War With Iran? MacGregor Warns This Ends the Dollar
Summary
Gold: Guest argues gold is effectively the new reserve currency, citing China's accumulation and gold-backing moves and India's cultural hoarding, with skepticism about U.S. reserves.
Mining: Recommends investing in mining broadly—copper, gold, and critical minerals—given their essential role in defense, industry, and society.
Natural Resources: Emphasizes “anything that comes out of the ground” as a core investment focus amid rising geopolitical and supply-chain risks.
Geopolitical Risks: Warns of a likely Iran conflict and potential Persian Gulf disruption, which could draw in China and Russia and impact global commodities.
China Dependence: Highlights U.S. vulnerability to Chinese control of rare earths and critical materials, reinforcing the case for resource exposure.
Fiat Currency Outlook: Predicts diminishing faith in the U.S. dollar and the end of easy money, favoring hard assets like gold and commodities.
Agriculture: Advocates revitalizing food production as a strategic priority and investment arena alongside minerals and metals.
Companies/Tickers: No specific public tickers were pitched; references to Starlink/SpaceX and First Majestic Silver were contextual rather than investment recommendations.
Transcript
Hello and welcome back to the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference. Welcome back to Soore Financially. My name is Kai Hoffman. I'm the NJR Mining guy over on X and of course your host of this channel and I'm really looking forward to this next conversation. We might have saved the best for last here on day two. Really looking forward to it cuz we're going to talk about the crossroads in the intersection of geopolitics and gold. And uh couldn't have found a better guest to do that with, Colonel Douglas McGregor. Colonel, it's great to have you on the show. It's great to meet you in person actually. >> Yeah, that's right. But we never have >> special coverage from the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference is brought to you by First Majestic Silver. There's no substitute for silver. No, we missed each other last year and we usually do virtual. So, tremendously appreciate you stopping by. Dankus, >> should we do this in German? practice. >> We're we're planning on launching a German language channel. So maybe we'll get you on and speak German. >> Well, I've got to get on there and I've got to but I've got to get practice. I you know, there's nobody in Washington speaks German. >> Really? >> The Germans in the German embassy won't speak German. >> It's crazy. Oh no. Um, let's dive in. I know you you have to head out. I tremendously appreciate you being here, Colonel. Um, let's start with the geopolitics. Let's really start setting the scene. Of course, lots going on. We can pick any type of topic and spend 3 hours on probably, but I'll let you choose the next like you you gave me sort of four hot beds that you that keep you occupied. And maybe which one is the hottest? Where are the flames the highest perhaps? >> Well, I think the two hottest topics really from a strategic standpoint for the United States, one is clearly in the Middle East. This imminent war with Iran is very dangerous. The last time that we confronted the Iranians, it was a an attempt to end the conflict, which was not going very well for the Israelis. It wasn't going very well for Iran. But of the two, the Israelis sustained a lot of damage. And President Trump wanted to end that. He did everything he could. He went through these agreements with the Iranians so that we bomb certain targets and they hit certain targets. And he said, "Now the war is over. We're finished." But Mr. Netanyahu is not finished. Mr. Netanyahu's goals, which are de facto our goals as a result, is to establish unchallenged Jewish supremacy from Israel over the entire region. Iran stands in the way. Now, it's not the only one. I think in in Israel they are finally coming to terms with the reality that on their borders uh is Turkey and the Turks are not terribly happy about the advances the Israelis have made in places like Lebanon but especially Syria but he wants to finish the job so to say with Iran. Now you know that very recently they had these demonstrations and and these were characterized in the west as oh the regime is about to fall. Everyone hates the regime so it's all nonsense. Most of these demonstrations at the beginning were quite legitimate. I mean the currency has been effectively destroyed by us through our sanctions and people are upset with the inflation, the prices and so forth. That was all. And you had some discussion between reformers and conservatives about how fast to move forward in certain areas. But then the Mossad came in with the CIA. They brought in 40,000 Starlight terminals from Musk and they tried to orchestrate a violent overthrow. It failed and they have about 6,000 people I think that have been captured and a lot of these are what we used to call years ago fifth columnists operating inside the country against the country and they have executed large numbers and quite frankly that's what we would do if we were in a war. So this is not some sort of act of barbarism and isolation. So right now I think Iran is frankly stronger, more socially cohesive than it was last June and they're also better armed and better equipped. >> Is that maybe the reason why we haven't seen any military action against Iran at the at the time of the uprising? Cuz it felt like we were like leaving leaving them hanging a little bit like if we instigated it, there were talks about a strike and nothing happened. I think there was an assumption built into the whole thing that this demonstration would turn into a nationwide uh up what do you call an uprising and it didn't materialize and so they had enough firepower they thought on hand that they thought could push it over the edge when it failed miserably and the government reasserted its control dramatically decisively that's when the word came back from Netanyahu look we're we're going to need everything we're going to need much war. Okay. >> And Trump has has essentially acquiesced and you have a massive build up of forces. The I think the Lincoln battle group should arrive within the next few days at at the outside a week. Once that's on station, if you look at the placement of forces, which we don't want to discuss publicly, but all over the region in Europe and so forth, they will have enough platforms, enough weapon systems to uh do enormous damage to Iran. Let's put it that way. Like one thing I heard actually the US doesn't have enough air defense missiles. Is that uh a fact or >> every time every time you go to war and you're trying to defend against incoming missiles, you shoot two or three missiles at every incoming missile, you run out pretty quickly. So I think over the last six, seven months there's been an attempt to dramatically ramp up production to get to a point where they have enough on hand at least for some period of time. Now what is that period? A week, two weeks, 3 weeks, a month, not much more than that. >> It fits with the statements by the president that we need to increase production. We cut salaries if you don't deliver. >> Well, the problem is that's not how you're going to