Douglas Macgregor: US-Iran Diplomacy Fail (Transcript)

Their government is on a path to war with Iran.

How Would the War Be Fought?

GLENN DIESEN: Well, how do you think this war will be fought? Because you mentioned that a lot of these bombers have to fly a lot longer than what they usually would. But there are some reports of up to or more than 100 aerial refuelers to essentially assist in this, what appears to be a massive buildup of both naval power and air power.

So how do you think this can be fought? Because this won’t be a limited war. And I think the Iranians ruled out the possibility of just a limited strike as well. So how do you see this war? Well, I know you’re not part of the war planning on this one, but how do you think the war planning is being played out?

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: I don’t know the various options that are being presented to President Trump. Politicians, as you know, historically always want to be a little bit pregnant, but most politicians don’t want to bring the child to term. And by that I mean they’re looking for something short of what they fear most, which is all-out war. And so I’m sure he’s being presented with a couple of limited options, because politicians like to signal as opposed to do anything.

When we were moving towards the Kosovo air campaign back in 1998, the politicians in Brussels were floating ideas along the lines of, “Well, let’s have a demonstration strike to show the Serbs that we’re serious.” And of course, this was ridiculous. You’re going to fire cruise missiles at a target where there are no people, there’s no installation to speak of, and tell everybody to look at the target and then watch an explosion. And they believed that this might avoid a bombing campaign against the Serbs.

Of course, that eventually was thrown out, but they continued to try and tinker. And ultimately we miscalculated — I say “we,” I’m talking about Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe — on the numbers of aircraft and munitions that would be required. And so the air campaign, instead of being over within two weeks, lasted 78 days.

Iran vs. Kosovo: A Very Different Scale

I think you have a similar phenomenon here. You’re talking now not about 8 million people in Kosovo and Serbia. You’re talking about 90 to 93 million people inside Iran, which is the size of Western Europe. And the population centers are now actively covered by various air defense systems.

Now, will all these air defense systems work very well? I don’t know. I would assume that they will do better than they did the last time. But the challenge for us is, as I mentioned earlier, twofold.

First of all, you have to sustain yourself in a region where right now almost everyone is telling us to get out of their country. Stop and consider this for a minute. Jordan is allowing us to occupy bases in the western part of the country — two of them — and there are large numbers of aircraft sitting on the ground there. Otherwise, we are largely dependent upon air bases outside of the region. That’s a huge problem, because instead of just flying back and forth within relatively close proximity to Iran, which is what we did last time, this time, as you pointed out, we’re going hundreds of miles.

Well, to do that, you have to have almost an inexhaustible supply of air refuelers. And these have to rotate. You’ve got to have air refuelers on station, then you have to have air refuelers on their way, and air refuelers on their way back so that they could be replenished and so forth.

Logistical Nightmares: Airspace, Bases, and Overstretched Forces

Right now, it looks like we’re planning to operate in Iraqi airspace. Now, the Iraqis are not supporting us, and they’re violently opposed to any war with Iran. I don’t know what that means. Does that mean that we could face hostility from Iraq in that airspace? Are we constrained by it?

People have been talking about, “Well, you could have attacks from the north and attacks from the south.” Well, if you’re coming from the south, you’re flying almost a thousand miles to reach the targets that you’re trying to hit. That’s enormously difficult.

Just recently, within the last 24 hours, a friend who’s on the ground over there said, “We’re being forced to fall back on India as a place from which we could stage, refuel, rearm, and then fly back into action.” Or you’re forced into Africa. But even the African states like Egypt and Sudan are not supporting us in our war with Iran. Part of that is they never wanted to, to begin with.

But I think also we have to point out that the comments made by Ambassador Huckabee in his interview with Tucker Carlson have had a very negative impact. People that live in the region are looking at the Greater Israel Project as an existential threat to them.

The Navy’s Condition and the Tyranny of Distance

So you put all of this together, then you look at the fact that you’ve got a navy which is overstretched, overextended, and frankly worn out and exhausted. The Ford Battle Group was down in the Caribbean for more than six months. I think they’re looking at month nine, maybe ten at sea. That’s outrageous. That’s just unacceptable.

Now they’ve pulled into Suda Bay, which is in Crete, right off the coast of Greece, to deal with a lot of problems. Everybody’s heard about their waste disposal problem, let’s put it that way.

