Inside Iran's Covert Operations | Jon Hackett | Ep. 368

In this conversation, Jonathan Hackett shares his extensive experience in the Marine Corps, focusing on his transition from signals intelligence (SIGINT) to human intelligence (HUMINT) and his operations in Iraq. He discusses the complexities of Iran's intelligence landscape, including the roles of the IRGC and Vaja, and the impact of economic sanctions on the Iranian regime. Hackett also delves into the targets of Iranian intelligence operations, the concept of sacred talismans in Iranian politics, and the ongoing threat of assassination attempts against dissidents. The conversation highlights the intricate dynamics of intelligence work and the challenges faced by operatives in the field. In this conversation, Jonathan W. Hackett discusses various aspects of Iran's covert operations, intelligence collection, and military strategies. He delves into the evolution of Iran's cyber capabilities, the impact of sanctions, and the complexities of their unconventional warfare. The discussion also covers the Iran Experts Initiative, the dynamics of coalition operations against ISIS, and the implications of cyber operations on U. S. intelligence. Hackett emphasizes the importance of understanding Iran's historical context and regional influence, as well as the challenges in assessing threats posed by proxy groups on U. S. soil. Grab Jonathan's new book here! https://www.amazon.com/Irans-Shadow-Weapons-Intelligence-Unconventional/dp/1476696934 Today's Sponsors: GhostBed⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/house FOR 10% off! PIA VPN ⬇️ https://piavpn.com/TeamHouse For 83% off plus 4 months free! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics... JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouse To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video -early access to shows -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Support the show here:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse ___________________________________________________ Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured __________________________________ Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/ —————————————————————— Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️ https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouse Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample "Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio" 00:00 Jonathan Hackett's Marine Corps Journey 02:57 Counterintelligence Operations in Iraq 05:52 Transitioning from SIGINT to Human Intelligence 09:06 Insights on Iran's Intelligence Landscape 12:07 The Role of the IRGC and Vaja 17:48 The Impact of Sanctions on Iran 20:59 Iran's Intelligence Targets and Operations 35:09 Iran's Ethnic Tensions and Separatist Movements 39:43 The Role of Diplomatic Cover in Intelligence 46:00 Assassination Attempts and Targeted Operations 53:18 Iran's Covert Influence Operations 55:53 The Evolution of Iran's Cyber Capabilities 01:08:03 Circumventing Sanctions: Iran's Financial Strategies 01:17:58 Coalitions Against ISIS: A Complex Relationship 01:22:01 The Fallout of Exposed Intelligence Programs 01:26:39 Iran's Support in the Bosnian Civil War 01:29:03 Hezbollah's Presence and Operations in the U. S. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:30Speaker 04

  The Team House with your hosts, Jack Murphy and David Park.

• 1:42Speaker 05

  Hey everybody, welcome to episode 368. I am Dave. Here with me tonight is Dee, our fearless producer and sometimes host, and the host of Eyes On. Our guest tonight, again, is Jonathan Hackett. If you didn't see his first episode, it was 3:51. Tonight, we're going to talk a little bit more about his Marine Corps background, and we're also going to talk about his book, which I have right here. Phenomenal book, Iran's Shadow Weapons.

• 2:13Speaker 05

  I'm used to being able to just hold it up and the camera's there. Iran's Shadow Weapons. So, welcome back, Jonathan. We really appreciate it.

• 2:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, thanks for having me. It's great to see you guys, not in the studio this time, but still good to see you.

• 2:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, we're having some technical issues at the studio, so we're doing this old school.

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• 4:30Speaker 05

  Um, so Jonathan, can you, uh, give us kind of a brief summary of your Marine Corps history? And then there are a couple of things that we'd like to talk about that we didn't get an opportunity to last time before we get into the book.

• 4:44Speaker 06

  Sure. I'll just give you guys wave tops. So I was in the Marine Corps for twenty years. I started out doing signals intelligence, which is collecting on foreign signals, you know, communications and things like that. Went into cryptography, which is a little bit of a more niche area of sigint, uh, moved over to the National Security Agency headquarters in Fort Meade. I worked there for a couple of years on some special projects, kind of like tailored access operations and things for very specific outcomes.

• 5:11Speaker 06

  After that, I realized I was kind of getting too deep into the skiff, sometimes a skiff within a skiff and I, I needed to get outside. And so I moved into the counterintelligence, human intelligence world and went to training for that in Danneck, Virginia. And went over immediately to Afghanistan after that for over a year, um, doing human first. And then as the mission changed, we moved into C I a lot more. And then came back and I went right over to Marsoc twenty thirteen. And I was there for five years because we're only allowed to stay for five years. Um, so I stayed for it was four months or four years, eleven months. And I think it was like twenty nine days that I was there, um, and then had to go. So I went over to D I A. And I did three years there at the U S Embassy in Jordan, Amman, Jordan,

• 5:57Speaker 06

  where I worked on not only Jordan issues in the overt capacity, but we also worked on a lot of other clandestine things going on around the region. Most importantly was Syria because Syria doesn't have a U S Embassy in it. So there are a lot of the Syria activities we had to handle from Jordan and from Turkey also in some other places. So I had some, uh, things to do with that. And then after that ended, I went to go be an instructor in Danneck. Teaching the Marine Corps how to do special activities on the counterintelligence, human intelligence side. All the way up from, starting from like very basic, you know, debriefing things through interrogations, through source handling, through surveillance detection routes. All the way up to principal agent operations where the students do run full phase denied area activities and get certified on that and become counterintelligence, human intelligence specialists.

• 6:41Speaker 06

  For the Marine Corps and then I retired. And just started up as an unemployed student at Yale Law School now. Where I'm just getting inundated with stuff to read. So I took a little break to come talk to you guys.

• 6:54Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, I can tell you read a lot because about a fifth of your book is, is references. It's amazing. Yeah.

• 7:03Speaker 06

  That's something left behind from like the human side where you have to source everything. You should never claim anything without something backing it up because your opinion is kind of worthless without something backing it up. And as you saw, probably there's like multiple citations on each piece, you know, kind of converging to show like, hey, this isn't my opinion. This is what's actually happening.

• 7:21Speaker 05

  Right, right. Um, so can you tell us some of the things that we didn't get a chance to get to about your career? Uh, while you're in there, there was a strike. There were a couple of things that, you know, we didn't have an opportunity.

• 7:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, we talked a lot about my kind of background and then just a little bit about Marsoc, but uh, there were some parts we didn't get to, especially the Iraq deployment 2016 when ISIS was really entrenched and the US and coalition partners were about to retake Western Iraq from ISIS. This is after all the massacres going on, all that stuff. And I was on a special operations task force, uh, 81. Out there and our job was to do in part. Work with the tribes in Syria, Eastern Syria and the Kurds in Northeast Syria and other groups in Western Iraq. To start building this kind of ring around Mosul, which was the heart of ISIS or Daesh in Western Iraq and actually Iraq generally. And we were doing that because the plan was for the counterterrorism forces, which was the Kurdish and Iraqi forces.

• 8:19Speaker 06

  They would come in later and actually retake Mosul with conventional strike operation, gigantic operation. I mean, it was the 82nd Airborne came in there. It was a huge thing. That was after we left. So my mission there was to prepare the environment. By doing airstrikes or controlling airstrikes, running really intense human source network I had. For example, I had one principal agent. A principal agent is basically a source that works for you. That has a sub-source network under him doing things for you. So basically. There's a level of separation between you and the actual people doing the thing, and that's for safety reasons. That's also to protect the operational security of the mission and things. And we had a very intense network like that throughout Western Iraq, and one of my principal agents had fifty-two.

• 9:00Speaker 06

  Sub-sources working for me, which is a lot to keep track of, especially during combat operations. Lot of validation going on to make sure that what what those people were saying was true and all that. And at the same time, that particular task force that I was on hadn't done any human triggered strikes yet, and a human triggered strike is when. Basically, you have a human being sitting across the street. This is typically how it works. Watching a building saying, hey, that building has got one bad guy in it or eighty bad guys in it. These are their names. We go and monitor that facility for up to eight hours because that's the requirement at the time that we had to have eight hours of what he calls soak. On the target before we could strike it to make sure women and children don't come in or out, so that we understand the risk profile of the strike. And I'd have one of my sub-sources sitting across the street.

• 9:46Speaker 06

  And he'd be giving me information. I'd be passing information along. I would get B fifty-two's or F eighteen's up in the sky. And whenever the moment was right, I'd be the one coordinating that bomb hitting that building. And I would hear it right through the phone because my source would be watching it happen. And the interesting thing is to to make sure the asset validation was going correctly, we would never tell them that we were planning to strike. We always had to kind of string them along so they weren't quite sure what was about to happen or when was it going to happen. You've got kind of an idea, especially after they see their first one, like. They know this will probably happen, but they're always shocked and surprised the moment that bombs drop. On the building and the one that stands out to me was Abu Omar Al Shashani, who was the equivalent of like the Minister of Defense for ISIS, all of ISIS.

• 10:30Speaker 06

  And we have been tracking some lower level guys, especially my source network. I've been monitoring some like finance guys and some other things. We were. Doing some smaller strikes, you know, killing twenty people, thirty people at a time. And we got this new piece of technology called Gorgon Stare. Gorgon Stare is like a, it's a series of pieces of equipment that are able to monitor almost everything happening based on a single target. And what I mean by that is, let's say you have a funeral for one of the bad guys we killed. Well, ISIS, the way they do their funerals, especially during Ramadan, they don't bring the women and children. It's only the fighters, you know, like the guys that were there that knew him. So what you can do is start tracking all those individuals at that funeral. When they go home, you can turn Gorgon Stare on and it will monitor each of those individuals, where they're going on a heat map.

• 11:15Speaker 06

  And you can basically see these like little legs coming out and it will continue monitoring all of them, building this gigantic pattern of life. Well, that's a new stack of targets to start looking at. And we really started maximizing the use of that. And as we did that, we started getting way more careful about which targets we picked. There were a lot of targets at the time. There was something like thirty thousand ISIS fighters active, like with weapons strapped to their bodies at any time at that time. So we really could have hit, you know, you could have throw a rocket and hit an ISIS guy across the forward line of troops. They were everywhere. But we don't want to waste time and resources and mission momentum by just striking whoever. So what I started to do was trace particular activities. One in particular was when we hit a certain building, the way that people reacted to that strike started to tell me something.

• 12:01Speaker 06

  And there was one strike in particular, we blew the building up, killed like forty guys. And instead of coming to recover bodies, we saw them clear everybody out from the street away from the building and they started sending guys in with plastic garbage bags, black garbage bags. And coming out with them over their shoulder like Santa Claus, carrying out whatever was very heavy. And we figured out that that was actually gold. Because we had struck a bank. And then they took a lot of that gold to another place that was very important to them. And we began tracking that place. It was a lot of these like thing after thing with the domino effect of them kind of revealing to us based on a very early instigation toward them that sets off all these patterns that we can follow. And I'm leaving out a lot of details, obviously, to protect Sure. operational security, but this is kind of the gist of it.

• 12:46Speaker 06

  And it turns out that one night in Ramadan, one of my sub-sources told me that, hey, there's an IED factory in this place. And, you know, back during the Iraq war, like the early years, you think IED factory, it's like a couple of guys with some cans and, you know, some explosives. This was like a industrial factory. I mean, it was actually a factory converted, like it had conveyor belts and everything, converted to produce IEDs on a industrial scale. It was insane. And I was able to figure out who ran that facility and there were some other buildings around there. And the way that they had set up the security around this place, there was only one way out. I was actually able to get a B-52 from Syria to fly into Iraq and blow this place up. And there was something like 3,000 rocket tails that we were able to count from the footage afterward. I mean, this thing was insane. And the way it blew up, I mean, you could hear it for miles around.

• 13:31Speaker 06

  People thought that it was our strike that made the explosion. It was just, it was not. It was the explosives in the building that cooked off after the smaller, relatively smaller bombs. But then the guys exited that one way out and we followed that. And come to find out, they went over to go notify Abu Omar Al Shashani's deputy that we had been kind of moving up the food chain because he doesn't use a cellphone. It was very important. The smart guys don't use a cellphone. But we still could get him anyway. And there was another night during Ramadan, like three days later, we'd been watching this location that we thought it was actually Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's summer house, which was where this other gentleman was at, Abu Omar, who's Chechen, by the way, Al Shashani.

