's say he is not like let's say he is found innocent, right? They don't convict him. I mean, the U.S. can't possibly allow him to go back to Venezuela, right? They would have to. They would have to. And that would throw a serious wrench into the whole idea of

[06:44] getting rid of him and either cowing the government of Dulce Rodriguez or installing a pro-American government. I mean, if he were to return, oh my God. Well, and that was my thought too. And I mean, without getting too morbid, but when I first heard about the capture, my first thought was I heard about the capture and then he was going to be tried. My first thought was, why didn't they just kill him? You know, unless somebody poses a clear and present danger,

[07:17] that's the terminology that's used. You can't kill him. Executive Order 12333 specifically prohibits killing someone overseas unless they pose a clear and present danger to the United States, to American citizens, or to American installations. But I mean, couldn't they, you know, I don't know, cook up something? Like, I don't know. I mean, without getting too like considerate. And then what happens when they get caught? I mean, either you're going to have what appears to

[07:50] be a legitimate judicial system or you're not. And we want at least to have the veneer of what do you call it? Propriety, we'll say. Yeah, I mean, I totally get the whole like legal aspect and everything. I was just surprised with that because, you know, I mean, I'm in my mid-30s. I'm really used to us just bringing, you know, a world leader into a U.S. trial, like what you're

[08:25] talking about. I mean, there's going to be some guy that's going to have jury duty in August, let's say. Yeah. And they'll be like, oh, you're on the Maduro case. And then you're going to see Maduro. And then you're going to see, what, various generals and people from the CIA and FBI and DEA, whoever. And they're going to be on the stand saying, yeah, like, this is a bad dude. Like, it just, the whole thing to me, I was like, what the heck is going on? But I wanted to ask you. Well, look at the Nuremberg trials. The Nuremberg trials were for every Nazi

[08:57] who was in a position of leadership during the Second World War. And most of the prosecutors were in their 20s or 30s, the military prosecutors. And they tried every one of those guys. I mean, the only ones that weren't tried were like, you know, Hitler, he committed suicide. Gurbals committed suicide. Martin Borman ran off to South America. And so did Joseph Mengele. Everybody else went on trial and almost all of them were hanged. That's a very good point. I wanted to ask you from, I guess, now that we've kind of focused

[09:33] on, like, I guess some of these, like the smaller aspect of this thing. When it comes to, like, big picture, like, why did this happen? Was there any significance of when this happened? And was this a predictable outcome? An interview I did recently was on predictive markets. And they had one about Venezuela, just, you know, this is a poly market. And gosh, I can't remember the numbers. I remember there was a market for it. I remember it not being extremely high that something like this was going to happen. But it was there. It did

[10:06] exist. Yeah, sure. But, um, so, yeah, I guess that's the first question of why did this happen and B, were you surprised when it happened? Yeah, that's the second question. No, of course not. It was not at all surprised. One thing about Donald Trump is that he does exactly what he tells us he's going to do. Sometimes it sounds so outrageous. We don't want to believe it. But he does exactly, as he says, he's going to do. He said Maduro was going to go and Maduro went.

[10:37] So no surprises at all. I don't think that there was any reason for the timing other than it was fortuitous for us that the weather was good. Our sources were in place. We knew exactly where he was sleeping that night because, you know, the CIA had to recruit sources close to him. The CIA had to recruit sources in the military to make sure that the radar was off, to make sure that we knew exactly what bed he was sleeping in and what house, to make sure that the military, the Venezuelan military wasn't waiting to ambush our people,

[11:12] to make sure that this sound machine that we used, this sound weapon, was ready to go operationally. So we did it because we were ready, not because of any, you know, predictability market. And just a picture. I mean, why did America do this? I mean, what did we gain from this? Or what are we gaining from essentially taking over Venezuela? That's an easy one. The Chinese were buying Venezuela's oil. The Indians and the Chinese

[11:47] were refining the oil. We were hurting ourselves with sanctions. Now that oil is going to open up again and it's going to be refined not in China, but in Houston. We wanted to put an end to Venezuelan aid for Cuba. We wanted to put an end to Venezuelan oil sales to Russia. I mean, you know, when you're the big kid on the block and you're not afraid to use military force and you don't care about violating international law, you just do what's

