Larry Johnson on Trump's Iran blockade, ceasefire fragility, and US strategic decline
Larry Johnson, former CIA analyst and publisher of Sonar 21, speaks with Glenn Diesen about the US naval blockade of Iranian ports, the fragile ceasefire, and the broader strategic consequences for American power in the Gulf.
Summary
Glenn Diesen interviews Larry Johnson on April 15, 2026, covering the US naval blockade of Iranian ports, the state of the ceasefire, and the wider geopolitical fallout. Johnson argues that the blockade is largely theatrical — ineffective in practice, with Chinese oil tankers already transiting the Strait of Hormuz unimpeded — and that the US Navy lacks the assets to enforce it properly without exposing itself to Iranian coastal defense systems. He describes Trump's decision-making as erratic and disconnected from reality, driven by a narrow information diet and emotional volatility, with senior officials reportedly telling the president only what he wants to hear. Johnson reveals that JD Vance had agreed to Iran's ten-point negotiation framework before being overruled under pressure from Trump's donor network, and that Iran's negotiating team was abruptly abandoned mid-session without explanation. He concludes that Russian and Chinese diplomatic efforts are actively working to broker a Gulf settlement that excludes the United States entirely, and that US influence across the region — and in Asia more broadly — is eroding rapidly.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
The naval blockade of Iranian ports
Glenn Diesen: Today is April 15, 2026, and we are joined by Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst who now publishes at Sonar 21. Thank you very much for coming back on the program.
Larry Johnson: I always enjoy our conversations.
Glenn Diesen: Glad to hear it. Let's start with the Strait of Hormuz, because we are in a ceasefire — at least so we're told — yet a blockade has now been put on Iran's ports, which is an act of war. It's a strange escalation to carry out during a ceasefire, and it tends to be brought into the conversation by spokespeople at the White House even as they're saying they're abiding by the ceasefire. So it's unclear what the ceasefire means, but at least they're not shooting at them, it appears. What is the likely success of this blockade? Because from what I understand, they have to keep a fairly safe distance, and the waterway is not narrow when you go this far south.
Larry Johnson: This is all like Japanese kabuki theater — very stylized, very scripted. The US has a version of what's going on: they are stopping every ship, not a ship is getting out, they've got it locked down tight. Meanwhile, other reports indicate that ships are leaving and those ships are not being stopped. People I know who are in a position to know what's actually going on described it as — one of them said it's like a security guard at a mall. He's got a uniform but no real authority to do much, and not terribly effective.
This could potentially heat up, but as you noted, Iran has coastal defense cruise missiles, close-range ballistic missiles, and a variety of drones — both underwater and on the water and in the air — three dimensions they can use against any US ship that gets within, say, 200 miles of the coast. The Abraham Lincoln, for example, in March had gotten within 220 miles of the coast and got attacked and suffered damage that even Donald Trump later admitted — he said they had been attacked from 17 sides.
Right now it appears that Chinese vessels carrying oil for China have left the Strait and are making their way to China and have not been stopped. Now this could all change, but to do a proper interdiction on these ships you need helicopters, destroyers — they can come out and threaten to shoot, but they're not going to carry that out. Even if you had an aircraft carrier and the two ships that look like small aircraft carriers and carry lots of helicopters, they can only cover a limited area. It is stretching air assets. It's putting a real strain on US air assets — the maintenance costs, the stress, the time up in the air. And it's not easy to figure out where ships are. The oceans are big, and the ships don't have an easy automatic way to track them. I learned that the hard way working with the Joint Special Operations Command over 23 years. When we would do exercises, some of them maritime, unless you put a transponder on a ship and it turns on and sends out a beacon, you might be able to track it, but otherwise there's no way to know. You can ping something, you can see something on radar, but it doesn't necessarily tell you what it is.
Then we get to what's the purpose of the blockade, and this is where the Trump administration is all over the board. Early on they immediately lifted sanctions on Russia and Iran — why? Because they wanted to keep the supply of oil up. But now this week they've reimposed sanctions on Russian oil and they're trying to shut down the flow of Iranian oil. They've already lost 20% of the world's supply. Yet the oil markets are acting like happy days are here again, with prices going down on oil futures, while the actual price people are paying where the ships finally dock is like $140 — I've seen one price as high as $210 a barrel for Singapore. The economic gut punch that's coming from this, the West has its eyes closed.