• 14:12Speaker 06

  And we were able to start monitoring the location and we counted 86 guys going in there throughout the evening and none of them coming out. And my, one of my sub-sources contacts me through my principal agent and lets me know that this is in fact one of those meetings. And it wasn't in just one building. It was like multiple compounds around. And as we're, we're going through the eight hours required soak of the target, the sub-source is reporting to me on who's in which building. So I've got multiple high-level names of who's in what building. And then eventually able to get aircraft up there. And then the one-star general in charge of authorizing these strikes had to wake up a bunch of other generals that sit around a table basically and make, make decisions. Because the building that Shashani was in was a religious building.

• 14:56Speaker 06

  And in order to strike one of these buildings, we have to get a certain level of concurrence that's different than even striking a house, which also requires its own concurrence. And it's called a category one removal, which means there's this list called category one targets that we're not allowed to touch. And we have to get the target removed off category one to be able to strike it. And so it was something like four o'clock or three o'clock in the morning. We were able to finally get approval from four or five generals that had to all give their cut on it. And There were other wrinkles in this. For example, there was a US person in one of these buildings who was a legal permanent resident in the United States, but he was a naturalized US person, which required even higher level approval to continue moving forward the strikes. There's a lot of risk analysis going on, but also

• 15:38Speaker 06

  the optics were being analyzed throughout this strike process. And I was under a lot of pressure because we knew that those guys would vacate around 6:00 AM as soon as the sun came up because they were there for Sahur dinner, which is the meal you eat during Ramadan to break, right before you break your fast in the morning. It's that smaller meal right before iftar. And minutes were ticking away. It was almost, it was almost sunrise and I'm getting worried, you know, and finally we get the go ahead. And we blew it up and turned out it was 87 guys in there dead and one of them was Shashani.

• 16:12Speaker 05

  It's amazing. How did you guys verify that? I mean, cause you can't like send in a team to do BDA, right?

• 16:18Speaker 06

  Yeah. So at the time there were actually civilian hospitals and there were ISIS hospitals. These ISIS hospitals were for ISIS fighters only. They had like their own separation between, you know, they didn't want their fighters being exposed to the regular people. And then we had sources inside of all these hospitals. And I had two particular sources that were very good that were in one of the hospitals that they usually took the higher level guys to. And every time a body bag went in, that person was there verifying with everybody and letting me know. And the thing is they don't know who I'm looking for. I'm only asking them for the names of every single person that comes in there and nobody on the ground knew what targets we were after at any time. And we never gave them feedback like, oh yeah, we did kill that guy. You know, Jim Bob, we don't do that because we don't want it to muddy up the process. Right?

• 17:02Speaker 06

  And so sure enough, next morning we got confirmation from that person that it in fact was him.

• 17:09Speaker 05

  It's amazing. Um, any other like kind of big stories from that part of your career that you want to talk about that we didn't get a chance to touch on?

• 17:20Speaker 06

  Hmm. Nothing like that. That's that's such a longer thing, really.

• 17:24Speaker 05

  Yeah. What what was it like going from, you know, SIGINT into HUMAN for you?

• 17:33Speaker 06

  It was an interesting transition because working at the National Security Agency, we are told that we have, you know, the highest clearances and the most access and all this. And, you know, for to some measure, that's true. But going into the human intelligence world, I didn't I didn't know that there were a completely separate connection of of control systems and ways of handling information. And that was a big learning curve for me because of the way intelligence information is handled from SIGINT derived information is very different than how it's from human controlled systems and from from source handling of human beings. A very different. The tradecraft is obviously completely different. With SIGINT, you're kind of protecting the the instruments and the methods of using those instruments. Whereas with human beings, you're trying to protect them and the mission.

• 18:17Speaker 06

  It's more, it's obviously more human like, which requires a lot more security considerations. It's much more difficult. It's much more, in some cases, more expensive, especially if you're working with cover. If you've got, you know, cover, commercial cover, for example, it's extremely expensive and it may never get you anything, depending on how you set it up. And and that's part of the game is that some of this never produces anything. Some of it produces gold mines. Whereas with SIGINT, you kind of know, like, that's the guy's phone. That's what he said at the end, you know? Where with HUMAN, you've got to, because the human element's there, these guys might not be telling the truth. They might not know that what they said was wrong.

• 18:56Speaker 06

  Want money ideology. They might have, they might be under coercion. They might be doing it for excitement. You know, there's a lot of things you have to control. Sometimes you're like a therapist with them and you have to learn a lot of this stuff that might be frustrating to some people at times, like, why do I have to listen to this, how this guy feels about his spouse? It's like, well, that's really important because you're going to use those things as buttons to push in the future when you really need them. And that's kind of simplifying it. But that is a little bit difficult, especially from a SIGINT background. But it's true from any background that doesn't deal with people. You know, you could be an infantry guy and still have and have to learn those same things in the in the same difficult way because that doesn't make sense for where you came from, you know?

• 19:32Speaker 05

  Yeah. It's interesting. Well, you know, with your background and you know, your operational experience, your experience both in, you know, SIGINT and cyber and in human that you seem like the perfect person to write this book because you, you already had your experience in, in different fields that you covered. So I think I imagine it probably gave you a better depth of understanding when you were, you know, reading the reports and, and all the various sources and stuff. It is, it's an incredible book. It, I mean, I'm surprised how much information is in this book, especially considering,

• 20:15Speaker 05

  you know, how closed off Iran is, you know, and, and it, I imagine that it's a very hard country to penetrate and get information on.

• 20:25Speaker 06

  Well, it's interesting because all that is true, but there is so much resistance to the regime, which you see in the book.

• 20:33Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 20:34Speaker 06

  Just like those, those buttons we were talking about earlier with human sources. There are plenty of buttons on Iranian targets to push to get information about what's going on behind that, that walled garden, you know?

• 20:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 20:46Speaker 06

  And it's because of what the regime does to its people. It's not because of what Israel does to Iran. It's not because of what the US does. It's because of the regime oppressing their own people so extremely that suddenly there are a lot of people that are willing to do things they never would do before because of this pressure.

• 21:01Speaker 05

  And, and that's one of the things that I found interesting is you mentioned that, that the populaces, the Iranian populace is actually the number one target of Iranian intelligence.

• 21:14Speaker 06

  And it has been since 1980.

• 21:15Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 21:17Speaker 06

  It's never changed. There's never been a moment.

• 21:20Speaker 05

  How did you get interested in Iran?

• 21:24Speaker 06

  Well, my very first interaction with Iran in intelligence context was in Afghanistan. And I was doing some counterintelligence activities there to protect some of our aircrafts that we had and. I didn't really know much about Iran on a tactical level at that time, or like their, what they were doing. I knew a lot of the higher level things because when I was working at the National Security Agency, I worked on strategic issues like Russia nuclear stuff, North Korea stuff, China stuff, all, all in the nuclear level, and then with Iran and on some other things related to that. So I knew the big picture, you know, this was a threat, but I'd never seen them in action and I don't think most people actually have. And I was there in the desert at a very remote base down by the Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan tri-border area.

• 22:10Speaker 06

  And which is called Baluchistan. And suddenly I, I look up and there's this thing that looks like a skateboard flying around in the sky. And kind of up ahead of us. And actually a pilot came running over to me and he pointed out to me too, he's like, do you see that thing? I'm like, yeah, what is that? And we started taking photos of it and sent it over to some of the CIA guys that we were connected to. And they said, you know, that's a, that's an Iranian Mohajer for UAV.

• 22:37Speaker 06

  But what was happening, it was going in like a square holding pattern because whoever was controlling it, it had gotten too far outside of their control. Cause at the time they didn't have one-way attack and all this stuff. It was very much, you know, more rudimentary. And it had lost control and went into a holding pattern over the GPS grid of where it was supposed to be monitoring. So we're just watching it go in a square over the base and uh, somebody knocked it down and we took it. But that was, that was my first introduction to like an actual Iranian threat happening in front of me. Um, which as I said, is kind of unusual to see because usually people think of it like behind the scenes and the shadows and all that. Maybe not so much today now, but for much of the time, that's how it was viewed. And that kind of like piqued my interest a little bit. And then when I went to places like Senegal, for example,

• 23:21Speaker 06

  I found out that two streets over from our diplomatic facility or our team house in Dakar, was a Hezbollah team house in Dakar that was working with cocaine shipments from South America into Dakar, which is the largest, the port of Dakar is the largest import point for cocaine in all of Africa. It's 54 countries in Africa and that's the biggest important location.

• 23:43Speaker 06

  And it's just kind of interesting because like we weren't fighting with each other. We were both there for different things, which is kind of interesting. Like, well, why are we here like this? Why aren't we fighting each other? You know? So there's, there's a lot more going to. So I was trying to like figure out like what's going on here, like higher level. It's not just, it's not just war, you know, there's more to it. It's politics involved. There are those politics. And those are the kind of questions I started asking that kind of got me down that pathway.

• 24:04Speaker 05

  You know, and so going, starting into the book, because you, you talk about the politics. Um, you talk about the three talisms, uh, you know, and a lot of misconceptions people have about Iran's motives. Uh, and how that colors, uh, the, the intelligence that they collect and how they perceive that intelligence. Can you kind of go into those ideas?

• 24:35Speaker 06

  Yeah. And actually I call them sacred talismans because that's actually borrowed from Clausewitz. Who was kind of talking down on other military theorists like Jomani at the time, which was a French Napoleonic theorist. Who had all these like grand ideas about the world that were all based on what they thought the world was. And it was like a thing that could never be questioned and it can only be this way. And he was saying like, that's not true. I mean, you go to, you go to war over here. It's different than going to war over here. You can't just say that the same thing. Um, and so he called those ways of thinking sacred talismans. And that's why I call these things sacred talismans, because in my opinion, they're flawed at best. Uh, perhaps mistaken is better way to describe it. The first one is Israel versus Iran. And I mean, even looking today, like everyone's like, oh yeah, obviously that's what's going on.

• 25:19Speaker 06

  But if you start peeling it back, which I do in the book, it's not, it's not so clear cut that it's Israel versus Iran. I mean, who's the one doing the bombings? Who's the one killing people? Who's like, I mean, it go, I could just go on and on about the facts and how lopsided one side is versus the other. And also about the reaction to those things. It's not what you would expect if it was actually a conflict between two states as it's described. And a lot of times that particular talisman is described as a ideology against ideology, which again, I think is naive. It's political, it's especially if you look at political realism, you know, states are black boxes operating to survive against other states and to keep their interests alive. And the regime doesn't care about the state of Iran. The regime cares about the regime.

• 26:03Speaker 06

  So that's like a black box within a black box, making decisions about securing itself. And then in Israel, same thing. I mean, you have the Likud party keeping itself alive as strongly as it can, as, as long as it can. You know, so there's, there's these political decisions that look like ideology, but to someone who's actually, if, if you removed the names off of the parties, it would be hard to actually make the same judgments we might make if the names were on the parties. That's, that's the, what I call the blue talisman. Then there's the red talisman, which is exporting the revolution. That idea came up and you hear it in discourse a lot. People say like, oh, Iran's exporting the revolution. There's this crime terror nexus in Bolivia or like whatever. But really, I mean, those are, those are drug trafficking operations that generate income.

• 26:48Speaker 06

  The end. I mean, they're not over there with guns, shooting people. They're over there with dollar counters and bubble wrap, wrapping up veils of cocaine to ship it to Africa to make money so they can survive. Because they're heavily sanctioned and they can't access the banking system and they're cut off from the SWIFT system. So how else are they going to move their money around and make more money? Yeah, it's illegal, but it, I mean, is that, is that a terror network nexus? I don't know. Uh, maybe if, if they're actually doing terror, what does that mean? Um, and these might be like off putting questions to people, but you have to be able to question anything. Because if you cannot question an idea, this is no longer a fact based idea. Now it's an emotion based idea. We have to be factual about how we approach this stuff, especially things that

• 27:32Speaker 06

  bring up as many emotions as Iran and Israel, as we just talked about.

