Jim Rickards Talks Iran, and His Time at the CIA

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Jim Rickards’ latest appearance on Steve Bannon’s WarRoom show is a must-watch. Today we’ll discuss a few highlights then link to the full interview.

Jim talks in depth with Steve about a number of hot-button and controversial topics. The Supreme Court bombshell, Iran, immigration, and even Jim’s time working with the CIA.

The conversation starts out with Jim and Steve discussing the American intelligence failure with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq in 2003. I enjoyed this clip, because it’s always fascinating to hear Jim talk about his time working with U.S. intelligence agencies.

Here’s Jim:

“Now, I was not [working with the CIA] on the WMD case, but I was at the agency in the aftermath. There was a guy, head of the National Intelligence Council, which is the creme de la creme of analysts, named Dr. Thomas Fingar. I worked with Dr. Fingar quite a bit. He was put in charge of cleaning this up [WMD mistakes]. Making sure it didn’t happen again.

What they did was, they came up with a grammar book. And a lot of these words you hear from the intelligence community, you can’t take it as plain english. They use words like ‘we assess’. They put everything in terms of probabilities. The words are designed to avoid certainty.

So Tulsi [Director of National Intelligence] and Ratcliffe [CIA Director] are constrained. They’re in a grammatical straight-jacket.

Jim goes on to explain how Tulsi Gabbard’s statement a few months ago that Iran was not working on nuclear weapons, likely was – in the literal sense – true. They may not have been, at that time, assembling a nuclear weapon. But they were moving in that direction.

Honestly, this reminds me of how the Federal Reserve communicates. Overflowing with legalese, misdirection, probabilities, and unknowns.

Then Jim explores the possibility that Tulsi’s assessment (Iran wasn’t working on a bomb) could have been part of the clandestine action. An effort to get Iran to let its guard down before the attack. Even if Tulsi was technically correct, her statement could have been part of the plan. If true, this one has deep implications. It worked, but could potentially harm our nation’s reputation in the international community going forward.

Jim goes on to say that President Trump is making a mistake by sidelining Tulsi, because she was severely limited by that grammatical straight-jacket.

Discussing Netanyahu’s Plans

Friday’s conversation between Bannon and Rickards was cut into two parts. In the second, the gentlemen begin by watching Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tell Fox News’ Brett Baier that American intelligence was wrong, and that Iran was extremely close to getting nuclear weapons. Additionally, the Israeli leader makes the claim that the Iranian nuclear threat is not yet extinguished.

Jim and Steve agree that Netanyahu was exaggerating the threat. Bannon goes so far as to call Netanyahu’s claims a “bald-faced lie”, and an “upsell attempt”, with Israel’s leader attempting to claim that we need to do more (regime change).

Both Bannon and Rickards seem dead set against another regime change effort in the Middle East. They reference the WMD situation in Iraq a number of times in the situation, and clearly those wounds are still fresh with these two men (and the American people).

Overall, it’s an excellent interview. As I mentioned, it is cut into 2 parts on the Rumble platform (similar to Youtube but with less censorship). Here they are:

• Part 1 (14 minutes)
• Part 2 (7 minutes)

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