get more missiles. We have no surge capacity >> and we have not mobilized industry for war. >> The Russians have tremendous capacity. >> Years of experience now at it. >> The Chinese have also built a huge manufacturing base and they can add tremendously to whatever the Russians build. We're not in that position. So this has to be successful if we do it within a fairly short period of time. We cannot maintain the country under siege if that makes sense. And again, if we try to do that, inevitably the straits of Hormuz will close. >> China buys about a third or more of its oil from Iran and the Persian Gulf. They're not going to tolerate that. The Russians, they have interest in Iran. People don't seem to understand Iran is just a little south of Russia. What happens down there matters. They don't want Iran to go through what the Russians have been through. We went into this Ukraine war with a goal of destroying Russia. divide it, split it, rape it, and take its take its resources. It's failed. We, you know, we're out of business. They want to do that to Iran. I don't think it'll work. But I think that's really what's behind it all. >> Yeah. >> Um Iran is an interesting like example as well because where there a lot of regional or international interests meet, you just touched on Russia, China, Turkey. Um >> well as you mentioned Turkey that's important because what the Turks have said very clearly to us and anybody else who wants to listen is that they are not interested in the destruction of Iran. They may have differences with the Iranians from time to time but they realize that their existence as a nation state as well as Iran are very important to the whole region. You know Iran is a civilizational state. It represents a specific civilization. So do the Turks. And you know, why would you want your neighbor size of 90 million with enormous potential if if they can ever develop economically if we'll lift these sanctions, why would you want that destroyed? They don't. So, I think the Turks will stand by and watch and then we may be surprised at what they may be willing to do. Erdogan has played both sides of the fence, but his population is firmly on the side of both the people in Gaza, the Palestinians, and the people in Iran. interesting statement there. Yeah, like Turkey is an interesting one because they they're officially EU members as well. So, it's it's an interesting debate. Um I I want to get to China a little bit and like the situation and the relationship with the US as well cuz it will lead us down the pathway towards gold that I want to talk with you about as well ultimately. What what is the relationship between the US and China right now and what what is your what what what are you picking up? >> It's very interesting. remember the meeting that occurred in Seoul between President Trump and Xi. And when President Trump went to that meeting, he discovered certain things. I think he understood some of it when he went in, but he walked away with a very clear picture. And the picture is this. China is not part of a supply chain. We're not just buying things from time to time in China. We are hostage to China. We are heavily dependent upon what they produce, not just rare earths or other things. The rare earths get a lot of attention because medical applications, industrial applications, I mean silver is another good example. >> Silver is in every F-35. It's in every sighting system that we have. All these minerals have a critical role to play. And China made that very clear to the president and the Chinese made an arrangement that they would lift sanctions on certain things for a temporary period. I think it was a year or something. But then they turned right around and raised the price on everything. I mean the Chinese are in the catbird seat. The Chinese have thought from the very beginning as soon as they finally abandoned Mao and the communism that he represented, they then began planning into the future. And for 30 years they have been planning to be in a position they are now. They hold in in Trump's words all the cards. We don't. Now when it comes to gold they've also been accumulating gold. But then again so is India right now. Somebody told me the other day and they may be right. Indian housewives have more gold on hand in their households than we have at Fort Knox. >> That may be true. I don't know. I mean no one has inventoried our gold. And when we tried to do it, it was shut down quickly. So, a lot of us are very suspicious about that. But gold is now the reserve currency, not not the yuan, gold. And what the Chinese have done is they've decided to back their currency with gold. Gosh, what an interesting notion. And they have this new facility in Riad. They have a facility in Hong Kong. I mean, we you can go into those things. The art the rim is is now in in Hong Kong. It's a means of exchange. Now, people say, "Well, they're threatening us." Well, they're not really threatening as us as much as they're filling a vacuum. I >> was going to say, are they have they weaponized gold to to the extreme here? And uh maybe what what are the ramifications of that? Like the ripple effects of all of that? >> Well, I think our fiat currency is about had it. But the fiat currency always rested on on the assumption that we were the strongest. We were invincible and vulnerable uh and immune to whatever happened and therefore you could always bet on the dollar. I think that's changed. >> Maybe as a follow-up to that, like Japan, the yen still exists, but they've been in like economic trouble for decades. >> Well, don't you think that we in fact are on a road similar to Japan? >> I've been saying that before. We're just kicking the can down the road. We just have to give up the not we, but the US has to give up the reserve status. >> Right. >> The question is, is it willing to do that to survive? >> Well, you know, the the view is that would be a catastrophe for us. Well, if you think the catastrophe involves you can no longer print money at will, I disagree with you. I think that would be a good thing. One of the things that people don't understand is when we came off the gold standard, you could intervene militarily anywhere you wanted. You could go to war anywhere you wanted. You just printed money. You didn't have to go back to the population and say, "We're raising your taxes." You know, this all happened because of the Vietnam War. LBJ spent us into oblivion, the president, and Nixon was stuck with a bill. He had squandered huge quantities of money on the home on this great uh war on poverty great what was it called the uh I can't remember now great society program and then on Vietnam which made absolutely no sense nobody there ever knew what we were doing I mean it's sad but it's absolutely true so Nixon inherited this and remember he said that taking us off the gold standard was a temporary measure but most things in Washington that begin as temporary end up becoming permanent It was very convenient because you can print money. Hit the button. More money's available. Go do it. And that's about to end I suspect. I can't point when I mean I had this conversation with Nasim Talib. >> Mhm. >> And I love his work. I don't agree with all of it, but his bottom line is he said, "Doug, gold is the reserve currency