[12:23] right for you. And this was right for us. Yeah, I mean, with this whole story, I mean, one thing that I, in some ways, I appreciate is the fact that Trump has, he never sugarcoated it. He didn't say we're going in there to free the Venezuelans. It wasn't the whole George W. Bush, we're bringing freedom and democracy. He's just re-going for the oil. That's it. Which is a war crime. It's specifically delineated in international law that to invade and occupy a country for the

[12:59] purpose of taking and exploiting its natural resources, that's a war crime. But, you know, who's going to stop us? I mean, from the international community standpoint, it seems like a lot of our allies, and maybe this is just they're going along with America because, like you said, America is the biggest, strongest country on the planet. But it seemed like just from things that I saw, and I might be incorrect, that a lot of other countries were kind of okay with it. Is that the case? I mean, obviously, there were some that were probably pretty pissed,

[13:29] but others like the French and other European countries, they seem to be quite okay with this whole thing. You know, yes, that's true. And I'll give you one reason why. When I was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff, I was the senior investigator there, and I did a deep dive into drug trafficking through West Africa. So most of the cocaine that ends up in Europe goes from Colombia through Venezuela to West Africa, specifically

[14:00] Guinea-Bissau, where it's put on camels, right? The cocaine's put into sacks, placed on camels, and they're walked up these ancient Tuareg paths through the Sahara Desert to Morocco, and they're put on little boats, skiffs, and taken to Spain. And in Spain, the coke is cut, it's bagged, it's disseminated. Okay. The evidence was convincing that the Maduro government,

[14:35] I believe actually it was his brother, that was the one acting as the middleman between the Colombian cartels and the Africans. And so was Venezuela the source of cocaine trafficking in the United States? No, it was not. Colombia is and Mexico is, and Ecuador, to a lesser extent. But in terms of the cocaine that goes to Europe, the Venezuelans were the middleman and they were making money for it. You're not going to overthrow the Colombian

[15:05] government because it's an allied government. You can't overthrow the Mexican government, obviously, and the Ecuadorians are pro-American. So you go after the weak link, and the weak link in this case was Venezuela. And even try to imagine in addition to the drugs, with U.S. companies, again, maybe I'm wrong in saying this, but seemingly it seems like American companies are largely taking over Venezuela's oil industry. Well, that's the idea. President

[15:37] Trump met with all the major oil companies, CEOs, and said they're going to divide up Venezuela's oil, and they're each going to take a share. Again, illegal. To imagine that there's a lot of European countries or other Latin American countries or Japan and Korea. I have to imagine there's probably a lot of people that are okay with that. Yeah, very much so. And I think something that kind of muddies the water a little bit, and again, this is just from what the media is saying. It seems like there's quite a few even Venezuelans

[16:11] that aren't necessarily crying over the fact that Maduro's out. It seems like a lot of them are kind of okay with him being gone. Most everybody's okay with him being gone. I mean, the only decent relations that he had were with China, India, Russia, Cuba. That's pretty much it. That's pretty much it. There aren't many people that are going to miss him. Yeah. I mean, because you mentioned a few times the whole aspect of international law and how

[16:43] this was illegal. Again, just as a person like me, I'm a total lay person. I wasn't in the know like you and as connected as you were. This was your profession. But just as a guy that was just awake when it happened, I'm like, what the heck is going on? They overthrow a government. They capture a leader. It took them 40 minutes or something. The Chinese are in town to watch the whole thing happen. We killed 35 Cuban soldiers while we were doing it. Killed 80 people, 45 Venezuelans and 35 Cubans. I mean, the whole thing. I mean,

[17:22] there is a part of me that's like, wow, this is incredible. And again, how come we just didn't do this in the Middle East 25 years ago? But then another part of me is thinking a little bit deeper. It's like, what is going on here? And then the fact that the media, I always find it interesting to me. And I know the media will move on from stories once it's been around for a while. But the fact that there's not really that much talk about Venezuela now, that's where I'm thinking, okay, for the last couple of weeks in particular, it's like, there's something weird going on.