But then you have the problem of once your ships have fired their missiles, where are they going to go to load new missiles? Do you steam all the way down to Diego Garcia? You can’t use the Gulf. And historically that’s where we’ve reloaded. Do we go back to Italy, to Sicily, all the way to Naples? Do we go north into Greece? Probably into Greece, I suspect, to some extent.

All of these issues I don’t think were anticipated, and they’re now being aired and people are discussing how to deal with them.

Can We Actually Hit the Targets?

So while we have enough rockets and bombs and missiles on hand to destroy much of Iran — there’s no question about that — how do you get them onto target? How do you get there? How do you get close enough to drop your munitions, to launch your missiles, without putting yourself at risk?

We were drawing arcs and looked at the Shahab-2, which is a theater ballistic missile — a medium-range ballistic missile that the Iranians have developed. It’s hypersonic. They have large numbers of these. And even the airstrips or air bases in western Jordan are within range. So of course is Israel. And so of course are our ships in the Mediterranean.

We’ve got the advantage, I would argue, in air-to-air technology and surface-to-air technology in many ways. But we’re dealing with the tyranny of distance. And the only people that can fly in and fly out and deliver their munitions easily — provided they’re not shot down, but we don’t think they can be targeted effectively — are the B-2 bombers and the B-52s eventually. But they fly at what, 40,000 feet?

We’re not sure. We don’t think the Iranians can shoot them down, but we may discover we’re wrong, because we do see a lot of evidence that they can track them. If you can track something, as the Serbs demonstrated, you can shoot it down.

So the bottom line is we have a lot of questions for which there aren’t good answers. The Navy and the Air Force are working hard to deal with these issues and come up with solutions. But I think that’s why you’re beginning to hear rumblings in Washington from the military about its uncertainty as to the outcome of the air and missile campaign.

Poor Planning or Strategic Miscalculation?

GLENN DIESEN: To what extent is this just poor planning? Because it does seem like it’s expensive to keep all this military hardware and all these troops. And as you mentioned with the Gerald Ford, there’s a problem as well with basic waste — you have to return every now and then and do some maintenance.

But given that they have all these weapons in place at the same time as one is engaged in this prolonged diplomacy, and also without a clear strategy for war — that is, what are the war plans? Where do you refuel? Where do you stock up on more missiles? All these different issues — is this just poor planning? Because you would think that this would have been in place. Or was the US taken by surprise that Iran wouldn’t permit a limited war? Or how do you — well, is this not such a big deal?

The Witkoff Admission and Iran’s Existential Stakes

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Well, that’s a good question. And I think we received a partial answer to that quite by accident when Mr. Witkoff, who is one of the two plenipotentiaries that President Trump is sending around the world to negotiate deals for him — they haven’t been very successful, obviously, but nevertheless, he continues to use them — and he was asked about something similar to what you asked, and he said, “Well, we thought when they saw this enormous military buildup that they would capitulate.” That’s what he said.

So I think to some extent, you’re dealing with people who not only have an inflated picture of ourselves — in other words, of the American military, its effectiveness over time, its power projection capability — you have a group of people that don’t understand the world they live in. They don’t understand that for Iran, survival at this point against the US and Israel is an existential question. When you confront existential questions, you tend to fight to the bitter end.

Ulysses S. Grant, after his presidency was ended, he went on a world tour, so to say, and he stopped, interestingly enough, for some time in China and visited in Beijing. He did not speak with the emperor at the time, but he did talk — actually, it may have been an empress — but he did talk to the emperor’s principal representatives, chancellors and so forth, and they asked him, “General Grant, under what circumstances should we Chinese be prepared to go to war?”

And of course, at the time, China was living through this century of humiliation where the Europeans were marching back and forth over its territory, and there wasn’t a great deal they could do about it. And he said, “War is always a mistake short of national humiliation or strategic disaster.” In other words, you don’t fight unless your very existence is at stake.

Well, for Iran, that question is answered. Their existence is at stake. You do not surrender or capitulate to powers that are dedicated to your destruction. Now, we can go back and look at all this nonsense about “help is on the way, we’re coming,” and all the Iranians — millions of them — are going to jump up and down and say, “Please bomb us. Please destroy our country so we can be free.” Yeah, that’s all crap. And the numbers that have been peddled on the street about how many thousands of people were killed are nonsense. The way the entire thing is being characterized is nonsense.