now. Nobody wants to admit it, but that's where we are. So who has the most gold wins?" >> Yeah. >> We think we have the most, but nobody's inventoried it. Yeah. And the Chinese has have never reported it officially. So, which might be three, four times as much as we have because they don't export anything. >> That would be my suspicion. >> Absolutely. It's it's an interesting discussion because like what what are the effects of all of this? So, assuming China becomes the new or the yuan becomes the new reserve currency, global reserve currency because it's partially goldbacked at least. Um what what does that mean for like coming back to geopolitics perhaps as well, Taiwan, what does that mean for the Asian region? Like what what should we be expecting from that side? Well, China has very carefully calculated the relationship between what we're discussing and Taiwan. >> Mhm. >> Originally, Xi's plan called for reunification in 2046. >> Mhm. >> And that was based on the assumption that the Taiwanese would vote themselves into China. >> Now, we don't want to spend too much time on Taiwanese politics, but you basically have two primary parties. One is pro-Japanese and pro- US, and the other is pro-China. That's KMT Wellong. This is the old Chinese party of Shank Kaishek. They want reunification. They control the parliament. All right. The president isn't from the other party. He's the one that makes uh comments about independence and Taiwan going its own way and so forth, but he's been told by the parliament, "Shut up. We're not going anywhere." And people don't understand, every time there's been a crisis in Taiwan over China, uh, everybody sends their money to the mainland. >> The banks literally transfer their money to the mainland. This is an artificial construct. There isn't doesn't have to be any conflict with Taiwan. Taiwan is part of China. We recognize that decades ago. That's a fact. >> There was never a signed treaty, I believe. Right. There's just was never a signed document that said Taiwan is independent. >> Never. Absolutely not. And even as I said, the KMT, this is Shanghai's party, wants reunification. They've been striving for that. And what's happened is that the system on the mainland has changed. We we treat everything as though nothing changes. Iran is unchanged from 1979. It's ridiculous. Everything changes and evolves. >> And people don't understand that if you ask the Chinese on the mainland, ask the Chinese in Taiwan, what do you want? They'll say one word, Singapore. They want to live in Singapore. And this is something else Americans don't understand. They think, oh, the the the surveillance state, this is evil. Not if you're Chinese. >> The Chinese regard that as no, there are behavioral norms here. You have to fit in. This is China. >> Same thing in Singapore. So if if that's the goal and both of these nation states, if you want to call them that, certainly Taiwan and the mainland both want the same thing, they're going to get it unless we're stupid. And you know that's a big statement because we've been very stupid over the years. >> Yeah. And do you sense more stupidity coming up along asking along that theme cuz like we got midterm elections coming, right? So my my question is like do you expect any fallout geopolitically from that military attack somewhere or just >> maybe you know creating peace that for the ninth time this you know along that um >> I think the following is true. President Trump was elected for many reasons but none of them involve foreign policy. In other words, he was not elected to be a foreign policy president. So why is he doing what he's doing? Why is he so belligerent? Why is he so confrontational? Americans had hoped that he would do the opposite. that he would find a way to disengage and pull back from these places. Why? Because America has its own share of difficulties and problems. We we want to solve those here at home. We all know that as a nation, we're very divided on a human level over many things. Race, politics, culture, whatever. He was expected to find a way to to bridge those gaps. Those were important to us. Reinvigorate the economy. Everybody knows that you can't repatriate the manufacturing sector overnight, but he was expected to focus there. He's expected to enforce the law, round up, and deport aliens. Well, you can't do that with a few policemen, and they've already discovered they're in over their heads, and they're meeting armed resistance. It's a low inensity conflict. whenever we've deported millions of people. And we did. We deported 9 million Mexicans in 1929 to 1932 because we went through the stock market crash and the president of the United States said, "I've got to free up jobs for Americans." Remember the old adage, all Americans won't do that job. Well, when you can't eat and you have no choice, you'd be surprised what kind of job you'll do. And so, this point was, let's move these people out for their safety because if we don't move them out, eventually we're going to say, "Well, wait a minute. You're not an American. What are you doing here? Franklin Roosevelt deported 3.5 million. Harry Truman deported 2.1 million. Eisenhower 1.2 million. We've done this before. Who does it? The army. You need the help. In other words, we we want to do this, but it has to be professional. And the police have to be protected when they're executing their mission. What you see in Minnesota is the police are unprotected. And these these people are they didn't wake up in the morning and say, "I really don't like this. I'm going to demonstrate." They're very well organized. They're paid. They have money behind them. >> You know, this is this happened when we saw BLM and Antifa. A truck pulls up and drops off several thousand bricks and somebody comes up and passes out money and say, "Throw the bricks at the police car." >> Yeah. >> Come on. I >> I've seen photos of bricks being stacked on street corners for people to take with them. >> Yeah. Now, President Trump did not invoke the insur insurrection act at the time. He was advised not to. In retrospect, I think he should have. >> At some point, we're going to have to do something like that on a local basis because now you have a a governor and a mayor who are working in a in a wellled organization against the United States government. We went through this before. It's called 1861. We fought a a massive civil war over it. It was about the supremacy of federal law. That's why we used the 101st Air Mobile Division back in the 1950s to integrate schools in Arkansas. It's why we used the 82nd Airborne Division in Detroit, 1968-69. We've done this before. We're not thugs. I'm not a thug. I don't want to hurt an American. But it reached the point where you needed military force to come in there and restore order, not to take the lead. We always want the police in the lead, but the police can only do so much. and they they they're being asked in my judgment to perform superhuman tasks and it's not fair. >> So is is this the yard stick we should measure Trump at when it comes to midterms and I'm trying to figure out if there's any >> what I think is what I think is going to happen there's going to be a lot of resentment and anger towards Trump because between now and then we'll go to war in Iran. Uh