Latest / Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar / 3/11/26: Trump Freaks Over Strait Of Hormuz, Mearsheimer Says US Losing War, Iran To Hit Israel Hard

Transcript

3/11/26: Trump Freaks Over Strait Of Hormuz, Mearsheimer Says US Losing War, Iran To Hit Israel Hard · Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

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1:47
Speaker 6: Welcome.
1:47
Speaker 5: Really, we're so happy to see so many new faces,
1:51
Speaker 5: and we have a lot to talk about today, So
1:53
Speaker 5: we're going to start with updates from Iran and the
1:56
Speaker 5: broader Middle East. Just basically, Secretary Access said yesterday this
2:00
Speaker 5: is going to be the most intense day of the war,
2:03
Speaker 5: and that proved, unsurprisingly.
2:06
Speaker 6: To be true.
2:06
Speaker 4: From both sides.
2:08
Speaker 3: My dropsite colleague Jeremy Scahee will be joining us to
2:11
Speaker 3: talk about some of the reporting that he's done.
2:14
Speaker 4: He was supposed to be here last week.
2:15
Speaker 3: He bumped us for an interview he was doing with
2:17
Speaker 3: the deputy Foreign Minister.
2:19
Speaker 4: It was luckily we had two people scheduled, so it's okay, fine, Jeremy,
2:23
Speaker 4: we'll let you go this time.
2:26
Speaker 3: I think if you've been following Jeremy's reporting, you have
2:28
Speaker 3: known ahead of time, sometimes by weeks, you know where
2:31
Speaker 3: this is going. So we're going to talk to him about,
2:34
Speaker 3: you know, what he's been seeing the last few days
2:36
Speaker 3: and what he sees coming over the next few days.
2:38
Speaker 4: Particularly as.
2:40
Speaker 3: In Washington, you're starting to see Republicans suggest that we
2:44
Speaker 3: declare victory and wrap this up. Tom Cotton said that yesterday,
2:47
Speaker 3: whereas Democrats, kind of fitting with the reporting that we've
2:50
Speaker 3: been doing previously, are very critical of the war but
2:54
Speaker 3: don't seem to be doing anything to stop it. Now
2:56
Speaker 3: they're talking about we need to have hearings about the
2:58
Speaker 3: purpose of.
2:58
Speaker 4: The war, what that should do it? How about we
3:01
Speaker 4: end the war and then.
3:03
Speaker 3: Then we could talk about it. But like it feels
3:07
Speaker 3: like they like the fact that it's hurting Republicans so much.
3:10
Speaker 6: They love it. They love it.
3:12
Speaker 5: I liked the idea that Thomas Massey had to actually
3:15
Speaker 5: just put a declaration of war on the floor that
3:18
Speaker 5: he would vote against to see who would vote at
3:20
Speaker 5: the end of the day for it or against it?
3:22
Speaker 4: Right, anybody feel like voting on this?
3:24
Speaker 6: It is just a thought.
3:26
Speaker 5: Lots going on in that in that region. Obviously that
3:29
Speaker 5: we're going to get to some new soundbites from John
3:32
Speaker 5: Meerscheimer that are really worth thinking about. Taking some time
3:36
Speaker 5: to pause, and you know, we're almost what are we two? Well,
3:39
Speaker 5: we can half into this thing right now. And it's true,
3:42
Speaker 5: as Ryan said, it's the chatter is now should we
3:45
Speaker 5: from Republicans just declare victory? Trump is certainly talking that way,
3:49
Speaker 5: and you see perception history being written in real time.
3:55
Speaker 5: So important to kind of stop on that point. We're
3:59
Speaker 5: going to talk about some of the tactical questions to Ryan, Yes.
4:04
Speaker 3: And then CNN and the New York Times we're calling
4:07
Speaker 3: this block. Tapper have absolutely lost their minds over a
4:13
Speaker 3: combination of the way that they're approaching this war and
4:16
Speaker 3: the fact that Zorn Mamdani I guess refuses to resign.
4:20
Speaker 4: I don't like. I don't know exactly what their what
4:23
Speaker 4: their problem is, but.