What compounds this is the literal craziness of Donald Trump. He is out of touch with reality. He doesn't remember from one day to the next what he has said. He says things that he sincerely believes are true that just are not true — such as Iran begging for negotiations. No, they're not. Not at all. We're the ones begging for those negotiations. Iran can live without it. Trump is emotionally volatile, yelling at people, getting angry. The best description I've heard is it's like kids living with an alcoholic, abusive father. Don't wake dad up, tiptoe quietly, don't do anything to get the old man angry because he's going to start punching you. That's how they're treating Donald Trump right now, which is frightening.
There is a lot going on behind the scenes. This is not some great 5D chess game where Trump is maneuvering to accomplish this objective or that. He's making it up as he goes along, piece by piece. And the only one who has been firm about this being a bad decision, this being wrong, has been JD Vance. And Trump has gone out of his way to humiliate and isolate JD Vance.
Glenn Diesen: I often wonder when I see these tweets — today Trump tweeted that China's very happy that he's opening the Strait of Hormuz, that he's doing it for them, for the Chinese — and at the same time putting a blockade on Iranian ports where 90% of the oil goes to China, and that same day Scott Bessent comes out and says they're going to sanction probably two Chinese banks for buying Iranian oil because Iran is a sponsor of terrorism. And at the same time the US is supposedly opening the Strait of Hormuz for China. I mean, who is the audience for this? The Chinese are not sitting there going, "Oh, how kind." Is it for the MAGA cult? It's hard to see who this is for.
With the naval blockade, as you said, it requires a lot of naval assets which are being overstretched. But with more assets in the region they have to dock somewhere for maintenance. A lot of the logistics appear to have taken some damage and hits. To what extent do you think this makes the US more exposed?
Larry Johnson: It's unsustainable. We're told we're winning, we're in control. Then why is the George HW Bush carrier sailing along the west coast of Africa to get to the Persian Gulf region? Why didn't it take the shortcut and come through the Med, down the Suez Canal, and then through the Red Sea? Because they're scared to death they'd get sunk by the Houthis. Scared to death. That's the reality.
You bring up the excellent point about where they're going to get maintenance and service for these ships — if nothing else, to be refueled and refitted. Diego Garcia is really the closest base. The United States has got itself in an unsustainable military operation. So what's going on is Trump's announcements — everything is being done for the American audience. Just to say, "Hey, things are cool, things are all right, don't worry, it's all great." But the reality of what's actually unfolding out there is something else.
Meanwhile, like they're attacking China — yet this week, end of last week and into this week, China and Russia have stepped up their activities trying to broker a peace, working with the Saudis, working with the Emiratis, working with the Iranians. Russia approached Turkey, and the Turkish foreign minister signed on board — yes, we'll do that. So there's actually work underway to work around the United States, to ignore the United States as no longer relevant. And the air assets and naval assets required to try to do an interdiction are going to get stressed out. To be most effective they've got to be close into the Iranian shore, but the closer they get, the more vulnerable they are if this war goes hot again.
Right now we have a ceasefire that's in effect until Monday. Pakistan is undertaking significant efforts to try to get the negotiations back on track. JD Vance — I've learned — was the one who had agreed to Iran's ten-point plan for restarting negotiations. Trump then, under pressure from all of his Zionist donors, backed away and said, "We didn't accept any of that." They were actually making some progress until Vance was basically told to shut up and come home. Stop talking.
But now the realization about the negative economic effects on the US economy and the global economy is starting to hit home. The more I watch Scott Bessent, the more I just — he tries to pretend that things are great and things are not great. It's anecdotal, but one of my neighbors is a rancher with a ranch 20 miles outside of where we live. He was commenting that he's had to pay — the price of diesel is up over $2 a gallon, adding almost 40% to his fuel cost. Fertilizer is triple the cost. And on top of it, we've had a drought in Florida, so the hay and grass that would normally feed cattle hasn't grown, so he's had to purchase hay. He says it's very difficult to come by right now. He said last year he bought 40 bales of hay at $40 a bale. It's now $90. So it's more than doubled in price. And instead of 40 bales, he needs 90. So he's now up to $3,600 as opposed to $1,600 — more than double the price. And he says, "I'm in the red." That's happening to farmers and ranchers across the United States and around the world.
