MASSIVE IRANIAN TERRORIST CELLS IN AMERICA! IRANIAN CIVIL WAR? JOSHUA PHILLIP EPOCH TIMES

➡ Dave Hodges, host of the Common Sense show, discusses the Dodd Frank Law 2010 and its implications for bank customers. He also promotes Noble Gold as a solution to potential banking issues. The show features an interview with Joshua Philippe, a journalist from Epoch Times, who discusses various issues including energy, sleeper cells in America, and Iran. The conversation also criticizes mainstream media for their coverage of recent events in Iran.
➡ The text discusses the issue of nuclear weapons, particularly in relation to Iran. It suggests that while some argue that if other countries have nuclear weapons, Iran should too, others believe that it’s dangerous to allow a country that has expressed harmful intentions to possess such weapons. The text also discusses the political situation in Iran, with some citizens opposing the current regime and potential for a regime change. Lastly, it touches on the impact of sanctions and financial aid on Iran’s actions, suggesting that funds may be used for terrorism and nuclear programs.
➡ The article discusses how Israel has been strategically eliminating key military leaders in Iran, possibly leading to a shift in power. It suggests that Iran’s focus on developing nuclear weapons and supporting terrorism, instead of improving the quality of life for its citizens, is driven by politics and power, not religion. The article also highlights the potential for Iran to become a prosperous nation if its leadership changes. It ends by questioning the possibility of a successful revolution in Iran.
➡ The article discusses the potential for a change in power in Iran, with the current regime possibly being replaced by a government-in-waiting. It also highlights Iran’s global influence, particularly its support for terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas. The article further explores the potential threats posed by sleeper cells in the U.S. and the possibility of the Chinese Communist Party indirectly supporting these networks. Lastly, it discusses the connection between terrorism and drug trafficking, emphasizing the significant number of deaths caused by drugs like fentanyl.
➡ The book “Red Cocaine” explains how Mao Zedong established networks through Cuba and Brazil to create communist regimes in Latin America. These regimes legalized drug cartels, which then infiltrated the political system, leading to corruption and control by these cartels. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also uses drugs as a tool to conquer nations. The CCP has also infiltrated the U.S. through spy networks and influence campaigns, targeting influential individuals to control the country from within. This is a form of subversion, and it’s a significant threat to the U.S.
➡ The discussion highlights concerns about China’s influence on global platforms like TikTok and its potential to spread propaganda. It also discusses China’s alleged attempts to manipulate American institutions, including universities and media outlets, to further its own narratives. The conversation ends with a call for more awareness and action against these perceived threats.

Foreign Dave Hodges here, host of the Common Sense show. We are the show that is freeing America one in slave mind at a time. Thank you so much for joining us. Really good to be with you. We’re coming to you from the Noble Gold Studios and I’ll tell you, the Dodd Frank Law 2010 is there. If your bank gets in trouble and there are some that are in big trouble right now, they can keep everything that you have put in the bank. Dodd Frank 2010, look it up. Noble Gold can help you out of that mess.

I’ve been a personal Customer of Noble 7 1/2 years. Been advertising for over 8. I couldn’t recommend them more highly. So all you got to do is go to davehodgesgold.com that’s davehodgesgold.com put in your email, we don’t sell your data and I’ll send you out a free electronic information and you’ll say, yeah, I got to do this to protect myself. Hey, we have a real timely show. Given the events that are going on and our appreciation to the Epoch Times and to Todd Bauman for setting this interview up. We’re going to touch on a couple of really important issues here.

Energy and that part of the equation as well as sleeper cells in America that Iran has even warned us and threatened us with publicly. Our guest is Joshua Philippe. He’s an award winning journalist and senior investigative reporter at Epoch Times. I’m happy to say I’m a proud subscriber. He is the host of Crossroads, a news analysis program on Epoch tv. His works have included breakthrough investigations into certain disease organisms that have invaded. He’s talked about the documentary with regard to medical issues that we really can’t talk about because we’ll be censored on certain platforms. But nonetheless, he’s here to talk to us about Iran.

He’s, like I said, this guy is, is absolute serious business. Epoch Times has my ultimate respect as a credible news source. And especially given my tirade about the mainstream media today and their coverage of the raid in Iran. It’s great to have someone on that can tell the truth. Joshua, welcome to the show. And I appreciate you understanding that we can’t deviate too much from Iran and China simply because of the sensors and where I want to put this, this, this is going to go out on all our networks, it’s going to go out on radio, it’s going to go out on our podcast.

But if I go social media, we’ve got to be a little careful there. I, I’ve, I’VE been censored left, right and center. So I, I fully understand. Don’t worry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, let’s start with the raid that the mainstream media says was ineffective, despite Netanyahu giving us gushing praise, and he wouldn’t do that because his entire nation’s at risk. So it’s absolutely insane what’s happening here. But what’s your take on what happened and the implications from the taking out nuclear facilities? Well, it’s interesting. So, I mean, long story short, Trump again orders this attack, USB 2 bombers go destroy these Iranian nuclear facilities.

Come back, everybody’s celebrating. And then New York Times and CNN published stories based on anonymous sources who claim that they saw what was intelligence assessments that say that the facilities were in fact not destroyed. And Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump, they were mad about that. Pete Hegseth, against Defense Secretary, gave a very long statement criticizing these outlets and so did Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump basically saying that they’re undermining the US Military. They’re taking away the celebration of something that should be celebrated, something that even Barack Obama, when he was president, was saying we should do everything we can to destroy Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon.