But the point is, if you’re an Iranian right now, you have a choice. You can live on your knees as the subordinate, permanent subordinate or subject state of Greater Israel, or you can fight. They’re going to fight. And I don’t think Mr. Witkoff or President Trump or Mr. Kushner or any of the other people in his inner circle, like Mr. Lutnick, really understand what it means to Iran. They are not going to submit. There will be no halfway house between peace and war. If we attack them, they will be on a total war footing, and they fully expect to fight to the bitter end.

I don’t think we ever did understand that. We tended to impute to Iran the same sort of weaknesses that we see are very glaring and obvious in many Arab states. But the Iranians are not Arabs. The Turks are not Arabs. These are great powers. If you think they’re going to submit to you on the basis of threats that they understand are limited, and they understand what your limitations are, it’s not going to happen.

So at this point, I think we’re surprised. And in that sense, you’re correct. We did not prepare for the worst case.

Allied Participation: Britain, Europe, and the Limits of Coalition Support

GLENN DIESEN: Well, earlier on, you mentioned Huckabee, which is the US Ambassador to Israel, and how he gave this interview to Tucker Carlson where he outlined why Israel essentially should take half the Middle East — that it’s within its right. I think it’s reasonable to assume this has spooked many of America’s allies. But how do you see the different allies of the United States being willing to participate, either by joining in or allowing their territories to be used for launches or refueling or any of that sort? Because I guess everyone has an incentive to indicate they will have nothing to do with this. Even the British suggested that the US couldn’t use Diego Garcia. I’m not sure if they walked away from this since, but I assume they say it doesn’t cost anything to make these statements openly before an attack, but during an attack, these things might have changed. How do you see the possibility of the US working with its allies in such an attack?

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Well, as far as the British are concerned, I’m told that the RAF is sending their F-35s to participate and also sending refuelers. So it may be one of these cases with the British — which is not unusual — where they want to depict one image at home and a different image to us. I think you’ll find the SAS involved, MI6 will be involved, the Royal Air Force will be involved, and their refuelers will be part of it.

Now, the rest of the Europeans, probably not, and we shouldn’t be surprised by that. Now, some people will say, “Well, they’re cowards because they’re afraid of the large Muslim populations in their countries.” That may be true in some cases, but I think there’s another side to this, and that is that however much the Europeans dislike the Muslims that are living inside their countries and would like to see them go home, they don’t support mass murder. In other words, they don’t support what’s happened in Gaza or the way the Israelis are treating the Palestinians, period. That has an impact.

And everything that we’re seeing happen today has to be traced back to Gaza. Iran sees itself as obligated as a Muslim country to demonstrate solidarity with the people of Palestine. And increasingly the rest of the Arab world follows suit.

So I guess the answer to your question is that other than the British, I would not expect very much help or assistance, at least not overt. There may be other things that allies are willing to do. And there is always discussion in the intelligence community. I would imagine that if intelligence is discovered about some potential weapon system we don’t know about, or some intention on the part of the Iranians, that the intelligence services will share that information. I’d be very surprised if that didn’t happen.

Possible Surprises: New Weapons, Chinese Technology, and the Unknown

GLENN DIESEN: Well, on the possible new weapon systems — that was actually one of my questions as well. What could be the mutual surprises here? Because both the United States and Iran might have some surprise for each other. I assume that perhaps the US and Israel — well, it wouldn’t be a surprise if they have infiltrated Iran and have some targets, or could bring in fighters. But Iran as well — what kind of surprises can it bring in? New weapons, intelligence from other external actors? Because the weapons technologies themselves seem to have been undergoing a bit of a revolution over the past few years. And it doesn’t seem likely we’re going to see the same war as we saw back in June.

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Yeah, I think we have to look at several categories. One of course is the theater ballistic missile category. The Iranians delivered five or six hundred missiles over the last few weeks to the Chinese. We don’t know the absolute mix — in other words, we don’t know how many are the medium-range ballistic missiles that are hypersonic versus other kinds of missiles. But we do know that most of the high-end missiles that the Iranians have access to — out of, let’s say, 2,000, they probably represent close to 800 or 900. These are going to be targets obviously for us early on. We’d like to destroy all of that before the Iranians get a chance to use it.

