Lawrence Wilkerson On War With Iran

In his conversation with Judge Nap today, Lawrence Wilkerson had some interesting things to say about the possibility of a war with Iran, as well as about the situation in the Middle East in general. For any readers who may not be familiar with Wilkerson, here is his Wikipedia page: Lawrence Wilkerson. In the first post today I had occasion to mention Wilkerson’s views on the Russian strike at Poltava. Here I’ll do a partial transcript of the second half of the video, in which the topic shifts to the Middle East—because I thought some of it was that interesting, especially what he has to say about Trump. Wilkerson hates Trump, so that makes these remarks all the more interesting. Perhaps he’s really scared of what another Dem regime could bring.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson : Netanyahu Deceives US Into War

LW: Acknowledged by a lot of experts now is that the 100 plane strike [by Israel in southern Lebanon] did absolutely zero--it bounced the rubble. It may have got a couple of Katyushas, but most of them were fakes. Hezbollah has everything ready to go now, sophisticated stuff, ready to go and they're pretty sure that 60 to 70% of it--if not more--is going to get through, and it's going to get through all the way to Tel Aviv. What they're waiting on is Iran. Now I thought the ceasefire talks and the peace talks and such and all the movement from Cairo to Doha and back again, and Tony Blinken and all these people talking about these things, and Bill Burns working away in the trenches on it was enough to stall Iran. But what I'm hearing is, Iran is taking all this time to make sure what they do works, and works really well. So Bibi may ultimately get his wishes and it may be extremely destructive for the state of Israel, if not existential.

Judge: Well, Iran has a lot of new equipment and they've got to make sure they know how to operate it and the right people are are running it, whether they're Russian or Iranian technicians.

LW: The last time we thoroughly war gamed it [war with Iran]--which I admit was a few years ago--but I've kept up with the war games ever since. The only thing we did with bombing [in the war games] was we made them very very mad and we made them go underground, which is usually the consequence of massive bombing. You don't solve anything, you just make the enemy even more fiercely devoted to what he was going to do, that your bombing was trying to stop. And the North Koreans were there to show them--throughout the time I was in government--to show them how to do underground facilities and nobody's better at it than the North Koreans. So you would have to put troops on the ground eventually to make sure that you had destroyed--for the time being, anyway--any capability they had to make nuclear weapons. And once you put troops on the ground, think about Iraq, think about Afghanistan, but think about it with 90 million people, much more difficult terrain, much vaster strategic depth ...

Judge: You mentioned earlier--maybe I misheard you, Colonel--that in a war between the United States and Iran the US would lose. Why do you say that, Colonel?

LW: I say that for the same reason we lost in Afghanistan and we lost in Iraq and welost in Somalia we lost in Libya. Look at Libya today--Libya is a basket case, and we made it that way. We have not won anything judge since the first Gulf War, and that's across the board. If you think Afghanistan's a victory please come talk to me. If you think Iraq was a victory please come talk to me. If you think Syria was a victory please come talk to me. We haven't won anything and we wouldn't win in Iran in a far more profound way than we didn't win in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, and a host of other countries that we tried to influence with military power--which is not the thing you need in dealing with these countries.

Judge: What is the likelihood of an American war against Iran?

LW: I think very slim, because one thing I believe this Administration understands--and I know its military leaders understand--is they don't want it.

Judge: They don't want it as an October surprise before November 5th and they don't want it at any time.

LW: That's exactly true. I was there during Operation Praying Mantis, I was at CINCPAC, we were the providing CINC, I was there during Operation Earnest Will when we reflagged the Kuwaiti tankers, and one of the things we started virtually every briefing with was: We do not want a war.

Judge: Is [Trump] willing to fight, if he's elected, willing to fight a war against Iran--or is it anybody's guess?

LW: I don't think Donald Trump would be that stupid to put the United States in a position where it had no choice but a war a ground war with Iran. Would he bomb them? Would he go after them with Navy carrier ...

Judge: Would he listen to Lindsey Graham?

LW: I don't think so. I really don't. I actually think Donald Trump despises Lindsey Graham.