They actually brought out something interesting with these reports coming out, which is there’s high confidence intelligence and there’s low confidence intelligence. And this is just how the intelligence community and military assessments work. When you can’t get somebody to actually go on the ground and see it for themselves, which you’re not going to, you’re not going to have a Pentagon spokesman go and digging through the rubble, you know what I mean? Digging down and seeing if the base, seeing if the tunnels were fully destroyed, there’s no way you could really do that. So they dropped these bunker buster bombs.

We know based on the effectiveness of them, there’s not going to be much left, especially given how many they dropped. And what happened was this, intelligence analysts, they do different reports, they’re going to have several different forms of. This is what was explained by Pete Hegseth and others. You have the what if scenarios. What if it was not destroyed? What if it was completely destroyed? And you’re probably going to have a few what if somewhere in the middle, partially destroyed, mostly destroyed. And these are your assessments right now. In the end, once there’s a more full assessment, they can determine, okay, which one of these likely happened.

Low confidence, high confidence. And what the Trump administration is saying right now is that somebody, a leaker, which the Pentagon and the FBI are actually now they’re looking for this person and they might get prosecuted. We’ll see. They chose to leak to the media the low confidence report. In other words, the assessment that was deemed to probably be the least likely, the one that they don’t think actually happened, which was the report that the bombs did not actually destroy the facilities. And then whoever leaked this gave their own personal viewpoints on it, relaying this, oh, I saw this report, and here’s what the report said to these news outlets, which then published reports saying that this was a fact, publishing it as if this was the actual assessment and as if this was true.

And you could argue that’s deeply misleading to the public because people are then led to believe that an assessment that was not deemed to be the actual assessment was in fact what they believed happened. In response to that, the CIA actually released the actual high confidence assessment. The CIA director actually came out, you know, John Ratcliffe came out, published it, and they say that in their assessment, the high confidence one, meaning the one that they say happened, just about everything was destroyed. There’s almost nothing left of these facilities. And interestingly, CNN is now backtracking cnn. They just, in fact, a little bit ago had some individuals on, they were doing interviews.

Now they’re saying, okay, it looks like the facility was in fact destroyed. And so that’s been the track of the way the story’s developed. It sounds like they still have a mole in the Pentagon. And despite their best efforts to rid themselves of those kinds of people, there’s still some that exist. Pretty interesting. I looked at Hegseth’s rebuke of the mainstream media at a press conference. Did you see that he did a couple of them, yeah. There was the one he did, of course, the initial rebuttal where he talked about the difference of high confidence, low confidence.

And then he did a follow up where he just absolutely went off on the media. And I assume that’s the one you’re talking about. He went on for about three minutes just slamming the media as being dishonest, as being politically motivated. And I mean, he would know. He was a journalist himself, so he knows how things work behind the scenes at different news agencies. And you know, what’s interesting though is you see this kind of messaging kind of coming out across the board with the Trump administration right now. They’re really calling out the establishment media, not only of, you know, feeding, you know, partial news, we could say, but of even potentially intentionally misleading the public in what seems to be partisan motivations.

They don’t want Trump to do the parade celebrating a successful victory. They want to take those brownie points away, which is a big deal. Which is a big deal because especially leading up to the midterms, what is going to inform the voters, well, did the president do what he said he was going to do? And that’s going to impact whether people vote for the next candidate of that party or vote for somebody else. If voters are disenfranchised, it means they didn’t believe they got what they wanted. And so the media seem to be really going out of their way, at least according to Hegseth and others, they’re going out of their way to make good things look bad.

And it seems to be that’s what he’s calling them out for. Yeah, well, they don’t have anything of substance to put in to replace the criticism of the bad action in their opinion. You know what really bothers me about this? And I’ll just speak as an average citizen. Iran has a history for years with this regime of saying, little Satan, Israel, big Satan, America, we’re going to take you out. You got sleeper cells, we got, we’re going to have nuclear weapons, we’re going to wipe you off the face of the earth. And it seems to me that the members of the mainstream media would rather make Trump look ineffective than do the job of protecting Americans and Israeli citizens.

Yeah, well, and Iran has not changed that narrative either. And I’ve seen people saying, well, doesn’t Israel have nuclear weapons? Doesn’t America have nuclear weapons? Why can’t Pakistan have nuclear weapons? I’ve heard analysis on that saying, well, you know, a law abiding citizen can own a firearm, but do you want the crackhead down the street who says he wants to kill you to own a firearm? You know what I mean? There’s responsible owners and irresponsible owners. And if a person’s saying that their intent is to destroy you, you probably don’t want to give them the tool to destroy you.

That’s gonna be in your interest to do everything you can to prevent them from getting it. And so, you know, on that point, this has been bipartisan until now. And it’s interesting to see that it has suddenly become such a partisan issue going back to the Barack Obama administration. You know, President Barack Obama was saying that we should do everything we can Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. And his solution was to give them pallets of cash and try to get them to not build a nuclear weapon by doing so. And then what do they do? They take American sailors hostage and Then make fun of them and just become really brazen.

Trump, of course, put sanctions on Iran during his first term in office in an attempt to make them not build a nuclear weapon. He wanted them to make a deal. The Biden administration came in, they pulled off the sanctions, they released the money. What did Iran do? They restarted the flames of global terrorism because they used a lot of that money for terrorism. People came out and argued, well, the money that was unlocked can only be used for this or that. Republicans argued, money is fungible. If you give somebody a hundred dollars and they had $100 for food and everything else, it doesn’t mean that they have to use that $100 you gave them for drugs or whatever else.

