WH FREAKS After Intel Reveals Iran's Military Capacity To Fight Back

Let's go to the military section now. This one is very interesting, and the response of the Trump administration is really what makes it very critical that we all pay attention. Let's put this up here on the screen. From CBS News, Iran's military is more capable than Trump administration is publicly acknowledging, sources say. The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency submitted a written statement ahead of a House Armed Services Committee hearing that says Iran can still inflict damage.

Quote, Iran retains thousands of missiles and one-way attack UAVs that can threaten US and partner forces throughout the region, despite degradations to its capabilities from both attrition and expenditure. So for those of you who don't know,

the DIA is kind of, it's like a private CIA, but for the Pentagon. So it's a very reductive way of putting it. Basically, they do military assessments on foreign governments. For intelligence purposes, all of that gets rolled up

to the ODNI. Now, as part of their statutory authority, they must submit written updates to Congress by law. Remember, when the course of the war was happening, we often would get updates about troops and about the damage

and about how many weapons have been expended, how many people have been wounded, from updates of the Pentagon to Congress. Now, not to us, but Congress would leak it on our behalf. So I take this very, very seriously, because of course, very seriously, because of course for them, it's also a crime to lie under oath. They have to produce these reports accurately

to the best of their ability and submit them to Congress, which is an independent body, which is supposed to be able to review. So that is the official statement of the Defense Intelligence Agency. And that's not even based on,

oh, some anonymous source says. This is a written, on the record statement from the DIA to Congress. Here's how the White House reacted. Let's put this up here on the screen. The legacy media is doing PR for the Iranian regime again.

The truth is, under President Trump's leadership, the US military decimated Iran's capabilities in 38 days. Their defense industrial base was destroyed. Iran's ability to build and stockpile ballistic missiles and long range drones has been set back by years. The vast majority of Iran's ballistic missiles,

launcher vehicles, long range attack drones were destroyed. The Iranian Navy was annihilated with more than 150 of their ships sunk. And Iran's air forces are functionally and operationally irrelevant now. Now again, this is, and she again says that the media

is doing PR for the regime by directly quoting the Defense Intelligence Agency's assessment. And then you should partner that with some of the more recent updates about munitions. We talked a lot about that during the war. Now it's been over for a week or two,

or at least we're in a ceasefire. So we have some numbers, shall we? Let's go through the numbers, let's put it up here. This is from CSIS and CNN. CSIS, again, to set the table, is basically an arm of the Pentagon.

They do, quote, independent analysis, but it's basically like, it's a defense industrial base think tank, and they do independent, quasi-independent analysis in the open source in order to basically lobby for more weapons, except whatever their agenda is. So I take their stuff actually very seriously.

Most people do in Washington. Here's what they say. The approximate estimate of percentage of US munitions that have been expended in the Iran War, 50% of THAAD interceptors, 50% of Patriot interceptors,

45% of precision strike missiles, 30% of Tomahawk missiles, 20% of joint air to surface standoff missiles, and 20% of standard missiles. The single most troubling one right there is 50% of that. Remember how much we talked about that,

how important that system is for any potential war in Asia. And remember, I'm not just talking about some preemptive war or whatever. I'm talking about Japan and South Korea, the countries which we stripped some of these THAAD interceptors out of. Remember also that we fired hundreds of them just in the 12-day war, and we only acquired a few dozen or so over the last two years. The production timeline is a disaster.

Same on the Tomahawk missiles is we expended hundreds, we've only produced a few dozen. There's only one facility in the United States that even makes them. There's some problems with rare earth minerals to even manufacture them. Even if we wanted to rapidly increase production, you basically can't for a significant period of time to make sure that you were to build out more facilities. So this has set us back. This 38-day war set the United States back probably a minimum of five years. And that's if we got our act

together for some sort of potential future conflict. And that does not even touch the cost. With that alone, I can't—back of the napkin math, hundreds of billions. Hundreds of billions in what it was cost. Not even mentioning the opportunity cost of all the actual allies that it would have been used to defend.

Or if we ever, what if we got hit again? 9-11, now what? You know, I mean, that's the whole point, is to have munitions like this. It's bad. It's really bad. And that's why the Iranians feel so confident. And they should.

Because they, you know, can see this report. They can see this reporting that's out there in the public of how much U.S. stockpiles have been diminished and how much that has made not the U.S. so much, but our allies in the region and ultimately Israel, which of course has their stockpiles of these interceptors even more diminished

have been really dependent on us. But it means that all of those Gulf Arab countries are really sitting ducks. And they were complaining during the hot war portion about how they were not getting protected the way that Israel was being protected.

