Latest / The Nation Podcasts / The End of American Global Power? W/ Anusar Farooqui | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer

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The End of American Global Power? W/ Anusar Farooqui | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer · The Nation Podcasts

• 0:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: The old world is dying, the new world struggles reborn.
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now is the time of monsters.
• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: But with those words, I welcome you to the time of monsters podcast.
• 0:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: This podcast is produced by the nation magazine.
• 0:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm teaching here right here for the nation.
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, we've been discussing the Iran War for quite some time, and going into the various diplomatic ins and outs and the causes of the war.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I thought it would be useful.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And for this purpose, I'm very happy to have on Anasar Furuki, who does a sub-stack called policy tensor, which I will link to.
• 0:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he's been a sort of exceptional analyst in sort of like not just covering what's going on day to day, but the sort of a larger overview of what this means.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: That it's for the Middle East, but for America's place in the world.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: So first of all, welcome to the program.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, let's just get started over, I mean, I think one thing I like about your writing is that you've been very bold in making statements, which I think other people were reluctant to, although they're coming around to it.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think one thing that you've been clicked on a bunch about is that this has been actually an American defeat, and that Iran is emerging as a real power in the world.
• 1:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I wanted to ask you your thoughts about that, but I, and we can go, this is a big question.
• 1:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, in different components, well, what's your Gerald thought about like what has happened in the war so far?
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that the picture of the world that people had in their heads, not just the Trump administration, not just the principles, but even the military officers and US intelligence and Western intelligence, and even the New York Times, the New York Times began this war by putting it under the file,
• 1:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: and even after the massive retaliation of the Iranians, it was still filed under U.S. and Israel assault around for a whole week.
• 2:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that was based on a certain picture of the world in which the world is unipolar, the ISIS is doing this one-sided war of punishment against basically a defenseless country that cannot really harm you.
• 2:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it turned out that very quickly, even in the first few days, it turned out that all the paths towards victory towards this one-sided board of punishment that could unfold were closing very quickly.
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, decapitation was possibly something that could have worked, maybe the country could have destabilized, that didn't work, that was clear in the first 72 hours, what was the alternative?
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the United States could disarm Iran, could take out all its drones, uh, production sites, and missile production sites, and so on, and that's what I call the introduction word as a military term.
• 2:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it became very clear very early on that the introduction war was not going well that the Iranian stockpiles and Ransibility reconstutes weapons was much higher than they were suggesting.
• 3:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so already in the first week it became clear that this was not going to be in any sense a clean victory and then it further emerged that Iran had really, really damaged US bases and
• 3:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Basically, it was, it was very much a two-sided war of attrition, counter force war on the one hand, like the Americans were attacking Iranian military assets, the Iranians were attacking American bases.
• 3:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it was two-sided in that purely military sense, but it was also two-sided war of punishment, right, a game of mercy.
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: At
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: In that sense, if you look at it as a game of mercy, since you can't crush Iran, and Iran was going to survive with weapons that they can continuously deliver to you and your friends, it became clear that Iran had the upper hand because Iran could impose far more cost for far more longer.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: than the U.S. could impose on Iran.
• 4:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I mean that in a way specific sense, in a game of mercy, what matters is your paint tolerance.
• 4:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: The United States was fighting an optional war of aggression.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Iran was fighting for survival, is fighting for survival.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that means that Iran had a very vastly superior balance of result in its favor.
• 4:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: is much more as old than the United States, which meant that they could keep up, they could take the punishment for far longer than they was within US tolerance.
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And therefore, the United States had really no good options and would have to sue for peace on Iranian terms.
• 4:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this is a very straightforward, strategic defeat.
• 4:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Iran today holds the Gulf, it controls almost, and it is not going to relinquish that control.
• 4:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: The United States basically has to come to terms with Iran.
• 4:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know, I think that that's very true.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's interesting, the ways in which there's been a denial of this, partially based on politics, obviously for the United States and in Trump in particular, admitting defeat is hard.
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, well, when here's the sort of counter narrative that actually the war has been like a victory.
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: What Trump has said in his, his lackeys and supporters and other people in the administration say is,
• 5:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: We achieved regime change, right?
• 5:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: The I told us no longer there.
• 5:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we've destroyed their Navy and we've destroyed their Air Force.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now they had a blockade of the straight, but we've blockaded them.
