Author Gad Saad speaks to Joe Rogan about growing concerns on the left and right in the U.S. about Israel’s influence in Washington, AIPAC, and the Iran war. Rogan said many Americans think it looks like Israel is exerting too much pressure, such as pulling the U.S. into war with Iran, and the U.S. does not appear to be gaining anything. Saad offers a calm, friendly response to the idea that U.S. policy can be reduced to Israeli pressure, arguing that shared interests and concerns about Iran’s nuclear ambitions offer a more straightforward explanation. He said concerns about lobbying are legitimate, but that the stronger claim, that America is being puppeteered into war, gives too little agency to U.S. leaders and ignores the broader threat posed by the Iranian regime. “If you’ve paid attention to what Netanyahu has said over the last few decades, it’s always been ‘they’re a year away, they’re two months away.’ He’s been doing this forever,” Rogan said. “He spoke at the U.N. and had that giant cartoon bomb, remember the Looney Tunes bomb, with the percentage of enrichment of uranium. He’s wanted this for a long time.” “I can’t comment whether Netanyahu was pulling our eyes, but surely it can’t be that the Israelis are so manipulative in their puppeteering that they’ve pulled the wool over the American eyes and really there’s no danger that the Iranians were posing,” Saad said. “And we’ve convinced the Americans to go to war. Do you think that it is that?” “Israel has shared interests with the United States, as most allies would, where they both agree that probably an Iranian regime that has nuclear weapons would not be a good thing for world peace,” Saad continued. “And so because these two countries have maybe greater testicular fortitude than the NATO countries, it seems as though the Israelis are puppeteering the Americans. But do you really think that Donald Trump is sitting and saying: You know, had I not been such a weak guy with no personal agency, I wouldn’t have fallen sway to the incredibly influential Zionist lobby?” “It’s undeniable that the Americans have the Israelis in their ear, pushing for their self-interest. But that’s also the reality of every nation on earth. But that doesn’t mean the Americans are so lacking in personal agency, are so gullible, are so easy to puppeteer,” Saad also said. Joe Rogan suggested the historical perspective that the existence of the Islamic Republic in the first place is blowback from U.S. actions. “They were trying to nationalize oil,” he said. “The overthrow of a foreign government and supporting an ayatollah to take their place is a pretty big factor.” “And look, there are a lot of consequences for that down the road,” Rogan said. “We have monkeyed in other countries for our own interest for a long time, and with horrible consequences for the people in those countries. And I think Iran is an excellent example of that.” “You remember the old butterfly effect, right?” Saad added. “A butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon, and then that reverberates into a cyclone somewhere else.” “Everything in the world can ultimately be linked back to oxygen, to the United States, to the military complex, to the Zionist lobby, because in some very facile way, all of those entities are connected in a meaningful way in this causal network,” he said. “But using Occam’s razor, does it really make sense to blame ISIS on American policy or the Zionist lobby, or does ISIS itself have any personal agency in terms of what it then does for the next 10 years that it’s in power?”

JOE ROGAN: In this country, the concern with Judaism is the support of the Israeli military, right? The concern is the amount of influence that it has on the United States government: how we got into the Iran war, why we give them so much influence over our military, over our decision-making, over our politicians. I mean, AIPAC famously promotes and supports a tremendous amount of politicians in the United States. That’s the big fear, is that there’s an inordinate amount of influence that Israel has over foreign policy, our decisions, and even our political structure in the country. GAD SAAD: Right. Several ways to tackle this. Say the Iran war, take Israel out of it. Do you think there are multiple countries that would share in the recognition that probably an Iranian regime that has an eschatology that basically says the end of times requires that there is sort of death to everybody before the final imam comes back-would it be a good idea for the Brits or the Romanians or the French or some of the Gulf countries? Would they be happy if Iran had a nuclear weapon? So to frame the issue of the U.S. attacking, or being involved in the attack on the Iranians, as, you know, the United States doesn’t have personal agency, they’re all wood crickets that are being puppeteered by this incredibly powerful lobby called Israel-that simply doesn’t pass the smell test. Of course, Israel has shared interests with the United States, as most allies would, where they both agree that probably an Iranian regime that has nuclear weapons would not be a good thing for world peace. And so because these two countries have maybe greater testicular fortitude than the NATO countries, it seems as though the Israelis are puppeteering the Americans. But do you really think that Donald Trump is sitting and saying, You know, had I not been such a weak guy with no personal agency, I wouldn’t have fallen sway to the incredibly influential Zionist lobby? JOE ROGAN: Well, it’s not just incredibly influential. It’s the amount of financial support they gave his candidacy, and again, all the different politicians that are beholden to Israel. That’s the concern that a lot of people on the right and on the left have here in America. Most people in America do not support this war. A large percentage of people think it was a bad idea. GAD SAAD: What are your thoughts? JOE ROGAN: I don’t think it’s a good idea. GAD SAAD: Why? JOE ROGAN: Well, because first of all, it doesn’t seem to have a clear resolution, right? It’s like we went over there because we were told that they were very close to developing a nuclear