4:26
Speaker 3: They have gone so far overboard it's utterly insane, to
4:29
Speaker 3: the point where we actually, I think, have to talk
4:32
Speaker 3: about it. Also, we did some our own polling. We
4:36
Speaker 3: put a poll out into the field, drop site and
4:39
Speaker 3: Teo put this into the field. We're going to have
4:41
Speaker 3: some exclusive results from that. As you can imagine, we
4:43
Speaker 3: did not ask the kinds of polling questions that the
4:46
Speaker 3: mainstream media would have asked. One of them we asked
4:51
Speaker 3: was do you believe that Donald Trump was motivated at
4:54
Speaker 3: least in part to go to war with the Ron
4:57
Speaker 3: to cover up the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
5:00
Speaker 4: If you're watching this program, you won't. You won't be
5:02
Speaker 4: You might.
5:03
Speaker 3: Be pleasantly surprised that you are in the majority of
5:06
Speaker 3: the country in believing that, yes, he did. So It's
5:09
Speaker 3: not just people who watch this program, like the average
5:13
Speaker 3: American believes that that's the case. We'll unpack that, get
5:16
Speaker 3: into the precise numbers and a lot of other interesting
5:18
Speaker 3: questions that we asked too.
5:20
Speaker 6: You guys asked, on a scale of ten to ten,
5:24
Speaker 6: how much do you love this war.
5:26
Speaker 4: And also I thought that was a creative one.
5:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, have you have you exercised your right to the
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Speaker 3: VP three twenty six breakingpoints dot com premium subscription and
5:35
Speaker 3: the result not enough Americans yet have, So make sure
5:38
Speaker 3: you do that. And we're going to talk about some
5:39
Speaker 3: of the podcasters who this for whom this is a
5:43
Speaker 3: breaking point, like Cheez like they cannot abide anymore.
5:48
Speaker 4: Brogan among them, for.
5:50
Speaker 6: Whom it is not a breaking point.
5:51
Speaker 4: Bill Maher, he's fine with this.
5:53
Speaker 6: So we have some dueling.
5:54
Speaker 5: Clips with Rogan mar and we're going to dive in
5:56
Speaker 5: do all of it. So let's start now with we
6:00
Speaker 5: called straight Gate Ryan the Strait of hermus where there
6:04
Speaker 5: was some conflicting reports about what the hell is going
6:07
Speaker 5: on in the Strait of hermus yesterday Ryan critical question
6:12
Speaker 5: not helpful when there's muddled information about what's happening in
6:15
Speaker 5: the strait of her moves. So let's start with a one.
6:18
Speaker 5: We could put this up on the screen, a report
6:20
Speaker 5: from CBS News' Jennifer Jacobs, who said US intelligence assets
6:24
Speaker 5: have begun to see indications Iran is taking steps to
6:27
Speaker 5: deploy minds in the strait of her MOUs shipping lane,
6:30
Speaker 5: Iran is using smaller crafts that can carry two to
6:33
Speaker 5: three mines each. Well, Iran's mindstock isn't publicly known. Estimates
6:37
Speaker 5: over the years have ranged from roughly two thousand, six
6:40
Speaker 5: thousand naval minds of Iranian, Chinese, and Russian made variants.
6:45
Speaker 5: According to Jim Laporta at CBS News, Ryan, give me
6:49
Speaker 5: a reaction to this bit of info.
6:52
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, can you imagine being the sailor
6:55
Speaker 3: tasked with this? That's like and Trump responded by saying,
7:00
Speaker 3: if Iran has put out any minds in the hormones straight,
7:02
Speaker 3: and we have no reports of them doing so, we
7:04
Speaker 3: want them removed immediately. If for any reason, minds were
7:08
Speaker 3: placed and they are not removed forthwith, the military consequences
7:12
Speaker 3: to Iran will be at a level never seen before. If,
7:15
Speaker 3: on the other hand, they removed what may have been placed,
7:18
Speaker 3: it will be a giant step in the right direction.