They can use that to buy food, and they can use the 100 bucks they already had to buy drugs. And the same thing with Iran. If they didn’t have money for terrorism and they had to use the little money they had or to build nuclear weapons, they had to use a little money they had to pay for their normal services. And then suddenly you unlock billions of dollars. Well, great. They can use the billions of dollars to do what they needed the money they had for, and then use the money they had to restart terrorism and restart their nuclear program.

And it seems they did just that. Actually, those programs have turned the Iranian citizens against their government. I’ve had people on from the Iranian resistance. Some of them are in exile in Paris, and they are quite clear. Even the military made of conscripts, average people drafted in the military. They don’t support the mullahs. They don’t support this regime whatsoever. Let me ask you this kind of a sidebar question to where we’re going. I’m getting reports, and I can’t confirm them, that they’re shooting in Tehran and outlying areas. And some people think it’s one faction of the military versus another.

Have you heard those reports? I have not heard those reports, but I would not be surprised. And because what’s happening alongside all of this, the former Crown Prince of Iran under the Shah of Iran prior to the 1979 revolution, he’s come out and he’s actually trying to start a takeover of the country. He’s trying to start a. An overturning of the regime. And he wants to turn, at least he says, Iran into a democracy. Now, that could go a few ways. Hamas is a democratically elected government. You know what I mean? They’re democratically elected. So democracy doesn’t.

It doesn’t always mean good government in some countries. And of course, we can look at the very successful countries in the Middle East. A lot of them are kingdoms like Saudi Arabia. But regardless of that, you have the former crown prince of Iran coming out, and he’s saying he’s going to start a movement. And he’s been calling on members of the government, members of the military, members of anybody else in the administration or around the country. They’ve set up a secure line for them to communicate with him, and he’s trying to start an overthrow of the government.

So that that is happening. Now, are other countries involved with that? We may never know, but without a doubt, that is happening. I guarantee you there’s three initials involved. It’s called CIA. But I had Shaheen Go Body on my show. He’s part of that movement. In fact, he’s in exile in Paris right now. And he has said exactly what you’re saying. And he referenced me to a couple of websites that showed how the economy in Iran had stopped in its tracks three weeks ago. And so the people are already in a discontented mood. And I’m hearing they’re having celebrations after raids if they’re not killed because they’re hoping it’ll lead to a regime change.

Some of them have even been publishing videos like that. They’re like, okay, they’re like, they’re celebrating as the bombs are going off. I know. You know, one interesting thing, actually. So after Trump launched these strikes on the nuclear facilities, Israel launched several strikes. But the strikes Israel launched immediately after were not about the nuclear programs. One of the things they did was they said they were bombing regime targets. And, and also they said systems of repression. Now, why would they be destroying regime targets and systems of repression? Well, they were basically using strikes to, at least in my opinion, go after the current powers of the regime and the systems through which the regime persecutes its people.

In particular, they actually destroyed, I believe, the gates of one of the big prisons and they destroyed the building where the prosecutors and judges are. Big deal. Because the prison they destroyed these things on is one of the main facilities to house political prisoners. And, you know, the media was painting that in all kinds of ways. They just bombed the political prisoner building. Now, they bombed the gates turned out, and they bombed the prosecutor’s office. So it does seem to be the case that, at least in the initial strikes, after the Trump destroyed the last remnants of their nuclear power, you did in fact, have attacks that were meant to probably facilitate regime change.

And as you mentioned, too, a lot of Iran, a lot of Iranians, do not support the current regime, what people forget is it’s a new regime and they were a very different country before that. A lot of Iranians in the United States, they don’t call themselves Iranian, they call themselves Persian. And the reason for that is because they don’t recognize the current regime, which only came about in 1979. And if you look at pictures before that, they look like a European country, women in bikinis and stuff like that. It did not look like it does now.

I know the transformation is amazing. But you know, the Iranians I know here in America are steadfast about there needs to be a regime change. I, I haven’t found one that I’ve talked to over the years that doesn’t think that, but does. I want to ask you a technical question with regard to military. I understand this. The Iranians have their basic military made up of mostly conscripts, but then the mullahs have their own army. Is that accurate? I’m not totally sure about that. I do know they have the irgc, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. And without a doubt you’re going to have different factions in the military.

You are going to have your boots on the ground and your meat for the grinder to be crude. And with those people, they are going to have just whoever they can get, but you’re also going to have your elite force. Those are going to be your high ranking officers, the people they probably want to keep close to them, their close confidants. Because you know, when you’re, when you’re a totalitarian regime, you want to make sure the people holding the gun right next to you is not going to turn that gun and shoot you. And so, you know, it’s one of the top priorities of any dictator, actually.

You know what I mean. Joshua, I wanted to ask you this question, though. We know that military leaders have been targeted for assassination and the Israelis have successfully carried out those raids. Isn’t that to strip the leadership that might be loyal to the government, to let the ranks swell with dissent? So maybe that’s the way the revolution starts. You know, I think you’re hitting on something really important. And it’s interesting because I haven’t, I haven’t actually heard many people mention this, but yeah, you’re, I think you’re 100% correct. And maybe this is one of the big pieces a lot of people are missing right now.

