Larry Johnson and Glenn Diesen discuss Russia's posture toward European escalation and US military withdrawal from the Persian Gulf
Glenn Diesen interviews former CIA analyst Larry Johnson on Russia's shifting stance toward NATO's increasingly direct involvement in the Ukraine war.
Larry Johnson and Glenn Diesen discuss Russia's posture toward European escalation and US military withdrawal from the Persian Gulf
Glenn Diesen interviews former CIA analyst Larry Johnson on Russia's shifting stance toward NATO's increasingly direct involvement in the Ukraine war.
Summary
Glenn Diesen hosts Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst and writer at Sonar 21, for a wide-ranging discussion on Russia's changing strategic posture in response to escalating NATO involvement in the Ukraine conflict. Johnson argues that Russia has lost any remaining illusion that the West seeks a peaceful negotiated outcome, and that figures like Sergey Karaganov are now openly advocating graduated military escalation against European infrastructure and assets. The conversation covers Putin's invocation of Operation Barbarossa as a warning to the West, the economic fragility of Europe, and the severe consequences of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz on global oil and fuel supplies. Johnson also discusses the emergence of a new international military and economic order centered on Russia, China, Iran, and BRICS — including Chinese weapons and technical support to Iran during the recent US-Israeli attack, and the rise of the CIPS payment system as a digital alternative to SWIFT. Johnson closes with what he describes as breaking news: that US Central Command has issued orders for American military forces deployed to the Persian Gulf, Jordan, and Israel to return home, significantly reducing the likelihood of renewed US military action against Iran.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Opening: Russia's recognition of direct European war preparations
Glenn Diesen: I want to talk about an article you recently penned on Russia now recognizing that the Europeans are essentially preparing for more than indirect war — a very direct war with Russia. I think this has been a long time coming, for more than twelve years now. We see NATO using Ukraine as an instrument to weaken Russia as a strategic rival. We've heard enough comments from top American officials to verify this. And we know that in 2014, of course, the NATO-backed coup was framed as a democratic revolution, but what they really did was build a huge Ukrainian proxy army while sabotaging the Minsk peace agreement. Since 2022, I think all of this has continued. All paths to peace have been blocked by NATO countries while at the same time announcing that weapons are the path to peace. Incrementally, NATO's involvement has escalated, especially when things are going badly for Ukraine, and now we see NATO weapons being used — NATO intelligence, NATO targeting, the weapons guided at long range at least by NATO satellites, and even NATO contractors pulling the trigger.
Furthermore, unless we are to believe that the drones that attacked St. Petersburg from the Baltic Sea did not transit through or even originate in NATO territory, then we can say that these attacks are now also coming from NATO, at least using their territory. Something appears to be changing in Moscow. Perhaps it's the European leaders speaking ever more openly about the need to break Russia, mass-producing long-range weapons to strike deeper and deeper inside Russia. There's no more pretense anymore, and something appears to have changed in Moscow. Putin's speech, I think, was also an indication of where things are heading. What is your take on that speech?
Larry Johnson: I've learned to pay attention to Sergey Karaganov. I know he's been a mentor of yours — or at least you worked with him at one point. Sergey gets dismissed by some people as just a political scientist, but he's a very thoughtful guy and he's very good at seeing trends.
Let me pose the opposite case that will reinforce where Karaganov is coming from. If the Sinaloa cartel was being supplied with drones and missiles by China and Russia, as well as the intelligence for hitting coordinates inside the United States, and they were able to launch attacks all along the southern border and going deep into Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, the United States would view that as an act of war and would retaliate accordingly. They wouldn't sit there and pretend it was just some minor border skirmish. Well, that's exactly what's happening with Russia now.
I think we can see that the Anchorage period — where Putin met with Trump and there was some hope that the United States was engaging Russia and that there was going to be perhaps a diplomatic exit — that's dead. Absolutely dead. And that has been announced by Sergey Lavrov, among others, and by Ushakov, who is a close adviser to Putin. They've all made it clear that that process is dead.
This goes back to Karaganov's position: the West has lost its fear of Russia. They assume they can do whatever they want — bomb them, kill them, destroy schools — and Russia is not going to do anything in return. Karaganov is talking about a graduated escalation, but nonetheless an escalation. Step one: you start hitting the factories and military sites in those countries to let them know that they've crossed the line — you've hit us, we're hitting you back. I think that ought to be followed up by putting NATO on notice that any surveillance aircraft, even in international airspace, that are collecting information on Russia will be targeted and shot down. The West has got to know they cannot continue this kind of provocation, because as Karaganov has pointed out, if this continues, the next step is the use of tactical nuclear weapons, and that pushes the world into a whole new direction.