7:20
Speaker 3: President Donald J. Trump, So, the US has been striking
7:24
Speaker 3: some boats which they say were laying mines. Problem for them,
7:28
Speaker 3: You know, once they lay their minds that you know
7:31
Speaker 3: their their their mission is accomplished. Even if most of
7:34
Speaker 3: the sailors who are sent out on that mission probably
7:38
Speaker 3: expect that the chances of them coming back as slim.
7:41
Speaker 3: There was also footage of our mind sweepers. Did you
7:44
Speaker 3: see this no pulling into the dock in Philadelphia because
7:48
Speaker 3: they were being decommissioned because they were too old? Like really, like,
7:54
Speaker 3: you gotta be kidding me. That sounds yeah, it sounds
7:57
Speaker 3: sounds absolutely perfect. So this is just up being upping
8:01
Speaker 3: the cost of trying to trying to move through the
8:05
Speaker 3: straight of Formosa. Because Trump's strategy this week has been
8:09
Speaker 3: to basically, you know, chant the names of the captains,
8:13
Speaker 3: like you can do this, guys, come on, like that's
8:16
Speaker 3: his strategy, Like Tom Tom Tom Tom, Like you know
8:19
Speaker 3: you could just bow right through, you know, you know,
8:21
Speaker 3: man up have the courage to do it. So what
8:23
Speaker 3: if the insurers are not there? We've got the Export
8:27
Speaker 3: Import Bank, Well they'll get you, or the Finance Corporation
8:29
Speaker 3: Development Finance Corporation.
8:31
Speaker 4: What we got your back. Don't worry.
8:32
Speaker 3: When when has the US ever betrayed one of our
8:34
Speaker 3: commitments made hastily.
8:36
Speaker 4: In a time of war? We got you covered.
8:39
Speaker 3: And so some ships are turning off their transponders and
8:42
Speaker 3: moving through. But now and if the Iranians don't see
8:47
Speaker 3: them coming through a lot of them.
8:49
Speaker 4: Some of them are making it through.
8:52
Speaker 3: If you don't know where the minds are, right, it
8:56
Speaker 3: changes the calculation again.
8:57
Speaker 6: Well, and let's put this Chris Murphy post up on
8:59
Speaker 6: the screen.
8:59
Speaker 5: This is a two C Senator Murphy yesterday posted at night,
9:04
Speaker 5: and on the strait of her moves, they had no plan.
9:07
Speaker 5: Referring to the administration, I can't go into more detail
9:09
Speaker 5: about how Iran comes up the straight, but suffice it
9:12
Speaker 5: to say right now they don't know how to get
9:14
Speaker 5: it safely back open, which is unforgivable because this part
9:17
Speaker 5: of the disaster was one hundred percent foreseeable and ran
9:21
Speaker 5: obviously with the strait of her moves. The oil prices
9:25
Speaker 5: are on the line. You have fertilizer, which a huge
9:28
Speaker 5: chunk of the world's fertilizer moves to the strait of
9:30
Speaker 5: her moves. So right now in playbook this morning, I
9:33
Speaker 5: opened it up right before I got here. And of
9:35
Speaker 5: course you have this internal debate within the administration about
9:40
Speaker 5: politically how long it is tenable for oil and gas
9:44
Speaker 5: prices to be going up like this, how long they
9:47
Speaker 5: think they could get away with three to four weeks
9:49
Speaker 5: and we're coming up on the end of week two.
9:51
Speaker 6: Here Democrats are saying.
9:53
Speaker 4: Oh, I think that's what the Trump administry is.
9:55
Speaker 5: That's what the sources close to the administration were telling
9:59
Speaker 5: Politico this morning.
10:00
Speaker 6: Also that once.
10:02
Speaker 5: We're still political, they were surprised when they saw that
10:04
Speaker 5: one hundred and twenty dollars barrel spike that caught them
10:07
Speaker 5: off guard. So this sort of goes to what Chris
10:10
Speaker 5: Murphy is saying here is that there wasn't quite a
10:12
Speaker 5: plan and there was a lack of understanding or diligence
10:16
Speaker 5: about understanding exactly what was going to happen in the
10:19
Speaker 5: Strait of Hormos after the strikes initially.
10:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the you know, we have some strategic patroleum
10:27
Speaker 3: reserve that we can release that G seven have their
10:30
Speaker 3: own emergency kind of global reserve that they're planning on releasing,
10:36
Speaker 3: and so.
10:39
Speaker 4: So there's there's that option.
10:41
Speaker 3: The other option is for the US to start accompanying
10:47
Speaker 3: ships right protecting them as they moved through the Strait
10:50
Speaker 3: of Hormuz. And you had an absolutely incredible moment yesterday
10:55
Speaker 3: in the financial markets where the US Energy Secretary we
10:58
Speaker 3: can put up this next element, Chris wright. He comes
11:01
Speaker 3: out and he announces that the US Navy has successfully escorted.
11:08
Speaker 4: A tanker through the strait.
11:11
Speaker 3: So if you knew that he was about to announce that,
11:13
Speaker 3: or you if you knew that that had happened and
11:16
Speaker 3: you bought oil futures, you made an enormous amount of
11:20
Speaker 3: money over the next five minutes.
11:23
Speaker 4: As as well.
11:25
Speaker 3: Sorry, you lost an enormous amount of money if you
11:27
Speaker 3: if you owned or if you were short oil, you did.
11:30
Speaker 5: Great because I thought you're gonna say, if you were
11:32
Speaker 5: like specific on polymarket.
11:34
Speaker 4: Right, well that too.
11:36
Speaker 3: But so oil prices crashed because like, oh amazing, So
11:39
Speaker 3: the Navy successfully escorted a tanker through the Strait of Hormuz.
11:47
Speaker 4: The cavalry has arrived.
11:48
Speaker 3: This the battle is saved, the world oil supply is secured.
11:53
Speaker 3: Five minutes later, he deletes the tweet. Imagine being the
11:57
Speaker 3: trader who's like refreshing that tweet. It's like sweet has
12:00
Speaker 3: been deleted. You're like, oh god, because as it turns out,
12:06
Speaker 3: it was either a lie.
12:09
Speaker 4: Or it was untrue. We need to get to the
12:11
Speaker 4: bottom of this.
12:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, many, many, many millions of dollars changed hands and
12:16
Speaker 3: the US lost whatever little tiny credibility it had left.
12:19
Speaker 3: So Levitt, Carolyn Levitt, was asked about this, and let's
12:24
Speaker 3: get her response.
12:25
Speaker 6: I was made aware of this post.
12:26
Speaker 7: I haven't had a chance to talk to the Energy
12:28
Speaker 7: Secretary about it directly, however, I know the post was
12:31
Speaker 7: taken down pretty quickly, and I can confirm that the
12:34
Speaker 7: US Navy has not escorted a tanker or a vessel
12:37
Speaker 7: at this time, though, of course that's an option the
12:39
Speaker 7: President has said he will absolutely utilize if and when
12:43
Speaker 7: necessary at the appropriate time.
12:45
Speaker 4: Okay, so never mind that did not happen.
12:50
Speaker 6: This is a cabinet secretary.
12:52
Speaker 4: This cabinet is the Energy Secretary, Energy secretary. It'd be
12:55
Speaker 4: one thing of the HUD secretary. Yes, like heard a
12:58
Speaker 4: little gossip and tweeted that.
13:00
Speaker 3: Right, the Energy Secretary, Yeah, that's the that's the guy
13:03
Speaker 3: who would know that.
13:04
Speaker 5: Also the Umbrella Nuclear Policy Organization. So not looking great
13:10
Speaker 5: if you're just firing off tweets and deleting them about
13:13
Speaker 5: fragile geopolitical questions.
13:15
Speaker 3: And we're going to talk later with Jeremy about the
13:19
Speaker 3: either the lack of a strategy or the way that
13:21
Speaker 3: the strategy is unfolding. But for a glimpse into how
13:27
Speaker 3: completely bankrupt the US approach is. Right now, you've got
13:33
Speaker 3: Fox and Friends buddies just throwing out random, random plays.
13:40
Speaker 3: Let's let's take an island and then control the oil.
13:43
Speaker 3: Let's play a five here.
