Ret. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Netanyahu Could Turn to Nuclear Bombs If Iran War Escalates

The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has entered its 11th day. Its impact is being increasingly felt across the globe. Al Jazeera is reporting residents of Tehran overnight experienced some of the most intense bombardment of the war. At least 40 people were reportedly killed near the city's Hesalat Square in Lebanon. The death toll from Israel's attacks are nearing 500.

About 700,000 residents have been displaced. Earlier today, Iran reportedly fired drones towards Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates, where a large fire broke out in an industrial area home to petrochemical plants. A suspected Iranian missile also hit a residential building in the capital of Bahrain, killing one person and injuring eight others. On Monday, the Pentagon posted online a photo of a missile with the words, "'No Mercy'

superimposed on it. An accompanying message read, "'We have only just begun to fight.'" But soon after, Trump told CBS News, quote, "'I think the war is very complete, pretty much,' he said." Trump's CBS interview led oil prices to drop and for global stocks to quickly rise. But after the Wall Street markets closed, Trump told Republicans in Florida the U.S.

hasn't, quote, "'won enough.'" At a news conference on Monday night, ABC News reporter Selena Wang questioned Trump about the conflicting messages.

Mr. President, you've said the war is, quote, very complete, but your defense secretary says this is just the beginning. So which is it, and how long should Americans be prepared?

Well, I think you could say it both. The beginning, it's the beginning of building a new country. But they certainly—they have no Navy. They have no Air Force. They have no anti-aircraft

equipment.

It's all been blown up. They have no radar. They have no telecommunications. And they have no leadership. It's all gone. So you know, you could look at that statement.

We could we could call it a tremendous success right now as we leave here, I could call it. Or we could go further, and we're going to go further. But the big risk on that war has been over for three days. We wiped them out in the first two days.

On Monday, President Trump said he had a good call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who reportedly proposed a, quote, quick political and diplomatic end to the Iranian conflict," unquote. We begin today's show with retired Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell during the run-up and early years of the U.S. war on Iraq.

He's taught national security affairs at both George Washington University and the College of William and Mary. Colonel Wilkerson, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you respond to what has taken place over this last 11 days, starting with the diplomatic talks in Geneva between Iran and the United States? And as those talks were just wrapping up, U.S. and Israel attacked Iran and killed the supreme leader there.

Your response?

Yes, and, Amy, for the second time, we violated international law in that respect, and just common human decency. And your comments at the opening of the show were spot on, but not nearly broad and deep enough. I come from an administration of George W. Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney that committed war crimes. War crimes that Colin Powell and his lawyer Will Taft and I agonized over

in trying to present some message to the American people about them. This administration has committed more war crimes in the last few days than I think any country since Adolf Hitler committed. And that is an incredible condemnation of this entire process. We have bombed civilians relentlessly. We have bombed a school.

We have bombed a hospital, we have struck facilities in the nature of Tehran's oil capacity that is now putting black poison all over 10 plus million people. And we are essentially not bombing ballistic missile sites and bombing war material, we're bombing people. We took a lesson from the IDF, if you will. We are bombing people, as incidentally they are still doing in Gaza and doing now in Lebanon to a fare thee well.

These are all war crimes, and one wishes with fond hope that someday we might be called before the bar of justice and have to account for these war crimes. And what you just talked about is a crime also in the eyes of international relations and people who want to keep decent international relations ongoing in the world. We're destroying that. And on top of all of that, and this is the real serious problem here for America, Trump and Hexeth and Rubio and the other entourage of their national security complex

have completely misjudged the nature of this war, as has to a certain extent Bibi Netanyahu. This is a country as big as Western Europe, with 93 million people, probably 90 million of whom will fight us to the bitter death, who live in terrain that almost killed Alexander the Great. It is entirely inhospitable to military operations, and Trump is talking about actually talking about putting ground forces there.

And the only way he will be able to claim any nature of victory is to do that. Only that will be the end of the empire's presence in the Levant and the Middle East in general, because we will not be able to sustain that economically, physically, we do not have the soldiers or Marines to do that, but that's what he's talking about.

This is pure nonsense. There was a column in Haaretz yesterday, and the title of the column essentially was, Trump will chicken out in this war too. I'm sorry, he's not gonna chicken out necessarily. That might be the tone intent he puts to it.

He's gonna be defeated, as are we. Colonel, I wanted to ask you, we played that clip with Trump talking about all the damage that Iran has sustained, but there's been very little acknowledgment by the U.S. military or the White House to the enormous damage that has occurred to the U.S. military footprint in the Middle East. For decades, all of these bases and a radar, a multibillion-dollar radar, were established

throughout the region. And what's your understanding of the nature of the damage that has occurred to all of

these bases, not just among the Gulf states, but also even in Iraq and other places of the Middle East.

Yeah, that damage is enormous. And I think what you're witnessing right now is the initial steps of the empire, the American empire's retreat from the Levant and the Middle East in general. I don't think we're going to be able to sustain our presence there after what's gonna happen here, particularly if we stay at this for a long time and really do take significant casualties.

We're already taking more casualties than people know about because the media is not being apprised of. Yes, we had the ceremony at Dover, but there are people getting ready at Landstuhl, our throughput hospital in Germany right now, to accept multiple casualties coming in.

They've stopped their civilian service and so forth at that hospital. And other things are being geared up too, like Walter Reed. I don't think they have even a modicum of appreciation of what kind of casualties are gonna result though, especially if we put ground forces into Iran. And that is the only way, unless he just lies

completely about it, that Trump is going to be able to assert any kind of real force with regard to this population. And to your point, in Bahrain, they have taken out billions of dollars worth of U.S. radar and equipment, including the vertical missile-loading cranes. So now ships have to go all the way to Diego Garcia to load these weapons. They have essentially obliterated our capacity to carry out combat actions from a number of places in Saudi Arabia,

in Qatar, in the United Arab Emirates. Now, Rwadid is actually under threat now too. And this is all part of the warp and woof of our ability to carry out combat operations in the region. I'm not even sure our biggest facility for passing on troops,

a throughput facility that we use in both Iraq wars, is in Kuwait. I'm not even sure that that's up now and able to do anything. So how would you even get Marines or soldiers, God forbid, into Iran?