I hope there is nobody left in Russia who harbors the illusion that the West is seeking a peaceful negotiated outcome. No. Absolutely not. The West wants to destroy Russia. They're intent on that. The rhetoric has become more intense. And what's really bizarre is how the media coverage is now portraying Russia as being on its back foot — Russia's suffering, Russia's losing. Meanwhile, what's actually happening on the battlefield is that Russia is moving forward in a way it has not moved forward in the previous four years.
In 2023 they were focused on Bakhmut, then Avdiivka, and then in 2025 Pokrovsk. There was always one battle getting all the attention and all the resources. Not now. There are multiple battles along the line taking place simultaneously, and they will collapse the Ukrainian line at some point. The war has changed in tone — that is certain.
Glenn Diesen: It's been so many fictions all along. I remember when Russia first went in, the main talking point was not just "unprovoked" but "full-scale invasion," even though the Russians were talking to Zelensky about finding a peaceful solution on the first day of the attack. Already in March of 2022, the first articles came out saying Russia was already losing and would run out of missiles within two to five days. Then we had the Nord Stream issue — oh yes, they blew up their own pipeline. Then we had the invasion of Kursk — oh, this is definitely turning the tide, now Russia is losing. Every time NATO escalates with a new weapon, it's a game-changer. We've been listening to this for more than four years — now the Ukrainians are winning, now they're winning. It gets more absurd every time. But the goal is always the same: to prolong the war, keep it going. Officially the language is that we just want Ukraine to negotiate from a position of strength, we want to force Putin to the negotiating table, even though it's the Europeans who refuse to talk to the Russians. Anyone paying attention would know this is absurd, but the propaganda is really dialed up and following these talking points is somehow considered very patriotic — even though, as you said, we're heading now toward not just war but a war that could very easily escalate into the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
Putin's Barbarossa reference and what it signals
I did notice that in Putin's speech he referred to Operation Barbarossa — the 1941 invasion. Why do you think that historical comparison is so important?
Larry Johnson: The point Putin was making — this was an address on Tuesday the 23rd, the day after the 84th or 85th anniversary of the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany — he was addressing cadets, graduates of military, intelligence, and police institutions. In making that reference, he was noting that right now the West is making no attempts to hide its intent to go to war with Russia. They're openly talking about attacking Russia within two to three years. Putin's point was very simple: we've been there before. The Russian people have been there before. We know what it means to face this kind of threat. And while the Soviet Union was not prepared to repel that invasion in 1941, the message I took from Putin was: we're more than prepared. We know it's coming and we're going to deal with it.
He put out a red flag that the West should see — you're getting ready to enter a hot zone, and if you follow this path, the result will be the same as what happened to Germany and its European allies that attacked the Soviets and were ultimately defeated. But this time, Russia is not going to sit back and wait to be attacked. Once it becomes clear that the West is intent on following through on this threat, Russia is going to take steps to defend itself. That was the clear message I took away from that speech.
Glenn Diesen: This is an important part of it — if Russia thinks it's going to be attacked, it will not wait for the opponent to strike first. I think something like this was mentioned in one of the biographies of Putin as well: he learned early on that if you know a fight is unavoidable, make sure you throw the first punch. I would argue this is one of the reasons — not one of them, but the main reason — why they invaded in February of 2022.
Larry Johnson: Exactly. I agree. Because in November of 2021, the US and Ukraine signed this charter on strategic partnership, and at that point one of the top advisers to the former French president made the point that this signing convinced the Russians that they would either have to attack or be attacked. So this really was the straw that broke the camel's back. Why would they wait for an attack on Crimea or Donbas? So they went in.
But is this what the Europeans are waiting for? When they talk about preparing for a future war with Russia, is that a Russian retaliation they're talking about? Because if they really think Russia is going to attack Europe, they would need to outline what the objective would be. What exactly would be the purpose of attacking Europe? The only purpose I can see — unless you believe in fairy tales about restoring the Soviet Union — would be to restore Russia's deterrent. But is the goal then to go to war?
I don't know if you saw it, but Putin issued a response to the Germans the other day that was absolutely scathing in its sarcasm. The bottom-line message was: why would we want to invade you and then be responsible for a group of transvestite, transgender, blue-haired weirdos? What do we gain from that? We don't need that. We don't want that. You can have it. That was his basic message. It went on — I recall it was like eight or nine points. I thought it was actually brilliant how he presented it, because it was entertaining but also very much to the point.