• 5:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: So so so how do you respond to the sort of narrative that actually the United States still has the upper hand?
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there is a kind of desperation you can see in the, in the, in the pronouncements that come from the Trump White House, and, you know, the truth is sort of revealed in how many times Trump had to walk back his, uh,
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: and then he chickened out right before then.
• 6:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: So he has echoed multiple times already.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so we know that, you know, we don't we can't take the pronouncements from this White House from this administration, seriously.
• 6:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, there's hardly any serious observer in the military affairs or strategic affairs outside the sort of world-mongering blob.
• 6:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: that doesn't see this.
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's very clear to everybody that at the minimum Iran is now in a much better strategic position and a much stronger position than it was before the war.
• 6:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I'll go for much further.
• 6:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I insist that the Iran has proven that it is a great power.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, that's what I wanted to get to because I actually think, I mean, now you see more and more people, even in the establishment, places like the Wall Street Journal and the economists, they're saying that, you know, this has not been an American victory, the war has not turned out as expected.
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I think that what differentiates you from other analysts is your insistence, you know, that not only as the war not gone, the way the US wanted, but that Iran has actually emerged as a real force in the world.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, let's let's elicidate that.
• 7:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: What do you mean by that?
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: to close this term, analyst to me is probably Robert Payp.
• 7:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Payp and I differ very significantly in many ways, but on one thing we agree, and that is that Iran is emerging as a world power.
• 7:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: But babe doesn't understand the foundations of that, in my understanding, and babe's understanding is different.
• 7:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: In babe's understanding, the hermos weapon, it runs control of hermoser's arms, veto over Gulf energy gives it a polar position in the world.
• 7:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: That it gets to the people like the South Koreans, they have to travel to Tehran in a minute of a war.
• 7:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: to Karifa with the opinions, India has to do an about-face and say sorry about that with the two Israel, you know, we still want our tankers, could you please oblige us, right?
• 7:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so you see the, you see the in terms of the behavior of the other states, you can see how they respond to
• 8:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: and how they respond in a combination this way.
• 8:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this is what it means to be a world power.
• 8:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let people really care about being on your good side.
• 8:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's where we are seeing that.
• 8:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And paper and I agree that that is happening and that will become, that will be consolidated, a short of a prolonged, protracted war that destroys the United States and around together.
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I will, I, a bad paper and I disagree is my intention that Iran has been proven to be,
• 8:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: By that, in this, if Iran were not that strong, if Iran was not strong enough to fight off the US and fight off the combined might of the United States in Israel, it would not be able to hold on to the Hormous Web.
• 8:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: It would not be controlled the state.
• 8:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: People say that, oh, it's just a matter of shooting some drones and missiles at tankers, and anybody can do that, Bahrain can do that or you can do that.
• 9:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, actually no.
• 9:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: fight off the United States, even Israel or Britain or Germany can't fight off the United States, the way Iran has.
• 9:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we need to explain something that is very remarkable here, which is the inability of the United States to military defeat Iran.
• 9:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: which is a very, very important thing.
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: How is it possible for a run to do this, right?
• 9:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, I mean, one can sort of go back to like, how deep this goes, right?
• 9:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Iranian, the skill set of the Iranian population, the degree of their education, the attainment, and their, there are more, and Iran produces more engineers than the United States.
• 9:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that tells you something very significant, right?
• 9:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: It means that the venture goes very, very deep in Iran.
• 9:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, these are actually useful to distinguish between around and other countries in the region, what in terms of the sort of like population, but as you also indicated in the human capital, in the, you know, the degree of like education.
• 10:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: But what are some of the other sort of pieces of this Iranian strength?
• 10:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: One of the, in my understanding, one of the key factors here that has, uh, that is responsible for this, you know, discovery, is that we had in a mature precision strike regime, which is something that was theorized by American military thinkers, uh, Andrew Kupinamek in particular.
• 10:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the early 90s, look, we have this monopoly on this precision strike
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: and this is a very, very powerful weapon, and this monopoly that we have will vanish eventually, and this will be diffusion of this military technology, and that will make the, that means that the world will no longer be unipolar, there will be other powerful players that will be able to utilize this technology properly and create a formidable military power.
• 10:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, Iran, just to give you one more fact,
• 10:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: that really pins this down.
