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The Wesley Clark "Seven Countries" Clip and Why It Keeps Coming Back

Evidence rating: CONFIRMED that retired General Wesley Clark said this on camera in 2007. STRONG for the list itself: a firsthand, on-the-record account by a former NATO supreme commander, matched since by the record of what happened to each country on it. The memo has never been released.

If you have seen one old video shared every time bombs fall on Iran, it is probably this one. A retired four-star general sits across from a journalist and lists seven countries the Pentagon planned to "take out" after 9/11. The last one is Iran. In 2026, Iran is the country the United States is at war with.

Who is speaking​

General Wesley Clark is a retired four-star U.S. Army general. He was NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe and led the 1999 Kosovo campaign. He ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. He is not a fringe figure, which is why the clip carries weight.

What he says, and where​

The interview is with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, recorded at the 92nd Street Y in New York and published March 2, 2007. Clark says that about ten days after 9/11, visiting the Pentagon, a general on the Joint Staff told him the decision had been made to go to war with Iraq. A few weeks later, while the U.S. was bombing Afghanistan, he went back:

"He said, 'I just got this down from upstairs' — meaning the secretary of defense's office — 'today.' And he said, 'This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.'"

Clark says he asked whether it was classified, was told yes, and said, "Well, don't show it to me." He did not name the general.

Watch it: Democracy Now, March 2, 2007, video and transcript; the widely shared excerpt on YouTube, "General Wesley Clark: The US will attack 7 countries in 5 years".

In the same interview Clark argued against war with Iran: "you shouldn't use force, except as a last, last, last resort. There is a military option, but it's a bad one."

The clip in 2026, as millions heard it​

In August 2026 the clip reached a new audience on the podcast of comedian Theo Von, whose guest, Professor Xueqin Jiang, played it and connected it to "A Clean Break," the 1996 policy paper written for Netanyahu's first government. This investigation has preserved that segment:

Theo Von and Professor Xueqin Jiang, replaying Wesley Clark's 2007 account; as posted by @RedPillSayian on X, August 2026.

From the transcription, after the Clark excerpt, Jiang says: "We're 96, um, they, they write the clean break memo, encouraging Nanyahu to choose a path of war and dominance in the Middle East," and asks: "if the United States was not doing this at the behest of Israel, then how can we explain what's going on?" Von, going down the list: "So he ran for last on the list. It's his final boss." The Clean Break paper itself named "Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Syria, Hizballah in Lebanon, and Iran" (see A Clean Break, 1996). The paper and the Clark memo are different documents; Jiang's point is that the targets are the same.

How it recirculated on the days of the strikes​

  • June 22, 2025, the day of the U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear sites: actor Rob Schneider restated the list on X (post).
  • February 28, 2026, the day the joint U.S.–Israeli war began: an account posted the clip with the caption "We're going to finish with war in Iran," calling it "planned for decades," with about 130,000 views (post).
  • 2024: WikiLeaks posted it on September 11 with the quote "We are going to take out 7 countries in 5 years" (post).

What happened to the list​

Iraq: invaded by the U.S. in 2003. Libya: bombed in 2011. Somalia: U.S. strikes for years. Syria: U.S. forces fought there. Lebanon: Israel's wars, and in 2026 Israeli troops holding southern Lebanon. Sudan: split in two in 2011, normalized with Israel in 2020, in civil war since 2023. Iran: bombed by the U.S. in June 2025, and at war with the U.S. and Israel since February 28, 2026. "Finishing off, Iran." The full country-by-country record is on the Seven-Country Scorecard and the Post-9/11 Pentagon Country List.

In a later 2007 speech, as Glenn Greenwald reported it, Clark described a "policy coup" by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and others. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz had signed the 1997 founding statement of the Project for the New American Century, and Richard Perle, who led the study group that wrote A Clean Break, signed its later letters (see PNAC).

What a citizen can do​

  • Watch the full Democracy Now segment, not a 40-second cut.
  • Compare the list with what happened to each country since 2001.
  • Ask for the document. A Freedom of Information Act request, or a member of Congress asking the Pentagon on the record for "the seven-countries memo" of late 2001, is the way to put it on paper.

Status: Wesley Clark is alive. Amy Goodman, Rob Schneider, Theo Von, Xueqin Jiang, and Paul Wolfowitz are alive. Donald Rumsfeld is deceased (2021). Dick Cheney is deceased (2025).

Sources​

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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