Russia has to step back and look at the fact that these attacks Ukraine is carrying out are not being carried out because Ukraine has the expertise to do it. And the concern is that you've had Ukrainian officials just recently talking about building a nuclear warhead. There is a report from a YouTuber by the name of Borykman — sometimes his reporting has been quite accurate, sometimes questionable — but he claims that a recent arrival of a British ship in Odessa carried yellow barrels that appear to contain radioactive material. I'm sure Russia is now all over that. You can't put it past the British to try something absolutely crazy — that they would run that risk. They are poking the bear. It's like they think they can throw a punch at Russia and Russia is not going to react. I maintain that is a dangerous, dangerous assumption. Russia's been slow to anger, but once their dander is up, they are most formidable.
European strategic logic — or the lack of it
Glenn Diesen: One can understand why, especially the British, because they appear to be among the most aggressive in this war. But one can understand it because they essentially designed a proxy war almost in the dream scenario during the Cold War — to have the Ukrainians and Russians kill each other en masse while the West stands on the sideline. That's essentially what's been created here. Though it's a war where the Europeans have said we have to bring this war to Russian territory, which they now have, but Europe is a safe zone. All the industrial production, all the missiles and drones which they advertise they're producing to attack Russia with — all of this is within European or British territory. So it can't be touched by the Russians, and essentially the Russians accepted this rule of the game: NATO countries can launch long-range missiles and drones deep into Russia, and Russia is not allowed to touch NATO territory. This isn't sustainable, especially now that it's becoming so much more open and larger scale, and also as you said, the clear indication of intent — to fight a war once Russia has been weakened.
How do you see Putin as having changed over time? Because last year he was all about diplomacy, Anchorage, all of this. Now we don't hear much about diplomacy anymore. The main speeches are about war — we will achieve our objectives, we have the military power. Yes, they've kept the door open for diplomacy, but they quite obviously do not believe it will go anywhere.
Larry Johnson: I think he's been — I don't want to say forced, as if it's against his will — but he is cognizant of what the political pressures are, and whatever his personal desires for trying to avoid conflict and avoid escalation, I think he recognizes it's reached a point where the demands of the Russian public are such that they want stronger action. They want decisive strikes against Kiev, up to and including killing Zelensky, killing Syrsky, killing the top leadership. The reality is that senior Russian officials and generals have been assassinated all along, and there's an attitude of: it's time for payback. But not just payback — you've got to cut the guts out of this thing and make it so that the Europeans also pay a cost.
That's why when you listen to people like Medvedev, I think his views are more in line with the majority of Russians than those of Putin. So Putin in a way is playing a little bit of catch-up. Now, I don't deny that the military strategy is not being set by Putin — it's being set by Gerasimov. But I think we've now reached a stage where the Europeans must pay a price for enabling this violence. Otherwise they will continue to escalate it to a point that will lead to a nuclear strike, and that's the danger — in efforts to avoid it, Russia is taking the very actions that will actually make it more possible.
Glenn Diesen: One can understand the restraint of Putin, because if they now begin to hit back against a NATO country, the response would be absolutely fierce. But these people seem to think this is a computer game of some sort, or at least that there's proper escalation control — that they can do this and if the Russians retaliate, they will be able to manage it. I just don't think anyone's going to be able to control the escalation once the Russians finally retaliate. The whole idea is the Russians do not dare — until they do dare, as they did in 2022. And then it's completely unprovoked and this is the time to stand up against the new Hitler. We know what the script will look like after the Russian retaliation, which is why it's quite dangerous.
But what do you see as the thinking on the European side? Because let's be honest — the Europeans are declaring the intent but they hardly have the capabilities. Well, not yet. If the Russians wait much longer, they might have more.
Larry Johnson: You used the word "thinking," implying that the Europeans are thinking and have engaged in a rational thought process. For the life of me, I don't know what they are thinking, because it's so illogical. You step back and say: okay, whether I'm Germany or Poland or France or the United Kingdom, do I need to pay more for oil and natural gas, or do I need to pay less? Is it better for my country if I pay less? Well, in the world of logic, it's better if you pay less. But the choice, particularly with the Germans, is: no, no, no — we're going to cut off all ties with Russia, who supplies cheap oil and gas. We will stand by and do nothing while the United States blows up the Nord Stream pipeline, compelling us as Europeans to now buy more expensive liquefied natural gas from the United States. And in fact, we're going to ban any kind of economic interaction with Russia, which is going to weaken our economies, cause recessions, cause inflation, cause higher unemployment. And they're doing this consciously. They're choosing to do this. And then on top of it, say: oh yeah, and then we're going to take on Russia and fight it and defeat it.