if you look at the polls 70 plus% of Americans pled opposed to any intervention in Venezuela. I don't see any evidence that there's much enthusiasm about Greenland and these things aren't necessary. You know, we we don't have to invade a place to capture resources. We have lots of resources and we always had the option of working with the government in the country. Maduro was willing to sign all sorts of deals. He didn't want to go to war with us. We didn't we we I think discovered that we didn't want to go to war with him because Venezuela in Spanish means Vietnam. It's the size of Germany, France, Austria combined. I mean, 30 million people. Good lord, what a terrible place to go in and try to govern and rule. They have gold mines, they have emerald mines, they have oil and gas. That's true, but why not work with the government? And you saw what happened when he turned to the people in the oil industry. They said, you know, it's not investable right now. And it isn't. It's very expensive to go get that oil out. It's very heavy oil. It has to go to special refineries in Texas, which we have, but it's not going to dramatically change the game. And he seemed to think this is going to change the oil market. The Chinese import roughly 4% of their oil from there. What do you do when you no longer have the ability to access Venezuela? You go somewhere else. It's not the end of the world. >> Buy more Russian oil. >> Right. The Persian Gulf, that's a different matter. >> That's very different. >> No, absolutely. Fascinating conversation here. Maybe top trend you you're watching 2026 like is is there one top of your list? Is it really Persian region? >> I think I think we have to watch and see what happens in the Persian Gulf. If this becomes a truly destructive war, which I think it could, it's going to invite others to the table. China, Russia, even India will be interested and it'll have a negative impact on us here at home as well as in the Middle East. It'll just destroy goodwill and cultivate hatred, anger, and hostility. That's the biggest this USC now of Ukraine. I have the impression that President Trump has thrown his hands up in frustration and walked away from it. I don't think he really ever understood it, what was happening there. I didn't think I don't think he understood the complexities. And as a result, we kept going in and saying ceasefire, ceasefire, ceasefire. And the Russians have already been lied to over the Minsk Accords. They've been lied to repeatedly about NATO. And so they say, "You want a ceasefire so you can rearm and reorganize and stay in the fight. We have no interest in that. We want a settlement, but and we're willing to talk about that, but you're not going to get a ceasefire right now." And that seems to have been a problem for him to understand. >> I don't think he understands it now. He keeps sending people back there and >> they're they're going to have to fundamentally change the sheet music because what they're singing is dead end. I don't know what will happen. I don't I think if he walks away, the fragility of the European governments, France, Great Britain, Germany is such that they may be gone and be replaced. Now, who replaces them? I would say at this point almost anything is better, but I think that's coming. And I think the Russians are are moving cautiously because they would rather deal with new governments that are soberminded and are willing to come to some sort of understanding in Ukraine. Remember, Ukraine could have always had the Austrian state solution. This is not rocket science. >> Yeah. >> Well, in Germany, for example, if the AFD comes to power, I'm sure they'll figure out a deal. >> The AfD has a lot of diversity of opinion. The biggest problem the AfD is they are not a unified political force. They need to unify as a force and agree on certain principles and things and then I think they could fight their way to the top because Germans are fed up. >> Absolutely. >> Every German I talked to on the phone, my friends, people I went to school with, they're all what what is what is going on? This is crazy. >> Yeah. We lost our way a long time ago. >> Yeah. And unfortunately, I blame us to a large extent for that because we we put Germany through the ringer, >> the re-education process. And so I remember when I was in school, if you mentioned anything that happened before 1945, they looked at you like, "We don't talk about that." >> Well, there's a lot to talk about in the thousand years before 1945. Nobody wanted to go there. I think that's got to end. I get the impression younger Germans, the younger you go, the more willing they are to say enough. >> It started changing after around the World Cup that we had in Germany, the soccer world cup. That's when we started flying flags again. >> Yeah. >> Before then, that was a no-go, right? So that's when it changed. Fantastic. >> Colonel, >> is that enough? >> It's enough. It's enough. It's a lot. It's a lot to process as well. I can't wait to do this later this year again. >> But everybody everybody wants to be right now into anything that comes out of the ground. >> Yeah. >> People say, "What do you invest in?" I said, "Anything that comes out of the ground." They look at me, I say, "Food. The agricultural sector needs to be revitalized. We're going to invest in food production. Invest in any mining effort at all. copper, gold, any of the minerals, it's all going to become extraordinarily vital and essential. These things are the foundation of our society and civilization, not just defense, everything. That's where we need to focus, not on brutalizing and bullying other countries into submission. Anyway, >> those are great closing words. I'll shut up. Great closing words there, Colonel. Um, you run your own YouTube channel. Where can we send our audience? >> Well, there we've got two things that you can do. We founded a new organization called the nationalcon conversation.org. And you can go look at what's on that website. We state very clearly what our goals are. We are not uh we characterize ourselves as being politically homeless. We're not Democrats and Republicans. We don't want to be part of those parties. They are a dead end. We need new leadership, new way forward, and that's what we're interested in constructing. So, that's one thing. And then there's my website. All you have to do is Colonel Douglas McGregor. It'll take you eventually to the website. Uh in any case, uh think about being politically homeless cuz a lot of us are a lot of us are very frustrated. >> Absolutely. And it's dangerous cuz then you lean towards a force that you don't understand. >> Right. >> Right. Always. Absolutely. Really appreciate it, Colonel. Thanks so much for stopping by. Can't wait to do this again virtually unfortunately next time. No, >> that's looking forward to it. Thank you so much. And everybody else, thanks so much for tuning in here to the conversation with Colonel Douglas McGregor. I love talking geopolitics with you. It's great conversation. If you enjoyed this as well, hit that like and subscribe button. We have a goal of reaching 100,000 subscribers by the end of this quarter. With your help, we can achieve it. So, thanks so much for doing that and we'll be back with more here from Vancouver. Take care out there.