But the Shahab family of missiles and others — they are hypersonic. They can reach out at 1,200, 1,300, 1,400 miles or more. We don’t know if they can go further. The ranges can be changed by altering the weights of warheads and the nature of fuel consumption in the missile. But we should expect that within a thousand-mile radius, they can hit most anything they want with great precision. And it’s hypersonic, which means we can’t shoot it down.

Now there are some new missiles the Chinese have provided that are designed to sink ships at sea. Their range is shorter — less than 200 miles would be the maximum range. So again, you’re back to what we were discussing before. If you’re at sea, you are obliged to move further and further away to avoid being struck by any of these missiles, because you may not be able to protect yourselves. Remember, the ships that are around the carrier really exist to protect the carrier. So they’re the ones with the air defense missiles that are designed to destroy whatever is incoming. How many missiles do they have? I would hesitate to say, but I would say that what they have could be exhausted very quickly. Then you have to go back to port to reload.

Now, back to the Chinese aspect of this. The Chinese are being given credit for putting on the ground a new radar that can actually look out to 700 kilometers or more — so you’re looking at 450 miles, something like that, maybe 500. I don’t know how many of these radars they have, I don’t know exactly where they will be positioned, but conceivably, when you look at the probable routes of attack that will be used by air power and missiles, they’ll be able to focus on those more likely attack routes.

Now, when can they actually target something, even though they may have acquired it? When is it targetable? In other words, when can you acquire it as a target and link it to a missile? I don’t know. I don’t think any of us do know right now. What’s the degree of granularity of the radar performance? In other words, how much can we learn from this radar picture that’s 400 or 500 miles out there? I don’t know.

I think a lot of people are saying, “Oh well, our goose is cooked. Now the Chinese have missiles that can race out there and put down our aircraft before they ever get within range to launch their munitions.” Remember, one of the things we did the last time — and I’m sure we want to do it this time — is we want to fly up to the edge of the air defense zone and then launch Joint Attack Munitions — in other words, missiles that are designed to destroy integrated air defenses, radars, and anti-missile missiles. I’m sure we’ll try to do that.

But what this suggests, with this new radar capability and new missiles from China, is that they may not get close enough to release their weapons — that they could actually be shot down if they get that close. This is all speculative, Glenn. None of this that we’re dealing with on the Chinese side has been tested in combat. We just don’t know. So whatever the claim is, it may or may not be accurate. We’re going to get an education. If this stuff is as lethal as advertised and can reach out as far as it does, we’re going to get an education. There’s no doubt about it.

Possible Outcomes: Losses, Spin, and the Inevitability of Attack

One thing we can say with certainty is we are going to lose people. Now, someone said, “How many losses can we take?” I don’t know. Somebody said, “Well, we can take 10,000 casualties.” That seems a bit extreme to me. I’d be surprised if we would tolerate that and keep on fighting.

There are several possible outcomes. One is we don’t lose that many people, but we have little or no impact on Iran. What do we do at that point? Can President Trump spin this as some sort of victory? Not without a submission by Iran.

Then the next possible outcome is that we’re very successful — we destroy much of the integrated air defense — but we’re still watching missiles land on Israel in great numbers, doing irreparable damage and killing people. How do you spin that as a success story? I don’t know.

And then there’s the one that I think is most likely, which is we take losses, Israel takes losses, the Iranians take losses, but we get the worst of it, and the Israelis get by far the worst of it. That’s a distinct possibility. And I think that’s why you’re hearing in Washington now all these things like, “Perhaps we need to look at a different approach. Maybe we should reconsider.”

The problem is, how can Trump reconsider anything? He’s threatened Iran consistently, and he has put down this marker. The Israelis want the ballistic missile arsenal trimmed and constrained. The Israelis want no interaction between Iran and its allies in the region. Those things aren’t going to happen.

So the only thing that President Trump has said consistently is that they can’t have a nuclear weapon — which is fine, because the Iranians have said they don’t want one. But then he says no enrichment. We went from no enrichment to maybe 60%. Well, we’re back to the Joint Comprehensive Program that was developed under President Obama. How can President Trump go backward and readopt something that in his first term he threw away? I don’t think it’s possible.

So the bad news here is we’re going to have an attack. We’re going to strike Iran. And those possibilities that I outlined are all valid — they could all happen that way. And I don’t have a definitive answer for you.