13:45
Speaker 8: Look to see him take carg Island, that oil island.
13:48
Speaker 9: He would be just like that as well.
13:50
Speaker 4: We control their oil. Ninety percent of their roil goes
13:52
Speaker 4: to this little island.
13:53
Speaker 9: The President talked about it in nineteen eighty eight, two
13:56
Speaker 9: year and I think you should grab it.
13:58
Speaker 3: And I think that gets to the folly that was
14:01
Speaker 3: at the heart of this entire operation Epstein Fury to
14:04
Speaker 3: begin with, which was it's.
14:06
Speaker 4: Gonna be like Venezuela.
14:08
Speaker 3: And so it went great, we went in, we got
14:11
Speaker 3: Maduro and then they just handed us to oil and
14:14
Speaker 3: it was amazing. And so they keep trying to reconfigure
14:18
Speaker 3: what is obviously a completely different situation into that, and
14:26
Speaker 3: I think they're looking for something that they can do
14:27
Speaker 3: and then declare victory.
14:30
Speaker 6: But yeah, I think that's right.
14:31
Speaker 3: But doing that is will be that I mean, do
14:35
Speaker 3: you have any thoughts on that that would be a bloodbath?
14:38
Speaker 3: Holding it would be like quite difficult. I don't think
14:44
Speaker 3: it's serious but any of this was serious and there,
14:48
Speaker 3: and they've tried to do it anyway.
14:50
Speaker 6: I thought I was totally serious. From Brian kill me,
14:52
Speaker 6: he's not serious, like right, right, But that's to your point,
14:57
Speaker 6: like if you.
15:00
Speaker 5: If you don't think certainly, it's hard to tell what's
15:02
Speaker 5: serious when it's being like tossed out between Fox and
15:05
Speaker 5: Friends and the President. We just put the President's tweet
15:08
Speaker 5: about the truth social about the minds up on the screen.
15:11
Speaker 5: He's like, if for any reason the mind like, you
15:13
Speaker 5: never know what he knows and what he's serious about,
15:15
Speaker 5: what he's not serious about, so you have no choice
15:17
Speaker 5: but to take it all seriously. And I think that's
15:19
Speaker 5: exactly what the right, the right position is. So ah,
15:23
Speaker 5: he's joking, Well, we're in war and people are dying,
15:26
Speaker 5: so take him seriously.
15:28
Speaker 6: I agree with you. I think that would be a nightmare.
15:31
Speaker 5: And the long term what does that look like if
15:34
Speaker 5: they're trying to come up with some type.
15:35
Speaker 6: Of deal about the future, what is there what.
15:38
Speaker 5: Is the long term prospect of holding oil island, as
15:43
Speaker 5: Brian Killmad put it, what is the what is the
15:46
Speaker 5: plan for a year from now, for ten years from
15:49
Speaker 5: now if you're holding oil island. How is that going
15:52
Speaker 5: to make things significantly better? How is it going to
15:55
Speaker 5: make the situation less tense? I mean, it just none
15:57
Speaker 5: of it makes sense.
15:59
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just think that would be very difficult for
16:00
Speaker 4: them to actually hold it.
16:01
Speaker 6: But right exactly.
16:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so going to the to the question of
16:05
Speaker 3: because this is.
16:06
Speaker 5: It's basically putting, since we're talking about minds, it's putting
16:09
Speaker 5: like a trip wire.
16:10
Speaker 6: Yeah, right in the middle of the.
16:11
Speaker 4: Hole, Yes, exactly.
16:13
Speaker 3: And so the question really is, you know, can Iron
16:17
Speaker 3: withstand the bombardment that they're taking and continue to fire
16:22
Speaker 3: their own ballistic missiles longer than the US can withstand
16:27
Speaker 3: the cracking of the foundations of the global economy. And
16:31
Speaker 3: that's the key question, and the question underneath that is
16:35
Speaker 3: what happens to the oil flow through the strait of
16:38
Speaker 3: horror moves? So we have some actual data that that's
16:41
Speaker 3: that's emerging that sheds a little light on this and
16:45
Speaker 3: doesn't I don't think would give comfort necessarily to either side,
16:48
Speaker 3: but it's important to have the facts here. So you
16:50
Speaker 3: can put up this drop site post from Twitter. The
16:53
Speaker 3: point they're making here is that about thirty five percent
16:55
Speaker 3: of the oil of the oil that normally goes through
16:58
Speaker 3: the Strait of horm moves is still going through. But
17:00
Speaker 3: let's break that down a little bit. So normally you
17:03
Speaker 3: were averaging about fifteen million.