Israel, in some of its initial strikes, they were killing off the leadership of the Iranian regime. They even wanted to kill the supreme leader. Trump stopped him from doing it because he said it’ll throw the country into chaos. And it probably would have, to be honest. But what they did do, okay, one of the reports that came out, they made a fake meeting call and they got all the top military leaders together and then they bombed it. And so they killed a lot of them. They also carried out targeted assassinations, individual strikes. They did that a couple times, the big meetings, and then bombed the whole place.

And Israel has been pretty. They’ve been pretty surgical with this, the nature of what they’ve been capable of. It’s been interesting to watch. Even, for example, when they had the whole pager bomb incident and they’re blowing up people’s pagers of these terror groups, that was incredible. I mean, that was incredible to watch. And so they did have, it seems, agents on the ground, including possibly within the Iranian military, who were able to facilitate these things and then wipe out the leadership. But to the point you made, I think you’re spot on with this, because what does it mean? If you have all the top trusted people who are effectively the regime, and then all the armed people who are not really in support of the regime, and you kill off the people who are loyal to the regime, what are you left with? Yeah, left with the people probably don’t want it there.

And so you might actually be facilitating a change of power. And especially if a lot of your leadership is gone and now the military is called to repress the people’s dissent, you’re going to get less compliance because you’re asking people to go against their family, their neighbors and so forth. So, and, and there was another thing that made me think of this too. It’s what Netanyahu said after the first raid. He said to the Iranian people, your liberation has begun. So that’s what put me in that mindset, that this, this is one of their goals, is to provoke a revolution, which I welcome.

I wish Iran would become a responsible nation. We trade with them, they’re oil rich, their people standard of living could go way up. But heck, they take their money and put it into terrorism and ignore the people. Well, and on that point, look at what they could be. Iran could be Saudi Arabia. Yeah, I mean, really, like, you look at the quality of life there compared to Iran, they could be Qatar, they could be the uae. If you look at other countries in that region that basically do nothing other than trade oil people live like princes.

Your average citizen lives like a prince. And Iran has that capability. They have the resources for it, they have the markets for it. And the only reason they don’t have that is because, again, they get sanctioned because they’re so dead set on developing nuclear weapons. What is the motivation behind that? Like, why, why does that, why is that a sensible decision? It doesn’t make sense from any kind of economical standpoint, any kind of quality of life standpoint, anything, I would say. And so, you know, yeah, if you, if you get rid of the people who’ve done that to that country and you allow them to become, as Trump has put it, he says that they’re going to become a great trading nation now.

They might become a very wealthy country. And I think the people would probably want that. Yeah, obviously. And, you know, it’s funny, people in repressed countries today, they don’t live in total isolation as they did in the past, because the Internet and social media, they know how we live, they know how Europe lives, and they know how they’re being treated. And this is what Iranians have told me. So, Dave, it’s not the 1950s again, and I totally agree with that. And you’re right, they could become such a powerhouse economically with their oil. You know, you’re right about the economic nonsense behind their actions and the totalitarian abuse.

But here’s what I think might be going on. I’d like your opinion. The mullahs are extreme zealots. At least they’ve been painted that way. And do they want the return of the Mahdi to force end times? And does that help explain their fascination with nuclear weapons and their threats against Israel in the U.S. so, yeah, when it comes to, like, a lot of the terror groups, isis, for example, they’re trying to fulfill prophecy in order to trigger the end of the end times. Yes, there are. There are some like that. The entire idea of, you know, the Levant, right, the Islamic State, was in fact to fulfill that prophecy.

Does the Iranian leadership actually believe this? I don’t think so. What I think they’re actually about is politics and power. And this ties in, of course, into Islamism and political Islam versus religious Islamic. And the history on this is interesting. Here’s a question. If Iran is actually motivated by religion, if the reason they hate Israel is because Israel, again, is because of Gaza and their belief that Israel is persecuting Muslims. Right. If that’s their belief, then why do they trade with the Chinese Communist Party when the Chinese Communist Party runs some of the biggest repressions of Muslims of any country on the face of the planet? The Chinese Communist Party enslaves Muslim Uyghurs.

The Chinese Communist Party harvests the organs for the transplant industry of Muslim Uyghurs, Falun Gong practitioners, even some reports of house Christians. But they kill Muslims for their organs, for business. They torture them, they persecute them. So why does Iran not have a problem with that? That’s a big question. I would say the answer to that is because it’s not about religion, it’s about politics. They use religion as a form of social control. And what you have with political Islam, which a lot of that came about through the Muslim Brotherhood and you know, the, the revolutions that were sparked through that, including the Iranian revolution, including many other, what were actual communist revolutions, it was, it was sparked by a merging of Islam with socialism.

The individual who did that as part of the Muslim Brotherhood was, I believe, said Al Qutib. And the idea was it was a reinterpretation of Sharia or not Sharia. Well, Sharia also a reinterpretation of jihad. Instead of being an internal battle for your soul with yourself, as being an external battle to force it upon others, it transformed, in other words, from being a system by which. And again, you know, people can believe whatever they want, a system by which you hold yourself to certain standards, to a system which should be enforced through government. And so what you had was these regime leaders saw a very big opening because what they can do, if you have a communist leader, what was the biggest problem the Soviets had? Well, the biggest problem the Soviets had was people had moral values that informed them that the actions of the government were evil.