[17:53] Like there's something I don't know, like who's fully taking over what exactly is happening. But it's not even mainstream topic anymore. And no, because people are talking about Minneapolis, they were talking about Greenland, they're talking about the Epstein files. There's just not enough bandwidth to be worrying about Venezuela right now. I mean, the whole international law element, I could see how if you're not an ally of America, you would just say this is totally lawless. This is total crap. But I mean, would he get it? I guess

[18:27] that's the thing is what are they going to actually do about it? Exactly. What are you going to do about it? I mean, is there any kind of recourse that like the BRICS nations can have? You know, you can you can go to the United Nations and make a very strongly worded statement. And that's pretty much it. The United Nations, which is even headquartered in New York City. So you can tell next time there's a General Assembly meeting, you can go visit Maduro in prison while you're in town. Yeah, right. Yeah. Wow. So after it happened to,

[19:02] I forgot who said it, I can't remember if it was Rubio or Trump himself, but they kind of threw something out there about Cuba. Yeah, I think I hate to say this, but I think the Cuban government is the next one that that falls. And I say that I say, I hate to say it and I say that what I'm saying for specific reasons. I went to Cuba two years ago, my first trip to Cuba, absolutely beautiful place, lovely people. They want very much

[19:33] to get along well with the United States. Literally not a single Cuban doesn't have family members living in the United States, right? You would think we would have very naturally close relations. And indeed we reestablished diplomatic relations with Cuba under the Obama administration. Trump won, they ended those diplomatic relations and closed the embassies. Under Biden, we did nothing to reestablish. Nothing. Biden did nothing, which was funny,

[20:04] because relations with Cuba were the crown jewel of the Obama foreign policy. Biden did nothing. And now that we've cut off Cuba's sole source of oil, I mean, it's just a matter of time before that government falls. If that government were to fall, I mean, would it be similar to Venezuela or more like Iraq? Because, I mean, again, just as a layperson seems like with Cuba, that's okay. So this isn't going to be, we got to build their infrastructure

[20:34] because they're 60 years in the past. This is more, I don't even know who the leader is now. It's not one of the castros, whoever the leader is now. Well, Fidel is dead and Raul is retired. Yeah. It's not like people are armed, they're not armed. And yeah, it's going to be Venezuela. It's not going to be Iraq, no. So just another swapping out in the middle of the night, we just said that. Yeah, probably. I mean, that one should be a lot easier logistically, you just fly over from Florida,

[21:06] right? Yeah, I mean, it's a 30 minute flight. It's pretty close. I mean, they're 90 miles. Havana is 90 miles from Key West. I mean, if you're a neocon, if Trump takes out Cuba, he's already taken out Venezuela, if he buys Greenland, if he helps to, well, he has been helping Israel since he came into power. I mean, but that's every president has helped Israel and especially even Biden, you know, when the war started. I mean, this has got to be a neocons' wet dream, right?

[21:39] Yeah, seriously. Yeah. You know, that's why this whole MAGA thing, this is a serious split within the Republican Party. A lot of MAGA people were, a lot of MAGA ideology was very attractive to the left because it was an anti-war ideology. And now it seems that the that the neocons are in the ascendance again, that we have an activist foreign policy,

[22:10] as you said, Greenland, Iran, Venezuela. The neocons are licking their chops with the support of the neoliberals because the DNC, man, they want to jump into any war anywhere in the world with both feet. They're happy to do it. So it's, things are changing. And it looks like MAGA is losing steam. I mean, again, I could be totally mistaken, but it seemed like in Trump's

[22:42] first term. I mean, yeah, we did do things abroad, but it seemed like it was more just the mandatory, okay, we did some bombing of ISIS or we did this or that. And I mean, I'm not saying these things are right or wrong, but it just seemed like it was just more, you know, hey, we have to do something. The military won't let us not do anything for four years. We got to do something. Oh, I disagree. I disagree. It's been my experience throughout the entirety of my career that the military, especially the Joint Chiefs of Staff are the

[23:14] ones who are the most anti-war of any of the governmental factions, right? You've got, you've got the President, the Vice President, as independent entities, you've got the National Security Council, the CIA, the State Department, DOD, JCS. It's the Joint Chiefs of Staff that are the most reticent, the most reluctant to go to war. Interesting. Wait, so which agency would you say then is like the most like every time some kind of military action is proposed,