What we're looking at here is the beginnings of what's going to be a collapse of the global food system, potentially. It could get that serious. The Trump administration is a bit like Nero fiddling while Rome is burning. They're not putting out the fire, and instead the policy moves are completely contradictory. One minute, "Oh, we don't need the Strait of Hormuz, who cares," said Trump. And then the next minute he's demanding in the most foul language possible that Iran open the Strait. Then he's complaining that the Europeans aren't pitching in to help. Then he turns around and blockades it so nothing gets out. And now he's saying, "Oh yeah, we're helping China. China loves us for what we're doing because we're stopping the flow of oil to China." It's a complete scatterbrained approach. And the only thing that explains it — it's not 5D chess. This is a mental illness.
Glenn Diesen: That's why it just looks like this shock to the system is difficult to absorb, especially now. If it had happened two or three decades ago maybe it would have been easier, but we now have all this just-in-time logistics where we don't rely on warehouses, so everything has to run smoothly in order to reduce logistics costs. That can't absorb much shock. You have people where record numbers are living paycheck to paycheck or severely in debt. So if you suddenly have a slight increase in food prices or energy, it's very difficult to absorb. Now we're going to have this massive energy shock where prices double, and a massive food shortage coming up with prices spiking. You can see how the problems will just start to spread through the entire system. It's going to affect everything. Such a massive shock to the system — I don't think they know what's coming down the road.
I guess we shouldn't listen too much to what Trump is saying as opposed to what he's doing, but he did say this war will soon be over. Of course he's been overly optimistic since day one, but do you think he's expecting a defeat of Iran? Because I see a lot of US military hardware being moved into the region. Or do you think his desperation is kicking in so they need to find an out?
Trump's information environment and the narrative of victory
Larry Johnson: It's more about creating a narrative that he thinks will sell, that sounds good on Fox News. He literally confines himself to watching Fox, reading the New York Times, and not doing much else beyond that. So he's got a really narrow information flow. And up until about two or three weeks ago, he wasn't getting the bad news — because if he got bad news, he'd fly into a rage and blame the person delivering it. This is Shakespearean. This is a modern version of King Lear who has gone mad. No one's come up with a solution, a fix — what do we do with this guy? He should actually be removed from office and receive medical care, in one of those care facilities for people with dementia. But instead he's allowed to still be in charge of this country and to make irrational decisions. To think that it was a good idea to send out a picture of himself as Jesus healing the sick, and then turn around and say, "No, I was a doctor, what are you talking about?" There's growing concern within the White House, I'm told, by somebody who's in a position to know. This is worse than the Biden situation. Biden could fly off the handle too, but he was relatively harmless. Trump is not — Trump has a viciousness to him and he's lost all empathy.
Right now, with the information coming out about the so-called blockade, it appears that the Navy is deliberately lying to him, telling him what he wants to hear. Meanwhile, there are efforts underway to restart the talks and to use the nuclear issue as the way to get out of this. JD Vance wants to exit the war, and the way you exit it is basically to resurrect the JCPOA — you don't call it that, but that's what it is. It would be on-site inspections by the IAEA, continued support of the Non-Proliferation Treaty by Iran, but instead of a ten-year agreement, this would be a permanent, forever agreement. That's why Trump will be able to say it's a much better agreement than what they had before — because now he's got a permanent forever agreement and Israel is safe.
There are also reports out today that there's going to be a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, and that again goes back to one of the demands that Iran made. The problem is Trump is very much being driven around by Benjamin Netanyahu. So even though Vice President Vance may be given the green light to do certain things, he doesn't have the ultimate authority here. And Trump's decisions are very material — one day he's in favor of it and the next day he's opposed to it.
Glenn Diesen: I saw him give an interview where he was arguing we could have this war over with soon, we can get a deal to make sure Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon. And this gives me some optimism because this sounds like an out. If this was the goal — Iran not having a nuclear weapon — they could have kept the JCPOA. They could have easily got another agreement with commitments plus transparency, something they can verify. But it's the fact that it was first linked up to these other issues — limiting Iran's ballistic missile program, decoupling from its regional partners — all these things where Iran also had to capitulate its conventional deterrence. So I thought this could be a sign of optimism. On the other hand, I always blame myself when I listen too much to what Trump is actually saying. It's more interesting to see what he's actually doing.
He's also pushing a victory narrative, always referring to how many leaders he's killed, the infrastructure destroyed, the military targeting which has been diminished. How do you see this? Does he genuinely believe that a lot of killing equals victory? Because the forever wars in the Middle East proved the US can have all these tactical victories but it doesn't win. Or is he just selling a war?