And it was actually Christians and Catholics and Orthodox church members who overthrew the Soviet regime. So what did they learn? Well, if you want to fully control the people, you need to also control the religion. And so as part of this interpretation, what did they do? Well, the communist leaders put on the robes of the priests, and then they said, if you criticize me, you’re committing heresy and you should be killed. And so they transformed political criticism into religious criticism, and they use it as a system of repression. We can see in their international relations, though it has nothing to do with religion.

They would be enemies of the Chinese Communist Party if this was actually about religion. What an interesting interpretation you brought up the Muslim Brotherhood, though. If we go back in time, we know who created the Muslim Brotherhood. The Nazis, in fact. And I think that mentality explains some of what we’re seeing today. In fact, I’ve read that Mein Kampf is still a best selling book in that region. Wouldn’t surprise me, actually. It would inform some of the narratives, in fact. And also actually the Soviets in fact, spread the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to, to paint this image of, you know, Israel as being the little Satan, America as being the big Satan.

In fact, a lot of the spreading of that was done through Romania under, under the, under the Romanian communist regime. One of the highest ranking Soviet bloc defectors was a, it was a, you know, senior general, a guy named Ayan Mihai Pachepa actually defected from Romania and he published a book called Disinformation Before Disinformation was a politicized term in the West. Published a book and he actually explained how he did that operation and why they did it. And it was basically to get the Muslim world against America through using Israel as the proxy and also. And then to win Soviet support among these countries.

You know what’s incredible to me though, I’ve had interaction with Iranians in this country and they don’t hate America. In fact, actually most of them are very patriotic. I really believe the people want a fundamental change. I think Shaheen Go Body is correct. I think the former leader in Iran is correct. I think they’re right on the money with what they’re saying and doing. Can a revolution succeed in Iran and how bad would it get? I think they could, I think they could succeed. Now will that be pretty. Probably not. But the other point, the other point, you know, including the one you raised, is if the people who would have crushed dissent are now dead, it might not be such a, such a chaotic change of power.

And especially if you have also a government in waiting, which you do now with this former prince, right, or with the, I guess he’s still technically crown prince. You have a government in waiting. Now, how, how solid is that plan? I personally assume he has people behind him, will probably never make themselves public. I assume that’s happening, but we’ll probably never fully know. But this individual is, you know, basically has a system in waiting, is saying, this is what’s waiting for you as soon as the regime is out. And I think they may actually facilitate it.

In fact, the crown prince even came out and he was saying based on his information, and I would assume he’s talking to people in Iran because he’s getting these back channels. He was saying that the leader and his family were already planning to flee Iran, so that that might be happening also. I’m hearing that too, but I, I think some of the mainstays of the old guard, you could have the regime fly the coupe, but the mainstays may fight to the very end. You never know. The biggest, the biggest Issue you’re going to have, in my opinion, is not Iran as a singular entity, but Iran as a global entity.

Because what else aside from the nuclear programs? Everything else. What was Iran? They were one of the, they were among. I would actually say the CCP is bigger, but they were, they’re called the greatest, you know, the biggest sponsor of terrorism. Hezbollah is tied in with them. Hamas is supported by them. A lot of terrorist organizations are supported by them. A lot of people don’t realize Hezbollah has huge power even throughout Latin America, let alone the Middle East. They have Hezbollah in Lebanon. They’re basically a full military force. In fact, when Israel went into Lebanon, they were shocked by the war they were fighting.

They were fighting a full military with Hezbollah. But if you go down to Latin America, there are countries like Peru that have a Hezbollah political party in countries like Brazil. Iran has huge influence, huge influence in Mexico. I’ve been told by former U.S. intelligence officials that Hezbollah actually trained some of the cartels on how to build roadside bombs. I, you know, improvised explosive devices, IEDs, Joshua, they taught them. I can go a step beyond that. I’ve got eyewitnesses I’ve interviewed on this show years ago that talked about CIA in army service training, Hamas, Hezbollah, and also to the cartels.

And it was overseen by the Sanchez predest cartel out of Peru, which is what now? The Shining Light, I believe they’re called. Shining Path. Yeah, the Shining Path, yeah. And they, they, this has been ongoing for some time, and they trained them in light infantry. And this is what led Trump in some part to change some of the border fencing in his first term to repulse light infantry attacks when he found out about that. That’s what I’ve been told. So, yeah, you’re right on the money. The car cartels are in estimated 30 countries now, at least the CJNG.

But that’s interesting that you made that connection because it’s strong. So this taking out the regime may not end the threat. And if, let’s say that the ayatollah says, okay, I’m out of here, or he’s assassinated and he’s out of the way. What about the sleeper cells in America? So the biggest thing that’s going to happen is who takes over these networks? My personal belief, the Chinese Communist Party will probably find a way to indirectly support them, and they’ll probably do it through proxy of another country, maybe the Taliban, for example. The CCP is working very heavily with the Taliban in Afghanistan, maybe through another terror group, maybe.

Maybe through Al Qaeda. Which is trying to resurge now because they’re kind of battling with ISIS for, you know, which, which, which person leads the, the global terror movement. Somebody is going to gain control of Hezbollah, whether it’s directly financing or whether Hezbollah transforms into its own network. But they’re also dealing, of course, with the problem of people who found their way into the United States. Now, on the sleeper cell issue, you’re going to have a few different parts to this. Now, when it comes to the official Iranian agents, what have we seen with them? I’m in New York City.