That's a huge problem. They will sink the ships that are coming to deposit those troops wherever they're coming. We have not really damaged their ballistic missile capability. And the media blackout on Israel

is keeping the American people from seeing the enormous degree of destruction to Israel. The latest component of which was a riposte to Israel's having struck their oil facilities on Haifa, their oil facility port. And Haifa is being taken down much the way Eilat was taken down by the Houthis, the Al-Ansar

in the Red Sea, when we failed to be able to reopen the Red Sea. And that's the next step. The Bab el-Mandeb will be closed once the Houthis have gotten into action full-time again. And 60% of the world's commerce passes through the Red Sea. It's not oil and gas exclusively. It's all manner of things, foodstuffs, commodities and such.

So this is a war with long legs. Trump has completely misinterpreted it. The only one who's interpreted it correctly is Bibi Netanyahu, and I think he's ready to use a nuclear weapon should it become as bad as it looks like it might right now,

because Iran has not even began to shoot its most sophisticated missiles. And now, the second and third class of those missiles is getting through almost without opposition. Imagine what these Mach 3, Mach 4 missiles with huge warheads that have maybe a hundred different

other warheads they display all across an area are gonna do to Israel once they're fired. And they're still there and they're still ready to fire. And Colonel, I wanted to ask you, you mentioned the media coverage of what is going on in Israel. It has been amazing to me that all of the major U.S. media are based in Israel, in Tel

Aviv, yet we are seeing the least amount of coverage of what is going on within Israel. I want to quote from a piece, an online piece, that CNN reporter Oren Lieberman posted earlier this week. And he wrote, and I'm quoting, every reporter in Israel and every member of the public is subject to a military censor. On national security grounds, the regulation authorizes the censor to prohibit reporting or broadcasting any material that

would reveal sensitive information or pose a threat to the country's security interest." And he goes on to say, this is particularly sensitive during wartime, when the military censor has made clear that broadcasting any images that reveal the location of interceptor missiles or military sites hit by enemy projectiles is forbidden, especially in live broadcasts." Now, they say this on their website, but they never mention this on air.

None of the networks are mentioning on air that they are strictly prohibited from showing any actual real damage. I'm wondering your sense of the responsibility of the U.S. media, especially since they're always showing us the results of the plumes rising in Abu Dhabi or in Saudi Arabia or even in Iran, but not the direct hits that are occurring within Israel. I'll tell you what I told the senior editor to The Washington Post recently.

I think it's abominable, the lies that the American mainstream media, both video and print, is telling the American people. And they're putting us in jeopardy in a real substantive sense, because the American people have no way of judging just how foolhardy, how stupid, how unwise, how violative of international dictum and rule this war is. And when it gets to the point, I think this is the end of the Trump presidency, actually, because when it gets to the point where the pressure is so great and some of this has to

come out and casualties are manifest, then the American people are gonna ask really important questions. Why did you lie to us? Why did you tell us what you were telling us? Why did you start this war of choice? Iran was no threat to the United States of America

whatsoever. Did you go to war for Israel? We have heard you went to war for Israel. These are questions that are finally gonna get out there in the hustings and going to have to be answered by someone, probably your local congressman, the supine body that has done nothing to check this president,

particularly in the war power. And we haven't even talked about that. This is a complete violation of the constitution of the United States. Just as Kofi Annan said about the 2003 Iraq war, it's an illegal war. And he went on to say it was a violation of our own constitution. And he was absolutely right.

But this pales or that pales in comparison with what Trump is doing right now and what he is gonna probably have to do in order to seem to correct his errors. And I'm truly worried that this destruction of Israel is gonna reach a point. I listened to Netanyahu recently speaking in Hebrew

to his clan, to his group, Ben-Gavir, Smotrich and others like that. And at the end of his remarks in Hebrew, which was translated for me very reliably, I think, he essentially said that if it went south, if it went bad, he was prepared to show the Iranians

something they had never seen before. I think he meant a nuclear weapon. And I go back to 1973 when Golda Meir told a BBC reporter, you can check, it was printed in London the next day on the front page, that she would use a nuclear weapon. In response to his question, would you use a nuclear weapon?

Because at that time, they were pretty hard pressed in the 73 war. And she said, yes, without equivocation. I think we're back at that point again, and for probably a far more dangerous situation.

I know you have to go, Colonel Wilkerson, but I just want to point out, you were the former chief of staff of Secretary of State Colin Powell, who dragged his feet on supporting the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, but ultimately gave that speech that he would call a stain on his career at the U.N. It was critical for Bush, President Bush, that it was Colin Powell who gave this speech, because he was seen as the reluctant warrior.

And he gave that speech saying there was evidence of Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction. Can you make a parallel to what we're seeing today?

I can, but I think this is far greater a travesty than a tragedy. That was bad enough, and torture was the thing that broke my back. And ultimately, it sort of broke Colin Powell's back, too, because we realized that we had signed up not only to a war that was not necessary, we had signed up to a president of the United States for the first time in the nation's history making public policy torture.

Other human beings being tortured was made presidential public policy. This is far worse, I think, and it's been building for some time. It's been building all since Trump was, and actually since his first administration. It's been building all since Trump was, and actually since his first administration.

And I think it makes what we did, not to discount it, but it makes it pale by comparison. Thanks for watching Democracy Now!