[23:48] they're the ones that are like, we got to do it? Like who's the most? In the last 25 or 30 years, the State Department and the, well, under Bush two, it was the State Department, the National Security Council, and the Office of the Vice President. But on a longer term basis, it's the State Department and the National Security Council. That's very interesting. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I was thinking that it seemed like in Trump's first term that he was far more

[24:18] contained compared to like this term, like already, like, I mean, we're, we're literally a year in, a year and what, two weeks into the second term. And I don't remember anything like this in the first term again, maybe I'm mistaken, but. No, he was more purely, you know, isolationist, which I think is what people wanted. It was one of the reasons why, why he won again. People, like me, for example, I have five kids, I have four sons and a daughter. My kids will not go overseas to fight for Israel's foreign policy.

[24:52] It's just not going to happen. And I think in Trump won, the president agreed with that, understood that, that it's America first, we're not going to fight these wars of choice. And Netanyahu worked on him and worked on him and worked on him. And next thing you know, you know, we're, we're on the brink of war with Iran. Yeah, I mean, even, yeah, I mean, you're right. I mean, when he was running in 2015, I mean, just even saying things like, I mean, he was going back and forth with Jeb Bush in

[25:24] the debates. And I think he called the Iraq War a big stupid war. He said something along those lines. And that's what somebody like me at that time, I was in my twenties, a lot of people that I knew that were older and younger. We thought that, you know, not that the people who fought it were stupid anyways, but it's like, you see these random guys, you know, you go to the gym, you go to the store. Yeah, legs. Yeah, no legs. And you look at it and it would piss me off from like these poor guys, like they, they sacrificed to go abroad for a conflict that I, what did they even achieve? What was our

[25:59] achievable goals that we had there? And, and when Trump, when he came out so anti against that, I had personally never seen a mainstream candidate say the things he was saying, because in 2015 and that primary, everybody that was on stage as Republican, they're all parroting mostly the same things. And then he's coming in here saying something totally different now. You know, you fast forward to now. And I mean, are there like a Lindsey Graham was president. I feel we would really be in wars everywhere. But so yeah,

[26:30] everywhere, compared to Lindsey. I mean, yeah, I guess Trump is more dovish, but compared to first term, it's, yeah, I mean, what, even the South of Greenland, I mean, if we can buy it, if they want to sell it, and we, yeah, it's not for sale. Yeah, that's a thing. This is not for sale. And they said it's not for sale. So I mean, what are we going to do? We're going to take over Greenland? No, we're not. It'll be the, it'll be the death knell for NATO. And he knows that. But he always starts off with this outrageous demand. And it so frightens people that he, that he forces them to the negotiating table. And in the end, we negotiate some deal that

[27:04] is really for what he wants. And what he wants in this case is the rare earth metals. That's what he wants. I mean, Greenland is just full of rare earth metals. Yeah. And we already have a treaty with Denmark from 1917, allowing us to essentially take what we want and to station as many troops as we want. We don't need to buy Greenland. We don't need to invade Greenland. All we have to do is just take what we want. That's what the treaty says.

[27:35] So is all of this posturing, is it just to enforce the treaty, just so that they'll... No. I mean, the treaty's in place. It's in force now. I think it's just to prepare public opinion and to force the Danes to act, to act more quickly. Interesting. You know, I want to ask you, just because again, you brought up Iran, what makes in your mind, what would make a conflict with Iran so much more dangerous,

[28:05] let's say the world or the, you know, the region, then let's say Cuba change because it sounds like the way, and maybe I'm mistaken here, but the way that you describe Cuba sounds like something very similar. If it's similar to Venezuela, that means that there's almost no regional blowback. You just go in there, take them, switch, then a new guy comes in, they become pro-west and, you know, boom, that's it. What makes Iran different than that? Well, Iran has lots of missiles and there are lots of American military installations,

[28:38] hopskipping a jump from Iran. You know, there's this longstanding joke at the CIA that, you know, why did Iran put its country right in the middle of all of our military bases? Yeah, it's something like 144 separate military installations within like two hours flight of Iran. So if Cuba were to fall, it falls. That's it. It's the end of the story. It falls. A new government comes in. They'll negotiate with the United States. Nobody really