Larry Johnson: He's repeating what he's being told. The Pentagon, through Pete Hegseth, is basically lying to him. They're not giving him the true picture of what this conflict actually is. They tout, "Oh, we've blown up this and we've blown up that." Meanwhile, they're not reporting that Iran has rapidly rebuilt and repaired several of the sites that we thought we had destroyed — sites that are now back in operation. And what I am hearing within military circles, among the planners, is that they are extremely concerned about new weaponry that China has introduced. Now they're out saying, "Oh, China promised Trump they're not introducing weapons." Well, first, I'm not sure China has even said that to Trump. But even if they said it, they're not doing it — they're doing the exact opposite. There is real concern that there has been a significant upgrade in the air defense system with the assistance of China, and that F-35s and all the fourth-generation fighters the United States has flown into the region will be vulnerable and will likely be shot down — at least some of them.
Glenn Diesen: I've seen some reports of Chinese aircraft delivering unknown material to Iran. I'm assuming these are weapons. I didn't take Trump's comment about China's promise that seriously, because it looks like Trump and the Chinese essentially want the same thing. Trump needs headlines suggesting that the Chinese respect his authority and wouldn't dare send weapons. And the Chinese are also happy with the headlines that they're not supplying weapons. So they both win. But of course I do think the Chinese are supplying.
What is the likelihood that there could be a peace agreement? Because I always thought the main challenge for Trump is that on one hand he wants an out, but what the Iranians demand as an out is essentially too big a price to pay — too humiliating a defeat, especially after making all these victory laps claiming to have won.
Prospects for a negotiated exit
Larry Johnson: I think if he can build the narrative and avoid the humiliation, he can do it by simply selling the story that he has got a permanent, forever-and-ever agreement where Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. He can sell that. And then excuse the lifting of sanctions as fulfilling the promise that Iran's going to become a great economic power.
The other component of this is what happens with the war between Lebanon, Hezbollah, and Israel. I think Israel has suffered enough damage in that war that they're also looking for a way out. So if they can get some sort of new ceasefire agreement in place with Hezbollah, I think they'll take it. That still doesn't solve the Gaza question.
But there are other pressures here — Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff and their associates have significant investments in the Gulf, particularly in the United Arab Emirates, and they're at risk of losing that money. So that's another incentive to try to get a negotiated end to this as quickly as possible so they can try to salvage their investments in those countries. I don't think the UAE is recoverable now. I think it's beyond recoverable. But you have had direct diplomatic intervention by the Chinese with the UAE and also with the Saudis and the Qataris, and Russia as well is talking. So Russia and China are working together to try to create a peace settlement that will exclude the United States. The United States will not be party to that. They could conceivably pull that off. I don't rule out anything on that front.
Glenn Diesen: After the twelve-day war we spoke at length about the damage to Israel's infrastructure, economy, and industries. Do we know anything yet about the hit they've taken? Because there are limits on the information coming out, but what do we know so far?
Larry Johnson: It has been substantially worse than reported, and we know that because if they had not caused significant damage, the Israelis would not have the censorship on it that they do. Because they would allow the media to come in and say, "Look, our air defense system has worked spectacularly, we haven't been hit, all the structures are standing, we're in great shape." They haven't done that because the opposite is true. They've taken a serious drubbing.
And we're now eight days into this ceasefire and it ends next Monday. We'll see if it gets extended — it may get extended. The Trump administration is desperate to get a deal done, and Iran is ready to go back and fight. So we'll see if Trump makes any further concessions. They will portray it as, "Oh, Iran came begging to the table, please, let's keep talking" — all Iran's doing. And there's no guarantee that Iran will come back to the table either.
Glenn Diesen: It's been a few humiliating rounds. I'm thinking of when Trump said, "We have some constructive talks, so we're not going to hit them," and then the Iranian foreign minister came out and said, "No, we actually have no talks at all." If they really wanted peace, this seems like a very strange game to play. But what do we know now about the Iranian position? I spoke to some Iranians who made the point that the negotiations seemed strange — that Vance couldn't really answer questions and had to pick up the phone and call someone constantly. And I was told that at the end, when they thought the negotiation was still going, Vance and his team just packed up and said, "Okay, I guess we're done," and broke it off. So it's very hard to read this kind of diplomatic behavior.
