DOUGLAS MACGREGOR SPEAKS TRUTHS THE U.S. REGIME HIDES:

8 October 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx7H6F1TIz4

“Trump Won’t Be Able to Invade Iran. It’s Simply Impossible! | Col Doug Macgregor”

8 October 2026, Judge Napolitano interviews Macgregor, 25 minutes

COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT

All right. To uh Iran, I’m gonna ask you to become a shrink again. Would Trump be as as foolish and as as Napoleon and Hitler were when they used massive land forces to invade catastrophically make catastrophically failure invasions of Russia? Would he do the same thing in Iran? >> Well, the good news is that President Trump doesn’t have the ground force to invade the country, per se, that he can do is seize points along the coast or islands inside the Persian Gulf, which I guess people like Kellogg and others are telling him is important. I I think is completely meaningless strategically, isn’t going to change the outcome whatsoever. So the good news is that he can’t squander uh as many lives as Bonaparte or Hitler did, but he still can, you know, run us into bankruptcy, which I think is where we’re headed right now. >> How um logistically treacherous, catastrophic, impossible, whatever adjective you want to use, would a land invasion of Tehran be? >> Well, the nearest point to Tehran is probably somewhere in northern Iraq. That means that you’d have to assemble a very large force, several hundred thousand, and then you’ve got 360, 380 miles that wind on very narrow roads through many passes until you finally reach the Iranian plateau and that can then attack Tehran. We don’t we don’t have those forces and that route is catastrophic. You lose one or two bridges here or there and suddenly you’re held up forever for all intents and purposes these days. I mean, Alexander the Great did it, but he was up against fewer forces than we are in many cases and certainly not the same quality. So, I you know, I I can’t imagine. I think what you’re going to see is something in the Gulf. And if you’re an Iranian, you might welcome the Marine Corps to the Gulf. Let let them sail through the straight of Hormuz, get inside the Persian Gulf, and then effectively neutralize them or destroy them. >> Well, they’d be trapped in there. >> That’s the point. That’s the point. I mean, the president keeps saying he’s in control of the Straits. Uh, the information I’m getting right now as we’re talking is the Iranians have launched numerous cruise missiles at various ships. Presumably, these are some of the vessels that we’ve encouraged to break the laws or the regulations. as the Iranians and the Omanis have established and they’re being punished for it. I don’t know. It could be that they’re also just trying to strike other vessels that may belong to us. But the point is we obviously do not control the straight of Hormuz. >> Is the US still 600 I don’t know if it’s kilometers or nautical miles. I don’t know what the difference is. But is it still that substantial distance outside of the mouth of the strait? >> Yes. I mean, engagement envelope dictates that they don’t, you know, they don’t want to risk being uh severely damaged or sunk. You know, most of the time people talk about sinking an aircraft carrier, sinking a large capital ship. To be successful, you don’t have to sink anything. All you have to do is damage it, leave it dead in the water, and then suddenly they have to be rescued and more ships come in and more ships are are damaged or sunk. Becomes a a largecale disaster. So I I think they’re staying as far away as they can, but obviously as they’re going to have an impact, particularly with air power when the time comes, they will have to draw closer. >> Have uh President Trump and Secretary Hegseth degraded the Navy? >> Well, I you know, listen, we’ve talked about this before. We have the wrong instrument at the wrong time in the wrong place to deal with uh new capabilities that we’re not prepared to to confront. That’s been the problem from day one. You’re talking about an old World War II force structure made over with some new technologies over the last 50 60 years. So that it’s much more potent than it used to be, but it’s still very vulnerable. It’s easy to find now. Everybody has access to space-based surveillance, commercial or military. When I say everybody, I’m I’m talking about the mid-level powers as well as the great powers. You can’t launch amphibious operations because if you try to, you’re going to be identified. You’re going to be seen gathering your ships and and capabilities. And then you’ve got to get close enough to land something. That’s usually at least within 30 to 50 kilometers. So, what’s that 18 miles? And of course, the Gulf is, as you pointed out, Judge, it’s like a big bathtub. You’re not going to hide anything in that. >> Uh, just as an aside, thinking of Hegseth, this is the new Department of War symbol. Chris will now compare it to the old one. They removed the olive branches [from the Defense Department’s official badge]. And of course, he reduced 13 stars to five. I don’t know what the don’t know what the significance of that is. I don’t know if he can do that on his own. I mean, that type of thing is approved by the Congress, but what kind of a message is he trying to send? >> Well, you know, I I sort of regard Hegseth the way uh owers had somebody he called mini me. [laughter] And I sort of look at that as mini Trump, you know. I mean, and I can make an argument that he’s got at least at least two Trumps. Probably one in the form of Bessent and then Mr. Hegseth. Of course, Mr. Hegseth gets a lot more attention, >> right >> But I I think that’s what you’re dealing with. I you know, how how seriously do you take this stuff? >> Yeah. Yeah. After