War With Iran? MacGregor Warns This Ends the Dollar
Summary
Transcript
Hello and welcome back to the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference. Welcome back to Soore Financially. My name is Kai Hoffman. I'm the NJR Mining guy over on X and of course your host of this channel and I'm really looking forward to this next conversation. We might have saved the best for last here on day two. Really looking forward to it cuz we're going to talk about the crossroads in the intersection of geopolitics and gold. And uh couldn't have found a better guest to do that with, Colonel Douglas McGregor. Colonel, it's great to have you on the show. It's great to meet you in person actually. >> Yeah, that's right. But we never have >> special coverage from the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference is brought to you by First Majestic Silver. There's no substitute for silver. No, we missed each other last year and we usually do virtual. So, tremendously appreciate you stopping by. Dankus, >> should we do this in German? practice. >> We're we're planning on launching a German language channel. So maybe we'll get you on and speak German. >> Well, I've got to get on there and I've got to but I've got to get practice. I you know, there's nobody in Washington speaks German. >> Really? >> The Germans in the German embassy won't speak German. >> It's crazy. Oh no. Um, let's dive in. I know you you have to head out. I tremendously appreciate you being here, Colonel. Um, let's start with the geopolitics. Let's really start setting the scene. Of course, lots going on. We can pick any type of topic and spend 3 hours on probably, but I'll let you choose the next like you you gave me sort of four hot beds that you that keep you occupied. And maybe which one is the hottest? Where are the flames the highest perhaps? >> Well, I think the two hottest topics really from a strategic standpoint for the United States, one is clearly in the Middle East. This imminent war with Iran is very dangerous. The last time that we confronted the Iranians, it was a an attempt to end the conflict, which was not going very well for the Israelis. It wasn't going very well for Iran. But of the two, the Israelis sustained a lot of damage. And President Trump wanted to end that. He did everything he could. He went through these agreements with the Iranians so that we bomb certain targets and they hit certain targets. And he said, "Now the war is over. We're finished." But Mr. Netanyahu is not finished. Mr. Netanyahu's goals, which are de facto our goals as a result, is to establish unchallenged Jewish supremacy from Israel over the entire region. Iran stands in the way. Now, it's not the only one. I think in in Israel they are finally coming to terms with the reality that on their borders uh is Turkey and the Turks are not terribly happy about the advances the Israelis have made in places like Lebanon but especially Syria but he wants to finish the job so to say with Iran. Now you know that very recently they had these demonstrations and and these were characterized in the west as oh the regime is about to fall. Everyone hates the regime so it's all nonsense. Most of these demonstrations at the beginning were quite legitimate. I mean the currency has been effectively destroyed by us through our sanctions and people are upset with the inflation, the prices and so forth. That was all. And you had some discussion between reformers and conservatives about how fast to move forward in certain areas. But then the Mossad came in with the CIA. They brought in 40,000 Starlight terminals from Musk and they tried to orchestrate a violent overthrow. It failed and they have about 6,000 people I think that have been captured and a lot of these are what we used to call years ago fifth columnists operating inside the country against the country and they have executed large numbers and quite frankly that's what we would do if we were in a war. So this is not some sort of act of barbarism and isolation. So right now I think Iran is frankly stronger, more socially cohesive than it was last June and they're also better armed and better equipped. >> Is that maybe the reason why we haven't seen any military action against Iran at the at the time of the uprising? Cuz it felt like we were like leaving leaving them hanging a little bit like if we instigated it, there were talks about a strike and nothing happened. I think there was an assumption built into the whole thing that this demonstration would turn into a nationwide uh up what do you call an uprising and it didn't materialize and so they had enough firepower they thought on hand that they thought could push it over the edge when it failed miserably and the government reasserted its control dramatically decisively that's when the word came back from Netanyahu look we're we're going to need everything we're going to need much war. Okay. >> And Trump has has essentially acquiesced and you have a massive build up of forces. The I think the Lincoln battle group should arrive within the next few days at at the outside a week. Once that's on station, if you look at the placement of forces, which we don't want to discuss publicly, but all over the region in Europe and so forth, they will have enough platforms, enough weapon systems to uh do enormous damage to Iran. Let's put it that way. Like one thing I heard actually the US doesn't have enough air defense missiles. Is that uh a fact or >> every time every time you go to war and you're trying to defend against incoming missiles, you shoot two or three missiles at every incoming missile, you run out pretty quickly. So I think over the last six, seven months there's been an attempt to dramatically ramp up production to get to a point where they have enough on hand at least for some period of time. Now what is that period? A week, two weeks, 3 weeks, a month, not much more than that. >> It fits with the statements by the president that we need to increase production. We cut salaries if you don't deliver. >> Well, the problem is that's not how you're going to get more missiles. We have no surge capacity >> and we have not mobilized industry for war. >> The Russians have tremendous capacity. >> Years of experience now at it. >> The Chinese have also built a huge manufacturing base and they can add tremendously to whatever the Russians build. We're not in that position. So this has to be successful if we do it within a fairly short period of time. We cannot maintain the country under siege if that makes sense. And again, if we try to do that, inevitably the straits of Hormuz will close. >> China buys about a third or more of its oil from Iran and the Persian Gulf. They're not going to tolerate that. The Russians, they have interest in Iran. People don't seem to understand Iran is just a little south of Russia. What happens down there matters. They don't want Iran to go through what the Russians have been through. We went into this Ukraine war with a goal of destroying