weapon. But if you’ve paid attention to what Netanyahu has said over the last few decades, it’s always been they’re a year away, they’re two months away, they’re whatever it is. I mean, he’s been doing this forever. Ever since he spoke at the U.N. and had that giant cartoon bomb, remember the Looney Tunes bomb? When he spoke with the percentage of enrichment of uranium. He’s wanted this for a long time. There’s also a deep concern that he is only in office because of the war, and he has corruption charges in Israel, and that in order for him to stay in power and for him to avoid going to trial, he has to continue war. GAD SAAD: Can I comment on that? Let’s suppose you go to see your physician and your physician says, Hey, Joe, God forbid, it looks like your blood sugar is very high, and I’m going to classify you as now-never mind pre-diabetic, I think you’re diabetic. And if we don’t manage your sugar levels, there will come a day where I can tell you exactly what’s going to happen. We’re going to have to amputate your extremities. You’re probably going to lose your eyesight. You’re probably going to have sexual dysfunction, and you’re probably going to have some cardiovascular incident. That doesn’t happen on day two of you having been diagnosed with diabetes. There is a trajectory, and at some point there’ll be a tipping point where, until then, none of the diabetes complications happened. Now why am I saying all this? Because I can’t comment as to whether he’s been lying all the times when he said there’s two more years left, or one more year, or six more months. But surely we can grant the American government enough leeway to presume that if they thought that at this point it’s the right time and it is now intolerable for them to go another day with the current reality, that they probably had some intelligence that suggests that they are close. So I can’t comment whether Netanyahu was pulling our eyes, but surely it can’t be that the Israelis are so manipulative in their puppeteering that they’ve pulled the wool over the American eyes and really there’s no danger that the Iranians were posing, and we’ve convinced the Americans to go to war. Do you think that it is that? JOE ROGAN: Well, I wouldn’t say there’s no danger, right? So here’s one thing that we do know. They had said that their missiles could only reach a certain distance. That proved to not be true, right, because of the Diego Garcia missile launch. So they have missiles that are capable of reaching Europe, and that was not something they had said before. We know that they have enriched their uranium beyond what they need for nuclear power, right? And that they’re within striking distance of developing a nuclear weapon, right? But wasn’t it true that they had put-see, this is hard to know as me, as a person sitting in a podcast studio in Texas, exactly what their ruling had been-but that they had only done this in order to avoid the possibility of them being attacked, that they would get close to a nuclear weapon, so at least it would deter some potential attacks on them, and that they were doing this out of self-interest. There’s a large group of American politicians that did not want this war, that did not think it was warranted to attack Iran at this point. GAD SAAD: I think I’ve mentioned on the show before this distinction between deontological ethics, absolute statements: “it is never okay to lie,” versus consequentialist ethics: “it’s okay to lie if it is meant to spare someone’s hurt feelings,” right? So if your wife says, Do I look fat in those jeans? you put on your consequentialist hat and you say, You’ve never looked more beautiful, because maybe she’s put on a bit of weight, but you don’t want to hurt her feelings. So you lie. And for most of us, we go through life in most instances putting on a consequentialist hat, okay? And I’m going to link it now to our discussion. To have, for example, a deontological principle that says that I am always an isolationist-do you understand what I mean by here? Deontological meaning that it doesn’t matter what the environment is out there. I, as America, will never interfere in wars over there. That can’t be an optimal strategy, right? Because, for example, if you were a deontological pacifist, you say, under no circumstances do I believe that violence is the solution. Well, what would usually happen to a society if it adhered to deontological pacifism? JOE ROGAN: They’d be attacked. GAD SAAD: They’d be eradicated, right? So it can’t be that for some of these geopolitical issues, there is a rule that, in its nature, is deontological. So many of the Americans that are anti-this war are very, very staunchly steeped in sort of a libertarian, deontological, isolationist perspective. Now, in many cases, I would completely agree with that position, in that it’s not the Americans’ position to have to go and be the policeman of everywhere in the world. But let’s contrast it, say, with when World War II was about to happen, the appeasement strategy of Chamberlain, right? This guy with the little mustache says, Don’t worry about it. I absolutely have no designs to do anything bad. You swear, Adolf? It’s all good? Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry. Promise you really don’t? Even though you’re moving all of your stuff, you’re a good guy, right? I can trust you? Yeah, yeah. Of course you can. So appeasement only works if the other person is someone that can be fully trustworthy. It is almost incontestable that if the Iranian regime in its current form could ever cause great damage to everybody, not only Israel, right-I mean, the Gulf countries are not exactly putting up barriers against this war because they also are the enemies of the Iranians. So it’s undoubtable that of course the Americans have the Israelis in their ear pushing for their self-interest. But that’s also called the reality of every nation on earth. Every entity fights for its own interests. But that doesn’t mean that the Americans are so lacking in personal agency, are so gullible, are so easy to puppeteer, that there must be this Zionist lobby that otherwise is pushing us into an unnecessary war. Maybe