#2500 - Scott Horton

Scott Horton, a longtime antiwar journalist and host of the Scott Horton Show, walked Joe Rogan through the history of how the United States has repeatedly provoked conflicts in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, culminating in the recent war with Iran. Horton’s core argument is that American foreign policy, driven by neoconservative ideology and the influence of the Israel lobby, has consistently misread adversaries, overextended the military, and left the U.S. strategically weaker. He traces this pattern from the Iraq War through the Ukraine conflict to the current crisis with Iran, offering a detailed, historically grounded critique that challenges the mainstream narrative.

The Neoconservative Blueprint and the Iraq War

Horton explains that the neoconservative movement, which he describes as a cross between the Israel lobby and the military-industrial complex, has long sought to reshape the Middle East through military force. He points to the 1996 "Clean Break" policy paper, written by David Wurmser and Richard Perle for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which advocated abandoning peace negotiations in favor of regional dominance. This thinking later morphed into the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) and the Wolfowitz Doctrine, which called for the U.S. to prevent any rival power from emerging anywhere in the world.