• 11:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Pentagon informed Congress last year that China has 2200 medium range ballistic missiles and short range ballistic missiles SRBMs and MRBMs.
• 11:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is what they need to attack Japan and South Korea and Taiwan and up to one.
• 11:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's 2200, very, very important number, the military says this is a very difficult problem.
• 11:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: We'll have to count to this in this way and that.
• 11:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: If one has already fired 2200, we've been ballistic missiles in short-range ballistic missiles.
• 11:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now we are being told that 70, 60 percent, 50 percent of the capacity of that missile capacity is still left.
• 11:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: and we still haven't counted the fact that they have fired 6,000 drones on top of that and may have tens of thousands of drones in the arsenal.
• 11:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this is a really significant, great missile part, right?
• 11:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: In a very serious sense, in a sense that it's a period of the United States of China and Russia.
• 11:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, one of the things that happened was in the long resistance of the Iranians to the West and to the United States, they made certain very specific investments.
• 12:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: They put their bets very long-term investments on a very specific kind of technology and a specific kind of workforce that was supposed to give them deterrence.
• 12:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: That was supposed to give them a real deterrence.
• 12:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it turns out that
• 12:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: that was an extremely good bet.
• 12:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: So part of the reason by Iran is a real great power is because it's a real great missile power.
• 12:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
• 12:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
• 12:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then I think that actually answers several questions as to why this these claims of victory like having defeated, you know, Rand's Navy and Air Force, like they don't actually answer the problem.
• 12:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And because they don't need either, you know, I don't think their Navy was ever great shakes to be good with, nor their Air Force, which is heavily reliant on Soviet era, the very old airplanes.
• 12:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I mean, if they have the missiles, they didn't need the Navy or the Air Force, right?
• 12:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's like saying you defeated the German Navy in 1900, whatever.
• 13:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
• 13:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think maybe a like, further aspects to go along with what you talked about around sort of a very educated population.
• 13:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's also a sort of misunderstanding or of the regime.
• 13:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like I think, you know, part of there, even before the war started, there was an attempt to sort of pomemta.
• 13:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: rebellion in the country to fracture the country that way, which we now, you know, has been repeatedly admitted on his really TV though.
• 13:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: This was fermented by Masad.
• 13:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Americans have also admitted.
• 13:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 13:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 13:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 13:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
• 13:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's also the, and you know, like that, even before the war started, that had clearly failed.
• 13:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not to say, I mean, there's obviously has been long running, uh, tensions in the country.
• 13:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: They've been earlier organic, uh,
• 13:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: protest, but this attempt to make the sun of the shaw, the face of the rebellion, like that clearly failed.
• 13:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think that speaks to maybe failure to understand your radiant society and a lack of sort of intelligence on the ground in terms of
• 14:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, what that society's made out of.
• 14:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what I would also, I would want to get your thoughts on this is this sort of decentralized nature of power within Iran that this is not like one of the Gulf States, which are sort of like the very top down monarchies.
• 14:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: where Mohammed bin Salman can arrest his cousins and can the, these are countries where like power, growing out of the revolution has been dispersed into different groups.
• 14:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the IRGC, the military itself is a different faction, and so it seems like, now he's not to say it's a democracy, but it is a society where like there's like many different centers of power.
• 14:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: and that it's much the hotel called decapitation strategy is kind of based on an idea that this is just like a dictator ship, one can just take out the leader and put someone else in.
• 14:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this sort of third world military junta model, right?
• 14:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: the strong man model is like a model of a state formation in which you know most of the population the peasants and uneducated and so on and you have a very very articulated military and therefore the military is the most capable actor in the system and easy to dominate everything else.
• 15:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's the sort of basis of all the sort of CIA coups, right?
• 15:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: That model of like regime changes based on that sort of society.
• 15:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And one can understand how if you killed Saddam Hussein and his orthody, how that regime would fall or the same with Assad.
• 15:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: But this is not true of highly institutionalized Vanguard regimes, right?
• 15:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Revolutionary regimes of the communist sort.
• 15:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: or of the Islamic Republic, which is a really highly institutionalized regime with lots and lots of power centers, very distributed authority and quite consensual decision making.
• 15:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: It may not be a democracy in the Western sense, but it is a real republic.
• 15:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not this idea that it's a dictatorship, but theocracy is completely mistaken.