Let me see if I've got this straight. The UK can't even fill a football stadium with its army, it's so small. Your once leading-edge prowess in the world of maritime operations — that's gone, that's history. Germany, with factories that once turned out some of the most leading-edge military equipment — those are shuttered, and many of your factory jobs are now going overseas to the United States or other places.
Here is Europe. They remind me of the guy who was the star soccer player on his team when he was seventeen or eighteen — strong, virile, quite athletic. Well, now he's sixty years old. He weighs twice what he did back then, can barely run, but in his mind still thinks he's that seventeen-year-old football player. That's Europe. They still think they're the military power that dominated the nineteenth century, and they're not. They're a hollowed-out shell of a continent where military power has become really inconsequential. If you're going to take them to a dog show, they're in the Chihuahua class. And yet they want to take on Russia, who's in the Rottweiler class. They're this big dog. Europe is a bunch of yappy little dogs that have no significant economic resources, have lost their industrial edge, are not doing anything on the leading edge of science and technology, are not leading in space. There is not a single sector you can point to where you'd say, yes, this is the future and it lies with Europe. They're living on a legacy.
Glenn Diesen: I've been trying to make sense of the European position as well. I always make the point that the Russians are fighting an existential war. The Ukrainians as well — to a large extent this can also end Ukraine, so they also have reason to fear an existential threat. Both of those make sense. The Americans wanted to knock out a key rival, it didn't work, they handed it off and outsourced it to the Europeans — that also makes sense. But the Europeans really don't make much sense. If you look across all the countries in the EU, the politicians and the media only communicate in clichés and emotional slogans. Anything that deviates from it is censored. There's a massive cost for anyone breaking with the narrative of the group. One gets the impression there's a mass psychosis forming. If one argues that our territories being used to strike against Russia could push the Russians to retaliate, possibly resulting in nuclear war — ah, that's Putinist, because any word of caution sounds like one wants to restrain the attacks on Russia, and that means you're with the Russians. No one can dissent. The idea that we have freedom of speech, dialogue, and discussion — it's nonsense. There's none of that sort in Europe now. It's a loony bin.
There are no other objectives now than defeating Russia. All this talk about opening diplomacy with Russia comes with conditions that essentially require Russia to capitulate first. But beyond the hatred of Russia — do you think this reflects the inability of Europe to find its place in the world? It doesn't have the role it once did. It doesn't have a clear economic future. The partnership with the US is going away. Is this just desperation?
The Strait of Hormuz crisis and its economic consequences
Larry Johnson: There's actually a reality that's going to descend on Europe within the next two to three weeks, and this is the fallout from the shutdown of the Persian Gulf and Iran closing off the Strait of Hormuz. There has been a dramatic loss of five significant commodities — inputs into the global economy. At least 20% of the oil, 25% of the liquefied natural gas, 25 to 30% of the sulfur and urea which go into fertilizer, and over 40% of the helium which is used for making computer chips, among other things.
Right now on the oil front, the United States is within two weeks of essentially having run out of reserve supply of diesel and aviation fuel. They won't have enough of the heavy or sour crude that's required to make diesel and aviation fuel. It'll be sort of week to week depending upon what they can receive, because the United States is already a net importer of that. The same for Europe — Europe is a net importer of all classes of oil, and the shortages that are going to come will affect the economies dramatically. They're already barely bumping along, staying maybe slightly above zero. We're talking now about recession if not depression territory.
Oddly enough, Donald Trump talked about this two weeks ago at the G7, and I think that helped explain why he signed the MOU — because he recognized that in four weeks the US could be running on zero as far as the kind of crude oil needed to produce diesel and aviation fuel. Europe is in a worse situation than the United States, because the US at least independently produces enough of the light oil used to produce gasoline and has actually been shipping some of that to Europe as well. But Europe doesn't have that. On the issue of heavy crude and the middle distillates — that part of oil from which you get diesel and aviation fuel — that is going to be a critical shortage. And we're not talking months, we're talking weeks. We're going to have a dramatically different-looking world probably by July 15th.