seven months of war, has the Trump administration in in any capacity, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the White House itself yet to reveal a cogent military strategy? >> No, I think they’re doing what what we’ve done far too many times in the past in the history of our country. They’re playing. They made the decision to intervene and that was based on ludicrous assumptions that that quite frankly would never have stood up to serious analysis. But we we borrowed those directly without question from the Israelis. And Trump was undoubtedly under tremendous pressure from the Israel lobby and the the Jewish billionaires, the Zionists that funded him. And he didn’t really appreciate what he was dealing with. I mean, there’s no there’s no study. He doesn’t understand the danger now of his bellicose language and where that could lead him. I I just don’t think he touched with reality on that scale. >> Before we um uh segue over to Ukraine, I stumbled across this. It’s originally stated in 2003, but the clip we’re going to watch is 2007. You’ve seen this before, but it’s very telling every time you look at it. General Wesley Clark, >> “he said, “I just got this down from upstairs.” meeting the Secretary of Defense’s office today and he said this is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in 5 years starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran. I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” If you were Iran, you’d probably believe that you were mostly already at war with the United States anyway since we’ve asserted that their government needs regime change. So, uh, and we’ve asked Congress to appropriate $75 million to do it. And we are supporting terrorist groups apparently who are infiltrating and blowing up things inside Iran. And if we’re not doing it, let’s put it this way, we’re probably cognizant of it and encouraging it. So, it’s not surprising that we’re moving to a point of confrontation and crisis with Iran.” {Napolitano) >> Netanyahu’s marching orders going back as far as 2003. Colonel. >> Well, I think General Clark uh is is right and he knows whereof he speaks because he was the opening phase of regime change bombings that we’ve been engaging in for the last what over over 30 years. I mean, the entire Kosovo air war was designed to bomb Milosevich, and then the president of Serbia, out of office. and they’ve been trying to remove him since uh we’ve gotten involved in Bosnia Herzegovina. So he he’s very familiar with this. The problem is we didn’t learn anything from the experience. It didn’t work. We didn’t bomb Milosevich ?      ut. Milosevich was ultimately relieved or removed by a CIA plot that was hatched inside the country. We bought up a lot of support. Milosevich had plenty of opposition. We funded them and ultimately removed Milosevich, transported him subsequently to the ICC and everybody declared victory. I’m not sure that that was accurate either, but you know, he was he was very much in the lead of that process. So, he understood exactly what was going on. Uh I think he [General Clark] recognized what was going to happen, decided to tell everybody, but at the time is I I forgotten the date on this, but was he not running for president at that point? >> He might very well have been running for the Democratic You’re talking about General Clark. >> Yes. Yeah. >> Yes. Yes. For the Democratic nomination for president when that tape was made, not when he learned of this. He learned of it in ’03. He was running in ’07 and uh and 08. Uh, to Ukraine uh Colonel. And I’m sort of following the path of your Substack piece which I commend to everyone. “How do Washington’s proxy wars end?” Isn’t it realistic to conclude that US negotiators uh with Russia have no credibility and Russia has no credibility with the EU >> or rather the EU has no credibility with Russia. >> The way I should have said it. >> Yeah. Yeah. No, look, I think the sad truth of the matter is that President Trump has revealed to the world that he’s effectively a pathological liar. Nothing he says can be believed. He makes the most outrageous statements and walks away from anybody who disagrees with him or challenges his statement or tries to throw them out of the press pool. And he contradicts himself repeatedly. uh you know he promised that he would do all sorts of things apparently up in Alaska at that particular meeting and you know the Russians were very reluctant to meet with him at that point anyhow but you know Putin insisted that they all go and listen and give it a shot and they thought they had something going in Ukraine. Of course they didn’t. And then Trump turns around, gets on the phone with somebody like Zelensky and says, “Well, can you hit Moscow?” And Zelensky says, “Sure, you just have to give me the weapons.” I mean, if someone’s interested in reaching a negotiated settlement with Moscow over Ukraine, do you ask a question like that? And then do you turn around and encourage your European allies to provide? It doesn’t make any sense. Uh I I see no coherence. It’s back to your first question. What’s the strategy? Well, the strategy went, you know, in Ukraine from uh we’re going to knock the Russians over. They don’t expect this. We build up this giant Ukrainian force. When the Russians lose, that’ll undermine Putin. The population will rise up and Putin will be out of office. Then we can move into Russia and do as we wish with it. We’ll put somebody else in power. That’s what we’re trying to do in in Iran. The same thing. That’s effectively what we did in Serbia. Uh it’s effectively what we tried to do in Libya. Of course, we produced tremendous chaos down there that has never really been completely arrested. It’s what we did in Iraq. Didn’t work very