[29:11] cares. In Iran, the Iranians are going to go down kicking and screaming, and they know that they can easily launch missiles at American bases in Kuwait, in Bahrain, in Qatar, in Abu Dhabi, in Dubai, in Muscat, in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia. They can really make things uncomfortable for us. Now, in terms of, you know, when lose, the Iranians are going to lose. But how many Americans are going to be killed or how many innocent people in these other countries around the Persian Gulf are going to be killed? And another thing too is the United States is

[29:46] not equipped for a ground war. First of all, we're not good at it. Secondly, we don't have enough ground troops in the region or anywhere near the region to initiate a ground war. And we know from hard-fought experience that you can't win a war with just air power. It can't be done. We bombed Iraq back into the Stone Age, starting in 1991, and we still couldn't win that war. So, I mean, what are you going to do? Just repeat bad policies in Iran to accomplish what?

[30:19] Well, and I mean, that goes to this whole, you know, recently there's been all these protests and things taking place in Iran. If you just had to guess, I mean, I mean, obviously the Shah and all of them are saying, this is American backed. I mean, if it were me, if I was a policymaker, if I could, you know, let's say start protests in a revolution in Iran and they overthrow their own government and I get what I want and I don't have to send in troops. Do you? Well, I guess that's a question. Do you really care what you want? I mean, first of all, the Israelis, this has Israel's fingerprints

[30:53] all over it. And then two weeks ago, the Israelis came out and said, yes, it was us. We were the ones that set up the protests. And they did that through the MEK, the Mujahideen-e-Khalk, which is a long standing terrorist group. The MEK was founded in the early 1960s. Before the Shah of Iran was overthrown, they attempted to assassinate the American ambassador. They attempted to assassinate an American four-star general who was the head of U.S. forces in Iran. They attempted to blow up the American embassy. They were based in northeastern Iraq,

[31:28] that's where their training camps were. The group is headed by a woman named Miriam Rajavi. She's more of a cult leader than anything else. The organization has been identified as leftist, it's Islamic extremist, it's this, it's that, it's a cult is what it is. Her husband was the founder. He just vanished one day and nobody ever saw him again. The conventional wisdom is that she killed him and had him buried in the desert so she could take over the organization.

[31:59] Well, they were on the State Department's list of terrorist groups until 2009, when Hillary Clinton decided to take them off. And in the meantime, they hired Rudy Giuliani to lobby for them. They hired Hillary Clinton in Obama's second term to lobby for them. They hired Howard Dean, half of the DNC, half of the RNC. They're feted on Capitol Hill at these big dinners. Well, they're still committing acts of terrorism. They just decided that instead

[32:32] of killing Americans, they should just pay the Americans. And then they've closely aligned themselves with Benjamin Netanyahu. So in the, in this last go-around in Iran, you know, we saw these purportedly spontaneous demonstrations all over the country. Well, they started off as spontaneous in the, the bazaars, especially in Tehran. And it's because the value of the Iranian real has fallen. As soon as these things started,

[33:05] the Israelis jumped in with the MEK and the Kurds, the Kurds up north. And so the Western media said, oh, the demonstrations have spread around the country to these small towns and small cities. That's because that's where the Israelis sent them. They ended up burning something like 16 mosques to the ground. Why would you do that? If you're a Muslim, you burn mosques to the ground. And then they set on fire 38 fire trucks

[33:39] so that once they set the mosques on fire, there were no fire trucks to go put the fires out. So this is just a sabotage operation that the Israelis are carrying out through a middleman. They're not spontaneous demonstrations against the Iranian government. Yes, people are upset about the Iranian government. A lot of Iranians in the country and outside of the country would like to see the Aitolas go. But that's not what we're seeing happening on the ground. And as to the so-called Shah, the Crown Prince Reza Pallavi, this guy really is no more

[34:10] than a clown. He's not returning to Iran. He already said that he's not returning to Iran. His girlfriend is here. His wife's boyfriend is in France, his personal, her personal trainer that she's having an open and flagrant affair with, which is a death penalty offense, by the way, in Iran. He's not popular. I said on a podcast the other day, if he were to return to Iran, he wouldn't remain alive from the walk from the plane to the terminal. That's how little

[34:45] Iranians think of him. He hasn't even been in Iran since 1978. And what he's going to be this freedom fighting, you know, the savior of democracy? Come on. His father was a bloodthirsty murderer who bankrupted the country by stealing all of its riches and taking it out of the country for himself. So now I don't care what you're hearing from Iranian Americans in Beverly Hills, it's not going to be Reza Pallavi.

