US Iran Failure Accidentally EXPOSED by Pete Hegseth
Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté
Useful Idiots, LLC
4.5 • 4.6K Ratings
🗓️ 20 March 2026
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Click here for the full interviews with journalist Hala Jaber and Professor Sami al Arian: https://open.substack.com/pub/usefulidiots/p/full-episode-us-iran-failure-accidentally?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
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“It’s a psyop!” says Professor Sami al Arian, responding to the blustering and bloodthirsty address Pete Hegseth gave this week.
In the speech, Hegseth claims that US “capabilities continue to build. Iran’s continue to degrade. We’re hunting and striking death and destruction from above. Iran’s air defenses [are] flattened. Iran’s defense industrial base, the factories, the production lines that feed their missile and drone programs [are] being overwhelmingly destroyed.”
For good measure of ridiculous sadism, Hegseth quotes a World War II admiral to flaunt the murder of Iranians: “And to borrow a page from Admiral Ernest King in World War II, we’ve decided to share the ocean with Iran. We’ve given them the bottom half.”
But, Professor al Arian claims, this is bluster. This is a psyop against the American people.
“What he’s trying to do is to psyche the people and tell them that we’re winning and that the other side is totally decimated and obliterated and defeated. But the fact of the matter is that Iran is still shooting. Iran is having a war of attrition.
Whatever he’s blustering, whatever he’s saying, it’s total exaggeration as I see it.
First of all, you cannot defeat your opponent or change the regime from the air. The Taliban didn’t have a single air [defense]. And who won at the end? Who was fleeing and leaving in a hurry? Hamas didn’t have any air. And two years, they couldn’t pacify Hamas over Gaza, which was 360 square kilometers.
Iran is a vast country. Iran is 1.65 million square kilometers. We’re talking about an area greater than Western Europe. So whatever is hitting is hitting, obviously. But Iran is not going to surrender. It’s not going to submit to whatever dictates he may have.”
Subscribe for the full interview with Professor Sami al Arian in which he predicts how Iran’s regional allies like the Houthis in Yemen will affect the war, why Iran is striking other Arab nations, and whether the US actually gets any material benefit from helping Israel in their hunt for dominance over the Middle East.
We also speak with Lebanese journalist Hala Jaber, who joins us from Beirut as Israel expands its assault on Lebanon. She reports on Israel’s continued targeting of journalists, including this week’s “deliberate” airstrike on journalist Steve Sweeney, caught on video in Southern Lebanon, the surprising and stifling control the US has over the Lebanese government, and Hezbollah’s role in the fight against Israel and the broader Iran War.
00:00 Intro
00:53 Hegseth wants $200 BILLION for Iran War
03:34 Resigned Counterterrorism Dir. Called ANTISEMITIC for Opposing Israel
05:52 Jake Tapper is so mad about it
06:32 Hala Jaber interview from Beirut
16:24 Israelis Caught on Film Trying to Kill Journalist
36:48 Professor Sami al Arian interview on Iran
41:59 Debunking Hegseth: Iran isn't losing
49:42 How will the HOUTHIS change the course of the war?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Useful Idiots. I'm Katie Halper. |
| 0:07.0 | I'm Erin Matte. Thank you so much for being here. Our website is Useful Idiots Podcast.com. |
| 0:12.0 | Go there to support the show and get bonus content. This week, we will check in on the latest in the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, and it's spillover across West Asia, |
| 0:23.3 | including into Lebanon. We'll be speaking with two different guests, Hala Jaber, who is based in |
| 0:29.1 | Lebanon, a veteran journalist covering West Asia, and Sami Al-Aryan, who is an academic based in Turkey, |
| 0:37.1 | two very informed voices. |
| 0:39.4 | But first, we do a weekly recap segment called the Friday Free For All. |
| 0:43.8 | It's for our paid subscribers. |
| 0:45.7 | If you're a free subscriber, here's a preview. |
| 0:53.2 | Now, if you watched New Solidates Monday morning just a few days ago, you would have |
| 0:56.6 | seen Trump's top economics advisor, Kevin Hesitt, say this. |
| 1:01.9 | Do you need to ask Congress for more money to pay for what you're doing? |
| 1:05.5 | I think right now we've got what we need. |
| 1:08.2 | Whether we have to go back to Congress for more is something that I think that Russ Vote and OMB will look into. But the latest number, you said 11.3, the latest number I was briefed on was 12, and so it's consistent. So this is something that we've got the weapons that we've already got in place to do this. And so we're not necessarily going to need any kind of supplemental. So we're good. You know, we've already spent $12 billion on this unprovoked war against Iran, |
| 1:31.7 | but we're good. We probably don't need to go back to Congress to ask for more money. |
| 1:35.9 | Yeah, all good. All good. |
| 1:37.9 | Three days later, oops. We actually need $200 billion. Here is Defense Secretary or Secretary of War, Pete Hegesa. |
| 1:45.0 | $200 billion. |
| 1:46.0 | I think that number could move, obviously. |
| 1:49.0 | It takes money to kill bad guys. |
| 1:52.0 | So we're going back to Congress and folks there to ensure that we're properly funded for what's been done, |
| 1:58.0 | for what we may have to do in the future, ensure that our ammunition is, everything's refilled and not just refilled, but above and beyond. I mean, President Trump, as he said, rebuilt the military in his first term, didn't think he'd use it as dynamically in his second, but he had. So thank goodness he did that. And an investment like this is meant to say, hey, we'll replace anything that was spent. And now that we're reviving our defense industrial base and rebuilding the arsenal of freedom and cutting deals like our great deputy secretaries here is doing, long lead times on exquisite munitions, we're going to be refilled faster than anyone imagine. So exquisite. And yeah, it's so expensive to kill bad guys that we need. Sorry, US taxpayers. We need another, just another $200 billion, which, by the way, |
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