In New York City, not too long ago, they arrested an alleged Iranian agent who was accused of trying to hire an Eastern European mafia to carry out an assassination in Queensland, right here in New York City. And they allegedly were planning to kill an Iranian journalist who was critical of the regime. And so we’ve seen them try to hire people to carry out assassinations on American soil. During the campaign trail, Donald Trump, when he was the leading candidate, was briefed by US Intelligence and he came out and said this publicly, being told that, he said that Iran had a plan out to assassinate him.

Yes, Iran was planning to assassinate Donald Trump when he was on the campaign trail. Trump announced that. In fact, that’s why Trump was asking the Biden administration for presidential level security, which he was denied. They said the security of a former president gives him all he needs. But Trump was saying no, presidential status gives you some additional protections, especially from transnational issues. And he was saying he needed that to protect him from Iran. He was denied. But that did raise the issue of these Iranian agents in the United States. Now those are your official agents. Then you’re going to have of course, the sleeper cells, the paramilitary groups, I would say, like Hamas or not Hamas, like Hezbollah for example, those guys, I would imagine a lot of those will be working more on spurring on maybe other people to commit acts of terrorism.

The elephant in the room, the hidden hand behind global terrorism, is a lot of the big terrorists don’t do the violence themselves. They convince weak minded individuals or drug them and then get them to do it for them. They use useful idiots basically to carry out the attacks for them. And so the actual agents will probably be trying to radicalize people. They’ll be spreading things, maybe going to people who are now people maybe throwing rocks at police because they’re angry about the Trump administration or people, for example, these individuals, the individual accused of shooting two random Jewish, a Jewish couple, you know, outside of an event recently, that kind of stuff, they might try to capitalize on that social movement to increase the, increase the momentum, to make things more radical.

And I would see them doing this. And I would add too, just briefly on this, as you mentioned, the ties between Hezbollah and these terror networks and the cartels. The cartels are intertwined with terrorism. They’re intertwined with drug operations in the Middle East. Cr J, you know, the, you know, a lot of these Sinaloa cartel, a lot of them are deeply involved with this. And so, you know, what do you call the terror, what do you call the cartels in different parts of Latin America? A lot of them are what you call narco terrorists. They are narco terrorists.

Why do they call them narco terrorists? It’s because they’re both cartels and terrorist organizations. And why is it that a lot of these Middle Eastern countries, like the Taliban, for example, why were they growing opium? Where does the opium go? To the global drug trade? What is some of the biggest businesses in the tri border region, like Peru, as you were talking about, in the training of these groups? Well, they’re tied in with global terrorism. And again, the cartels get training from them, they get support from them. The Chinese Communist Party facilitates a lot of that, but Iran has a lot of influence too.

That’s amazing. I mean, the connections. But you know what I fear in this country, and I agree with you, they like to use straw men, but the straw men are here. It’s called TDA MS.13 in ISIS. Do you, do you think there, since there’s already a drug relationship, China sends the fentanyl. Okay. And then the narco terrorists distribute it? Isn’t that a natural marriage between these gangsters and China? In Iran, it has been, and let’s put it this way, okay, how many people were killed on nine, 11? Couple thousand. Right, Couple thousand. How many people were killed by fentanyl last year? 75, 000.

I believe upwards of that. Yes. Trump’s even saying up up to 100 million. Yeah. Drugs are killing more people than probably every terrorist attack combined on. On maybe like a monthly basis. That’s. If you let that sink in and understand what these terrorists are doing now. How did the drug network start? Mao Zedong actually started a lot of this. He did it modeling it after the opium wars from Britain against, you know, which brought about the end of the last dynasty of China. Mao Zedong brought this about. There’s actually a great book on this. It’s called Red Cocaine.

The author is Joseph Douglas. Fantastic book. It’s out of print, but you can get PDFs online, it explains basically how Mao Zedong created his networks. He went through Cuba. And Cuba, even though you’d say they’re a smaller country, they have a lot of influence all throughout Latin America through special agents. They also worked very heavily with Brazil. There’s what’s called the foro au Sao Paulo, the forum of Sao Paulo, which, between Brazil and Cuba, with Lula del Suva, who’s now in power again in Brazil, which facilitated and created movements to spark what they called the pink wave, which was the creation of communist regimes all throughout Latin America.

They did that. Now, when it comes to the drug trade, what other groups were part of the 4 au so Paulo? Well, on the fringes of it, you had groups like the Shining Path. And when it comes to what these politicians have done, when they take power, what do they do? They legalize the operations of the drug cartels and the narco terrorists. They say, this is just a business, we’re not going to get involved. And then what do they do as they legalize it? These become big, big parts of their economies. They allow it to happen.

And as the cartels get more money, what then happens? While the cartels start running their own people to get into office? And then they start putting money into political campaigns and putting money behind judges and putting money in bribery into the pockets of police. They effectively take over these countries. And so if you understand the cartels, corruption, foreign operations of the Chinese Communist Party, drugs are not just even a tool to kill Americans. Drugs are a tool to conquer nations using that money and other things. And Iran is also heavily tied in with that, mainly through, again, the narco terror groups.

Makes so much sense. And I’m sure you heard about the vice mayor of a small town in California, Southern California, that called for gangs to hold on to their Turf and resist ICE agents. We already know the 18th Street Gang and the Florence gang. Yeah. But here’s, here’s where the connection, I think, comes. We know that Singham, CCP member, a billionaire, he’s. He’s thrown money into these protests. That’s communist Chinese connected right there. He’s member of the ccp. And then you’ve got these gangsters and some of them are interrelated with these terror cell groups. And they’re saying, go after the federal agents.