[35:16] Well, I actually spoke, I might just say, Aitolas not Shah, but you're right. I mean, I guess it can always be said there's so many things going on, but I'll be completely honest with the Iranian stuff. I mean, I haven't dug as much into this as I normally would, because again, there's so many stories and maybe that's just on my, you know, it's on my behalf, which is I haven't had. Yeah, I haven't had. Read the Jerusalem Post. Read the Jerusalem Post.

[35:47] Their reporting is absolutely fantastic. Somehow they still have a budget for investigative journalism and they are really, really good. So take a look at the Jerusalem Post if you want to see what Israel's policy in Iran really is. Do you feel like after this whole recent thing, and I'm trying to remember how long this was going on for, is it a month this started in Iran? Or was it a month ago? Yeah, it's about a month. Yeah. I mean, has this, because I feel like every handful of years there's, oh, there's protests in Iran. Maybe this is the

[36:18] time, maybe the government gets toppled now. And I think it was 2009 or 10. That was like a really big year, right? Yes. And then I feel like there's maybe been a, I mean, just trying to remember on top of my head, maybe one or two cents then, but is this one, quote unquote, the big one, or is this just, there's nothing? No. I don't think this is, this is the big one, absent direct military intervention. I don't think this is the big one. I think the big one, frankly, was in 2009 to the point

[36:48] where Hillary Clinton asked, I think it was Twitter at the time, to not shut down for three hours to do maintenance, because she believes that so many Iranian students were communicating via Twitter that if we just kept Twitter on for those three more hours, they were going to overthrow the government and never happened. Oh, that's interesting. I did not realize that, that it was that close or it was perceived to be that close. It was perceived to be, yeah, that's right. It was

[37:18] perceived to be that close. And you know, another thing too, Hillary Clinton, first of all, I hate Hillary Clinton. I have no respect for Hillary Clinton, but every once in a while, she says something that's actually true. And she said at the time that Iran really is not a theocracy. It's a military dictatorship. And the country is run by the IRGC, the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps. That's true. But there are about 120,000 members of the IRGC spread out all over

[37:50] the country. Besides the military, the proper military, if you think that you could just launch a couple of rockets and people are going to take to the streets and the IRGC is just going to lay down their machine guns and everybody's going to live happily ever after, that is a fantasy. It's not going to happen. That's why we should be in constant diplomatic talks with the Iranians. We used to make this joke also at the CIA about Cuba, that if you want to overthrow

[38:23] the Cuban government, open McDonald's in central Havana. Six weeks later, Cuban government ceases to exist. I would say the same thing is probably true about Iran. I mean, I feel like I've used the word I feel a lot in this interview, but you know, talking, let's say, you know, a country like Vietnam, I mean, okay, we have obviously the Vietnam war, all this and that. I don't know what relations are totally between American Vietnam, but I know they make a lot of our crap. It's good enough that we buy theirs. Yeah. Yeah. We have good close relations with the Vietnamese now.

[38:56] So if we could do that with Vietnam, I don't fully understand why. I mean, even if Iran, these countries that say, oh, we hate you, blah, blah, blah, blah, it seems like it's all water under the bridge once money gets involved. I think that's, I think that's exactly right. Yeah. I mean, are there any voices? Are there any prominent voices that you could think of in DC that are that are saying, hey, you know, why are we going down this pathway of massive conflict with Iran and going in with Israel or whatever? Like, are there any voices that are saying, wait a minute, this, can we do this another way of