Glenn Diesen: Not a great time for Europe to engage in a direct war with the world's largest nuclear power.
Larry Johnson: Who also has ample supplies of oil and gas.
Glenn Diesen: Well, that's the big irony here — the assumption by the Europeans was that if they just cut all ties with Russia, the Russian economy would collapse relatively shortly. I still make the point that as soon as the sanctions were announced, I was making the point that this was going to fail. I worked in Moscow, on a program that worked on Russia's economic shift from West to East, and I knew that the Russians had made their economy essentially bulletproof. They were shifting quickly to the East, and any sanctions would only be used as an opportunity to intensify that process. I knew the Russians could diversify away from Europe, but Europe couldn't diversify away from Russia. But whenever I made this point, I was told that it undermines public support for the sanctions — so that's a pro-Russian comment, and that makes you a Putinist. This is the level of debate we have in Europe, and it is beyond ridiculous.
The point is that all of this cheap Russian gas and oil which used to go to Europe now goes to Asia, and as the Germans have begun to experience, their companies are following the Russian gas. When that gas goes to China, the German company packs up and goes there as well. It's stupid on a lot of levels.
Rubio, Anchorage, and the emerging new international order
I did want to ask about Marco Rubio in Anchorage. He made the point that what happened in Anchorage wasn't really a deal — it was more about discussing formats. Something that the Kremlin did not care much for.
Larry Johnson: Well, Rubio is incompetent. His job as Secretary of State — the last one to really occupy that role was Henry Kissinger. Henry Kissinger may have been a war criminal; there's no denying the man had intellect and thought in strategic terms. Sometimes he was a devious, evil bastard — there's no doubt about that. But he recognized — his telling Nixon, okay, we're going to go to China, we're going to reestablish relationships with communist China, something you, Nixon, if you fought against communism your entire career and made your career on that — we're doing this because we want to weaken the Soviet Union and we want to make sure we split China off from that branch of communism and help the Chinese develop a dependence upon us in the West. There was clear strategic thinking behind that.
Well, here's Rubio. He does not recognize the critical role that Russia is now playing in the creation of a new international economic, political, and military order. This is coming into fruition. Just as Russia's decision to attack Ukraine — because of the impending attack from the West, to preempt that — accelerated the growth of BRICS as an economic power, the US and Israeli attack on Iran, and Iran's subsequent defeat of that attack in part because of support received from both Russia and China — significant support ranging from financial aid, weapons systems, ammunition, and intelligence — we saw a recent report that the colonel who was flying in the backseat of the F-15 that got shot down south of Isfahan back in April reported seeing a drone pack moving as one, like a jellyfish, moving in a coordinated fashion. That came from China. There's no other country in the world that does that like China does.
The Chinese also provided missiles. Pepe Escobar and I learned from a Pakistani source that during some of the retaliatory strikes against Israel and the United States, using Chinese missiles, there were Pakistani military technicians trained by the Chinese sitting with the Iranians, helping them launch and use these weapon systems, which destroyed critical infrastructure for the United States in both Bahrain and Kuwait and at Al-Tanf air base in Jordan.
What you're seeing emerge now is a new international military, security, and economic organization — literally an alternative to the US-dominated post-World War II hegemonic enterprise. That's what the United States and Europe, I'm sure, fully comprehend, but it's happening. No matter how much they complain about it or say it's not real or say it's weak, the fact of the matter is it is happening. You look at the growth rate for China, the alternative to SWIFT they've set up — it's called CIPS, the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System. SWIFT is an analog system — it's like using a buggy whip. It's essentially email: I'm Bank A, you're Bank B, I say "Dear Glenn, I'm sending you this wire transfer, please credit it to this account," and it goes into your spam folder and you don't find it for three days. CIPS is digital — immediate transfer, assets move instantly. The number of banks signing up for it has increased by something like twenty-six in the last month alone.
The point of all this is that Europe is becoming increasingly irrelevant. They're not a huge market in terms of the rest of the world. They have been considered a potentially profitable one, although I will note the Chinese are making tremendous inroads in Europe with their electric vehicles. They're cheaper than Tesla, they're better in many aspects, they have better features, and the Europeans don't have an answer to it.
Glenn Diesen: No, they don't like it, but they don't know what to do. They keep referring to China as a threat because of it, which makes it very difficult because they can't defend that position. If you want to argue that China's a threat — a country that hasn't been in a war in more than four decades — and somehow the threat, defined as a military threat, derives from its electric vehicles being exported to Europe, that's quite extraordinary.