That dynamic would only shift more towards Iran being able to do damage. And just to go back to that CBS News report about the Iranian capabilities that remain, I mean, it's just completely different than what Trump has been selling

from the first day of this war, he claims that we had basically defeated them and victory was ours, et cetera. But they say that about half, and again, this is CBS News, right? This is like Trump regime propaganda outlet, CBS News,

that is writing this stuff. They say about half of Iran's stockpiled ballistic missiles and its associated launch systems are still intact. 60% of the naval arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps still in existence. That is totally, I mean, how many times has Trump said

that the Navy is basically completely destroyed, barely exists anymore, et cetera? They say said that the Navy is basically completely destroyed, barely exists anymore, etc. They say Iranian air power has been significantly degraded but not erased. About two-thirds of Iran's air force still believed to be operational, the official said after an intensive U.S. and Israeli campaign that struck thousands of targets, including storage and production facilities.

Trump on the other hand says, quote, we've taken out their Navy, we've taken out their Air Force, we've taken out their leaders. So square that with the fact that in reality, two thirds of Iran's Air Force still believed to be operational

and 60% of the naval arm. And here's the thing, because of their position, they don't need that much capacity. You know, it doesn't take a lot to be able to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed, for example. It doesn't take a lot to serve as a deterrence against the U.S. doing any sort of ground invasion, et cetera, which would be sure to be a complete catastrophe.

And I think Trump knows this at this point, which is why he's effectively pinned, you know, the, you could have known from the beginning that just bombing alone was not going to be this at this point, which is why he's effectively pinned. You could have known from the beginning that just bombing alone was not going to be sufficient. And this is what he continues to threaten of like, oh, we'll go back to bombing this and bombing that, et cetera. If that was going to work, they would have already done the thing that they needed to

do to make that work. It's not going to work. Can you inflict more damage and cause more pain and suffering and kill more civilians? Yes, you can do that. Is it going to work? No. You still haven't taken out their Air Force.

You still haven't taken out their Navy. You are not going to be able to accomplish this either with a ground invasion or with this blockade. And the Iranians claim that they used a lot of these decoys that they got from China. And I do think that there was some of that. So that as the US was hitting targets, some of what they thought they were destroying was actually just these Chinese-made decoys.

And then you couple that with the fact that, you know, Trump just lies. And also people lie to Trump about how effective things have been. And you end up in a situation where probably the president himself is somewhat delusional about the amount of damage that has been done.

Oh, almost certainly. Exactly. And, you know, let's even just look at what we destroyed versus what they destroyed in terms of how many munitions we expended, how unsafe now the United States actually is to some sort of peer competitive conflict. You know, I had two sources I spoke to, and I asked them very clearly, I go, did we hold back anything on Iran?

And they said, absent nukes, no. We did not. And obviously ground troops as well. Yeah, it goes without saying. But I said, did the United States military ever really hold back?

And they said, no. In the first three weeks of the war, we did everything we could do to collapse that regime and to defeat it militarily. Again, I challenge you to find another person, but outside of ground troops and nuclear weapons,

the answer was no, and that was a direct ask that I made here, really, because I was trying to assess the actual power of our military. You should be terrified by that, you really should. And also, I mean, let's take my own report out of that, and let's just look at it logically. It was in their interest to go all out because they needed to defeat them very rapidly

and it didn't work. So clearly, that's why we are where we are today with some fake JCPOA deal and blockade and all that. So you should really, really, people should be panicking about this. In the past, when you have a emperor has no clothes moment,

it really should lead, like, yeah, the Navy Secretary should be fired, but like for very different reasons. The Pentagon people should all be fired, the procurement folks, everybody in Congress, people should be walking around with their hair on fire. They go, oh my God, how are we ever gonna win a war in the future?

No, instead, you know, oh, we're gonna have more contracts for the same weapons systems. I mean, you've got, you know, the Gerald Ford, the aircraft carrier, it arrives in two days in the Middle East. What's the one that's damaged? I forget which one it is. Apparently that one, you know, it's gonna have to be retrofitted,

but it's staying in the area, potentially to have to support operations. We basically learn nothing from any of this. And in fact, we're actually erasing some of the casualties. Let's go to the next one. from the Intercept, they're saying that the Pentagon has now erased wounded U.S. troops from the Iran war casualty list, a quote, definition of a cover up. The government altered its tally of American casualties, inexplicably scrubbing some 15

wounded in action troops from the count, again, in a document that was provided to Congress. And then the last thing here.

Let me say one thing about this, because I think this is indicative of something, another important dynamic in this war, is like, OK, well, why are they scrubbing the casualties? Because they don't want people to really know the true cost in terms of service member lives and obviously those who have been wounded. And it points to the fact that the American public is not willing to take much pain over this at all. And this was a point that I was listening to Mearsheimer's latest interview with Glenn

Deeson. And he made a great point, which is, listen, if you accept the official narrative about the airmen who were downed and all of the extraordinary resources that we put in to retrieving this one airman. And we know we have the reporting about how Trump was freaking out and screaming at his aides for hours about this, to the point that he had to be removed from the room so they could actually focus and come up with a plan of what to do. That was for one guy.