[39:30] normalizing relationships? Yeah, there are some Iranian specific voices, Trita Parsi is probably the best. I have such deep respect for Trita Parsi's analysis. I think he's just fantastic. In terms of others, if you're thinking about Capitol Hill, yeah, there are a couple. There's Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, for example, absolutely brilliant thinker. There used to be, I can't even believe I'm going to say this, Marjorie Taylor Green was talking since the last six months that she was in Congress. She's no longer in

[40:05] Congress. Rand Paul is 100% right on this issue. There aren't many Democrats. Rokana might be one, maybe, but he goes back and forth with the Israelis on this issue. Yeah. Otherwise, no, you've got to look to the activist community. Code Pink, for example, Medea Benjamin and Code Pink, Brian Becker and the Answer Coalition. These are really the anti-war voices. The anti-war voices are generally not in the mainstream right now, which is a terrible, terrible shame.

[40:41] Well, even from the Israeli standpoint, I mean, can't they also get what they want by normalizing relationships instead of going down this, like, they can't normalize relationships. They can't because Israeli policy is to create states of chaos in every Muslim country and just sit back while the Muslims kill themselves or kill each other. That's the Israeli policy. The Israelis aren't going to, I mean, the Iranians aren't going to open relations with Israel

[41:13] ever under any circumstances. Same with the Iraqis, same with the Syrians. They're just not going to do it. And this isn't because, because some people can say, oh, well, the Muslims are anti-Semitic or they hate all the Jews. The Muslims are completely Semitic. This is another thing. Arabs are Semites. These Europeans that control Israel right now, they're not Semites. They're Europeans. And I always felt like when people say that, it's just, that's too,

[41:47] in my mind, that's not really a full understanding of politics where it might be wrong. I feel like with politics, it's mostly about or almost entirely about money and power. You're making money and do you have power? And if it would behoove a country like Iran and Israel, if it would behoove both of them and they're okay with it and they could trust each other, then they would do it. Then they would be allies or they would do business. But since it doesn't, they won't. And I don't think it's because the Muslims wake up and they say, oh, I hate Israel. And that's where we're going to have problems with them. I mean,

[42:19] I think a lot of the average people probably hate Israel because of things that they did. I don't think it was, they're not pulling stuff out of a hat. Right? I mean, it's not like a lot of it's not just like random, oh, well, no, they have to invent stuff. We could have an entire conversation just on that day before yesterday. And this was a barely mentioned in the mainstream media day before yesterday. The Israeli government came out and said, oh, the Hamas Ministry of Health, yeah, all their death toll numbers, those are actually correct.

[42:56] Nobody covered that. That wasn't in the Washington Post yesterday. It was in the Guardian. It was in the Israeli press. But the New York Times didn't cover it. The Washington Post didn't cover it. It wasn't on Fox or CNN or MSNBC. Oh, by the way, yeah, we actually have killed that many people. And you know, I've said this a million times, your policy cannot be kill everybody. Right? The Israelis themselves admit that more than 90% of the deaths

[43:26] in Gaza have been civilians. And almost all of them have been women and children. That's a crime against humanity. But we just allow them to get away with it. Why? Why do we do that? I mean, that's the billion billion trillion dollar question. It's funny to say that because I literally would have forgotten that story. I literally, I think I saw it on YouTube on my YouTube feed. Some random channel posted an image of that saying,

[43:58] Israel confirms death count. I think the number I saw was 70, 70,000. Yeah, it's about 70,000. But we don't yet have any idea how many bodies are still buried under the rubble. The estimates are another 100 to 200,000. You're right. It's that story, literally a blip. You would think that that was something like, oh, train derailment in Kentucky kills zero people. Oh, okay. Oh, that that sucks for Kentucky. Nobody cares.

[44:30] Yeah, that was very bad. And I mean, again, I might be wrong, but even though countries can do things now, that doesn't mean that in the future that, you know, people might hold them to account. And I'm not saying they're going to do anything bad per se, but the memory of this, the memory of what's happening now, I think it would be a stain. I think, I mean, 20 years from now, people will talk about this, like 30 years, 40 years.