Iran’s Response and the Risk of Escalation

GLENN DIESEN: Well, you’re saying that the decision to go to war has been made, most likely, and that Iran, for good reasons, considers this to be an existential threat. I very much agree. I don’t think there’s any regime change — I think it would be the Balkanization and destruction of Iran. But how do you expect Iran to respond then? Because the last war was primarily a war between Iran and Israel before the United States joined in, which was a very different sort of threat for the Iranians. The US is a very different fighting force, is much greater, and its objective seems to be not simply to degrade, but could be the complete destruction of Iran as a nation. So how do you expect Iran to respond to this?

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Again, I think that whatever we do, it doesn’t matter what kind of attack we launch. Iran will go to total war, and it will remain on a total war footing until we give up and go away, we are destroyed, or they can’t fight anymore. Now, the advantage the Iranians have is that they’re on land, they can resupply quickly, they can continue to manufacture, so they can build more missiles, more weapons.

There’s also another thing that we have to take into consideration: at what point do the Russians and the Chinese decide enough is enough? Now the Russians, I think, are taking a back seat to the Chinese in Iran right now. I think that’s because the Chinese had said, “You’ve got to finish up the war in Ukraine — we’ll take the lead in supporting and assisting Iran.” I think that private discussion has occurred.

So what will the Chinese do? Well, their greatest concern, of course, is to first of all keep Iran intact. They don’t want it to be fragmented, divided, and destroyed and occupied by the Israelis, our surrogates, or lose control of their oil fields to the Israelis and us. That’s the last thing they want. They don’t want the Straits of Hormuz to be blocked. So they have a small flotilla of destroyers in the Indian Ocean. They have put submarines to sea. I don’t know where they are, but they do have some submarines at sea. So do the Russians.

I think they’ll have to take stock of where things are. The ideal outcome for the Russians and the Chinese is that they have given Iran enough support that Iran can withstand us and survive the attacks without direct intervention. But if that’s not possible, it is not impossible that you could see Chinese pilots in Iranian aircraft flying the most modern aircraft, just as we have pilots, apparently, along with the Dutch and some other NATO nations who are voluntarily flying F-16s for the Ukrainians. So we could see that happen with the Chinese, potentially with the Russians. But again, I think the Chinese will take the lead here.

The Risk of Desperate Measures — Including Nuclear

GLENN DIESEN: Well, this is a problem. When you have a war between such large and strategically important countries, you don’t really want to see either one decisively win, because then you can see some very desperate actions being taken. So, of course, if Iran seems to be losing, you might see some very desperate acts from Russia and China to rescue the situation. But if the United States struggles and essentially exhausts itself, and the Iranians consider dealing what could be a knockout blow against the Israelis, or just us taking intolerable casualties — you mentioned 10,000 deaths, something along these lines — what does a desperate United States do, because it can’t be defeated by Iran either? Do you think there’s any opening that the US could move to nuclear weapons, or is that one bridge too far?

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Well, remember, we also have a problem with our financial system. We’re broke. The fiat currency system is at high risk of imploding. The fiat currency that we utilize isn’t backed by anything except we say the faith and confidence in the American government and its armed forces and its economy. Well, the economy isn’t doing all that well, contrary to what our president said last night.

And if you take that into consideration, the real question is, if this doesn’t work well, do you cut your losses and go home? Do you do that? If you do that, do you admit defeat? Do you ask for Russian mediation with Iran to bring an end to the conflict? That’s possible, but that’s rational. We Americans are not terribly rational. We’re very emotional. And I think that President Trump is in a position where, if he has to admit defeat in any way, shape, or form, that’s not going to be well received at home.

And remember, most Americans oppose this war. The latest polls say 70, 75% opposed, maybe higher. So what are they going to say if we, quote unquote, are seen as losing? Well, “We shouldn’t have gone there to begin with. What are we doing there?” You could see everything collapse.

But you’re going to get the war because of what you saw during the State of the Union last night, which is the entire Congress — Democrats and Republicans on both sides — standing up and saying, “God bless Israel.” That’s effectively what they said. And, “We’re going to support war with Iran.”

Why are Americans not in the streets? Why are they not objecting? Well, it’s a long way away. And most Americans are assuming that, well, Iran’s like any other state in the Middle East — they’re not that strong, they’re weak, we can bomb them into submission. You have some Americans that have swallowed all of the propaganda about evil Iran and the medieval society and all this kind of business. There are not that many of them paying that much attention, but most are just dismissing it out of hand. So if things go badly, they’ll be very surprised — extremely surprised.