And you think we have the stomach as a nation? We didn't want this war. The vast majority of the American public is like, let us get out of this. What are we thinking? This is a disaster.

We do not have the stomach to take anything approaching the type of pain and loss and suffering that it will take to create a different ending to this thing other than the ending we're at now, which is that we lost. That is the ending we're at now.

And everything between where we are now and when this thing actually wraps up, however it gets tied up in a bow or left with loose ends, it's all about when does Trump have to actually acknowledge the reality and put forward a deal that reflects the fact that we lost this war. That is the truth of the matter.

And it is possible that he can't bring himself to that place and we leave it sort of open-ended and then the Israelis pull us back in. That is certainly a possibility. Because, you know, for them, it is unacceptable. They see it as existential to allow things to remain the way that they are.

And so long as Iran keeps control of the Strait of Hormuz, yeah, there are other places in the world that will be hurt more, but the entire global economy, us included,

are really going to suffer over that. Here's some breaking news, literally, about what you're talking about. A quote from Donald Trump, I have ordered the United States Navy to shoot and kill any boat, small boats, though they may be. Their naval ships are all 159 at the bottom of the sea that is putting mines in the waters

of the Straits of Hormuz. There is to be no hesitation. Additionally, our mine sweepers are clearing the strait right now. I am hereby ordering that activity to continue at a tripled up level. Thank you for your attention to this matter, Donald Trump.

So look, the reason why that's so significant, and I'm almost certain this is a reaction to this story, which I was about to throw to, B5, let's put it up there on the screen, and let's make sure that we look at these both in context, is from the Washington Post, Dan Lamothe, an internal Pentagon assessment to Congress reports that clearing the Straits of Hormuz mines could take up to six months.

Now remember, originally, the Pentagon was telling people that they didn't even mine the Straits of Hormuz. And then Trump was like, no, they didn't mine it. And if they did, there were maybe eight, maybe 13 mines. Now they are going and telling Congress it would take six months to fully clear

the Straits of Hormuz of mine. And I mean, okay, let's do some basic math here. No resumption of the Straits of Hormuz traffic for six months, that's oil to 250, 300? I mean, let's go further. It may be that the price is fake

because it doesn't even really matter in terms of the amount of oil that's even getting out. That is a full-fledged disaster. And already, as we showed you all on Tuesday, this is already the worst energy crisis in global history. Six months of closure or even abnormal traffic through the Straits of Hormuz is, I mean,

energy catastrophe.

Yes, we will all drive, but gas will be $6 a gallon. Like it will just be, I'm just trying to think through the ramifications of all this in my head. It's insanity. I mean, Asia, Japan, they're, I mean, blackouts, like rationing, Australia, New Zealand, 12, $15 a liter or something crazy like that.

Africa, starvation and or blackouts. Bangladesh, Pakistan, all those places, nope. They will have nothing. The actual stockpiles, there's like a few more weeks, maybe a few more months left, depending on where you look at things,

but eventually, you know, the price is gonna catch up to reality. Six months of closure. I think, and this is the danger of what Trump just said, is a resumption of firing on Iranian boats would almost certainly lead to what? Like, because right now we haven't fired anything. There hasn't been a resumption of actual firing in the Straits of Hormuz.

Firing leads to horizontal explanation, more attacks, remember Iran fired on a few of those ships that were transiting through the Strait, maybe they'll fire at even more. So that just means more destruction, less oil that's moving through, and more global catastrophe. So if I put those two things together,

and why is he doing, he's panicking. And then even then, minesweeper moving through the Strait, I mean, they didn't get shot at? By the way, even in terms of our minesweepers, I think we only had three and they were all decommissioned like a month before the war, something like that.

So I'm told that there's some other technology that we could use, but the drone threat and all that makes it very difficult.

This is really scary stuff. The bottom line is this is an announcement of escalation. That's what this is. And what we've seen from this war up to this point is that the Iranians escalate in kind. They're able to do it and they're willing to do it. And right now, with the fact that they feel they were burned by both probably the Pakistanis and the Americans with this attempt to dial things back at the end of last week, where Rachi comes out and says, okay, the strait is open because of the ceasefire that was put in place in Lebanon.

And then Trump has to go out and humiliate them and say, well, we're keeping our blockade on, which is apparently, according to Jeremy's reporting, that is apparently violation of what the expectation was from the Iranian side. And so they feel burned not only by us, but also there have some serious questions about the Pakistani mediators and whether they're operating in good faith

and in an honest manner. And now you have this announcement of further escalation from the American side. of further escalation from the American side.

The Iranians are not likely to just sit back and take that.