[45:00] Agreed. And it's interesting that there's, to me, it just seems like there's a total disregard. Like you said, I mean, that the policy is kill everybody. I mean, that's very Machiavellian. But the thing is, since you're not going to literally kill everybody, everyone else alive is going to remember what you did. You know, one of the demands that most countries have had if the Israelis is they reopen the Rafa border crossing into Sinai, they finally reopened it yesterday,

[45:30] and they allowed three people to cross and they're not allowed to come back in. What is that? If you had to guess how much longer you think this war in Gaza continues, if it were up to the Israelis entirely, until the last Palestinian is either killed or exiled, that's the policy. Truly, I'm not saying that to be verbose or over the top,

[46:03] that's the policy. When Donald Trump talks about turning Gaza into another Monte Carlo, better than Monte Carlo, he got that from Netanyahu. If you kill or push out every Palestinian, look at all that waterfront property that can be developed. You know, that's red meat and when it's dangled in front of a career-long property developer. It's also a crime against humanity. You can't do it.

[46:34] I mean, yeah, no, I mean, you're right. When he said that that was one of those, I hope that was out of left field and I'm sure somebody in his family or team, I'm sure somebody showed him a PowerPoint presentation or a walkup. And I hope that's one of those things where hopefully cooler minds bury that on the desk. They say, oh, hey, you know, Mr. President, here's this report, here's that report, and then it just, that's at the bottom. Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right. Because what is it? So the Gaza conflict, I mean, we're talking about,

[47:07] it's been nearly two and a half years or two years and four months or whatever. I mean, is this going to be a thing where almost like Ukraine, Russia, where that's gone on four years now? And I have no idea when that's going to end. I mean, I think there's, there seems to be more pressure for that one to end than Israel-Gaza. Like, because even though countries, again, I might be mistaken, but Israel-Gaza, there might be countries that condemn Israel, but no one really seems to be doing anything. Whereas at least Russia, Ukraine, it seems like there was actually people trying to stop

[47:39] that one more actively. You know, we've got this foreign ministers meeting in Turkey that's taking place today. So it's the, it's Steve Weikoff, the special envoy, and Jared Kushner for the Americans. It's foreign minister Adakji of Iran, but it's also the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Russia. It's another dozen foreign ministers. I've maintained from the very beginning that there's still a chance for peace

[48:19] in that, you know, we used to say only Nixon could go to China, right? Richard Nixon was the most anti-Chinese political figure in modern American history, but it was Richard Nixon who got on the plane and went to China and then invited the Chinese to come to the United States. And then next thing you know, we're opening an embassy, the Chinese are opening an embassy, we've got normalized trade relations, and we've lived happily ever after. War does not have to be how this thing ends. Donald Trump is arguably the most anti-Iran

[48:53] president in modern history. And maybe because of that, he's the one who can make peace. I completely see what you're saying that, you know, Obama, the whole right was against, you know, his whole deal with Iran. They were never going to go with it, but I can see what you're saying. I mean, it makes sense to me that if there's one guy to go into North Korea or Iran or whatever, it's him. Exactly. He did it with North Korea.

[49:25] So, well, John, well, definitely, I want to thank you so much for coming on again. How can people listen to all this stuff that you're just a press of knowledge? It's like, I'm just blown away that you just automatically, I know this group, I know that group, but we didn't even talk that we're going to talk about Iran. So, this is completely just off the top of your head. There was no, it wasn't even a heads up. It just kind of came up naturally, but how can people keep up with your analysis and everything? Thank you. I've got three podcasts. I've got a deep program that I do with Ted Rawl every

[49:57] morning on both YouTube and Rumble from 9 to 10 Eastern. I have Deep Focus, which actually is taken off. I've only been doing it for, I don't know, nine or 10 months, and I've got 120,000 subscribers already. That's on YouTube, Deep Focus. And I've got one on Apple podcast called John Kiriakou's Dead Drop, what makes a spy tick that is actually, I can't even believe it, it's the number eight podcast in the world right now. Whoa, congratulations.

[50:27] Thank you. That's kind of a fun one. I just tell stories on that one. And then I've got a sub-stack at John Kiriakou. I'm on Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn and all those other places. Perfect. Well, that, gosh, that's awesome. I'm really glad to hear that, the topic. Thank you. That's awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right, John, we'll have a good rest of your day. I'll talk to you. Thanks so much. You too.