Is, is this the beginning or the rumblings of a kinetic civil war that they’re trying to start? I, I do think so. I, I do think you have that. So when it comes to the Chinese Communist Party, that gets into what you call transnational repression and subversion. Actually, a lot of my work as an investigative reporter has been into this. Back in 2008, my career. I’ve been with Epic Time since 2006. But 2008 was my beginning of my career as an investigative reporter. And that started because I accidentally uncovered a Chinese spy network in New York City.

It was tied in. It was being run through the Chinese consulate. We got recordings of the Chinese Consulate General admitting supporting these groups. And what I basically uncovered, it’s what’s called the United Front Work Department. So the Chinese Communist Party has two branches of focus on this United Front Work Department and the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office. The United Front is the front line of the CCP’s war on foreign soil. The United Front, right. The front line of a military operation right here in New York, in California and Texas. And what they do is they have. They have the Chinese consulate work as basically the local government office.

They do what they call liaison work. They send agents out and they try to win support of the different individuals. They invite politicians back to China. They try to grow operations. I recently exposed what’s called the Chinese Student and scholar association, the CSSA’s Chinese student groups that include not just students, but also faculty members, professors. They get paid by the CCP and they’re operated by the CCP openly. The Chinese consulate runs those, which lets them, of course, grow agents. And they can then place Communist Party agents in different branches of government, saying, hey, Chinese student who we raised up openly with support of the ccp, we want you to get a job in the FBI.

We want you to get a job in the Justice Department, we want you to get a job in the irs. And then the CCP will use these agents to do what they want from within the system. Yes, shocking stuff. But the United Front takes it even further than this. The United Front, they do what’s called leadership capture, or they call it capturing the civil society. And the theory of the CCP is this, that a government or a country is run by two factors. There’s your official government in America. Our constit institution is the bedrock of our government.

Right. There’s your official government and the system. But within the system, who runs it? That’s your civil society. Leaders, politicians, individuals of influence, so journalists, online personalities, influencers, which, by the way, the CCP is doing all kinds of paid trips. We’re now trying to get them to do propaganda trips in China or paying them to run CCP propaganda. There’s business leaders and, you know, Hollywood and so on. The United Front targets these individuals, and they’ll go at it by hook or by crook. Bribery, blackmail, backdoor business deals, or just influence campaigns. Hey, come back to China with me.

Let me show you the real China. Right? And so they try to capture these individuals. Once they capture them, they can control them and then control the country. This is how you lose your country, through subversion. And the CCP has massive operations for this. Some of the networks I uncovered have upwards of 10, tens of thousands of members within what they call, they call them tongs, Fraternal organizations. Huge operations. You know, what you just said about the Chinese makes perfect sense. But what Iranians have told me is the threat is omnipresent with Iranian terror cells here.

They’re intergenerational. I remember there was a show of 15 years ago called the Americans, and I think it’s still on Netflix. Intergenerational Russia. They were going to train the daughter. She was an American citizen born here, and they were going to train her before she rebelled. And I was told this is the model for the Iranian sleeper terrorist cells is that you just think they’re average Americans with Iranian roots from 30 years ago, but they’ve been living here and they’re waiting for the go signal. And I’ve had Iranians in this country tell me this, are they accurate? Well, I mean, think of how you do that.

We created the perfect storm of allowing that because you can come here illegally and the border was thrown wide open. You can then have a kid here and your kid will become an American citizen because of birthright citizenship. We allowed this to happen for, I mean, generations. We made it so easy to do. And so you can have people, illegal immigrants, or maybe they come in through a work visa, right? They come in as student visas. They have kids and they raise their kids and radicalize them. Maybe they go on trips back to their home countries.

They’re here, they’re citizens. But they’re loyal to a foreign government and loyal notably to ideologies that deem our government evil. They believe that they need to overthrow our government. They believe that their mission in life is to destroy us and everything we stand for. And they say this openly. They go to protests and they shout it, they write it on billboards and they say, you know, I’m fighting against, you know, the big Satan, as they would call it. They don’t. They might not say that openly, but that’s what they’re doing. And if you look at the protests on American college campuses, if you look at the messaging of some individuals who do have that type of dissent who are openly talking about this.

I would say whether that was done intentionally or not, it is in fact, the situation we’re in. Wow, that’s absolutely frightening because they’re just so blended in. You know, I see members of Congress that exhibit some of the traits you just described. There’s a few of them. Is my imagination running wild or do you see the same thing? You, you, you do have a few of them who openly state, at the very least, the same narratives. And, you know, some of them are American citizens through migration. They’re not born in America. They come from a foreign country and they, they talk about this just like a terrorist would in their home country.

Some of them have even openly praised terrorist organizations. And so, yeah, you do, you do have that. Florida, New York and Michigan come to mind. I’ll just leave it at that. But, you know, like bringing your brother in as your husband, I, I think that kind of fits here. But that happened. So this is. Even if we make a regime change in Iran and Iran goes path towards being civilized and become a responsible member of the world community, what’s left behind in this country could pose threats for generations. I think so. And, and again, I would actually say the Chinese Communist Party will probably pick up the slack of this and they’re going to try to control it.