The breakdown of negotiations and Iran's position
Larry Johnson: That was, I think, the most telling part — from Professor Marandi — that they didn't have the courtesy to say, "Okay, Foreign Minister Araghchi, we've just got to recognize we're at an impasse. We're not going to be able to solve anything at this point. We're going to go back and brief President Trump and maybe we can get together next week to see if we can make some more progress." Nothing like that. It was just: okay, we're out of here. And the Iranians were going, "Where did the Americans go? Oh, they beat it."
When I first heard that, I sent Professor Marandi a note just saying, "Hey, I hope you guys are talking to the Russians or the Chinese about having them fly you back to Iran." Because if you're at least under Chinese or Russian protection, they won't try to kill you. Whereas if you're flying on an Iranian airplane, I wouldn't put it past them to try to shoot you down. I guess what happened is they flew on a Pakistani-flagged airline back, and that prevented Iran from being attacked by Israel.
It's so strange that this has become a new thing — killing leaders and negotiators. It became normalized a bit too quickly. It's going to make it very difficult to have diplomacy in the future. The fact that this wasn't the argument — I remember a Washington Post article suggesting this should be a form of deterrent, that if you don't agree to our deals, we should kill the negotiators personally. It doesn't look like a good, stable peace agreement can come from this.
Glenn Diesen: But overall, where do you see this conflict going now? If the blockade's not going to work, the negotiations aren't moving forward, and military capabilities are being built up — are we just going back to war?
Larry Johnson: I think that's where we're ultimately headed. From a logical standpoint, you can see there is a clear exit ramp here for Trump — they can exit out of this war and try to get an economic solution in place that will start to repair the damage done by having closed down the Strait of Hormuz and having shut down basically the export activities out of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia. Bahrain is toast — the US base there is not coming back. Similarly, Kuwait has suffered some significant damage that may be unrecoverable.
But just because we can see the logic in solving it doesn't mean it will happen. The pressure that Trump is under from Benjamin Netanyahu is significant, and he's shown he's unwilling to really confront him and say, "Look, the United States is going to chart its own path forward." And this still leaves unresolved the situation in Gaza and the situation in Lebanon.
I had to go back and look — I didn't realize it, but the Lebanese war has been going on now for 51 years. The civil war in Lebanon between the Christians and the Muslims, and the Shia in particular, got kicked off back in 1975 when the Phalangists — this Christian sect — attacked and killed about 35 Shia civilians, and boom, civil war was on. That raged until a truce in 1990. But in the ensuing 30 years we still had constant flare-ups. In 2006 Israel again invaded southern Lebanon. There were bombings in Beirut in the '90s. The conflict has never really gone away. And now in this latest round, Hezbollah is holding its own and inflicting serious damage on Israel, which Israel can't sustain.
I could see the efforts to bring a peace, but to come back to what you said — let's look at what Trump is actually doing. Is Trump telling US military units to start withdrawing, to pull back, to scale down? No, just the opposite. They're sending more, they're ramping up. I think the debacle surrounding the rescue of the downed pilot — the crew member from the F-15 — two weeks ago has finally persuaded both the Pentagon and the White House that any kind of ground operations are out of the question. Too dangerous, too costly, too unpredictable. So they're going to continue with this economic pressure.
One school of thought advocating the complete blockade of Iranian ports believes that if they shut down Iran's ability to send oil out, it will ultimately damage their ability to produce oil, they'll be in a crisis, they'll have no income, and then they'll implode. There are some within the Trump administration who give that very serious credence. I think it's crazy, but that's what they're pushing.
Glenn Diesen: Could that be the goal of the ceasefire though — just to lower the intensity? Because as the war is going now, the United States is using all these expensive interceptor missiles, their assets in the Gulf States are being attacked, Israel is getting attacked. So this high-intensity war doesn't really work in the US's advantage. But if one can call a ceasefire and then at the same time begin to gradually bleed the Iranians by putting a blockade on their ports — which would also hurt the Chinese — essentially try to enforce some escalation control, a little like what was achieved in Ukraine where NATO countries could fire their missiles at Russia and then pretend it was Ukraine and Russia couldn't respond. Something similar that allows them to begin to drain Iran without Iran being able to respond in a significant way. Or do you think it's delusional that such a blockade can be enforced properly and that Iran would not retaliate?
China's warning and US strategic overextension
Larry Johnson: I think it's delusional on their part, because the blockade of the ports is not Iran's only outlet. They can go through Turkmenistan, they can go through other routes — there are roads in. It's not their only access to the outside world. Volume-wise, the ports could have an effect, but I don't think the United States has got the naval power in place to really stop it completely, particularly if they start using the Chinese. China has signaled very strongly that they're not going to put up with this, and that any attempt by the United States to interfere with Chinese maritime traffic is going to be resisted.