• 15:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, that is a misperception right now that the IHGC has become sort of this dominant over-beening power in a particular economy of Iran.
• 16:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is not true.
• 16:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: What is happening in Iran?
• 16:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of like almost like an Iranian spring.
• 16:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is a lot of consensus building and a lot of collaboration and especially the parliamentarians are front and center of this.
• 16:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: The ministers are active.
• 16:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: They are the ones who are running the country and the countries all behind them.
• 16:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the agency can't get rid of this is it's amazing what has happened because of the policy of murder of these rallies and the Americans.
• 16:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right.
• 16:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 16:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 16:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I want to really emphasize that that point, like I'll ineffectual this sort of assassination policy has been pretty good because it looks like they're falling back on that.
• 16:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: There has now been a sort of surge of chatter in Washington, especially from the Washington Post and elsewhere say, like, well, no, we just have to find, you know, who the right people are to assassinate.
• 16:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then, and then we'll get this like, you three guys in the
• 16:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just not that dark on, but it's a very powerful fantasy.
• 17:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that part of what's going on right now is the Trump administration is a very difficult spot because they have to negotiate.
• 17:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: They have to make concessions.
• 17:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: But they don't want to because they would look very weak and really go against their whole image of themselves.
• 17:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I mean, like, I think in that context, it makes sense why you're seeing people like, you know, Mark Thesen, the Washington Post, and other is saying like, well, we just haven't assassinated enough of the right people, and then, and that that will be the solution, the silver bullet.
• 17:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is a descent into barbarism.
• 17:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, this is this there is no precedent for this in in Western history in and in the issue of the one West Since at least a piece of as failure.
• 17:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is not a single instance Until until you know, there is really policy now or for declared policy or murder of the diplomats and a leadership of the of the enemy it's just this is just not part of our history in any meaningonsense so we are talking about a real-desented barbarism even the Nazis didn't do it
• 18:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, no, no, absolutely, you know, it is really striking.
• 18:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Although I mean, like as I said, I think the model is sort of what you went to earlier this sort of, you know, a period of colonization.
• 18:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like these thin third world countries where they're very concentrated in a power and like a clique is running the place.
• 18:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, that might be a not too bad a model for Venezuela, maybe, but you know, a lot of real model for even Cuba.
• 18:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, no, no, no, I absolutely, yeah.
• 18:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it just sort of speak, I think to the sort of misunderstanding.
• 18:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And maybe I be like, it is worth thinking through like what have been the sort of misunderstanding of the facts on the ground.
• 18:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, I think the big thing that you've emphasized is the nature of a rainy and strength.
• 18:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I just want to maybe suggest that in some ways a rainy and restraint has contributed to that, but I think like over the last decade or so, Iran has actually like showed considerable amount of restraint in your retaliating and sort of tit-for-tat bases, but not wanting to escalate.
• 19:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And my suspicion is that people watch it in particularly Trump interpreted as a sign of weakness, rather than this is the sign of a regime that, you know, what's the play along game?
• 19:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, see, yeah, if you give them a fully winner, the idea was that this is a weak and defenseless country and we could just smash it.
• 19:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: We can't, we can't underestimate this perception of weakness as the driver of this catastrophe.
• 19:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I'll go further.
• 19:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is not just in the Trump administration and not just the Yahoo's in the blog.
• 19:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: like my thesis and so on who want to these, you know, quick, short, syllable-its-insolutions, just murder them and, you know, you've got your, you've got the regime you want.
• 19:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or ideas like this, I think that if you read the accounts in the New York Times and that's where in detail about the World War, you realize that even the military had a basic intelligence failure.
• 20:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: They could have if they were skeptical of the idea of disarming about, they could have told them, well, if we are unable to disarmer on it's a real possibility, then we will not be able to retake Hormos and they will likely call Hormos and we will not be able to retake it, we will lose.
• 20:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: They do not say that because they believe that Iran could be disarmed because they were so drunk on this idea that Surveillance capabilities we can see everything from the sky and we can track, you know, the last guy and triple tap him to death So why can't we disarm Iran right?
• 20:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: It turns out that Iran has been preparing for this war for a very long time They have made preparations that allowed them to recon to their abilities.
• 20:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that the ground and so on thought and so on and so on and so So it's a it was a it was a grave intelligence failure
• 20:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: at the highest levels of American military and intelligence circles.