well. Ultimately, Iraq became the Iranian satellite that it is. We tried to do it in Syria. Now, we’re not so happy anymore with the rebranded ISIS folks that are running the place. I mean, this is this is the same play over and over and over again. And it all goes back to what Mr. Netanyahu wants in the region. There’s no question about it. He would like to create a series of puppet states obedient to Israel. If he can’t do that, then he wants us to kill everybody. He’ll help, of course, but we’re the ones with most of the military power and firepower. And I think what you’re going to see happen next in Iran, there’s no strategy, per se. They’re just target sets. And the target sets are going to include infrastructure. And that infrastructure will be in cities and towns. It’ll involve civilian losses of life. And we’re going to say it’s collateral damage. And they’re going to try and penetrate all these underground missile cities, at least the ones they can identify. It’s a repetition of what you’ve seen before, only with a great deal of TNT. You’re going to see thousands of 2,000 pound bombs dropped on these places. You’re going to see hundreds of missiles launched. The Iranians know that, and they know that it doesn’t make any difference what is discussed in private with us that’s going to happen. That’s what Israel wants. So when you listen to Mr. Rubio or Mr. Hegseth or in fact that for that matter Mr. Trump, you’re listening to Netanyahu’s talking points. >> Wow. I want to get back to uh Ukraine because of a comment President Putin made and it may have been in response to a comment General Donaghue made. Although in fairness to President Putin, General Donaghue’s comment was more than a year ago. Chris cut number seven and then cut number one. “If you look at Kaliningrad at its, you know, you can argue back and forth, but it’s about 47 miles wide, surrounded by NATO on all sides. There’s absolutely no reason why that A2 AD bubble to deter Russia, we cannot take that down from the ground in a time frame that is unheard of and faster than we’ve ever been able to do. We’ve already planned that. We’ve already developed it”. >> Putin: “If it comes to a direct attack on the Russian Federation, specifically targeting Kaliningrad or perhaps other territories, then the question of the Russian Federation using all the weaponry at its disposal will inevitably and immediately appear on the agenda.” >> Well, was supposed to fall in three or four days, so I’m sure the time frame is the same kind of thing. Americans need to understand the history behind this thing we call Kaliningrad. That’s the Russian version of the German word Konigsberg. And that area that you see there for 1,000 years was Germanspeaking, particularly the city, which was very very important to the development of the Baltic and and Eastern Europe. At the end of World War II, as the Soviet armies were advancing through Poland, Stalin sent a message to Roosevelt and said, “You know, I know this wasn’t part of the original discussion, but would you mind terribly if we held on to Konigsberg,” the state there that we now call in Russian Kaliningrad? The Russians wanted a port that was ice free. It was ideally suited for many reasons, strategically to put Russia in a position to dominate central East Europe. and FDR unhesitatingly said, “Sure, keep it. It’s a nonissue.” Now, when Germany was reunited, Chancellor Kohl uh who presided over that reunification was then questioned by the Russians and said, “Would you would you consider buying Kaliningrad from us?” And I have to understand that in order to persuade the the Soviets to leave East Germany, the Germans had to pour hundreds of millions billions of marks into the Russians to get them to leave as compensation and they wanted to charge him for Kaliningrad. Now, Chancellor Kohl decided for various reasons, no. He said, I think we’re going to let that go. That was a mistake. it it could have gone to Poland because even though it was German speaking for many years, it was under Polish administration from the Kingdom of Poland and the Polish Lithuania and then it went back and forth, you know, with Prussia and so forth. But my point is we’ve got a problem in Kaliningrad strategically and the Russians have a trump card sitting in Kaliningrad. They can launch anything they want from that soil in any direction and they have now declared the soil of East Prussia as [laughter] Russian. So this is part of the territory of the Russian Federation. If you attack it, you are at war with the Russian Federation. So the notion that you can go in there quite suddenly, take it all over and call it a day is insane. First of all, it won’t work that way. The Russians are welldefended. They have enormous capabilities that are just out of sight but on the ground there. They’re not going to allow that to happen. It’s a very short distance to move from uh through this uh gap uh that is uh it’s got a Polish name Suaki I think is what they call it or Lithuanian. But the point is it’s a very short distance to go from Lithuanian Poland and and uh Belarus straight into East Prussia. not not a great deal of difficulty doing that at all. So the idea that you would do this is is a stupid idea because it precipitates the very war that at least people like me and virtually everybody else you’ll talk to who’s lived over the last several decades has worked to avoid. Everybody has worked to avoid a war with Russia and we don’t need to go to war over Kaliningrad. It’s not necessary. And in that sense, Chancellor Kohl was wrong. >> Now, General Donaghue was fired. I don’t know if it was because of this statement, but other than bravado, what would have provoked him to make a statement like that? >> We have lots of cigar chewing