And I mean, case in point, tick tock. And I know TikTok people are divided on it. I know Trump has delayed the, you know, the ban, the TikTok ban over and over again. What was trending on TikTok before that whole thing happened? Do you know what was trending? One of the TikTok trends was Osama bin Laden’s doctrine justifying why it’s okay to kill civilians. And you had a TikTok viral trend where people were talking about the writings of Osama bin Laden and saying they agreed with it, that they understood, oh, killing civilians can be necessary in the event of a war because, you know, they’re the, they represent the regime or whatever else.

Now, I don’t believe that, to be clear, but this was trending, a trending topic on TikTok. Now who controls the algorithms on TikTok? Who controls that? The Chinese regime? Yeah, the ccp. And so if there, if something is allowed to trend, it’s because it has been allowed to trend or it’s being forced to trend, they could stop that and they chose not to. And imagine now what’s going to happen when you have all these kids who are, whether knowingly or not, joining these Social movements protesting against America. And because they’re on TikTok being fed foreign propaganda or disinformation or what they call agit prop agitation propaganda campaigns, they’re being fed these narratives, they’re being radicalized.

Who is going to control that? Well, then they’re bringing a story on this. About three months ago, radicalizers from China are being sent to our universities not to just take American education and become technically more proficient, but to spread their propaganda. I’m sure you’re aware of that too. Yeah, they are. Yeah. Well, you know, one thing I’ve been looking into lately is what we’re calling transnational repression. And you know, people have heard about the Chinese secret police stations, for example. They’re feeding false narratives to news outlets. One big thing we’re seeing right now, New York Times has been launching like just non stop hit pieces against persecuted groups in China who are here in the United States.

They’ve been running hit pieces against Shen Yun Performing Arts, which was started by American Chinese in New York and which is, you know, they have pieces critical of the ccp. New York Times is running hit piece after hit piece after hit piece on them and almost all the narratives they had are from the Chinese Communist Party. It’s, it’s CCP talking points. And what’s happening, they’re triggering criminal investigations through the government. Yes, now, now, in other words, the CCP has found a way to where they can get people to say things or feed propaganda that will feed narratives and then target their enemies or people they deem as enemies in foreign countries.

There was another case, in fact, recently or a few years ago, a Chinese agent, a special agent who has since been arrested and found guilty for this, tried to bribe an IRS agent to revoke the nonprofit status of Shen Yun and that individual, it turned out the IRS agent was an undercover FBI agent. So the guy got arrested. But you know, the CCP is trying to manipulate. I mean, look, they’re targeting Shen Yun and like religions, like they’re targeting Falun Gong, they’re targeting House Christian members and things like that, but. Or democracy activists, Taiwanese activists, they’re targeting stuff like that.

The biggest target is Falun Gong practitioners right now. But people might say, well, you know, they’re just going after Chinese people for now. For now they are. But if they find the ability to manipulate our government to manipulate law, to go after dissent, to go after people who are just critical of the ccp. Yeah, for now it’s those people. But once they demonstrate the ability to do that, and once they solidify that they will try to further seize control of the government and of agencies. And if we see them weaponizing government agencies as they currently are, it means we’re already well on our way to having that happen.

You know, in my state, I’m in Arizona. Mark Kelly gets over $20 million revenue from communist China directly and indirectly every year. And that’s been disclosed publicly. This is not even controversial. Then you got Mitch McConnell whose in laws control the six major ports in China and he gets big time money from China and he doesn’t support Taiwan very well. I could go on and on with this, this, but I mean, it’s already happening. It’s already happening inside of our government. 33 Republican legislators lobbying for China, led by Boehner, former Speaker of the House. I’m sure you’ve heard that too.

Yeah, well, it’s even coming out now that a lot of the green, the green lobby is being funded by the Chinese Communist Party because they’re trying to control our electric and our electrical infrastructure. And then what do we find? We find they’re selling us solar panels and there’s kill switches in them. Aside from handing off the future of our electric grid dependent on a foreign business, they’re installing backdoors in them and they’re lobbying our own government. And then who knows, maybe even feeding narratives to media to push that agenda. I really think this should raise a lot more alarms in this country because what this is, is it’s called leadership capture.

It’s leadership capture. They’re trying to control our country and frankly, we’re not doing much against it right now. Joshua, I gotta ask you, I hope you’ll come back on my show again to go down this path. I mean, we’re out of time, but this is a whole different avenue. I want to open up. And then I want to talk to you about what’s going on inside of China with Xi Jinping losing control of the military. And I think he’s on his way out. I want to, I want to talk, I want to get you back on the show sooner rather than later.

Talk about this. But I wanted to leave enough time because I have the ultimate respect for the Epoch Times. But I know you’ve got a show called Crossroads. Can you talk about how people can follow you? Yeah. So I do a show called Crossroads at Epic Times. You can follow me on YouTube. That’s Crossroads with Joshua Phillip. I’m also on EpicTV, but YouTube, you can watch it there. You can also follow me on X at Josh J. Phillips. Okay. Fantastic. Fantastic presentation today. It was everything I expected and more. And my thanks to the Epoch Times for sharing Joshua with us, folks.

It’s worthy of your attention. I get my morning delivery by email every day. I go through it because it really gives me a mindset of where I need to start. Hey, Joshua, thank you so much for coming on. I’ll be in touch because there’s a lot of stuff we left on the table. A pleasure. Thank you. Take care.
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