It was interesting what you mentioned about Kissinger, because as you said, he should take credit for breaking the Chinese off from the Soviet Union in the 1970s. But in 2014, Kissinger wrote some interesting articles making the point that neither NATO nor the Russians should use Ukraine as a front against the other — it should be a bridge. He was also quite critical of how Western rhetoric was essentially about defeating Russia instead of finding a formula for a common security structure.
This is important because he had discussions with Trump in 2016 before Trump took the presidency, and I'm sure he was communicating his own ideas about what to do — which is: you see this huge Eurasian giant forming, with Russia and China, and in economic terms Russia is now the junior partner. So reach out to the smaller one, play on its insecurities, and try to bring it over to our side of the ledger. That makes a lot of sense. But what happened? You had the Russia Gate hoax — Trump was a Russian agent. This is still how the Europeans talk, not just the ridiculous people on social media but the politicians and journalists. It doesn't bode well in terms of the wider strategic thinking we now need.
US military limitations and the risk of direct confrontation with Russia
My last question: if Russia strikes Europe in retaliation to restore its deterrent, what does the United States do?
Larry Johnson: The United States may want to jump into it, but they won't be able to. What the war with Iran has exposed are the limitations of US military power. You have to step back and ask: what are we going to do? Do we have a naval force we can send our aircraft carriers into the Baltic Sea or into the Black Sea? No, we can't. Aircraft carriers are really of no use in a military assault on Russia. So that leaves ground troops. We don't have ground troops — we've got 470,000 to quote-unquote invade Russia. And if we were proposing to do that, just the time required to assemble that force in Poland or Romania in locations where they could cross the border — the Russians, in the era of drones and short-range and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, would target and destroy those encampments.
So that leaves air power. And again, what we're running up against now is that until the Strait of Hormuz is open and the 20% of oil that disappeared from the market is back on the market — and that's going to be months, maybe a year or so — there's not going to be enough aviation fuel to sustain the kind of combat operation that would be required against Russia.
At the same time, the US calculation that it could engage in attacks on Russia and that its own continental locations would be free from retaliation — no. As Russia has deployed the Burevestnik atomic cruise missile, Russia would not hesitate this time to strike sites in the United States. This is an absolute worst-case, nightmare scenario. The reality is the United States has limited military assets. They're very expensive, but we don't have strategic depth with any of them. And what they've discovered again with Iran is that Iran — which does not have the kind of missile defense systems that Russia does — survived what the United States unleashed on it. Russia carries far more potential counterweight and is able to respond at greater levels of violence than Iran could to Israel or the United States in the recent war. So no, it'd be a recipe for suicide in my view.
Glenn Diesen: Well, it does appear that we are moving toward suicide in Europe at least. If you hear the hawks now in Moscow, their voices grow louder every day and they get more and more people on their side. The argument is essentially: go for full mobilization, kill Zelensky, destroy the entire government district in Kiev, and while you're at it, go after all the European plants that build weapons used to attack Russia. And if something goes wrong, reach for the tactical nukes. And what's holding all of these hawks back is Putin — and this is the man which the European leaders most of all want to get rid of.
Larry Johnson: Yeah.
Glenn Diesen: Because he is Hitler. You couldn't make this up. It's so bizarre. But there is, as you said, no logic anymore. It's just —
Larry Johnson: Pure insanity. Pure insanity. But they may get what they want, and they won't like what they get.
Breaking news: US military ordered home from the Persian Gulf
Hey, let me leave you with something unrelated to this — we'll call it breaking news. I have confirmed that US Central Command, through the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has issued the order for all those US military forces that were being deployed into the bases in the Persian Gulf, Jordan, and Israel — the order has now been issued: come home. You're going to start seeing all of that combat aircraft withdrawn. All the personnel — the 82nd Airborne — they're going to be withdrawn. It took more than a month to deploy them and it's going to take more than a month to redeploy them. But the point is, now that this order to redeploy has been issued, the chances of the United States re-engaging Iran militarily have been reduced significantly.
Glenn Diesen: Well, on those good notes — and there's not much of that recently — we can wrap it up. Hopefully, why not pack up the military bases in Europe as well, send them home, and perhaps then the Europeans become a little less cocky and we discover diplomacy.
Larry Johnson: From your mouth to God's ears.
Glenn Diesen: Well, thanks again, Larry. It's always great to speak with you.
Larry Johnson: All right, Glenn. Take care. Bye-bye.