caricaturures of real generals. They’ve all seen the movie. They all want to talk tough. They all want to pretend to be something they’re not. We haven’t fought any great wars for many, many years. And I think many of them want desperately to be remembered. And so they behave in certain ways and say certain things to attract attention. And I think frankly uh whatever he was fired for, I don’t think it had anything to do with that statement because that sort of thing really appeals to somebody like Trump. >> Correct. >> For that matter Hegseth. I think they tell him show up. You know, >> I think they fired him for some other reason that doesn’t seem to be made known to the public. Does the US and does the EU understand that a post-war Ukraine in whatever form it is can have no relationship whatsoever to NATO? >> Yes, they know that Russia has said as much. Uh and I think he’s speaking, you know, as a consequence of discussing this with Trump. Ukraine, there is no path for Ukraine to join NATO. I think we all know that what we’re afraid to do or unwilling to do is to sit down with the Russians and say, “All right, here’s your your pen. You draw on the map what you want and then we’ll look at it. We’ll draw on the map what we want and we’ll see how it comes out.” But the understanding has to be at the very beginning that Ukraine, whatever is left of it, and I don’t think it’s going to be anything like what you see today, I think that ultimately Odessa, as I pointed out in the a southern southern Ukraine, will have to be under Russian administration. The Russians are not going to allow Odessa to become again what it has been for the last several years. And it’s being a source of arms and mercenaries and anybody who’s willing to come in and fight in in Ukraine and also an export point not just for grain, but for women and children and whatever else the Ukrainian mafia wants to profit from. So the Russians aren’t going to allow that. So that much will be Russia. It’ll be Russia from the Romanian border where Mulava and Romania touch across to Odessa across to her son and then you know some version of Novorusia. In other words, what was established by Katherine the Great in the 1770s and 17 that will be reestablished. Then the question is what about the rest of it? We don’t know. But it’s going to have to be neutral and it’s going to have to have some Russian presence in so far as someone in the capital who sits on the national security council and ensures that whatever decisions they take, it doesn’t involve targeting Russian cities or killing Russians. >> Uh, Secretary was asked yesterday about NATO membership in Ukraine. And here’s his well here’s the Q&A qu number 12. Chris, >> “What is your position on uh NATO membership of Ukraine? Do you think Ukraine should be a member of NATO? >> Rubio: “Well, just on your third point, there’s no no yes or no answer to that other than to say that Ukraine right now NATO membership as you know is not on the table as we speak. Uh because there’s obviously a consensus process that has to happen in order for that unanymity process that has to happen. Right now, we’re simply focused when it comes to Ukraine on the ending of this conflict if that’s possible. And it’s unfortunate the amount of loss of life. But we’ve been clear that if there’s a role we can play in bringing that war to an end, we want to play a constructive role. We’re obviously watching the trend lines there and seeing that’s not the direction that it’s headed.” >> There’s no constructive role the US can play because the Russians don’t trust Trump and they think that Witkoff and Kushner are grifters. >> Well, I think Peskov said, uh, what we’re looking for is Istanbul plus. You go back to the original agreement reached between the Ukrainians and Russians and Istanbul that we sent Bojo the clown to disrupt and destroy. That could be the basis for the discussion, but obviously the borders are going to be very different. Now, at that point, the Russians would have accepted very different solution from the one I described. But given what’s happened, forget it. They’re not going to allow these things to go on in the future. Both Russia and Iran are in a similar condition. They can’t afford to let things go back to the way they were. In other words, there has to be a new recognized status quo. And that status quo has to be in Ukraine’s case neutrality, the absence of any foreign forces on the soil. And in Iran’s case, it’s in the Middle East itself, the absence of US bases and US forces. Because both of them know that if you disallow that, you probably won’t have to fight again. If you don’t disallow it, there’ll be another war, because a US base that sits today in the Persian Gulf is viewed as an Israeli outpost. Now, the ultimate question is, can Israel survive if there are no US bases in the region? >> Can the United States uh go home without permission from Benjamin Netanyahu? >> Not at the moment, but you know, we’re still just at the beginning of the descent into financial hell and once we can no longer print money, once we can no longer spend recklessly, once they’re the banking system collapses. I mean, all these things are coming. All we you know, we ought to have a a nonstop for 24 hours. Everybody from Ray Dalio to Warren Buffett to Muhammad Ela, just one after the other, tell us where we’re going. We’re all going to get the same answer. We’re marching into financial economic hell. It’s it’s coming. That’s what will stop us. Nothing else. We’ll print money. We’ll send arms. We’ll do whatever we can. We’re never going to back off and say, “Well, you know, that was a mistake. We shouldn’t have done it.” Eventually, we’ll have to, but not broke.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.