Russia. divide it, split it, rape it, and take its take its resources. It's failed. We, you know, we're out of business. They want to do that to Iran. I don't think it'll work. But I think that's really what's behind it all. >> Yeah. >> Um Iran is an interesting like example as well because where there a lot of regional or international interests meet, you just touched on Russia, China, Turkey. Um >> well as you mentioned Turkey that's important because what the Turks have said very clearly to us and anybody else who wants to listen is that they are not interested in the destruction of Iran. They may have differences with the Iranians from time to time but they realize that their existence as a nation state as well as Iran are very important to the whole region. You know Iran is a civilizational state. It represents a specific civilization. So do the Turks. And you know, why would you want your neighbor size of 90 million with enormous potential if if they can ever develop economically if we'll lift these sanctions, why would you want that destroyed? They don't. So, I think the Turks will stand by and watch and then we may be surprised at what they may be willing to do. Erdogan has played both sides of the fence, but his population is firmly on the side of both the people in Gaza, the Palestinians, and the people in Iran. interesting statement there. Yeah, like Turkey is an interesting one because they they're officially EU members as well. So, it's it's an interesting debate. Um I I want to get to China a little bit and like the situation and the relationship with the US as well cuz it will lead us down the pathway towards gold that I want to talk with you about as well ultimately. What what is the relationship between the US and China right now and what what is your what what what are you picking up? >> It's very interesting. remember the meeting that occurred in Seoul between President Trump and Xi. And when President Trump went to that meeting, he discovered certain things. I think he understood some of it when he went in, but he walked away with a very clear picture. And the picture is this. China is not part of a supply chain. We're not just buying things from time to time in China. We are hostage to China. We are heavily dependent upon what they produce, not just rare earths or other things. The rare earths get a lot of attention because medical applications, industrial applications, I mean silver is another good example. >> Silver is in every F-35. It's in every sighting system that we have. All these minerals have a critical role to play. And China made that very clear to the president and the Chinese made an arrangement that they would lift sanctions on certain things for a temporary period. I think it was a year or something. But then they turned right around and raised the price on everything. I mean the Chinese are in the catbird seat. The Chinese have thought from the very beginning as soon as they finally abandoned Mao and the communism that he represented, they then began planning into the future. And for 30 years they have been planning to be in a position they are now. They hold in in Trump's words all the cards. We don't. Now when it comes to gold they've also been accumulating gold. But then again so is India right now. Somebody told me the other day and they may be right. Indian housewives have more gold on hand in their households than we have at Fort Knox. >> That may be true. I don't know. I mean no one has inventoried our gold. And when we tried to do it, it was shut down quickly. So, a lot of us are very suspicious about that. But gold is now the reserve currency, not not the yuan, gold. And what the Chinese have done is they've decided to back their currency with gold. Gosh, what an interesting notion. And they have this new facility in Riad. They have a facility in Hong Kong. I mean, we you can go into those things. The art the rim is is now in in Hong Kong. It's a means of exchange. Now, people say, "Well, they're threatening us." Well, they're not really threatening as us as much as they're filling a vacuum. I >> was going to say, are they have they weaponized gold to to the extreme here? And uh maybe what what are the ramifications of that? Like the ripple effects of all of that? >> Well, I think our fiat currency is about had it. But the fiat currency always rested on on the assumption that we were the strongest. We were invincible and vulnerable uh and immune to whatever happened and therefore you could always bet on the dollar. I think that's changed. >> Maybe as a follow-up to that, like Japan, the yen still exists, but they've been in like economic trouble for decades. >> Well, don't you think that we in fact are on a road similar to Japan? >> I've been saying that before. We're just kicking the can down the road. We just have to give up the not we, but the US has to give up the reserve status. >> Right. >> The question is, is it willing to do that to survive? >> Well, you know, the the view is that would be a catastrophe for us. Well, if you think the catastrophe involves you can no longer print money at will, I disagree with you. I think that would be a good thing. One of the things that people don't understand is when we came off the gold standard, you could intervene militarily anywhere you wanted. You could go to war anywhere you wanted. You just printed money. You didn't have to go back to the population and say, "We're raising your taxes." You know, this all happened because of the Vietnam War. LBJ spent us into oblivion, the president, and Nixon was stuck with a bill. He had squandered huge quantities of money on the home on this great uh war on poverty great what was it called the uh I can't remember now great society program and then on Vietnam which made absolutely no sense nobody there ever knew what we were doing I mean it's sad but it's absolutely true so Nixon inherited this and remember he said that taking us off the gold standard was a temporary measure but most things in Washington that begin as temporary end up becoming permanent It was very convenient because you can print money. Hit the button. More money's available. Go do it. And that's about to end I suspect. I can't point when I mean I had this conversation with Nasim Talib. >> Mhm. >> And I love his work. I don't agree with all of it, but his bottom line is he said, "Doug, gold is the reserve currency now. Nobody wants to admit it, but that's where we are. So who has the most gold wins?" >> Yeah. >> We think we have the most, but nobody's inventoried it. Yeah. And the Chinese has have never reported it officially. So, which might be three, four times as much as we have because they don't export anything. >> That would be my suspicion. >> Absolutely. It's it's an interesting discussion because like what what are the effects of all of this? So, assuming China becomes the new or the yuan becomes the new reserve currency, global reserve currency because it's partially goldbacked at least. Um what what