• 27:37Speaker 06

  Then I get down to something called the black talisman, which is realism, which I kind of alluded to, where these actors are generally rational. And when I say rational, actually, Mer Dagon, who was one of the Mossad directors, said Iran is rational. They may not be our rational, but they're rational, which I think is a great way to describe it because it doesn't matter how we see the world. It matters how the actor sees the world. And if it's in their interest to do what they think is right, they're going to do it. Even if it's crazy and hurts people, they're still going to do it because that's what they think they need to do to survive. Especially when they feel like they've been backed up against a wall. So that's my perspective. When I look at this book, I look at it from a realist perspective, asking, you know, there's this thing, John Rawls is a philosopher that wrote a lot in the seventies and eighties.

• 28:20Speaker 06

  And he said that there's this thing called the veil of ignorance, where if someone dropped you down in the society and didn't tell you where in that society you fell, high class, middle class, low class, laborer, rich person, if you didn't know which of those things you fell into, how would you make the laws? You'd make them much differently than you would if you knew where you were. You know, and that's kind of the approach that I take with this is instead of like labeling everything, let me just look at the facts and see what the facts say. And when I talk about facts, I don't just mean like looking at the news and things like that. As you said in the back of the book, there are hundreds of declassified American intelligence documents that were top secret, secret no porn, and a whole trove of Iraqi documents that were top secret and secret that had never been seen before. These things are not for the public.

• 29:05Speaker 06

  These are internal political documents, basically our, our intelligence process feeding political decisions of, of facts that were collected on the ground through human intelligence, sigint and other collection methodologies with some other information to help back it up to put it into context for people to understand. So that's kind of a long way of saying what these talismans are, but it's important to question all of them, including my own assertions. People should question what I say too. And not in a combative way, but instead questioning like, well, where did you get that? What does that mean? What does that mean to me? Because I think people don't ask those kinds of questions. And that's how we end up 20 years in Afghanistan fighting the same war one year at a time for 20 years.

• 29:44Speaker 07

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• 34:12Speaker 05

  So, can you tell us a little bit about then, the, um, about the intelligence apparatus of Iran? We have the VAGA, the IRGC, QUDS, and then, um, well, you go ahead and tell us, please.

• 34:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, so a lot of people, even in the intelligence community in the United States, and I've seen this, they don't know what VAGA is. This is a new term for a lot of Westerners. This is what Iran calls their intelligence service, their, the equivalent of the CIA, their human intelligence service. In the West, we call it the Ministry of Intelligence. It's not called the Ministry of Intelligence. Why are we calling it that? So that's something I start out with, like, why are we using these things that we think are true that are not true? So let's start with what they call themselves, VAGA, VAGA. And that is their actual human element. That started out as their strongest component, or their entity. In 2009, there was something called the Green Revolution in Iran, when the country was almost overthrown.

• 35:12Speaker 06

  It was the most serious moment of overthrow since 1979 in the country. And the way the regime saw this was as a failure of Vajah to suppress the people enough to force them not to rebel. This is how it was viewed. And what they did was they basically reduced the power of Vajah, subordinated it to the IRGC. And this is where the IRGC intelligence organization came out to become a thing. Before that, it was a department, an agency, it was a smaller thing with like less remit. It was not meant to be inside the country doing things. But from that moment forward until today, it became this massive intelligence apparatus that now is the premier intelligence apparatus in Iran and outside of Iran.

• 35:52Speaker 06

  And Vajah has been relegated to kind of this political intelligence gatherer for looking at what are foreign diplomats doing, you know, like nothing that you would expect today's CIA, for example, to be doing. All the cover activity is IRGC now. There's very small components that Vajah still does, but it's miniscule. It's mostly the IRGC. And underneath that, and in the book I have a pretty good diagram of that, there are many different things underneath that. There's like 40 different departments underneath that. It's extremely complex. And part of what the regime, and when I say the regime, I don't mean the entire Iranian government, although they're all complicit. I mean that small kernel of decision makers who have absolute control over what happens, which is a very tiny number of people.

• 36:35Speaker 06

  The rest of the people in the government, which is about 1% of the 92 million people in the country, are just following along because it's in their interest to follow along, you know? But there's maybe between 100 to 1,000 named individuals that are the regime that's actually doing this stuff. And the IRGC is not designed to protect Iranian people, it's designed to protect that small group of people, that small kernel of people. And you can see it because the Ayatollah's son, for example, can go freely outside the country. He can go to Washington DC if he wants to. Why? Because he has a black diplomatic passport. Why does he have that? Why does he need that? And if you look at who in the regime are these named individuals that are the power holders, they all have black diplomatic passports. Qassem Soleimani had two diplomatic passports.

• 37:20Speaker 06

  Esmael Gani, the current Quds Force commander, has four black passports. I mean, these guys are able to come and go as they please. The Iran Central Bank Director, who's the sanctioned bank, you know, that is the bank target of the West, has a black passport and he's come and gone to Washington DC to World Bank meetings.

• 37:38Speaker 06

  I mean, these people are heavily protected and they know how to use the system. They know how to use the Vienna Convention, which is the thing that grants diplomatic immunity. And they initially relied on Vajah to ensure that. And now it's the IRGC that is providing that. And it's providing it so that the Iranian people remain shut down while these small elites are able to have the maximum freedom. They're basically monopolizing freedom at the cost of everybody else.

• 38:02Speaker 05

  Right. And I mean, there's, there's a lot of wealth at the top there too, isn't there?

• 38:08Speaker 06

  There is actually, when the Shah fled Iran in 1979, he had something like $6 billion in today's dollars, not in 1979 dollars. A very small amount of money. It's about the same as Donald Trump claims to have. And he had that much money. That was the Shah that was run out of the country for having too much wealth, for being too opulent, right? Well, now the Ayatollah, today's Ayatollah Khamenei, he has as much money as Jeff Bezos, but his assets are liquid. Jeff Bezos assets are not liquid. They're tied up in equity in his businesses. Elon Musk's, something like 90% of his money is tied up in equity in his businesses. If he pulled it out, his businesses would collapse. Not so for the Ayatollah.

• 38:48Speaker 06

  And actually that wealth grew dramatically after 2007, which is when the IRGC was first sanctioned by the United States. And there were these series of sanctions that grew from that period forward. And if you took a graph and showed the sanctions increasing and put it right next to wealth of these top elites increasing, they're positively correlated, which means they grow together. And especially after 2017, 2018, when we put the maximum pressure campaign on Iran, there's a dramatic spike in growth of wealth in these top leaders in Iran and a dramatic decrease in general wealth for the population of people in Iran. In fact, that same year that the Ayatollah's money exponentially grew is the same year that there were lines outside of grocery stores because there were chicken rations in Iran, because there was not enough chicken to feed people.

• 39:32Speaker 06

  There were gas rations in a country that's petroleum rich. At the same time that the Ayatollah was one of the richest human beings on earth. And that just kind of illustrates to you that this is not a democracy. It's not a country, it's not a capitalist country that reacts to capitalist measures like sanctions, right? Instead, it's just, it's enriching elites hand over fist.

• 39:53Speaker 05

  It's amazing. And you know, later in the book, you go into like the sanctions and the effects and we'll get into that. So with the IRGC, we have the IRGC CI, their cyberspace, their EW and cyber defense. And then, like you said, underneath that, there's just tons and tons of like different departments. Is there a lot of competition between IRGC and Vaja and then within the IRGC itself?

• 40:20Speaker 06

  There was between Vaja and IRGC before 2009. After that, no more. But when IRGC grew, the regime actually forced it to get so large that it would be too large to be controlled by a single individual besides the Ayatollah. Kind of like a check and balance in an authoritarian way. Because the IRGC is extremely powerful. I mean, even if you took the Ayatollah out, the IRGC could run the country right now. They control something like 40% of the entire black market or the entire economy, which is mostly a black market thing. Like if you want an iPhone in Iran, it has to be purchased from an IRGC supplier. And there are many iPhones in Iran. There are many Western products in Iran that you would think like, oh, they're sanctioned. They can't get that. No, you can get it. It's just $4,000, you know. And the IRGC was designed that way where there isn't one person. Qassem

• 41:04Speaker 06

  Soleimani, for example, even when he was the, you know, the big guy, he couldn't run all of the IRGC. He was in the Quds Force. He was a lower, relatively lower in stature compared to the others, even though he had some direct line to the Ayatollah and was able to get tasking from him directly. And a lot, he'd get away with a lot more than the other two star generals. There's only like 15 two-star generals in the entire country of Iran. Very few. And they're designed that way. And actually, the Ministry of Defense is actually, it's separated from the IRGC and it's subordinate to the IRGC. So the IRGC has a two-star general commander. The Ministry of Defense is led by a one-star. So if the Ministry of Defense, which you would think would be able to set defense policy, sets a policy, the IRGC can ignore it. And they do ignore it. They have ignored it. Which is kind of an interesting tension that was, it was designed that way. And there's

• 41:48Speaker 06

  a lot of these designs where there's these tensions built throughout this system, which is, again, not a democracy, but was created from an authoritarian mind of how do we, how do we keep that authoritarian in power? And they're, they're doing a pretty good job of it.

• 42:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, for sure. So, you know, in, about keeping, you know, them in power, who are the top targets for Iranian intelligence operations?

• 42:15Speaker 06

  The number one target is the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, M E K, or the People's Mujahideen, which has been a thorn in their side since 1979. The Mujahideen has existed for a long time before, since 1960s. Some would argue that it's a Marxist organization, some would vehemently argue against that. There was a divide between them in the 80s. But in any case, they were the main target and they remain the main target. In fact, in June, when Israel's war on Iran started, most, if not all, of the actual action people in Iran doing the stuff that we were seeing, like lazing targets and doing target reconnaissance and actually setting off devices, were not Israeli operatives. Those were Iranians, that most of them worked for Mujahideen-e-Khalq, the M E K.

• 43:00Speaker 06

  If you remember back in the early 2000s, when it was released that Iran had a nuclear weapons program, that was released through the Mujahideen-e-Khalq.

• 43:09Speaker 06

  And there's another set of targets, which is the Azeris, not Azerbaijan the country, but Azerbaijan province or a section of Iran, northwest Iran. Those nuclear documents that were taken a few years ago that Benjamin Netanyahu held up and said, "Look, we have all the proof now." It was something like, I think it was a ton of paper from this bunker, that was Azeri-assisted theft out of the country. And actually, they gave Israel overflight out of Azerbaijan, the country, to take those documents to Israel. And there's a lot of these groups that they've been against the government, any Iranian government, for a very long time. So before there was the regime, there was the Shah, and before the Shah, there was his father, and before that, there was the Kajars. So it is a

• 43:51Speaker 06

  long history. But the Kurds, for example, the Azeris, the Baluchis, the Achbazis, which are an Arabized group of Iranians in the southwest of the country and the border to Iraq, these are all separatist-aligned people. Not all of them are, but they're typically an area you can go to. If you want to do something in Iran, these are the people you work with as an outsider to do things against the regime, which means, these are the people the regime wants to get rid of, or to control, severely control. And in some cases, that's what they do. They just go and, you know, reduce the amount of resources they have, they reduce the freedom of action. In other cases, they go round them up and kill them, like they did to the Mujahideen in 1988. If you remember President Raisi, who died mysteriously in a helicopter last year.

• 44:34Speaker 06

  Uh, he was considered the hanging judge. He signed off on something like 3,000 execution orders that Mujahideen, Akal, were most of the people that were executed under his, basically by decree, saying like, yeah, that guy's guilty, no trial needed, go kill him. And he did that in 1988, 3,000 people, again, Mujahideen people. And so there's this tension between these groups that don't feel like they are, they don't feel Persian, they don't feel Iranian. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But they certainly feel, I'm Azeri, I am Ahbazi, I am Baluchi, I am Kurdish, you know? And especially when you look at the Kurds, there's 35 million Kurds. That's the largest stateless group, stateless ethnic group in the world. Period.