• 20:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: They assumed that this was something that was viable.
• 21:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: It might, there was a big, what, what, it was, it'll empty our magazine.
• 21:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: We will be left with half our magazine, and that will undermine deterrence in Asia.
• 21:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: But actually it turns out, even if it's empty your magazine completely, it's talking here that you can decide to run.
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is clearly what you can get in a different intelligence failure.
• 21:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now, I think in this sort of situation where, you know, I mean, really the United States has to make concessions, but they're not going to.
• 21:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so it seems like we're going to go through a sort of prolonged period of a kind of, you know, phony war or, you know, situation where Trump keeps making threats, but then extends a ceasefire.
• 21:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: But what do you thoughts on that?
• 21:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, like, like, because how long is that even sustainable?
• 21:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: that in three months we get something like a great depression.
• 21:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this is a ticking clock.
• 21:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: The pressure is on the Trump administration and the GOP and the American general because every day adds like a dollar to the price of oil.
• 22:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And like right now, gas is at $4 already is psychological level.
• 22:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: If this lasts for another month, there is no way gas is not going to be $5 in by the time you get to the mid-term
• 22:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: got the GOP.
• 22:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: So so there is a real crisis building they can't really push the can kick the can down the road very much here.
• 22:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: They need to either solve this problem or give up entirely on the GOP's prospects on winning the midterms.
• 22:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And even on the Gulf and say okay you know we we will if you want to if you if the price of keeping the empire is to destroy the world economy we are prepared for that.
• 22:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the decision that they need to make.
• 22:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so, and I mean, if you're thinking of trying to make me those changes, I mean, it seems like a game of chicken, and they do keep like putting other interests in jeopardy, particularly like in Europe and in Asia, they even like, there's a talk of like several bailout for Dubai, like, you know, like, through the swaps.
• 23:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you're suggesting that at some point they're just going to like at this game a chicken has to I'm like they're going to have to just like you know admit defeat like how do you think I'll play or like It's for me like the big difficulty with this scenario is like it's hard for me to imagine that Trump White House like like acknowledging reality that you know you've laid out very clearly
• 23:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, we don't need a theory of the world where the correct model of the world that we understand it is understood by the players for them to figure out how to work things, right?
• 23:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the forces operating on these players, these are collected.
• 23:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: are such that they are highly constrained and you can see where the constraints are and you can see like what they what where they must land in order to satisfy these constraints.
• 23:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise, they smash their head into the into the board right.
• 23:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so if you if you think about this, then what is the what are the options here?
• 23:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can't do this funny wall thing with it crushed the world economy and you know, bites comes back and you pull it to leave the
• 24:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Can you can you go back to what that's not one of what if you want I can I can spell out why that's not gonna But I think it's very clear to everyone concerned that this is not a real option.
• 24:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Mark these in the side Well, I actually I mean, yeah, if you want to take a second to explain why that that would be good because well, one is now hearing repeatedly Here's is like Trump but also these rallies.
• 24:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah, occasionally say like
• 24:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, we can just start fighting again and reduce around sending them back to the Stone Age.
• 24:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think this really prevents Minister just said that.
• 24:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, why can't they do that?
• 24:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: This idea is used at somehow they were doing something different on February 28th.
• 24:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: The point was to gut it around and kill it as a stake.
• 24:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is what these rallies and the Americans are trying to do.
• 24:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they failed in that endeavor.
• 24:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't work that way.
• 24:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that has been proven that it's all going to happen.
• 24:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, there is a whole century of the Arab weapon.
• 24:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you read Bob, Robert, Epsa, monograph, bombing to win, there is not a single case in which aerial bombardment and punishment or any kind of civilian targeting or population targeting.
• 25:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: has ever yielded a capitulation or even, like, succeeded in terms of coercion of getting something that the other, you know, was not going to give you.
• 25:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, yeah, no, no, it always has, like, the reverse impact of, like, actually, you see our strengthening regime provision.
• 25:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: What do we see now?
• 25:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: What do we see now?
• 25:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, let me explain why this is the case.
• 25:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there's somebody good reason for it.
• 25:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: If I'm torturing you, if I'm taking out in nails or whatever, at some point you will squeal, and say, okay, okay, I'll do whatever, right.
• 25:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'll, I'll, I'll can see I'll, I'll confess to, uh, transpiring against the, uh, the communist party.