does that mean for like coming back to geopolitics perhaps as well, Taiwan, what does that mean for the Asian region? Like what what should we be expecting from that side? Well, China has very carefully calculated the relationship between what we're discussing and Taiwan. >> Mhm. >> Originally, Xi's plan called for reunification in 2046. >> Mhm. >> And that was based on the assumption that the Taiwanese would vote themselves into China. >> Now, we don't want to spend too much time on Taiwanese politics, but you basically have two primary parties. One is pro-Japanese and pro- US, and the other is pro-China. That's KMT Wellong. This is the old Chinese party of Shank Kaishek. They want reunification. They control the parliament. All right. The president isn't from the other party. He's the one that makes uh comments about independence and Taiwan going its own way and so forth, but he's been told by the parliament, "Shut up. We're not going anywhere." And people don't understand, every time there's been a crisis in Taiwan over China, uh, everybody sends their money to the mainland. >> The banks literally transfer their money to the mainland. This is an artificial construct. There isn't doesn't have to be any conflict with Taiwan. Taiwan is part of China. We recognize that decades ago. That's a fact. >> There was never a signed treaty, I believe. Right. There's just was never a signed document that said Taiwan is independent. >> Never. Absolutely not. And even as I said, the KMT, this is Shanghai's party, wants reunification. They've been striving for that. And what's happened is that the system on the mainland has changed. We we treat everything as though nothing changes. Iran is unchanged from 1979. It's ridiculous. Everything changes and evolves. >> And people don't understand that if you ask the Chinese on the mainland, ask the Chinese in Taiwan, what do you want? They'll say one word, Singapore. They want to live in Singapore. And this is something else Americans don't understand. They think, oh, the the the surveillance state, this is evil. Not if you're Chinese. >> The Chinese regard that as no, there are behavioral norms here. You have to fit in. This is China. >> Same thing in Singapore. So if if that's the goal and both of these nation states, if you want to call them that, certainly Taiwan and the mainland both want the same thing, they're going to get it unless we're stupid. And you know that's a big statement because we've been very stupid over the years. >> Yeah. And do you sense more stupidity coming up along asking along that theme cuz like we got midterm elections coming, right? So my my question is like do you expect any fallout geopolitically from that military attack somewhere or just >> maybe you know creating peace that for the ninth time this you know along that um >> I think the following is true. President Trump was elected for many reasons but none of them involve foreign policy. In other words, he was not elected to be a foreign policy president. So why is he doing what he's doing? Why is he so belligerent? Why is he so confrontational? Americans had hoped that he would do the opposite. that he would find a way to disengage and pull back from these places. Why? Because America has its own share of difficulties and problems. We we want to solve those here at home. We all know that as a nation, we're very divided on a human level over many things. Race, politics, culture, whatever. He was expected to find a way to to bridge those gaps. Those were important to us. Reinvigorate the economy. Everybody knows that you can't repatriate the manufacturing sector overnight, but he was expected to focus there. He's expected to enforce the law, round up, and deport aliens. Well, you can't do that with a few policemen, and they've already discovered they're in over their heads, and they're meeting armed resistance. It's a low inensity conflict. whenever we've deported millions of people. And we did. We deported 9 million Mexicans in 1929 to 1932 because we went through the stock market crash and the president of the United States said, "I've got to free up jobs for Americans." Remember the old adage, all Americans won't do that job. Well, when you can't eat and you have no choice, you'd be surprised what kind of job you'll do. And so, this point was, let's move these people out for their safety because if we don't move them out, eventually we're going to say, "Well, wait a minute. You're not an American. What are you doing here? Franklin Roosevelt deported 3.5 million. Harry Truman deported 2.1 million. Eisenhower 1.2 million. We've done this before. Who does it? The army. You need the help. In other words, we we want to do this, but it has to be professional. And the police have to be protected when they're executing their mission. What you see in Minnesota is the police are unprotected. And these these people are they didn't wake up in the morning and say, "I really don't like this. I'm going to demonstrate." They're very well organized. They're paid. They have money behind them. >> You know, this is this happened when we saw BLM and Antifa. A truck pulls up and drops off several thousand bricks and somebody comes up and passes out money and say, "Throw the bricks at the police car." >> Yeah. >> Come on. I >> I've seen photos of bricks being stacked on street corners for people to take with them. >> Yeah. Now, President Trump did not invoke the insur insurrection act at the time. He was advised not to. In retrospect, I think he should have. >> At some point, we're going to have to do something like that on a local basis because now you have a a governor and a mayor who are working in a in a wellled organization against the United States government. We went through this before. It's called 1861. We fought a a massive civil war over it. It was about the supremacy of federal law. That's why we used the 101st Air Mobile Division back in the 1950s to integrate schools in Arkansas. It's why we used the 82nd Airborne Division in Detroit, 1968-69. We've done this before. We're not thugs. I'm not a thug. I don't want to hurt an American. But it reached the point where you needed military force to come in there and restore order, not to take the lead. We always want the police in the lead, but the police can only do so much. and they they they're being asked in my judgment to perform superhuman tasks and it's not fair. >> So is is this the yard stick we should measure Trump at when it comes to midterms and I'm trying to figure out if there's any >> what I think is what I think is going to happen there's going to be a lot of resentment and anger towards Trump because between now and then we'll go to war in Iran. Uh if you look at the polls 70 plus% of Americans pled opposed to any intervention in Venezuela. I don't see any evidence that there's much enthusiasm about Greenland and these things aren't necessary. You know, we we don't have to invade a place to capture resources. We have lots of resources and we always