• 45:17Speaker 06

  And they're split up between Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. And Iran has one called the PJAK, PJAK, which is a Kurdish separatist group in Iran that has been a constant thorn in their side that they've been blowing up, you know, routinely. Sometimes the Turkey's help. And these are just a summary of some of them, but there are smaller groups too. And the thing they all have in common is that they disagree with the regime. But there's no democratic mechanism for them to change anything with the regime. So instead of having that democratic mechanism, they have to resort to violence.

• 45:49Speaker 05

  The, uh, the other target you mentioned that we've seen, um, is the Salafi, uh, the Salafists, the, you know, Salafi jihadists. And what I thought was interesting is you mentioned that in the nineties, that Iran actually notified Western intelligence, uh, about the cooperation between the Taliban and AQ.

• 46:10Speaker 06

  Yes, they, they were actually helping us quite a bit. And that relationship was built in Bosnia. Because during the, the wars in Bosnia and Albania and Kosovo, the Kosovo Liberation Army and some of the Bosniak groups, which are Muslim Bosnians, were working with the IRGC. And actually, that was the Quds Force first overseas deployment to do unconventional warfare was in Bosnia. And we were there also, the I-4 and later on, the K-4 were there. Then Operation Allied Force was there. Continuously, there was US Western presence there with UCOM. And we built relationships with them at the time. And actually, you can read some of the stuff in the book about Clinton. That Clinton did a green light and actually allowed Iran to ship weapons in there to arm the KLA through Croatia.

• 46:53Speaker 06

  And that was a very interesting revelation that most people probably don't know is that the US was not necessarily working hand in hand, but we weren't holding it back. And because we were dicting that relationship, they took it upon themselves to share with us something they knew about what was going on in Afghanistan, and that was the Taliban housing Al Qaeda. And if you look at some of those targets that we struck when Bill Clinton authorized strikes in the late 90s, some of those targets were alerted to us by Iran.

• 47:20Speaker 05

  So you know, you break the book down into the official, well, I mean, into the three different sections. But under this, you talk about like the official cover, the nonofficial cover, and then the UW aspects. Can we talk about the official cover? Because you've already mentioned the black passports and the diplomatic immunity. How effective is that? And what are some of their greatest abuses of that system?

• 47:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, official cover is very interesting because it's something that every country does, and no one likes to talk about. And there are some obviously good uses of it. And then there are some abuses of the diplomatic passport is what I mean diplomatic community. This stuff all comes from the Vienna Convention of 1961, that basically says that you're allowed to do things in a country as as an agent of that sovereign power. And that means you're immune, you're you're inviolable, which means you cannot be searched. If you have a pouch, which could be a backpack, a box, a cargo container with a sticker on it that says this is a diplomatic pouch, that is inviolable, it cannot be searched. And as I said, every country does this. So when we are wagging our finger at Iran, we should remember all the times that we've done the exact same

• 48:30Speaker 06

  thing. And every other country does. I mean, this is part of what diplomatic status is for. Without getting into all the all the details of what the West does with it, Iran has stations overseas, and that doesn't necessarily mean Vajah stations. They have Vajah stations, and they have IRGC stations. And sometimes those IRGC stations are huge. And actually, the one of the very first IRGC stations that we have evidence of on the intel side was in Vienna, before the Soviet Union collapsed. And they had a small little Kutz Force element in there. It wasn't called Kutz Force yet. It was called Office of Liberation Movements. They had a little typist in there that was sending codes out, you know, but they were there on diplomatic cover. They were there as as a foreign ministry representative, not as an intelligence officer.

• 49:16Speaker 06

  Again, this is what many countries do, but Iran has certainly abused it. Dubai is a common location where they do abuse this, where they'll move cargo containers, gigantic containers like off of a ship with a little sticker on it that says this is diplomatic pouch, you can't touch it. And inside of that are weapons and money and whatever you need to put in there to escape scrutiny.

• 49:35Speaker 05

  Right.

• 49:35Speaker 06

  Actually, just side note, we had a Saudi prince in Lebanon when I was deployed there that tried to do the diplomatic pouch thing with his jet. He actually pouched his jet and it was full of ecstasy. It had like two million ecstasy pills in it, but when he landed, the door opened and they kind of all came out and it became like a now we see it thing. So he kind of messed that up, but that was a little side note. Um, but this diplomatic-

• 49:56Speaker 05

  Creative use of it for sure.

• 49:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, for sure.

• 49:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 49:59Speaker 06

  But they use it for other reasons too. So in New York, for example, there's something like 25 accredited Iranian diplomats living there right now that are allowed to live there. And they're on a, a range restriction. They're not allowed to leave a certain area of the city, but the area that they're in, it's a good part of the city. You can do a lot of things there, which means you can meet with other people, perhaps sources or perhaps handlers if you're being handled, you know? That's a place where everybody gets to go together. So it could be Israelis talking to Iranians. It could be Iranians talking to Kurds. Who knows what it is. It's happening all the time. They also had an office in Washington DC outside, run out of the Pakistani embassy. So that let's say you're an Iranian citizen studying in the United States and you lose your passport. Well, you need to get a new one, but you, how are you going

• 50:43Speaker 06

  to get that if you don't have a Iranian embassy in the United States? Well, there's, there's a guy in the Pakistani embassy whose job it is, and he is, he is an Iranian diplomat in the Washington DC that will get you a new passport. This is, this is the way, you know, this is the good way that this works. This is how it's helpful, right? And that's not cover. That's, that's declared.

• 51:04Speaker 06

  On the cover side, especially with commercial cover, it's a whole other animal because think about all their shipping lines are sanctioned, all the port entries are sanctioned, all their goods are sanctioned. Like I just said, the iPhone, how do you get that into the country on an industrial scale? Well, you have to have commercial cover and you have to have companies all over the world that look like one thing, but there's something else. And that is what they mostly make their money off of, of how they, they enrich the regime and how they move people and goods and equipment around the world very easily and with very little notice.

• 51:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, you went into that quite a bit in your book, the uh, the uh, Banyans, uh, Banyads? Banyads. Yeah. So, you know, when we talk about things that Iran is doing under, you know, diplomatic cover, we're talking about a lot of known bad actors. Like, we know that these people are bad actors. How come they just don't get PNG'd from everywhere?

• 52:02Speaker 06

  So that's something called reciprocity. If you start kicking out a person from country X, a person from country X will start kicking you out. And we saw this a lot during the Obama administration when we were having some escalatory actions with Russia, where we kicked some Russian diplomats out of the United States. Well, the next day, Russia kicked the exact same number of diplomats out of Russia. And, you know, we close a Chinese diplomatic facility in Texas. Well, the next week, there's a US diplomatic facility closed in China. So there's a huge risk of, if we interrupt this process that we all know is going on, the, the costs are higher than the benefits. So sometimes, it might be better to actually, rather than neutralize, it might be better to exploit that thing, which is exactly the confluence of human intelligence and counterintelligence, where you get to make the choice. Do I want to just cut this thing off and stop it?

• 52:47Speaker 06

  You know, if there's a drug vessel full of drugs and we see it off the coast of Venezuela, do we want to blow it up? Or do we want to capture the guys and interrogate them and find out where they came from, where they're going, and all this other stuff? Well, that's a choice between exploiting and neutralizing. And neutralizing has a lot of immediate shock value that looks good politically and in the news. But exploiting typically doesn't get known to anybody. It's a secret. And it goes on for a long, long time, and it can have a huge payoff if you're smart about it. And of course, that's my bias, because I did those things, and I know how they work. But I will, I will advocate for the high value and high impact that they have over a very long time, that if, rather than just shutting these things down or kicking these diplomats out, wouldn't it be better to recruit that diplomat as a double agent?

• 53:30Speaker 06

  And then have him work for you for 30 years, and then, and then recruit his own assets for you as a principal agent, that you could then further gather defectors to keep them defectors in place? I mean, the, the possibilities are endless. The value is endless. Rather than just kicking that one guy out and making the country kick one of your people out, you know? To me, it's, it's a no-brainer.

• 53:49Speaker 05

  When we talk about some of the things that, um, you know, Iran does in foreign countries, and in particular, the United States, and they do a lot of this stuff everywhere. Can we talk about, uh, Masih Alinajad?

• 54:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, Masih Alinajad is actually a very interesting person. She wrote her own book called "The Wind in My Hair", which I recommend if anyone's interested in Iran, like what it's like to be a person in jail in Iran, political jail, even prison, getting tortured. She wrote a book about it. The regime has been trying to kill her for a very long time. They've tried multiple times. The first time, she lives in New York, actually, and she's under FBI protection now. But when she came to the US, she started talking way more than she used to talk when she was in Iran, because now she had some distance, but the regime caught up to her. They tried to assassinate her once by recruiting some Chechen guys, who were kind of this hijinks group of guys that were pretty sloppy. They did a lot of physical surveillance on her home.

• 54:45Speaker 06

  They were looking at the way that she was walking to understand her behavior. And so they're doing a lot of, you know, early collection activity to see how this target looked. And they were interdicted. One of them had an AK-47 in his car. They were using their phones way too much. In fact, most of the reason we were able to catch them is because of what they said on their phones. It was very obvious what they were doing. So we neutralized them. And, um, a few years later, the regime still wanted to kill her. But they had a more elaborate plan this time. This time, they wanted to kidnap her in New York, bring her to a port in New York, put her on a speedboat, take the speedboat to Venezuela, and then take her to Iran so they could do a show trial and execute her, or torture her so that she would recant and make this negative message

• 55:29Speaker 06

  about what she was saying on the media. We were able to catch that as well. But there have been some others as well. Arbab Syar, who's Iranian, living in Texas, who's a used car salesman. He was recruited by the IRGC to assassinate the Saudi ambassador, who was in DC at the time, eating at a very nice restaurant. And he got very close to actually doing it. But there was a confidential informant that we had in the drug cartels, because he was actually buying his weapons from the Zeta's cartel. And we actually had a recruited guy in the Zeta's cartel recruited for something else, obviously. Who was like, hey, there's this Iranian stuff going on. You guys should look into this. And so DEA and FBI looked into it. Sure enough, yes, he had done quite a few things. He was ready to go. And we were able to capture him too.

• 56:13Speaker 06

  But a lot of these are very interesting when you look at them, because it's not an Iranian case officer or IRGC guy doing this. It's whoever they can get their hands on to do it, because they have such few resources available to do these things in the United States and in other countries, that they they're just kind of grasping at straws to see what sticks. They've recruited Hells Angels guys before to organize some assassination attempts more recently. Another very interesting thing to look at about how they recruit these guys in Canada. Then they have them illegally enter the United States and then go do the target reconnaissance that they're going to do and then go figure out when the time is right. But again, confidential informant helps with that. And we were able to capture those people too. So it's very interesting to see how they're doing things in the United States,

• 56:56Speaker 06

  because they're very different than how they do them in other countries, where they have more ability to move. And that goes back to the diplomatic thing. So if you look at Iran, which countries can Iran go to Iranians without a visa? This is an important question to ask. And you should always, if you're an intelligence analyst, you should always ask, you know, my target country, what countries can they go to without a visa? Because that means those are countries they can go to and do a source meeting without being easily noticed. Countries might surprise you. For example, Ecuador and Seychelles and Singapore. They can go there without a visa. Thailand, Georgia, Armenia. So there's a lot of countries that are not Muslim countries that they can go to and do the activities they need to do, their third country meetings. So that way they're not meeting the source in the source's home country or in Iran.

• 57:41Speaker 06

  They're doing it in a kind of safer area. This is how they kind of do things outside of the United States. In the United States, they're using a lot of cyber activity where they're and also in Israel, where they're recruiting their assets through Facebook, sometimes posing as lovers and other kind of things. And when we see these things exposed, we kind of chuckle at it. But also to ask like, why aren't they throwing more resources at this stuff? You know? But it's because they're more concerned about their survival at home than they are about anything else outside the country.

• 58:09Speaker 05

  Something you mentioned like that was surprising to me because most people I think of an age are aware of Salman Rushdie and the fatwa against him. I did not know you mentioned that there that over three dozen people have been killed trying to kill him and it's still going on.

• 58:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, he just got shot.

• 58:29Speaker 05

  And there's basically, there's basically a fund for his death. There was just an increase.