And here’s one other factor to keep in mind, and this is something that you were implying, and you’re right, Glenn: we will be embarrassed on the world stage. Right now, most people in Europe, most people in Asia, almost everywhere you go, think that the United States armed forces are invincible and invulnerable. If it turns out we’re not invincible and we’re not invulnerable, will this encourage others to take positions opposed to us? I’d say yes.

And we’re not just talking in the Eastern Hemisphere. What will be the impact in the Western Hemisphere? If you Americans right now are watching from a distance what’s going on in Mexico, it’s horrific. Mexico is a large organized crime state governed and run by drug and human trafficking cartels. They’re extremely well armed. Everybody points to Venezuela, but frankly, Venezuela shrinks to insignificance next to Mexico.

A lot of Americans are very concerned about that because we have not stopped the flow of drugs — we have reduced it. We have not stopped the human trafficking — we have reduced it. And the gangs and the cartels are extremely well armed and they are in close contact with our potential opponents. So there are all sorts of bad possibilities that result.

But no one sat down in Washington — in this administration or on the Hill — and said, “What do we stand to lose?” They’re looking at what can we gain from this. They never look at what they might lose from it. And we could lose a lot and get very little for our investment if we’re not careful.

And this goes all the way back to something else we discussed. Most Europeans need to understand this: we are not a land power anywhere, but in the Western Hemisphere we are primarily a maritime and aerospace power. And maritime and aerospace power has a limited dwell time. They come in, they stay for a while, and then they leave. They do not make a permanent, strategically irreversible impact. That can only be done by large numbers of ground forces. We don’t have them to send. It’s not a question of should we or could we — we can’t. Our army has been reduced to a fraction of its former self. It’s a shadow of what we had in 1991.

So how much can you realistically achieve with bombs and missiles falling on people? I mean, we should have learned this from the Second World War. We bombed the living daylights out of Germany, killed hundreds of thousands — over a million civilians in these cities — firebombing and destroying things. It did not change much. It took armies to go in and finally suppress and occupy Germany. So that’s not going to happen.

And I don’t know that anybody has sat down and thought this through, because remember, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs are both airmen. The senior advisor to the President is an airman, and I’m sure he’s a very intelligent and thoughtful man, at least I hope so. But the air power community very rarely misses the opportunity to bomb, on the grounds that they’re trying to demonstrate that’s all you need. It’s never been all we needed, and I don’t think it will be now.

Mexico and the Closing Remarks

GLENN DIESEN: Yeah, I guess this is why the war is so dangerous now. One can see all the pitfalls and all the disaster that could happen, and nonetheless there’s no off ramp to get away from this. I would have loved to ask you also about Mexico, because I don’t understand why Mexico isn’t trying to accommodate greater U.S. cooperation, because they seem to be losing control. But we are out of time, so perhaps we can cover this next time.

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Just remember — Mexico, the government is a facade. The president is irrelevant. She controls 40 square kilometers of Mexico City. The rest of the country is in the hands of organized crime and the drug cartels. That’s the truth. So when you speak about the Mexican government, there’s very little the government can do. The army is the most powerful institution, and the army is also involved in the organized crime.

So when you see something break out between the army and a cartel, which is what we saw recently, that tends to be the result of a struggle for power and money and people. It’s not evidence of the government’s control of anything. And by the way, if you listen to the press conference where Mrs. Sheinbaum spoke, along with the Minister of Defense and the Attorney General, they said, “It’s over, we’re back to normal now. There will be no more fighting like this.” And actually speaking, they’ve gone back to normal. But normal is organized criminality.

It’s not a country or a nation state in the sense that Europeans think of it. So when you look at the tourist areas — and they’re very concerned about that right now because cruise ships and airlines are turning around and not going into Mexico — the cartels will be very interested in restoring some measure of calm in the tourist areas to keep that money flowing into Mexico. But it’s not the Mexican state.

GLENN DIESEN: Fascinating. It’s a different part of the world. Anyways, thank you very much for letting me pick your brain. And let’s hope there won’t be a war. But thanks again.

DOUGLAS MACGREGOR: Right. Bye bye.

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