• 25:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: But, um, uh, the nation states are not individuals, right?
• 25:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you, if you kill a bunch of people and we've killed like what, 2020 to a hundred people in Iran, how many did we kill in Germany?
• 26:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 26:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right, because the Anglo-Saxon bombers killed more than a million Germans and even then Germany did not perpetuate, right?
• 26:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so we've seen this over and over again, even much bigger vaster campaigns of punishment campaigns have not yielded a capitulation anywhere.
• 26:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this idea that some of the Israelis and the American can bomb it into the Stone Age is is a powerful fantasy.
• 26:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I just had to provide, because I think semilessers may not have caught the point, which is in the case of Germany.
• 26:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: The air campaign was completely ineffectual, and it was actually boots on the ground.
• 26:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in particular, the red army, you know, who it's actually like made the defeat possible, because unless you have actual forces that people can see that are presence there, they will not surrender.
• 26:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's partially because, like, you know, the bombs, I was like, can kill people there for our way, where is the government?
• 26:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, you're in a state where, like, you know, bombs are following, you're actually more dependent on everyone around here, more dependent on your neighbors, on the state authority, and it causes a society to come together.
• 27:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And which can only be defeated, you know, like, if you actually send the troops on the ground, which is the United States that Israel, you know, will not do and cannot do because it would be a bloodbath where that.
• 27:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right.
• 27:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there is, there is a path to escalation that leads to U.S. ground invasion.
• 27:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: But even that's not going to work because we don't have the divisions.
• 27:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And on as the size of England, France and Germany combined, it has a hundred million people.
• 27:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: You see people say we've destroyed 13,000 targets.
• 27:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: We've flown some sort of.
• 27:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: 30,000 targets is nothing.
• 27:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: We are talking about a company that can take an order-minded to more punishment before even coming to the table with a better offer.
• 27:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the situation we are in here.
• 27:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: This idea that somehow the United States can prosecute this war at a much more violent level, it doesn't add up, it doesn't work.
• 28:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing in our history of the
• 28:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, you know, even if they try it, like, this will not get them that sort of victory that they want.
• 28:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And as you say, like, continuing the war for any left of time is already in danger of the world economy.
• 28:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, we become closer and closer to the cliff.
• 28:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, so, so, it is absolutely right that all the pressure points are for a US capitulation of some form.
• 28:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to have anything at to that?
• 28:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that's usually the analysis.
• 28:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: would like to add what I see as the contours of the deal here.
• 28:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that what we are looking at is the Americans really, really insist on the nuclear file.
• 28:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: They are going to get something like the JCPOA, maybe JCPOA plus maybe JCPOA minus but something like the JCPOA.
• 28:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's because they can't sell it otherwise at home.
• 28:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we are really going to insist on that.
• 28:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Iranians will absolutely insist on first a non-aggression pact and some kind of assurance that they will not be attacked again, a UNSC resolution, maybe even a treaty ratified by Congress, but certainly Chinese assurance that they will not be disarmed by as well in the United States any time if they are attacked, they will be resupplied with weapons.
• 29:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's one possibility of the problem of re-shoring that I'm better if it will not be attacked by the aggressors again.
• 29:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then there is the other important really important thing for the Iranians, which has been strangulated by the West for such a long time, which is sanctions relief.
• 29:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: they need substantial sanctions relief, otherwise they will not let go of the toll booth.
• 29:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the problem here is that the lobby is so strong that getting them sanctions relief and making it stick in Congress, for example, is very hard.
• 29:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a very big ask.
• 29:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to see something like a toll booth that is flushed over by saying it's not an Iranian toll booth.
• 29:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just a general toll booth that's going to pay for.
• 29:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: all the damages and will be eventually removed when the sanctions would become so and so on.
• 30:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it'll look like we're looking at something like that.
• 30:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: But these major sort of red lines, these absolute requirements of an ideal, will have to be agreed to be fed fairly quickly in days for there to be a path to a stable piece.
• 30:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I see it as a quick agreement on the core, an interim agreement and you open the sort of foremost and then you negotiate out the full agreement and that might
• 30:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: But that's how it might lay out.
• 30:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's why San Francisco's not in here.
• 30:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, okay.
• 30:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, I don't.
• 30:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that that makes sense.
• 30:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 30:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've gone thought that some sort of, you know, like Obama deal, but just call it the Trump deal.