• 58:36Speaker 06

  Yep. It was adjusted for inflation, you know, because it's been around for a while. So.

• 58:40Speaker 05

  Right, right. 3.3 million. And it's crazy to me that there's just basically like this, hey, if you if you get him or any of these people, like you get a piece of this.

• 58:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's basically a beef that the original Ayatollah had, and he is now dead. And a beef has survived him.

• 58:59Speaker 05

  Can we also talk a

• 59:00Speaker 08

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 59:15Speaker 09

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 59:26Speaker 08

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 59:31Speaker 10

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 59:37Speaker 08

  So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 59:57Speaker 02

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• 1:00:27Speaker 05

  A little bit about merchant, because that's pretty recent.

• 1:00:31Speaker 05

  Was it Asif Merchant?

• 1:00:35Speaker 06

  Who was that?

• 1:00:36Speaker 05

  Uh, the, uh, wasn't he the Pakistani? Um, the gentleman who was, uh, gonna, uh, who was gonna try and, the Pakistani who was gonna try and kill Trump?

• 1:00:47Speaker 06

  Oh, oh, yeah, yeah. So there've been a few of those. Um, I don't know how much stock I put into that. I have an, I have a theory that these are not like coming from high level IRGC. People, even the ARBOBSYR one that I mentioned, the Saudi in 2013 assassination project. I think these are lower level IRGC. This is my theory. I have no fact to back this up. But I think these are lower level ways of trying to do what they can with what they can. If you, same thing with John Bolton and Pompeo and Trump. These are like really low level amateur hour type things that have almost no resources attached to them. Something like that coming from, if, if it was coming from the top levels of the government, I feel like there would be more risk analysis in there. Some more thought about how it looks and how to, how to do it, you know?

• 1:01:32Speaker 06

  These things, and if you compare them to other assassination operations that the regime has done, especially against Iranians. Those are far more advanced, methodical. They put a lot more thought into it. They still failed a lot, but they succeeded a lot. And it wasn't this kind of like pie in the sky, like, oh, let's just go after that guy and go kill him. You know, they really thought through, how do they do it? Where's the right place to do it? What resources do we need? What country should it be in? Who should we recruit? Um, in Denmark, there were a few of these where they killed some Mujahideen guys and some ASMLA guys with very methodical ways of doing it even recently.

• 1:02:05Speaker 06

  So I question, you know, where are these orders coming from? And I, I don't know if those are officially sanctioned things, like even again, back to the ARBOBSYR. Case, when you look at the treasury sanctions that detail, you know, what was going on with that case? They implicate Qassem Soleimani and two high level IRGC guys in addition to the one guy that was on the phone with ARBOBSYR. But there's no, there's no link between that low level, basically a lieutenant colonel in the IRGC and Qassem Soleimani. Like, that doesn't really make sense to me. You know, I, I, again, theorizing that it's probably someone lower down the ranks who's like, I'm gonna make a name for myself and get this big hit and then I'm gonna be important. That's probably more likely.

• 1:02:49Speaker 05

  Makes sense. Um, so you know, then you go into covert action. Can we talk about the Iran Experts Initiative?

• 1:02:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's very interesting, more recent, actually, since the Biden administration. This is kind of a classic example of, and many countries do this, Russia does this, China does this with their Confucius Institutes, where countries will use their academic credentials to do intelligence things. And again, this is not a new surprising thing. This is very common in countries. But it was kind of surprising because of how close these individuals were to the Biden administration, specifically to the Iran team working for President Biden and the Syria team working for President Biden. And there was in fact, one individual on the Iran

• 1:03:35Speaker 06

  team, the envoy's team, that was telling the envoy advice, and that advice was coming directly from Zarif through emails to that person. Which is kind of interesting that emails are now in the public domain. And so if people want to go research them, they can. And all of the people that were involved in this Iran Experts Initiative claimed to be the ones that were providing, they said that the access they had to the regime was only for academic purposes, so that they could help inform the US government on the JCPOA.

• 1:04:04Speaker 06

  My thought, as an intelligence collector and a handler, well, that's probably how it started out for you. And then the regime kept pushing down on that button and kept you on, and now you're working for them, even if you don't know that you are. So sometimes, you know, ignorance is not an excuse for intelligence collection. And we've seen that many times with how people believe they're, they're providing something to one country and it's a false flag and they're providing it to somebody else, or they think it's something completely separate. And if you look at what they collected and what they did and what they said, this is a very clear cut influence operation that actually affected how our Iran envoy operated in the world. And, and when you're doing negotiations with a country, let's say Iran, you have a limited information. So the information you do have is extremely valuable, and you're using it to reduce uncertainty and increase your decision advantage.

• 1:04:48Speaker 06

  Well, the other side wants to take control of that process to their own advantage. And we would be ignorant to think that they were not. And unfortunately, at the time, we were ignorant to think that they were not, and they did do it. So again, I go in a lot of detail on it. I have the actual names of the people in there and everything. But it is kind of interesting to think about how many other times has this happened? You know, that's a question mark that should come up that, that people for future research should be looking into and in the intelligence community should be looking at what other things that look benign are not benign. Because that's a that's a great intelligence operation when it looks benign. That's what clandestine activity is. The activity looks like it's something else, you know?

• 1:05:23Speaker 05

  Right. And then, you know, uh, there's. So we're briefly going over all this stuff. There are so many great examples in this book. I highly, highly recommend everybody read this. It's Iran's shadow weapons. But let's move into cyber because cyber has been, oh, the link is going to be in the description.

• 1:05:46Speaker 05

  Uh, let's move into cyber because cyber has been something that, uh, you know, Iran was nothing. And then we hit him or they were hit with Stuxnet, uh, Stuxnet. And then they became something and it's been a real evolution for them, hasn't it?

• 1:06:03Speaker 06

  It's really fascinating. Actually, I'm not aware of another country having a similar evolution. As you said, they were nothing before, like 2007. At a maximum, they were defacing websites. Fast forward 10 years and they are overturning billions of dollars of ransomware and banks and destroying giant pieces of infrastructure and uh, SCADA systems, which are industrial control systems and like they just, they accelerate. Well, how do they do that? Where'd they get information? Well, as you mentioned, Stuxnet happened and Iran immediately reverse engineered Stuxnet and saw how it was made and they made their own piece of malware that they used that now they knew this new information. Well, then they said, well, what if we're under threat by other things? Let's start investing a ton of money in this.

• 1:06:49Speaker 06

  And they started recruiting these civilian entities, which is actually not unlike the US. The US, a lot of our, our cyber expertise is not uniformed service members or GS civilians at CyberCom. It's contractors, companies that have experts in them that the government hires to produce tailored items. Other malware, this is the way it actually works. There's a couple of really interesting books on it, like Countdown to Zero Day, which I recommend by Kim Zetter, which goes into how Stuxnet was actually made. It was not made by the government. It was made by other companies that were sold to the government. It's the same thing with Israel, like they have Pegasus. That's made by a civilian company. That's not made by unit, uh, 8200, their second organization, right?

• 1:07:30Speaker 05

  Wait, are you saying that the government is not on the leading edge of, um, of development and conception of? I'm just kidding.

• 1:07:39Speaker 06

  They're on the leading edge of printing money to give to those people.

• 1:07:42Speaker 05

  Yeah. Right.

• 1:07:44Speaker 06

  Because they'll pay a lot of money, a lot of money. You know, and the regime does the same thing. And they did the same thing. And actually, when Israel wiped a bunch of servers in Iran using a Wiper malware, Iran reverse engineered that and turned it into something called Shimon, which they then put on Saudi Aramco and erased all of Saudi Aramco's data, which is incredible because, as I said, even two years before that, the regime could only deface a website. And now they're wiping out the entire oil infrastructure of Saudi Arabia. Not all of it, but almost all of it, a huge, huge amount. And it wasn't just a one-hit thing. They had carefully planned it. They chose a day during Ramadan when they knew no one would be at the place. Like, everything was carefully thought through, it was very deliberate, which was a huge change before when they looked like this ragtag group of little hackers, which they call Severies,

• 1:08:30Speaker 06

  that were just hired off the street to go do forum blasts and, you know, take websites down with DDoS attacks. So you see this evolution, not as their innovation at the beginning, more their reaction. But as they reacted to it, they just took everything that hit them and then they turned it into their own weapon and they use it against us, which is the West, Israel, European countries, especially like Denmark, Netherlands, other countries as well, to their advantage. And after that first few years, then they rapidly accelerated producing their own things that are now novel, that would never have existed if things hadn't happened before to them that pushed them in that direction, which is kind of fascinating to, you know, revisionist history of like, what would have happened if we didn't do Stucknet? Or if they didn't discover Stuxnet?

• 1:09:12Speaker 05

  Right. And you also mentioned that when Israel used Wiper, that they uncovered a much more valuable NSA loitering tool that...

• 1:09:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, that wasn't very good for NSA.

• 1:09:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:09:25Speaker 06

  Yep. Yeah, so the NSA tool was hidden and had been hidden and was totally unknown. And that tool was extremely advanced and was capable of pretty much destroying the entire nuclear program and a lot of other infrastructure, including much of their non-nuclear defense infrastructure. And when Israel did that Wiper activity, it did it in the same kind of area of the memory of system that this other malware was. And when the regime went to go, look, they found both. And the US unfortunately lost this extremely advanced tool that now is no longer functional.

• 1:10:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:10:01Speaker 07

  I have a question. Can I ask a question?

• 1:10:03Speaker 05

  Please do.

• 1:10:03Speaker 07

  Uh, their cyber operations, what is like the percentage between like them going out there trying to make money for the regime to like offensive operations against state actors and stuff like that, whether it's Israel, the US, or Denmark?

• 1:10:19Speaker 06

  The money part was earlier and it has really dramatically decreased. And in fact, the last time they did a major financial operation, they did, they did two that were like really huge. One was against a Las Vegas company because the owner of the company was Jewish and made a statement about, about Iran. And to retaliate, they caused him several hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to his infrastructure. They didn't get any money from that, though. But then in Georgia, the state in the United States of Georgia, they attacked a municipal infrastructure and were able to do some ransomware attack there. After that, which was like more than 10 years ago, they have drifted away from that and they're mostly focusing on offensive cyber activity.

• 1:10:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's, it's wild that they now have like five advanced persistent threats, at least five that are associated with them. Can you talk a little bit about the 2023 attacks on US ships? Do you, do you recall that?

• 1:11:11Speaker 06

  Which ones are you talking about?

• 1:11:13Speaker 05

  Uh, the, I, the ballast, they, they are remotely.

• 1:11:17Speaker 06

  Yes, this is from a group called Shahid Cave, which is a very elite cyber unit inside of one of their elite cyber units. So you can think of it as, you know, inside of Cybercom, there is an elite national mission force, the cyber mission force. You can think of Shahid Cave as, as a team inside of that cyber mission force is kind of analogous. And what Shahid Cave did was they were able to actually steal through malware activity. They use these things called remote access Trojans or rats to get this stuff. So they, they created a rat inside of a computer system, tracked the designs for these ballasts. And if they wanted to, they could have basically hit a button and turn these ballasts off, which would have caused these cargo vessels to eventually

• 1:12:00Speaker 06

  sink after their machinery broke down and things. But the, the interesting part about that is that these were not operations they were going to do. Instead, this was a menu of options that they presented to the Ayatollah. And this, this was their job was to basically come up with all kinds of ways that if the Ayatollah wanted to, they could attack the US with cyber tools. Interestingly, they haven't used them to our knowledge, the, not just this tool, but other tools. And uh, That kind of goes along with what they do, not just in cyber, but in intelligence generally, where they take a lot of things and put them on the shelf. And they wait till there's a time when they really want to use the thing. And that's kind of interesting because there have been a lot of opportunities that you might think would be

• 1:12:42Speaker 06

  a good reason for them to use those things. You could think of like June, for example, as one of those times and they didn't do it. And that's kind of an interesting question of like, why didn't they destroy the ballasts on all of the ships in the Persian Gulf? In June, you know, but it probably goes towards the more political question of, well, if they did that, what would happen next? And what would that mean for them? You know, so they're probably, they, they probably have a lot of things on the shelf that they'll never ever use that are probably very powerful, but it would mean that their own destruction may be invited from using these things.