17:06
Speaker 4: Barrels per day.
17:07
Speaker 3: Now of that, one point two million was Iranian and
17:12
Speaker 3: that is still getting through and it's mostly going to China,
17:16
Speaker 3: so you're actually what you're concerned about is about you know,
17:19
Speaker 3: thirteen point eight million barrels per day, So what's going
17:24
Speaker 3: on with that? So according to that five point five
17:28
Speaker 3: million is still moving. Now you want to subtract the
17:31
Speaker 3: one point two from there to get what actually matters,
17:33
Speaker 3: because the oil that Iran is shipping to China is
17:36
Speaker 3: not is not foundational to the western kind of capital markets.
17:42
Speaker 3: So that gets you down to what three So that's
17:44
Speaker 3: three point three million barrels a day still still going through.
17:49
Speaker 3: So what's happening is that Saudi Arabia is trying to
17:52
Speaker 3: move a lot of their oil through a pipeline and
17:58
Speaker 3: then out the Red Sea, saying more than two million
18:01
Speaker 3: barrels per day are currently moving toward toward the Red Seat.
18:04
Speaker 4: So that's so if.
18:05
Speaker 3: They can't get it out through through the Strait of Hormuz,
18:08
Speaker 3: they're going to move it that way, the UAE is
18:13
Speaker 3: trying to use the Fujera pipeline to move about one
18:16
Speaker 3: point eight million barrels per day, and then there's about
18:21
Speaker 3: five hundred thousand barrels per day from tankers that are
18:26
Speaker 3: turning off their trackers and kind of sneaking through. So
18:29
Speaker 3: five hundred now it's not much like that's not that's
18:32
Speaker 3: that's not enough to service the global economy. But if
18:36
Speaker 3: they can move many millions through these pipelines, now the
18:41
Speaker 3: problem comes sets in. You can hit a pipeline, if
18:45
Speaker 3: we if we go up the escalation ladder to those
18:47
Speaker 3: kinds of strikes, you can certainly hit a pipeline and
18:50
Speaker 3: take that right offline. And the Houthies have not really
18:53
Speaker 3: got involved yet. So if the Houthi said no, actually
18:57
Speaker 3: you're not doing this anymore, which is interesting because remember
19:01
Speaker 3: again we're telling you the truth here. We've told you
19:06
Speaker 3: from the beginning that the Huthis are supported by Iran,
19:10
Speaker 3: but are independent actors.
19:11
Speaker 4: They make their own decisions. In the in the US,
19:14
Speaker 4: the western.
19:15
Speaker 3: Press is no, they're just they're just the the handmaidens
19:19
Speaker 3: of Iran.
19:20
Speaker 4: They do exactly what Iran tells them.
19:22
Speaker 3: Right this moment confirms it, Like if they if they
19:26
Speaker 3: did exactly what Iran wants them to do, would they
19:30
Speaker 3: not be like launching tons of ballistic missiles although at
19:34
Speaker 3: their allies and shutting the Red Sea down? And they're
19:37
Speaker 3: not yet. They're they're talking about you. They're strategizing that. Well,
19:41
Speaker 3: we may see them enter the fray, but they haven't.
19:44
Speaker 5: It's also the interesting because what is Iran right now,
19:47
Speaker 5: Like what is the government of Iran?
19:49
Speaker 6: Is it acting in total concert? Is there?
19:53
Speaker 5: It's it's it's hard to know what would be getting telegraphed.
19:56
Speaker 5: But no, I mean, I see what you're saying.