• 30:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I, you know, is the only real solution, because I mean, the deal that Obama negotiated in 2015 was itself an acknowledgement of realities.
• 30:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now the whole question then becomes what happens like if some sort of deal of that sort is in place because I think we're going to end into a world where the United States did suffer this kind of like major a defeat and everyone can see it and I think that this will create like all sorts of different incentives for absolutely the countries in the region but for the wider world right like like how does
• 31:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: it seems like world where Iran emerges as a major power that has to be dealt with in a serious way and has to be negotiated with on some level of quality that also leaves the United States in a very different position.
• 31:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I want to really get your thoughts on this because I think it's like you're thinking more broadly about this than anyone else.
• 31:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: So
• 31:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, in my understanding, whether or not you have a toll boot, the Hormuz weapon is not going anywhere.
• 31:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the power of the Hormuz weapon is its infinite uses, right?
• 31:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: The use cases are infinite.
• 31:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, let's think about this.
• 31:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not just that they can shut Hormuz if the first kind of reinforce the sanctions on them.
• 31:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, they can do that.
• 31:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: But they have a much better, much more surgical kind of a scapegoat here.
• 32:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: which is that if the UAE is messing with them, they can say, okay, UAE, your tankers are not going out, everybody else is going out, right?
• 32:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if they say, okay, India is not behaving itself, and it's trying to get too cozy with it as well.
• 32:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, Indians, we really are going to let your LNG pass.
• 32:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's a really formidable weapon of discipline that they can really impose their
• 32:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: core interest.
• 32:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: They can't impose everything.
• 32:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: They can't dictate things in detail like the United States does or something.
• 32:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it does give them sufficient leverage over very large number of world players.
• 32:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, from the Koreans to the...
• 32:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: to the Germans.
• 32:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: It gives them enough leverage that everybody has to treat them with respect.
• 32:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it is the behavior of the other powers that ultimately counts in, you know, what is a great.
• 32:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so Iran really emerges as a real poll.
• 32:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the reason for that is you can't take the Hormuz weapon from Iran.
• 33:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if Iran's going to hold onto the Hormuz weapon, then it has something like a veto over, you know, its core interests over almost all powers in the system.
• 33:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, I mean, apart from the really big great powers like China and the United States and so on, the Iranians really have kind of the ability to course the Saudis into submission, for example, the Saudis are playing nice.
• 33:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you see what they've been doing in the past weeks, the Saudis are the ones who arranged the Quartet, the Saudis are the ones who arranged these Lamar process.
• 33:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: They put Pakistan in the front.
• 33:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it is the Saudis at the back who are doing all this and because the Saudis want to
• 33:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: to be contained.
• 33:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: They know that there is no solution here unlike the UAE.
• 33:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Emirates are like, you know, but when I finished a job there, they're like, you know, they're basically as well as coming somewhere.
• 33:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no.
• 33:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, so, so, but we're just like all leave the United States because I think that like what's you get in a position where, you know, like a substituent stability where the Saudi Arabia, certainly, and Oman and some of these other countries,
• 34:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: realize that, you know, they have to work with Iran.
• 34:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, what is the value of the American protection regime?
• 34:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, hasn't this really shown that, you know, little like American that the U.S. cannot protect you in the way you want?
• 34:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: It hasn't also shown weaknesses to other allies, like, you know, South Korea and Taiwan that, you know, there will weaknesses here.
• 34:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, doesn't everyone kind of have to recalibrate their relationship with the United States as well?
• 34:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And let me give you a very bold statement.
• 34:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: The American Empire, the end of the American Empire is inside.
• 34:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'll tell you why.
• 34:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: It has to do with the specific
• 34:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: military realities that have been revealed.
• 34:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Iranians were able to destroy every single military base that was within their short range missiles, which means everything in the Gulf literally from Kuwait to U.A.
• 35:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: to bar end to Qatar.
• 35:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they were able to Americans have to evacuate all these bases, they have to move all the aircraft out, they had to move all the ships out, they had to move all the men out.
• 35:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they had to move them back to Jordan, saw the Arabia, Israel.
• 35:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: and then prosecute the war from there.
• 35:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And even there because they're concentrated they have value assets there so much.
• 35:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Iranians were able to use drones and missiles to take out some very, very high value targets, like the E3 centri album command posts, which like basically quarterback the whole battle.