• 1:13:12Speaker 05

  Right. Yeah. Where, where it turns into basically an act of war.

• 1:13:19Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:13:21Speaker 05

  Um, and let's talk about, you know, we talk about these capabilities, but let's talk about like their internal, like they have, they're pretty devious with their own population, you know, in terms of like the, the apps that they create, the software, you know, um, that they create where, where they, they'll put out, hey, here's a censorship, here's a way to circumvent censorship, but it's actually put out by the government.

• 1:13:47Speaker 06

  Yeah. And actually this is all because their internet is not like our internet. You know, we think like, oh, I can put a VPN on and I can, I can use Proton, whatever. Well, the problem in Iran is that they don't have an open internet. They have something called the National Information Network, which is given to them by China. This is a Chinese technology about how to create a, you know, China's great firewall, which is pretty successful. They gave that to Iran and Iran implemented it, which means that people in Iran cannot access the internet like we do. There are entire sections of the internet that they can never reach. Um, there are some VPNs that do work there, but they're not always working and they kind of come up and down and there's a lot of volatility there. But within that special ecosystem that they've created,

• 1:14:30Speaker 06

  as you said, they've got all kinds of little things in there that are ready to hook you. And especially during times of protest or unrest, there's a lot of things that are designed to trick you, track you or catch you. Or figure out where you are, you know, because what their their goal is to stop protests that they don't want them happening and they'll go to any length to do it. They were at the time during the Masa Amini protest a few years ago, they were throwing girls off of roofs because the girls were posting on Instagram. And we're at the actual protest, they were shooting girls walking home from school that had no part in the protest, just because they were there. Lots of lots of people were killed during this protest with live rounds. And at the heart of it was the internet.

• 1:15:10Speaker 06

  Because how else can you in a in a country so oppressed and so controlled, how else can you communicate that this protest is going down right now at this location? And they have to use the internet. And the problem is they can't access Instagram, they can't access a lot of social media that we can. Unless you're a regime person, they have special access in the network to be able to go onto Instagram and post their pictures and things. But that means that people have to use all these little tools and software. And if you remember like back in the nineties, when you were trying to download music, I wasn't doing it because it was illegal, of course. But for those who were doing it, you sometimes would download a movie or a song and it was actually full of viruses, right? Because you have no way of like verifying like, what am I downloading? Because it's it's all nothing's official and in Iran, it's like that.

• 1:15:51Speaker 06

  And they the regime puts a lot of stuff out there like, oh, this is the VPN that you can use to get outside the country. But it turns out it's actually a government controlled VPN that's accessing your entire phone. And that's one small example, but that's how the entire system is designed. Is to have total knowledge of what is every person in this country doing so we can stop them from rebelling against us.

• 1:16:12Speaker 05

  It's insane.

• 1:16:13Speaker 06

  And actually during during the June war, they shut the entire internet off for two days. Because not because it wasn't Israel that did that, it was the Iranian government. Because they recognized how weak they were during that conflict, like that was a great moment. If the people wanted to stand up and take the country over, that was if ever it was them. And so the regime noticed that and they turned the entire internet off, zero internet. You couldn't make, you couldn't call on WhatsApp, you couldn't do anything. And that was a very scary time because imagine there's bombs falling all around in in big cities. Israeli bombs and US bombs and you don't know what they're going to hit next because you don't even know the can't even see the news. You don't know if like this is the start of an invasion, right? I mean, you've no idea. So these people are like living in complete fear and darkness.

• 1:16:55Speaker 06

  And that's what the regime wanted them to feel, which is crazy because their their own country was under attack and they were trying to increase the fear of their own people during that time.

• 1:17:03Speaker 05

  Um, we talked a little bit about sanctions earlier, um, and how their wealth continues to shoot up, um, even with the sanctions can, uh, in, you know, and in, you know, you, you have some great graphs in there detailing like the bony odds and, and the shipping lanes or, or, you know, all the interest. But can you kind of talk about how they circumvent these sanctions and, and why they continue gaining more and more wealth?

• 1:17:33Speaker 06

  There's a couple of different ways. One of the most tried and true methods is something called a Hawala, which is an unofficial mechanism for moving money that doesn't actually physically move. So basically I have a ledger and you have a ledger and on my ledger, I say minus a hundred dollars and I, I sent a note to you that says, hey, on your ledger, right? Plus a hundred dollars. A hundred dollars never existed. This money is moving theoretically, but this is a very common, it's a, it's a legal system. It's not illegal. It's legal in many countries in the world. Because this is how they've traditionally used done banking for several thousand years. The regime relies quite a bit on Hawalas, especially for some of the earlier steps in their money movement process. So that because there's no trace from my book to your book, except from the person who said that that money moved.

• 1:18:17Speaker 06

  So let's say I want to move some money to Dubai. Well, I can do the Hawala to Dubai. Then in Dubai, there is money. Well, there's a lot of banks in Dubai and in fact, something like a third of the Dubai permanent population are actually Iranians. And that's because of the banking system in Dubai, which is hugely designed to facilitate money movement, not just for Iran, but for many countries. That's one of the things that Dubai kind of uses as selling point. Is that, hey, you can do banking here and we don't care what you do. And a lot of the banking is based out of those banks. There's also a lot of banks in Switzerland and banks in South America and in China. There's also a lot of, um, goods for cash or goods for services activity where, for example, if Iran brings a, a cargo boat with

• 1:19:02Speaker 06

  millions of barrels of oil on it, they can do a ship to ship transfer to China. And China does something very similar to the Hawala system where they give them goods in kind for that oil. And there's a lot of other ways they can do it too.

• 1:19:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was, like I said, you go into great depth.

• 1:19:21Speaker 05

  So let's talk about.

• 1:19:24Speaker 08

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:19:38Speaker 09

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant. So I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:19:49Speaker 08

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:19:54Speaker 10

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:20:00Speaker 08

  So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 1:20:21Speaker 13

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• 1:20:50Speaker 05

  Mentioned Soleimani, let's talk about what Iran got up to after the invasion of Iraq.

• 1:20:58Speaker 05

  You mentioned that there were thirty one transactions between two thousand four and two thousand eight. And those were large transactions for weapon systems or IED systems. You know, you know, we saw the EFPs out there that were Iranian generated. Can you go into that a little bit?

• 1:21:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, so the kind of the shocking part of that is many of those actuators and parts were either made in the United States or made in the United Kingdom. So like the radios, the Harris radios made in the United Kingdom, the actuators were made in the United States. Those companies had no clue that that's what was happening. But the way that the regime does its movement of money and material, you're not going to know that you're selling your actuators to an Iranian agent. You know, and so what they would do is they'd have a guy in the United States that would purchase it as a legitimate company, usually a cover organization, commercial cover, ship that stuff to Dubai or to another country. There's a couple of countries that I've listed in there, like Malaysia is another example. Then move it to another location in that same country and then mark the goods as something else, which is kind of tried and true method to do it. Just slap a new paper on there that says grain.

• 1:22:01Speaker 06

  And then ship it over to the Straits of Hormuz or to wherever you want to bring it. And then take it out of the packages and start making IEDs with it. It sounds crazy and like super easy, but you have to think about these shipping lanes we're talking about are some of the busiest places on the planet, especially the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, the Persian Gulf. And if you go further east in Indonesia, the Straits of Malacca, something like 60% of the world's goods pass through the Straits of Malacca on ships. So there's no way that you could stop every ship and look in every cargo container, especially if you're paying off people at the ports in, name your country, Singapore, for example, to just not even look at what the document says. Like they're not, they don't know what's in the thing. They don't care what's in the thing. It's kind of like, you know, the New York Port Authority in the 1970s, right?

• 1:22:44Speaker 06

  Like they don't care what's going over there. They just, they just want the cargo to move and put the money in their pocket, right? It's business. And that's what was happening where the regime was clandestinely moving these Western-produced pieces of equipment over to the Middle East and then killing our own soldiers with these US-produced pieces of equipment.

• 1:23:02Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah, it's, um, you know, I, I, regardless of what people's political opinions about Soleimani or the effectiveness of the strike, I know a lot of veterans saw it as, as, you know, comeuppance. Um, you know.

• 1:23:20Speaker 05

  Um. So let's talk a little bit about their unconventional warfare capabilities. You have the, uh, is it the Sabrine, the patient ones?

• 1:23:27Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:23:29Speaker 06

  Uh, that's kind of a white soft unit. And then there's, there's the more black soft type units as well that they have.

• 1:23:34Speaker 05

  And, and so what are some of the white soft and then some of the black soft up to these days? Or, you know, in the last, say, fifteen, twenty years?

• 1:23:43Speaker 06

  So really important distinction with Iran's military is that they don't have one military. They have two. They have the Artesh, which is the, like, our DOD. Then they have the IRGC, which is a completely separate military organization, which is larger than the Artesh. They're, they're about similar in size, but the IRGC is roughly larger. The IRGC's mission is to protect the Ayatollah and the regime around him. The Artesh mission is to protect the sovereignty of Iran like any other army would be. And a lot of outsiders don't understand that distinction. There's a lot of Artesh people that if there was a rebellion right now, they would turn their weapons on the regime. They don't want to be in this situation. They're just kind of regular people. IRGC people are different, right? And that's, that's a huge distinction that needs to be made. The Sabrine you mentioned are on the Artesh side.

• 1:24:29Speaker 06

  And there's a lot of Artesh white soft that do the traditional, like, visit, board, search and seizure of a vessel, for example. Um, they'll, you know, train foreign partners across the border. Another example. The biggest deployment of the Artesh, though, was in the nineteen eighty, nineteen eighty-eight Iran-Iraq war. Since eighty-eight, the Artesh never deployed more than a company-sized element outside of Iran.

• 1:24:52Speaker 06

  Which is crazy because you think like those units need real experience, at least not just with combat, but with like reception, staging, armored movement, integration, like moving to another country physically. It takes a lot of practice and training. They didn't have that from nineteen eighty-eight until two thousand sixteen. The reason they got that in two thousand sixteen is because of ISIS in Syria. That was the first time the regime deployed Artesh as a military force outside of Iran since the Iran-Iraq war, which is kind of interesting because we had the whole conflict in Iraq, the US did. There was many other conflicts between nineteen eighty-eight and two thousand sixteen that could have invited the army. They didn't send them, um, which is just, to me, it's kind of interesting. Like, why wouldn't you send your army to go do something? They didn't until twenty sixteen, and they actually had brigades, entire brigades deployed to, uh, Syria. Then the IRGC, what, what they're up to?

• 1:25:38Speaker 06

  They focus a lot on unconventional warfare in the ring of countries around Iran. But the way that they do unconventional warfare writ large, they separate it by portfolio or file. So there's like an Africa file, there's a South America file, there's a Middle East file specifically focused on Afghanistan, there's another file specifically on Iraq, there's one for Turkey, there's one for the Balkans, like the Bosnia deployment I mentioned, it is part of one element of the Quds Force going there. It's not the whole Quds Force going, it's a group that specializes. It's kind of like in the US, we have fifth group of special forces, they focus on the Middle East, they're not deploying to South America, right? And that's the IRGC and Quds Force has a very similar mindset. And actually, Qassem Soleimani was the architect of that, because before he took over in the late 90s,

• 1:26:22Speaker 06

  there was only one file, and that was the Balkans, because that was their only deployment. But as the US started moving and saber rattling about the Middle East, and then we invaded, 9/11 happened, like, hey, we need to do something around this country and separate it by task organization of specialty. The Afghanistan guys, you guys are only going to be Afghanistan. And actually, Esmael Ghaney, the current Quds Force commander, was an Afghanistan file guy. Like, he only did Afghanistan his entire career. And then when Soleimani was killed, Ghaney was elevated to that position. So he's kind of an interesting example of that file mentality.

• 1:26:58Speaker 05

  Something that you mentioned in the book that I forgot to mention earlier, I didn't know that Iran almost invaded Afghanistan.

• 1:27:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, forgotten moment of history.