had the option of working with the government in the country. Maduro was willing to sign all sorts of deals. He didn't want to go to war with us. We didn't we we I think discovered that we didn't want to go to war with him because Venezuela in Spanish means Vietnam. It's the size of Germany, France, Austria combined. I mean, 30 million people. Good lord, what a terrible place to go in and try to govern and rule. They have gold mines, they have emerald mines, they have oil and gas. That's true, but why not work with the government? And you saw what happened when he turned to the people in the oil industry. They said, you know, it's not investable right now. And it isn't. It's very expensive to go get that oil out. It's very heavy oil. It has to go to special refineries in Texas, which we have, but it's not going to dramatically change the game. And he seemed to think this is going to change the oil market. The Chinese import roughly 4% of their oil from there. What do you do when you no longer have the ability to access Venezuela? You go somewhere else. It's not the end of the world. >> Buy more Russian oil. >> Right. The Persian Gulf, that's a different matter. >> That's very different. >> No, absolutely. Fascinating conversation here. Maybe top trend you you're watching 2026 like is is there one top of your list? Is it really Persian region? >> I think I think we have to watch and see what happens in the Persian Gulf. If this becomes a truly destructive war, which I think it could, it's going to invite others to the table. China, Russia, even India will be interested and it'll have a negative impact on us here at home as well as in the Middle East. It'll just destroy goodwill and cultivate hatred, anger, and hostility. That's the biggest this USC now of Ukraine. I have the impression that President Trump has thrown his hands up in frustration and walked away from it. I don't think he really ever understood it, what was happening there. I didn't think I don't think he understood the complexities. And as a result, we kept going in and saying ceasefire, ceasefire, ceasefire. And the Russians have already been lied to over the Minsk Accords. They've been lied to repeatedly about NATO. And so they say, "You want a ceasefire so you can rearm and reorganize and stay in the fight. We have no interest in that. We want a settlement, but and we're willing to talk about that, but you're not going to get a ceasefire right now." And that seems to have been a problem for him to understand. >> I don't think he understands it now. He keeps sending people back there and >> they're they're going to have to fundamentally change the sheet music because what they're singing is dead end. I don't know what will happen. I don't I think if he walks away, the fragility of the European governments, France, Great Britain, Germany is such that they may be gone and be replaced. Now, who replaces them? I would say at this point almost anything is better, but I think that's coming. And I think the Russians are are moving cautiously because they would rather deal with new governments that are soberminded and are willing to come to some sort of understanding in Ukraine. Remember, Ukraine could have always had the Austrian state solution. This is not rocket science. >> Yeah. >> Well, in Germany, for example, if the AFD comes to power, I'm sure they'll figure out a deal. >> The AfD has a lot of diversity of opinion. The biggest problem the AfD is they are not a unified political force. They need to unify as a force and agree on certain principles and things and then I think they could fight their way to the top because Germans are fed up. >> Absolutely. >> Every German I talked to on the phone, my friends, people I went to school with, they're all what what is what is going on? This is crazy. >> Yeah. We lost our way a long time ago. >> Yeah. And unfortunately, I blame us to a large extent for that because we we put Germany through the ringer, >> the re-education process. And so I remember when I was in school, if you mentioned anything that happened before 1945, they looked at you like, "We don't talk about that." >> Well, there's a lot to talk about in the thousand years before 1945. Nobody wanted to go there. I think that's got to end. I get the impression younger Germans, the younger you go, the more willing they are to say enough. >> It started changing after around the World Cup that we had in Germany, the soccer world cup. That's when we started flying flags again. >> Yeah. >> Before then, that was a no-go, right? So that's when it changed. Fantastic. >> Colonel, >> is that enough? >> It's enough. It's enough. It's a lot. It's a lot to process as well. I can't wait to do this later this year again. >> But everybody everybody wants to be right now into anything that comes out of the ground. >> Yeah. >> People say, "What do you invest in?" I said, "Anything that comes out of the ground." They look at me, I say, "Food. The agricultural sector needs to be revitalized. We're going to invest in food production. Invest in any mining effort at all. copper, gold, any of the minerals, it's all going to become extraordinarily vital and essential. These things are the foundation of our society and civilization, not just defense, everything. That's where we need to focus, not on brutalizing and bullying other countries into submission. Anyway, >> those are great closing words. I'll shut up. Great closing words there, Colonel. Um, you run your own YouTube channel. Where can we send our audience? >> Well, there we've got two things that you can do. We founded a new organization called the nationalcon conversation.org. And you can go look at what's on that website. We state very clearly what our goals are. We are not uh we characterize ourselves as being politically homeless. We're not Democrats and Republicans. We don't want to be part of those parties. They are a dead end. We need new leadership, new way forward, and that's what we're interested in constructing. So, that's one thing. And then there's my website. All you have to do is Colonel Douglas McGregor. It'll take you eventually to the website. Uh in any case, uh think about being politically homeless cuz a lot of us are a lot of us are very frustrated. >> Absolutely. And it's dangerous cuz then you lean towards a force that you don't understand. >> Right. >> Right. Always. Absolutely. Really appreciate it, Colonel. Thanks so much for stopping by. Can't wait to do this again virtually unfortunately next time. No, >> that's looking forward to it. Thank you so much. And everybody else, thanks so much for tuning in here to the conversation with Colonel Douglas McGregor. I love talking geopolitics with you. It's great conversation. If you enjoyed this as well, hit that like and subscribe button. We have a goal of reaching 100,000 subscribers by the end of this quarter. With your help, we can achieve it. So, thanks so much for doing that and we'll be back with more here from Vancouver. Take care out there.