Episode 138 - Things Heating Up with Iran and Argentina Goes Dark

Lots going on in the middle east - and most of it is tied to Iran.  We'll cover all that and more on this episode of the Hot Zone.

 

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Okay, so things have been escalating in the persian gulf region as tensions soar between the US and Iran.  I haven't talked about it too much on the podcast because it's been all over the news, and I want to give you stuff that's happening around the world that isn't necessarily making the news for whatever reason.  But there are a few things happening that pertain to what's going on between the US and Iran that you might not have heard about.  So let's talk about that today.

 

Last week a A missile fired by Houthi rebels struck the arrivals hall of an airport in southwestern Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, injuring 26 people.  The footage is spectacular, but not in a good way, especially for that poor dude who was just walking through the door when the missile hit.  Definitely ruined his weekend.  Amazing nobody was killed.  Now the Houthis in Yemen are supported by Iran, just another of the many proxies that Iran supports to foment mayhem and misery across the middle east.  Nations support proxies like this so they can strike at their enemies without actually causing a real war that would be extremely costly in lives and treasure.  So rather than go to war with Saudi Arabia, Iran supports the Houthis in Yemen.  Rather than go to war with Israel, they support Hamas and Hezbollah.  Rather than go to war with the United States, they support over 100 shia militia groups in Iraq.  They support the Taliban in Afghanistan.  They even support the Maduro regime in Venezuela.  

 

News broke earlier this week that Iran and the Houthi rebels shot missiles at two American drones in the area, and managed to bring one of them down.  The US called it a significant escalation in the region, and may have something to do with more US troops being sent that direction by the Trump Administration.  In another incident, a mortar attack happened on a base in Iraq where US troops are located.  Fortunately nobody was hurt, but this is another likely escalation in the region.  Like neighboring Iran, Iraq is a Shiite-majority country, and has been trying to straddle the fence between Tehran and Washington. There have been concerns that Baghdad could once again get caught in the middle, just as it is on the path to recovery. The country hosts more than 5,000 U.S. troops, and is home to powerful Iranian-backed militias, some of whom want those U.S. forces to leave.  If the Trump administration wanted to really send a message here, they'd move all US troops to Kurdistan and out of the rest of Iraq.  That's what I'd do anyway.

 

After the two oil tankers were attacked in the gulf last week, and now these incidents, it just goes to show that Iran is flexing its muscles and trying to scare the US.  

 

We've used force against Iran before.  They talk a big game but when the missiles start flying, it'd take about six minutes to sink their entire navy.  They can't stand up to the US and they know it, so that's why they are funding all these proxies to try and just annoy us to death, I think.  I also think this belligerence on their part shows they sanctions we've instituted against them are hurting them.

 

Okay, let's talk about Argentina.  A massive power outage happened earlier this week that left almost fifty million people in the dark across Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile and Paraguay.  Authorities are calling it "abnormal," which...yeah, you think?  And haven't ruled out Cyberattacks as the cause as they continue their investigation.  It is kind of suspicious, and I could imagine a country like china or russia or iran doing something like this, hoping the US figures out they did it, as a kind of warning to US without attacking us directly.  We know Russia and China and North Korea have probed and even penetrated many US power networks, and our antiquated power grid would be pretty vulnerable to this kind of attack.  

 

A couple years ago I made a series of documentaries about the threat for NRA tv.  I'd highly recommend you go there and watch these pieces in their entirety, but here's a little excerpt to give you a sens of what's at stake.

 

[the fight for light.]

 

Okay, so this kind of thing is a big concern for the US.  If you haven't seen the docudrama that National Geographic did called "American Blackout", you should.  They estimated that a ten-day blackout across the US would cost something like 400,000 American lives.  It's something you and I should be prepared for.  You don't have to go all doomsday prepper...just give some thought to what you'd need to make it if all the electronic payment systems, for example, went offline for a few days or a few weeks.  I've seen lots of cases during localized natural disasters, such as the hurricanes in florida and South Carolina last year, where people literally don't have enough cash on hand or food in their pantry to feed their families for 24 hours.  And when you can't use your credit card, they get real desperate, real fast.  

 

Well that's all I have for today folks.  Thanks for watching.  As soon as I get done here today I'm heading for Medellin Colombia to do some more reporting on the migrant waves coming through there enroute to the US.  The United States Border Patrol has seen the flow of illegal crossers growing by thirty percent per month all this year.  And if the numbers I'm hearing out of Colombia are true, we haven't seen anything yet.  I was told yesterday that there are 35,000 migrants making their way through Colombia hoping to get to the United States before we can get a wall built.  So stay tuned, and I'll be reporting from there later this week and next.

 

I'm Chuck Holton and this is the Hot Zone.

 

 

end notes:

 

https://clarionproject.org/iran-supporting-more-100-shiite-terror-groups-report-17/

https://www.us-elitegear.com/