• 1:27:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:27:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, that was actually Mazri Sharif, there were some Iranian diplomats there and a journalist, and then some other Iranians that weren't affiliated with the government, and the Taliban killed them. And this was a huge problem inside of Iran, because they had just come out of the Iran-Iraq war, they were, you know, bloodied and beaten. Their only deployment overseas in the last decade before this happened, which I think was 97, was to Bosnia. Like I mentioned, that was a very tiny thing. They didn't want to be involved with anything outside of the country at the time. They were licking their wounds and trying to focus and clamp down the country and just like get back to normal. And then this thing happens with these diplomats in Mazari Sharif. And there's an element of the IRGC that wants to invade Afghanistan immediately. They had a whole brigade ready to go and they had a division also getting spun up. They went all the way up to the border.

• 1:27:58Speaker 06

  And there's this National Security Council like element in the Iranian government that includes Ayatollah. And they kind of were sitting around thinking like, well, what happens if we do this? What's next? And the reason they did not invade Afghanistan is interesting. It's because Ahmed Shah Masood, who was part of the Northern Alliance that we were allied with, would be in danger if Iran invaded Afghanistan. Well, why is that important? Well, because Iran was also helping the Northern Alliance. Because inside of the Northern Alliance were a lot of Hazara Shia folks who were threatened by Taliban and still are threatened by the Taliban now. And Iran didn't want to damage that. Those people that they saw as people they wanted to protect. And that went into their calculus of why they didn't invade. Again, another revisionist history question, like what would have happened if they hadn't invaded?

• 1:28:43Speaker 06

  Because this was again, like 1997 ish, we hadn't bombed Camp Farouk yet, which was the Osama bin Laden, one of the training camps, like we hadn't done any of that stuff yet. How different would things be if if they had invaded? Wow, what a what a different world.

• 1:28:56Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating. And it's interesting to where, you know, you talked about the intelligence quartet, you know, sharing intelligence with other countries about Daesh, you know, ISIS.

• 1:29:10Speaker 05

  Daesh and and I I'm curious. You know, ISIS was a, you know, they were the enemy of everybody.

• 1:29:20Speaker 05

  But but teams still formed to fight them. You know, separate teams still formed like this. This wasn't this global war on ISIS. You know, it was, you know, individual efforts, I take it. Or not individual, but kind of group efforts.

• 1:29:36Speaker 05

  But we didn't want to get too chummy with Iran or Russia or anybody else during that.

• 1:29:39Speaker 06

  I'll tell you, we were actually doing a strike in Iraq and we had. The target was soaked for a few hours. We had aircraft getting ready to go like we were we were going to blow this target up. And as we're watching it through ISR. This team that looks highly trained and like clearly a special forces team, not our team. And we have the task force like we know who's here and we see this team coming up out in in the infrared. And we're like, who is that? And we were making calls, making calls, trying to figure this out. Turns out it was the Germans. Because the Germans didn't want to say they were deployed there and they didn't want to be part of our coalition. And they were doing a raid on a compound and didn't tell anyone, or at least didn't tell us. And we were about to blow that compound up like minutes of like as they were going in there, we would have killed them.

• 1:30:23Speaker 06

  And it was crazy to me like how how even on the Western side, we were not fully integrated. Like you were saying, like it was, it wasn't a coalition by any means.

• 1:30:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:30:33Speaker 05

  That's crazy. So, um, you know, there's so much to the book and I hope I haven't left out any. Have I left out anything major in our discussion?

• 1:30:44Speaker 06

  Um, I mean, there's so much stuff about the different countries that the IRGC works in, but I don't want to spoil it. Cause it's, that was one of my favorite parts to research. Cause it's so interesting to see like in in Yemen, for example, like how did they get to where they are today? And do the Houthis even care about Iran, which is a big question because I don't, I would argue that they don't care as much as we think they do.

• 1:31:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:31:04Speaker 06

  Same with Hezbollah, which I also go into a lot of detail about where Hezbollah came from and how it formed. And Iran came in later. It wasn't, you know, like it's a very interesting kind of thing that we just take for granted. And as we talked about the beginning of the show, there's a lot of these things that we just say like, oh, that's the way it is. We should ask like, is that really how it is? Is that how it got that way? Cause if we're using the wrong information and we're making decisions with the wrong information, we're going to end up with really bad results that keep ending with failures over and over again. Because we keep using these biases every time we try to make a decision.

• 1:31:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, it's, it is. I don't want to say it's a dense book because that, you know, makes it sound dry. It's not dry. It's just packed with information. I mean, packed with information. I, and I said, uh, earlier about a fifth of this book is references and sources. I, it is exceptionally well, I'll show, I'll show everybody.

• 1:32:00Speaker 05

  So the sources start here. If you guys can, the sources, can you guys see this all right? Start here, like it's massive. It's a, I was shocked by the amount of information you had in this book.

• 1:32:13Speaker 06

  I wanted to write it like an intel report where if you want to get more info on that thing, you can get it instead of like, well, how did he come to that conclusion, you know, which is not an intel report. You don't do that. And intel reports are facts. They're not opinions.

• 1:32:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, it's fantastic. Well, if that's, if that's it, as long as we haven't left anything out deep.

• 1:32:35Speaker 07

  So when Israel hit Iran with the, that wipe program and Iran came across the NSA program that we had there. I mean, what's it like when we find out that our big, important program that we have had there for a long time gets exposed?

• 1:32:58Speaker 06

  I'll tell you what, the guys on the watch floor were pissed.

• 1:33:02Speaker 06

  So this program is called Flame and it was like a multi-tool, you could call it, where it doesn't just do one thing. It's like a launchpad to, that's clandestinely there that you can put a bunch of things inside of, and it will do a ton of different functions, right? And these different functions can do pretty much anything to a system, offensively, defensively. They can manipulate stuff to make things look real that aren't real. Like it's incredible what it could do. If you're talking about the bureaucrats, they cared about the dollars because the programs like Flame are worth millions of dollars. Like I said, they weren't developed by people in the remote operations center, which is where this came out of at NSA. These were developed by civilian companies that are hired for the specific purpose. Like I need you to make me this thing that can do these things.

• 1:33:45Speaker 06

  And then you'll get multiple companies are like, oh, I can do that. And this other company is like, I can do that too. Here's better. And, but I'll charge you $3 million for that, you know, and, and this is how this game works, right? Well, we just dumped a bunch of money in this program and this program is extremely expensive. And now it's gone. And the problem is if you take Flame apart and see how it's made. You can figure out how we might access other things with similar analogous methods, which means if we had other stuff like in Russia, for example, or in China or North Korea, all those are done too. So you're talking about like worldwide ramifications. And this is because Israel went in there and wanted to delete data. Again, this is, this is the conflict between exploit versus neutralize. China wanted to exploit. Israel wanted to neutralize, which they frequently do.

• 1:34:30Speaker 06

  That's their frequent approach is to just destroy the thing. How much more value can you get if you exploit instead? I mean, it's immeasurable.

• 1:34:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, and, and it's not as if, uh, you know, the, the, the different signals intelligence apparatus are checking in with each other to say, hey, we're getting ready to attack these guys. Uh, you got anything hanging out there that you don't want exposed?

• 1:34:58Speaker 06

  Yeah. And actually with Stuxnet, it's unique because there were five different countries involved with Stuxnet that were coordinating with each other about it. And they weren't the five I partners. You know, it was, it was the US was the five I partner in that partnership. And it was kind of like an interesting collection of people working together on this singular purpose, which

• 1:35:16Speaker 08

  Hi, I'm Jenna Ushkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:35:30Speaker 09

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant. So I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:35:41Speaker 08

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:35:47Speaker 10

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:35:52Speaker 08

  So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 1:36:13Speaker 11

  Hanging out at the pool is great. Relaxing and playing Vegas-style games on my phone at the same time. Drinking one hand and a blackjack in the other. It's all at Spinquest. Over a thousand games, including your favorite slots and table games. Be cool with this summer special. New players get $30 coin packs for 10 at spinquest.com.

• 1:36:36Speaker 03

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 1:36:43Speaker 06

  It was timed to happen right before the 2015 nuclear agreement. So that way, if the nuclear agreement didn't work out, we had this covert operation that would destroy the nuclear program anyway. But it was discovered, right? Typically, it doesn't happen like that. Who were the other countries? So it was Denmark, Netherlands, Israel, United States, and Germany. Which is interesting because the US and Germany were two of the countries that were part of the original P5 countries that were negotiating with Israel or with Iran on the 2015 JCPOA.

• 1:37:17Speaker 05

  And Germany has a history of helping Iran at times, training them in, you know, in different things.

• 1:37:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, in the early 90s, actually. They built reactors there, too? Yeah, actually, all the things that were destroyed, the parts of the centrifuges that were exploited by Stuxnet were Siemens-produced components. And how did we know how those Siemens components work? Well, they're made in Germany, and the German government was able to obtain access to all that material, you know? But in the 90s, they were training them on regular espionage, like human espionage, teaching them how to use cameras, take clandestine photography, do surveillance detection routes. Russia was also training them, too. But Germany actually gifted them a bunch of computers and cameras to do espionage. And with the knowledge, it's interesting because France, also with Germany in this time period, the early 90s,

• 1:38:06Speaker 06

  they knew that Iran was going to use this stuff to assassinate Iranians in Europe. Right? Like, Bond Station was being used as a platform for assassinations, and Paris Station was being used for the same thing. But the agreement was, as long as you don't kill Frenchmen, as long as you don't kill Germans, you can use those locations to do that stuff, and here's some cameras and computers to help you do it.

• 1:38:26Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 1:38:28Speaker 07

  Jesus.

• 1:38:30Speaker 05

  It's crazy.

• 1:38:32Speaker 06

  And again, that's all in the intel reports. That's not in the media. So like, that goes to the sourcing of like, this is stuff people have never seen or heard of before, probably. Or they're like, that's not possible. They're not friends. Well, guess what? In the intelligence community, there's no friends. There's only interests.

• 1:38:47Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 1:38:50Speaker 05

  Well, Jonathan, it's a great book. We really appreciate you. Thanks for coming back.

• 1:38:54Speaker 07

  We got a couple of questions from.

• 1:38:55Speaker 05

  Questions?

• 1:38:56Speaker 07

  Yeah, from JJ. Can Mr. Hackett share anything about the US funneling arms to the Iranians during the civil war in Bosnia?

• 1:39:04Speaker 06

  Super interesting. Actually, there's a whole section in the book about that. And some of it is public, and some of it I have in there from intelligence reports. And what the Iranians were doing, they were supporting the Bosniaks, which Bosniak with a K is the Muslim group that was being targeted by Slobodan Milosevic and other genocidal leaders there. And the regime at the time, remember, this was like, late 80s, early 90s, when the regime was trying to help Muslims worldwide, like, that was kind of their banner, like, let's help these oppressed. That was that they were doing. And they saw the Bosniaks as oppressed, because they were, they're being massacred. I mean, like, it was horrific. And so the regime went there and brought weapons there, trained them. They also taught the intelligence service of the Bosniaks, how to

• 1:39:48Speaker 06

  do intelligence collection. And this is where the clash came between US helping Bosniaks and Iran helping Bosniaks, because there was a group of them that we both were helping. And there was a group of them that Iran was helping that was harming us. And there was actually an IED factory that was discovered later on in the war that IFOR discovered, which is the international force there, that was IEDs to attack IFOR. Which is interesting, because at the exact same time, we were allowing the regime to provide weapons to people in Bosnia that were fighting against the Serbs. So there was this, like, overlaying of friend and enemy in the same space, because similar to ISIS, where everybody was against the Serbs, what they were doing at the time. And some of them were against them in different ways. Some of

• 1:40:32Speaker 06

  those ways overlapped. It wasn't clear cut, like, oh, that's my enemy, that's my friend. Sometimes it doesn't work like that. Even in Iraq, like, again, back when I was talking about ISIS when I was there. We actually were careful not to strike targets where we knew IRGC people were meeting in Iraq because we we knew that the sources they were working with were fighting against ISIS. So those are kind of like off limits places. We never sent them letters or anything and told them like, hey, guys, we're not going to touch you. But it was like an understood thing, like, we're going to leave these people alone over here because the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And we care more about ISIS right now than we do about killing a couple of IRGC guys that who knows what they're doing.