• 35:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: So these are really expensive and we're not going to get another one for net 2032 is the next time we're going to get the replacement for these planes, right?
• 35:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that only they were only 16.
• 35:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Iranians destroyed two of them.
• 35:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, this is a very exact fact.
• 35:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: The unions destroyed radar systems, more than a dozen radar systems in the Gulf, without which you can't see and track and track missiles and drones and direct airplanes and so on, war planes.
• 36:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what we are seeing here is the arrival of the problem that has been hypothesized by the military, which is the problem of base vulnerability.
• 36:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: What has been revealed is that Iran was able to push back U.S. forces by 1,000 kilometers.
• 36:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And China is a much more formidable power.
• 36:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so the bases in Asia are much more vulnerable than people had realized.
• 36:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this panic had been growing in the technical analyst community.
• 36:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: At Rand and so on, they've been banging the drum about passive defenses, the hardening the bases, and so on, and finally they got the senators, Rubio and other group to
• 36:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: ask the Pentagon why you know they buy not hardening these bases and so they have a property and a million dollars for this project.
• 36:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the problem is that China can build out
• 36:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: fast scale.
• 36:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: They've ordered one million drones, a kamikaze, lotering drones, and they expect delivery next year or something.
• 37:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like it's a, it's a, you think that if Iran can afford to fire 200 missiles in, in five weeks, what is the potential for China?
• 37:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like the bases in Asia are not defendable ultimately.
• 37:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: the United States cannot mobilize enough power, cannot mobilize enough force protection to defend those bases.
• 37:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: But that means that, you know, the deterrence in Asia has dead.
• 37:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: If the United States tries to fight China in Asia, it will lose.
• 37:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 37:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so we will probably not try to fight China.
• 37:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And one by one, people have to like abandon them.
• 37:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the Taiwanese already, you know, visited the opposition party, they visited China and they talk to Xi.
• 37:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can see the maneuvering, the sort of reshuffling underway,
• 37:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: and this ends only in one way, this ends with the withdrawal of, you know, the effort to impose a unipolar model on a multiple world cannot possibly work and will have to result, will eventually result in the, you know, wrapping up of the empire.
• 38:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I just want to, I think that's very useful.
• 38:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's a good way to kind of try to conceptualize what we're seeing.
• 38:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I will add the proposal that the United States, which is about 20 to 25% of the world economy.
• 38:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's always going to be like a major power.
• 38:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is that going anywhere?
• 38:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it's more likely that it will retreat into the Western Hemisphere.
• 38:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what is already kind of seeing this in the, you know, like, I think the success of, you know, the Venezuela actions, you know, which is a success.
• 38:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Only the minor, you know, like, of a hunter coup, you replace one leader with historical context for this.
• 38:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: So between the fall of France and Barbara Rosa.
• 38:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 38:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 38:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: The American strategic community was in crisis and they're like, okay, we can't really fight the German or whatever, like, you know, that's, we're not going to do that.
• 38:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: What we're going to do, we are going to do.
• 38:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: We are going to create a massive bomber force of 50,000 airplanes FDR declared and we will do, like, on the isolation, we will do robust hemispheric defense.
• 39:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's what the poll.
• 39:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the defense parameter was Bermuda and Hawaii and everything in between and we're going to make sure that we keep this hemisphere to ourselves.
• 39:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think that that essentially is where this ends up in a strict defense perimeter sense, because we are surrendering, you know, giving away the responsibility for the defense of Europe to the Europeans, that's already underway.
• 39:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 39:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: This shows that, you know, the ghost position in our Bible and certainly the position in Asia is absolutely not viable.
• 39:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: So,
• 39:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: in terms of like what are we going to contest in a full high intensity war sense, anywhere near a great missile power like Russia or Iran or China, the holding a permanent position is a very, very difficult task and it should be withdrawn soon rather than later, but eventually we will be forced to do it.
• 40:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's basically.
• 40:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.
• 40:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 40:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think that it's a good place to end on.
• 40:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to thank once again, Anasar for being on.
• 40:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I highly recommend for anyone who's enjoyed this.
• 40:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Cut Resetion as I have to read his sub-stack and also follow him on Twitter.
• 40:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I will put all those on the page with this podcast.
• 40:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: But again, thank you.
• 40:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much.