Glenn Diesen: How so? What are the Chinese saying?
Larry Johnson: They said they would treat it as an act of war. And I know that US military planners — that's the last thing they want. To get into a war with China. I think it's now pretty apparent the United States wouldn't last two weeks with China if they actually got into a full-blown war, because we simply don't have the strategic depth. We've drained our inventories of key weapon systems — VADs, the Patriots, the PAC-3 batteries, JDAMs are way down, JASSMs that we've used extensively are way down, Tomahawks way down. And then you get to the supply chain problem, which China controls. To rebuild some of those weapon systems, you need the rare earths that China is not providing now, and we don't have a good alternative.
Glenn Diesen: It looked like — given that China is the main peer competitor of the United States, and ever since the days of Obama, at least since 2016, the goal was to pivot to Asia to contain China — none of what's being done now by Trump seems to make much sense. When he came to power he suggested he'd wrap up the Ukraine war, he'd end the forever wars. All of this made sense if the objective was to transfer resources to the western hemisphere and East Asia. But now the US is still fighting in Ukraine, at least selling weapons and maintaining intelligence assets there, and now also doing this forever war with Iran. It's hard to see how the wider strategic objective in this massive shift of power can actually be achieved. It's very strange to watch, given that it looked like Trump had a very strategic outlook when he came in, and how little it corresponds with his actual actions.
Let me just ask a last question. What will be the wider consequences of this? Of course, energy crisis, possibly food crisis — but without a crystal ball, what do you think are the likely developments we might see from this war?
Wider consequences: US influence, the dollar, and political chaos
Larry Johnson: We're trying to figure out what the hell they're going to do. The US is losing influence in the Gulf. It basically promised all these guys, "Hey, we got your back, we can protect you, sign up with us and we'll protect you." Well, it turned out they couldn't protect them. The most bizarre behavior is that of the UAE — they are the most fervently opposed to Iran, and they've taken the biggest beating of all, with maybe the exception of Bahrain. The Saudis are still playing a double game, still trying to stay in bed with the United States, but they're under pressure to seek an accommodation with Iran.
They just announced that the pipeline that flows to the Red Sea, which had been sabotaged, has now been repaired and oil is flowing again. But they don't move that much oil — it's like 7 million barrels per day, which sounds like a lot but it's not. It's still about 50% of what they were putting out before. And it's still vulnerable — if this war goes hot, the Houthis will take out that port terminus.
The ability of the United States to dictate the future of that region is limited. The power of the US dollar is going away. We saw the auction for treasury bills — again, the percentage of foreign buyers dropped, so the Fed had to step in and buy up that amount. I think you're going to see an expansion of Chinese and Russian influence throughout the Gulf. And I don't see Iran backing off from using — let's say — a user's fee. If you come into the Gulf, you're going to have to pay a fee. One way they're going to recover and pay for the damages done as a result of this war launched by the United States and Israel.
Trump's erratic behavior is not going to get better. In fact, we will see further deterioration. I honestly don't know if he'll make it to the end of his term, because his behavior is so odd and it is creating real concern now in Washington.
Glenn Diesen: The seeming personal meltdown, the divisions within MAGA, the decline of his administration — all of this is creating a lot of panic and desperation, which is not what you want to see in a president at war. But here we are.
Larry Johnson: And the news about the midterms — the prediction markets, the Polymarkets as they're called, are showing a growing probability that the Democrats are going to sweep not just the House but the Senate, and could have as many as 54 or 55 senators, with Republicans losing well over ten seats. At that point, Trump has no agenda left. He can be mad all he wants. The question is whether the Democrats will impeach him or just let him sit there and twist slowly in the wind.
JD Vance has tried desperately to keep Trump from going down the path of war with Iran, and he failed. You're going to see a mixture of political chaos in Washington, with the possibility of Trump making some very irrational, dangerous decisions. But the sort of good news for Iran is that it has solid backing and relationships with China and Russia, and increasingly it looks like the Asian countries — Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam — are starting to go in their own direction. The influence the United States once wielded there is slipping away very, very rapidly.
Glenn Diesen: Not the best statecraft we've seen. I know you have a busy day ahead of you, so thank you very much for taking the time.
Larry Johnson: All right, my friend. Just keep doing the good work. The world benefits from your wisdom.