• 1:41:08Speaker 07

  All right, we got a couple more from Duncan Idaho. As far as I know, there have been ops on US soil sponsored directly by Iran. And there have been proxy group ops in a few other Western countries. But there haven't been proxy group ops on US soil. Is that correct? If so, why?

• 1:41:27Speaker 06

  So this is an intelligence thing where we don't know the answer completely. And actually, the FBI has come out with competing reports from their own organization at some time saying there's like 2,000 Hezbollah fighters in America ready to go at any time. Other reports coming out and saying, no, the greatest threat in the United States is, you know, other groups. I won't get into that. But then they say, but the Hezbollah threat's not that big. Or they'll say, well, the connections here are tenuous. They're actually like relatives of Hezbollah people that Hezbollah could push a button to like push on them emotionally and force them to do something. There's not a lot of consensus about exactly what is going on here. And actually, I was reading a report recently about in the United States, Iran and Hezbollah. How many of them actually came across the border during the Biden administration?

• 1:42:12Speaker 06

  Which is an interesting question. I saw one report that said it was like, I don't know, 600 guys or something. Well, that's that's a tiny, tiny percentage of the total people that came across. How do we even know it was 600? What were they doing? Are they doing money laundering? Are they doing drug stuff? Are they actually doing plots? Because a lot of times when you look at pre-attack planning, it looks a lot like other types of attack or other types of planning. Surveillance, for example, if you don't know why they're doing the surveillance, it could, it could look like pre-attack surveillance. It could also look like surveillance. So you could go do an intelligence activity like a source meeting. It could also look like a drug deal, like surveillance for, to find a location that's good for a drug deal. You don't really know until the thing actually happens, unless you've got recruitment of someone involved in that network, or you've got SIGINT or something else like that.

• 1:42:56Speaker 06

  So that's kind of a challenge where, like with the FBI, for example, how are they, without doing source operations or having SIGINT, it's very tough to know exactly what is the threat. Like, we might be able to say like, hey, that guy, I know he is a member of Hezbollah. Okay, what else do you know? Well, it's hard to know, you know? So it's kind of an ambiguous answer to that, but it's important to kind of take it with a measured approach of like, what exactly is this guy doing? That way you can ask the right questions and do the right intelligence collection to actually figure it out, instead of just assuming like, oh, he's a drug dealer. Well, if you make the assumption that he's a drug dealer, but he's actually a bad guy, terrorist, we, we've made a bad assumption. Same vice versa. If we say like, oh, he's here to do terror attacks and we're ignoring all the drug dealing he's doing, that's another problem, right?

• 1:43:39Speaker 06

  So we need to come at this question objectively, which I trust that counterintelligence, FBI counterintelligence is probably doing it really well. It has been doing it really well, but it's tough. It's really tough, not just in the United States, but any country, even when you have a lot more ability to do stuff. It's really hard to figure out what is that guy doing because you can't see inside their brain.

• 1:43:56Speaker 07

  Yeah, one more from V. How much or any of the operations that they have overseas have been self-funded? And he wrote IRGC sexy car wash fundraiser.

• 1:44:08Speaker 06

  Well, the thing is, they have a lot of money. They can put a lot of money at it, but what they typically do to fund the overseas stuff is use money that's not from Iran. So that means drug money, black market stuff, other criminal activity financing that, that generates income from those activities, especially in Europe, for example, a lot of illegal immigration fund things that they'll help do human trafficking and move people and get money from that. Or they'll move drugs like Captagon out of Syria into the Gulf Arab countries and make a ton of money off that. A lot of that money is used to finance these activities. Because again, it's really tough to move the money out of Iran physically, like take dollars out of Iran and bring them outside the country. You can do it, but you want to do it for what matters.

• 1:44:50Speaker 06

  And if an attack has, has a risk of being discovered, you don't want to use your dollars for that. You want to use your drug money for that, because that's something that you, you can stand to lose, you know?

• 1:45:01Speaker 07

  I have one more question about something you mentioned before about your career specifically.

• 1:45:07Speaker 07

  When you mentioned you were in damn neck training, most people think of damn neck as like where SEAL Team Six is. Want to just clarify a little bit of what that, you know, I don't want people to, so was you SEAL Team Six in the, in the comments and stuff?

• 1:45:20Speaker 06

  It's funny because people were upset that you were calling me an operator the other day, even though that's the job title of my, my job. But, uh, yeah, it was, it was the counterintelligence, human intelligence course, which is the Marine Corps. Intelligence clandestine intelligence activity training pipeline. So we are a validated CIA, uh, training organization that CIA comes down there every six months to validate our training. And, uh, we also issue a counterintelligence credential. So it's the only, the Marine Corps is the only one that does this. The other DOD branches do not combine counterintelligence, human intelligence. And they also don't train up to category one intelligence collection, which is the highest level of intelligence collection. That clandestine intelligence collection that exists. So it's kind of, we chose that place because it's a good place to do it, obviously, because the base has a lot of, you know,

• 1:46:05Speaker 06

  it's got a good fence. And we also transform the area around it, the damn neck area, the Norfolk and Virginia Beach area into a training zone. Where it's, it's a foreign country, essentially very similar to how.

• 1:46:17Speaker 08

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At The Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:46:31Speaker 09

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic. In a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:46:42Speaker 08

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you, you're not alone.

• 1:46:47Speaker 10

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:46:53Speaker 08

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 1:47:14Speaker 11

  Hanging out at the pool is great, relaxing and playing Vegas style games on my phone at the same time. Drinking one hand and a blackjack in the other. It's all at Spinquest. Over a thousand games, including your favorite slots and table games. Be cool with this summer special. New players get $30 coin packs for 10 at spinquest.com.

• 1:47:37Speaker 03

  Spinquest is a free to play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 1:47:43Speaker 06

  The farm does it and the guys have to go out there and operate as if they're in a foreign country and do other ops out in downtown Norfolk, you know, in the middle of the night, which is sometimes more dangerous than doing it in a foreign country.

• 1:47:58Speaker 07

  No more questions from Patreon also.

• 1:48:02Speaker 05

  All right. Jonathan, thank you once again. Thanks for, you know, thanks for the book. Thanks for, you know, taking the time to write that. And thanks for joining us tonight.

• 1:48:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm glad to talk about it. I think it's a super important topic.

• 1:48:16Speaker 05

  And everybody, thank you for joining us and we will see you soon.

• 1:48:20Jack Murphy?

  Hey guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show. If you've been watching it, enjoying it, but you'd like to get a little bit more involved and help us continue to do this. You can check out our Patreon. It is patreon.com/the team house. And for $5 a month, you can get access to all of these episodes of the team house ad free. The same goes with our affiliated podcast, Eyes On with Andy Milburn, Jason Lyons, McMulroy. That one, you will also get all of those episodes ad free. And you support the channel and the show and we really appreciate it. The Patreon members are literally what

• 1:49:00Jack Murphy?

  has helped this company, this small business survive, especially during our early years. And you are what continues to help this thing going even as we navigate the turbulent world of YouTube advertising. So we really appreciate all of you guys. There's going to be a link down in the description to that Patreon page. And there is also going to be a link to our new merch shop. So if you guys want to go and get some team house merchandise, we got stickers and we also have patches. And I should mention, if you sign up for Patreon at $10 a month, we will mail you this patch as well. So we really appreciate that. But they're also for sale on the merch shop.

• 1:49:42Jack Murphy?

  And additionally, they got T-shirts up there, water bottles, a tote bag, coffee mugs, all that good stuff.

• 1:49:50Speaker 08

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:50:05Speaker 09

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:50:16Speaker 08

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:50:21Speaker 10

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:50:27Speaker 08

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 1:50:48Speaker 15

  Oh, I have had no luck lately. Wait, lady luck?

• 1:50:52Speaker 02

  Bresky, I got you. I've had so much luck on spinquest.com. They have all of my favorite games, slot games, live blackjack, craps, and bubble craps. You can even get a $30 coin pack for just 10 bucks.

• 1:51:05Speaker 15

  10 bucks for 30? I'm heading over to spinquest.com right now.

• 1:51:09Speaker 03

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 1:51:17Jack Murphy?

  So please go and check them out and support the show. We really appreciate it, guys. Thank you.

• 1:51:25Speaker 08

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:51:40Speaker 09

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:51:51Speaker 08

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:51:56Speaker 10

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:52:02Speaker 08

  So join us and hear their stories and more. Because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 1:52:22Speaker 15

  What's up, everybody? It's Bretzky. It always sounds like a good idea, get the whole family together for the holidays. But if your family's anything like mine, by the second minute of dinner, there's a political debate going on, and I just want to get the hell out of there. That's when I grab my phone and play on spinquest.com. It has all my favorite slots and table games for free with the ability to win real cash prizes. Head over to spinquest.com or download the app today.

• 1:52:46Speaker 03

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 1:52:59Speaker 08

  Hi, I'm Jenna Ushkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At The Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:53:14Speaker 09

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:53:25Speaker 08

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:53:30Speaker 10

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:53:36Speaker 08

  So join us and hear their stories and more. Because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 1:53:56Speaker 02

  Hey everybody, Lady Luck here. I just love the holiday season, spending time with family, sharing stories, and having some holiday cheer. But sometimes, when the kids get a little crazy, I love to break away, cozy up, and play some Spinquest.com. They have over a thousand different slots in all my favorite casino-style games. And they're running a deal for all new players, a $30 coin package for just $10. So go to Spinquest.com and download the app today.

• 1:54:20Speaker 03

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit Spinquest.com for more details.

• 1:54:32Speaker 08

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:54:47Speaker 09

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to "I'm deathly allergic", in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:54:58Speaker 08

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:55:03Speaker 10

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:55:09Speaker 08

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.

• 1:55:28Speaker 02

  Hey guys, Lady Luck here. I just love the fall season. Cris Mornings Pumpkin Spice Latte, and it's the best time to cozy up and play Spinquest. They have over a thousand different slots in all my favorite casino-style games. And they're running a deal for all new players, a $30 coin package for just $10. So this fall, grab your favorite blanket, visit Spinquest.com and download the app today.

• 1:55:53Speaker 03

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit Spinquest.com for more details.

• 1:56:05Speaker 08

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:56:19Speaker 09

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic. In a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:56:30Speaker 08

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:56:36Speaker 10

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:56:41Speaker 08

  So join us and hear their stories and more. Because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 1:57:02Speaker 15

  Oh, I have had no luck lately. Wait, lady luck?

• 1:57:07Speaker 02

  Brett, see, I got you. I've had so much luck on spinquest.com. They have all of my favorite games, slot games, live blackjack, craps, and bubble craps. You can even get a $30 coin pack for just 10 bucks.

• 1:57:20Speaker 15

  10 bucks for 30? I'm adding it over to spinquest.com right now.

• 1:57:24Speaker 03

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 1:57:32Speaker 00

  She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

• 1:57:45Speaker 01

  Zolir 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolir, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolir. Zolir may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolir should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including... Zolaire is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or hardened circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolaire.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolaire.

• 1:58:28Speaker 01

  This is an advertisement for Zolaire, paid for by Genentech and Novartis.

• 1:58:32Speaker 15

  What's up, everybody? It's Bretzky. I just got done stealing candy from all of the kids in my entire neighborhood, and my stomach just hurts so bad I can barely get off my couch. But don't worry, I can still spin a thousand of my favorite slots and play all of the live table games I love on spinquest.com. New users get a $30 coin package for just $10. Go to spinquest.com or download the app today.

• 1:58:56Speaker 03

  Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.

• 1:59:02Speaker 16

  Monday Night brings one more big matchup to settle into. And when every play matters, the last thing you want to do is step away to figure out dinner. That's where DiGiorno comes in. Get a DiGiorno pizza ready before kickoff, then enjoy restaurant-quality taste fresh from your own oven while you stay locked into every play. Stock up on DiGiorno over the weekend, so when Monday night rolls around, the only thing you sweat is the game. Shop now at the link in the episode description. It's not delivery, it's DiGiorno.