19:58
Speaker 3: I just as if they come in and shut down
20:00
Speaker 3: the Red Sea, then then you're talking about a whole
20:04
Speaker 3: different ballgame. But if they don't, you might be able
20:07
Speaker 3: and they don't hit these pipelines, you may be able
20:09
Speaker 3: to trickle through enough oil, right to keep prices at
20:13
Speaker 3: a place where the global population can continue to stomach
20:18
Speaker 3: the attack.
20:19
Speaker 6: Maybe right? And I don't know.
20:22
Speaker 5: It's just with this Trump administration now talking about how
20:27
Speaker 5: they think they have a three to four week like
20:30
Speaker 5: landing strip. Basically it does go to why we start
20:35
Speaker 5: hearing them chirp now about declaring mission accomplished and victory.
20:40
Speaker 5: They're obviously very very very nervous about this, and they
20:43
Speaker 5: should be because of everything that was just laid out.
20:49
Speaker 6: Let's get to Meersheimmer.
20:50
Speaker 4: Let's do it.
20:50
Speaker 5: Let's talk about Professor John Mehersheimer's recent remarks about as.
20:55
Speaker 6: We were just saying, who's really winning? What does winning
20:57
Speaker 6: look like?
20:58
Speaker 5: Crystal Flagg this moment for a bunch of senators, by
21:01
Speaker 5: the way, went into a briefing yesterday on the war.
21:05
Speaker 6: That's where Chris.
21:06
Speaker 5: Murphy came out and put out the tweet that he
21:08
Speaker 5: referred to in the last block.
21:09
Speaker 6: We were discussing the strait of horror moves.
21:11
Speaker 5: We have some audio video of Senator Bluementhal also emerging
21:15
Speaker 5: from that briefing. Before we get to it, let's take
21:19
Speaker 5: a listen here to John Meerscheimer to sort of set
21:21
Speaker 5: the table as so, what's been accomplished quote unquote accomplished
21:26
Speaker 5: so far?
21:26
Speaker 10: B one, It's quite clear that the war is not
21:31
Speaker 10: going well for the United States and President Trump, I think,
21:37
Speaker 10: would like to put an end to it, and the
21:41
Speaker 10: problem that he faces is he can't find an off ramp.
21:46
Speaker 10: I think nobody can tell a plausible story about how
21:50
Speaker 10: this war ends. If we had decisively defeated Ran the
21:59
Speaker 10: way we decisive defeated both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan
22:03
Speaker 10: in World War Two, then you can say the war
22:07
Speaker 10: is over with, we are the winner, and we're going
22:10
Speaker 10: to impose terms on the loser. But that's not what's
22:15
Speaker 10: happened here. They haven't won anything approximating a decisive victory.
22:22
Speaker 10: And in a very important way, the Iranians have an
22:26
Speaker 10: incentive to continue the war, to turn it into a
22:32
Speaker 10: protracted war of attrition, and they have the means to
22:37
Speaker 10: do that.
22:38
Speaker 5: So obviously, definitions of what that means have been floating
22:41
Speaker 5: around from this administration itself. Last week, Caroline Levitt had
22:46
Speaker 5: to come out and enumerate the list of objectives that
22:50
Speaker 5: the administration had in Iran because so many different things
22:53
Speaker 5: were floating around from different members of the administration. Which
22:57
Speaker 5: is normal enough on a day that ends in war.
23:00
Speaker 5: Why a lot more egregious when.
23:02
Speaker 6: You are at war.
23:03
Speaker 5: Obviously, so Donald Trump has said he wants unconditional surrender.
23:08
Speaker 5: Ryan He's said it's about missiles, it's about nukes. So
23:13
Speaker 5: some of the challenge here politically for the administration but
23:17
Speaker 5: also just for a normal American trying to determine why
23:22
Speaker 5: seven lives have already been lost, we're looking at new
23:25
Speaker 5: numbers about how many people have been injured. Actually, why
23:29
Speaker 5: don't we just go ahead and rule B three here?
23:31
Speaker 5: I'm going to jump ahead because we have some new
23:33
Speaker 5: information about this.
23:35
Speaker 6: B three.