another three years, maybe another five years, maybe another 10 years, it would have resulted in a disaster. So if you are a universalist and you want the Iranian people to maximally flourish, forget about Israel. Don’t even mention the word Israel. Do you not want these 90 million people called Iranians, who have a deeply rich historical heritage, to flourish? I’ve had many graduate students who are Iranians in my classes and so on. They are some of the most modern, secular, outward-looking Westerners that have been choked for 47 years by a really nasty regime. So maybe we could celebrate that, if all this goes well, 90 million people are going to be freed. And I could say that statement without ever invoking Israel. What do you think of that? JOE ROGAN: Well, I think the reason why they’re in the situation they’re in in the first place is because of the United States. It’s because the United States and the British Petroleum Company. It’s because they were trying to nationalize oil. That’s what happened in the first place. GAD SAAD: The Islamic Revolution? JOE ROGAN: Yes. This is how it started in the first place. They realized that the British Petroleum Company was making a ton of money, and they wanted to nationalize oil, and we got rid of them and they installed this Islamic regime. And look, there’s a lot of consequences for that down the road. Obviously, the worst side of it was what happened to the Iranian people. When you look at the photos and the videos of Tehran from the 1950s, the 1960s, I mean, my God, it looks like a Western society: women wearing skirts, and everyone looks-it looks very modern and Western. And then it became this fundamentalist religious country that it is right now, this Islamic country that it is right now. They’re under a regime that murders protmonkeyesters. They famously murdered some high-level wrestlers. There was an Olympic gold medalist, and the United States, the UFC tried to get involved and try to keep him from getting murdered. Yeah, they do horrible things. There’s no doubt about it. It’s a terrible regime. But there’s a really good argument that that terrible regime is in place because of the CIA and because of the United States government, because of the British Petroleum Company, because we intervened, and we’ve done that in the past. We did that with Libya, right? There’s a reason why Muammar Gaddafi was out. We had Russell Crowe, who’s a brilliant guy, on the podcast explaining the history of Libya and how great it was for Libyan people when Muammar Gaddafi was in power, that if anybody wanted to get an education anywhere and they had some certain skills or talent in some certain area, they would fully pay for their education overseas. They gave everyone a house. Everyone who lived there had a home. People were educated. He was trying to set up something akin to the United States, but the United States of Africa. And they were like, We can’t have any of that, and so they got rid of him, and Libya became a failed state. We have monkeyed in other countries for our own interest for a long time, and with horrible consequences for the people in those countries. And I think Iran is an excellent example of that. GAD SAAD: So how much of the Islamic regime coming into power in 1975-if you have 100 points that you want to allocate to either it’s the U.S. that causes it, versus there’s an Islamic regime with its theology that is really nasty-how would you allocate the points in terms of the cause of that reality? JOE ROGAN: That’s a good question, and that’s a question that would be answered by historians rather than me. But I think there’s no doubt that we played a major factor in that. Don’t you agree with that? GAD SAAD: I mean, yes and no. So let me explain why I say yes and no. When you have a complicated geopolitical system, you can always look-you remember the old butterfly effect, right? There’s a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon, and then how that reverberates into a cyclone somewhere else, right? It’s kind of- JOE ROGAN: No, but- GAD SAAD: But I mean the principle- JOE ROGAN: It’s great if you don’t understand how the weather works. GAD SAAD: Fair enough. But the idea that there are causal networks is such that in this complicated web of causal networks, you can always find a particular entity that you can try to link back all of the causes to that entity. JOE ROGAN: But the overthrow of a foreign government and supporting an ayatollah to take their place is a pretty big factor. GAD SAAD: But that’s why I asked you to allocate the 100 points. JOE ROGAN: I wouldn’t be the guy to answer that. GAD SAAD: I’m going to answer off the top of my head, and it’s completely speculative, so the numbers I’m going to say are not- Let’s ascribe 10 out of the 100 points to whatever power the U.S. wields in that region to have allowed that regime to come in. But that regime carries the other 90 points of the 100 because they are the ones who, for the next 47 years, implement the reality that the common Persian is going to experience. Everything in the world can ultimately be linked back to oxygen, to the United States, to the military complex, to the Zionist lobby, because in some very facile way, all of those entities are connected in a meaningful way in this causal network. But using Occam’s razor, does it really make sense to blame-for example, people say ISIS is really due to whatever Israel. I mean, in some facile way, you could draw the causal link of how there was a vacuum that was created by the U.S. when they de-Ba’athified Iraq that allowed an extreme- So do we blame ISIS on American policy or the Zionist lobby, or does ISIS itself have any personal agency in terms of what it then does for the next 10 years that it’s in power? Do you see what I’m saying? JOE ROGAN: I do. GAD SAAD: So this is the old story. I’m going to butcher it, but I quote it in The Parasitic Mind: For the man who has a hammer, he only sees the world as being made up of nails, right? So this is when you’re presuming that there is greater explanatory power to a particular cause than there really is.

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