What happened in this episode?
Joe Rogan sat down with Scott Horton, editorial director of Antiwar.com and host of The Scott Horton Show, for a sweeping three-hour discussion on American foreign policy disasters from Iraq to Ukraine to Iran. Horton accused the Trump administration of catastrophic failure in the February 2025 Iran strikes, revealing that US military bases across the Middle East were crippled by Iranian missiles, with 70-75% of Iran's arsenal still intact despite official claims of decimation. He cited satellite evidence and classified leaks showing 18 bases from Iraq to Oman were hit, runways pitted, and the Naval Fifth Fleet station at Bahrain destroyed. Horton also disclosed that a US military commander told troops Trump was anointed by Jesus to trigger Armageddon via Iran strikes, citing reporting from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. The conversation turned to the origins of the Iraq War, with Horton detailing the neoconservative Clean Break Doctrine and Paul Wolfowitz's Defense Planning Guidance, which he argued scheduled decades of regime-change wars to benefit Israel. On Ukraine, Horton traced the conflict to two US-backed coups in 2004 and 2014 and NATO expansion that violated promises to Gorbachev, citing George Kennan's warnings. He accused the US of killing 173 Iranian schoolgirls with an experimental Lockheed tungsten-pellet missile in the initial assault. Rogan pressed Horton on why chip manufacturing in Taiwan matters and whether libertarian non-intervention is realistic, with Horton arguing the US empire is bankrupt and ought to withdraw from the Middle East entirely. The episode closed with Horton predicting Iran may break out and build a nuclear weapon in response to the strikes, though he argued their conventional missile force already deters Israel effectively. Throughout, Horton framed American interventionism as driven by short-term political incentives, citing Strobe Talbot's admission that NATO expansion prioritized Lockheed contracts and swing-state votes over long-term strategy.