23:35
Speaker 8: Reuters has reported that about one hundred and fifty US
23:39
Speaker 8: service members have been injured so far.
23:41
Speaker 10: Can you confirm that number and elaborate on that.
23:44
Speaker 6: I can't confirm the exact number. I know it's within
23:47
Speaker 6: that ballpark, but.
23:48
Speaker 7: I would defer you to the Pentagon for a specific
23:51
Speaker 7: number of wounded or injured thus far.
23:54
Speaker 5: So as people are trying to determine what the United
23:58
Speaker 5: States is doing, why, what is being sacrificed?
24:03
Speaker 6: Why?
24:05
Speaker 5: Here is Richard Blumenthal B two talking about what he
24:12
Speaker 5: took from a briefing on Capitol Hill yesterday for Senators.
24:16
Speaker 11: My questions have been unanswered, and I will demand answers
24:24
Speaker 11: because the American people deserve to know. And I guess
24:29
Speaker 11: I am most concerned about the threat to American lives
24:36
Speaker 11: of potentially deploying our sons and daughters on the ground
24:41
Speaker 11: in Iran. We seem to be on a path toward
24:45
Speaker 11: deploying American troops on the ground in Iran to accomplish
24:51
Speaker 11: any of the potential.
24:53
Speaker 4: Objectives here and.
24:57
Speaker 11: There is also, as disturbingly as anything else, the specter
25:03
Speaker 11: of active Russian aid to Iran putting in danger American lives.
25:13
Speaker 4: Literally, Russia seems.
25:15
Speaker 11: To be aiding our enemy actively and intensively with intelligence
25:20
Speaker 11: and perhaps with other means. And China also may be
25:25
Speaker 11: assisting Iran.
25:27
Speaker 5: So Bluemosel's Russia Hawk will get to that point in
25:30
Speaker 5: just a moment. But this is when the multiple layers
25:33
Speaker 5: here of the politics and the substance, and you have
25:35
Speaker 5: a senator coming out of briefing saying any of the
25:38
Speaker 5: potential objectives, not even able to zero in on like
25:41
Speaker 5: one of the administration's objectives because we're overall objective, because
25:46
Speaker 5: the messaging has been all over the place, but saying,
25:49
Speaker 5: you know, here's my interpretation of it, ring we're at
25:52
Speaker 5: an inflection point where either the administration decides to cut
25:56
Speaker 5: bait and define down what the objectives were, what victory
26:01
Speaker 5: looks like, or put, as Blumenthal said, troops on the
26:05
Speaker 5: ground in Iran to actually tackle substantively, whether it's the
26:11
Speaker 5: nuclear question, the missile question. I mean, I was talking
26:13
Speaker 5: to Brian Dean Wright, he's a former CIA guy, I'm
26:15
Speaker 5: actually the other day and he was like, well, you
26:17
Speaker 5: could put special forces on the ground to pull the
26:22
Speaker 5: nuclear material out of the dirt. Well, that's boots on
26:26
Speaker 5: the ground, that's boots on the fan. So it does
26:29
Speaker 5: feel like an inflection point right now.
26:31
Speaker 3: Yes, And so Senator Chris Murphy also came out of
26:35
Speaker 3: that meeting and did a Twitter thread that would add
26:39
Speaker 3: some of this in posts, and he said, you know,
26:43
Speaker 3: he said that, like, it's totally incoherent what they're hearing
26:47
Speaker 3: internally of what they're hearing in these classified briefings, and
26:51
Speaker 3: it contradicts and conflicts with the rationales that were given
26:55
Speaker 3: to the extent that any were given at all ahead
26:57
Speaker 3: of the war. So one of the things he said,
27:00
Speaker 3: the war goals do not involve destroying Iran's nuclear program.
27:05
Speaker 3: You're like, what he writes, this is surprising since Trump
27:08
Speaker 3: says over and over this is a key goal. So
27:10
Speaker 3: behind the scenes, planners are saying, no, it's not actually
27:14
Speaker 3: about the nuclear program. Second, he says they confirmed quote
27:19
Speaker 3: regime change is also not on the list. So that
27:24
Speaker 3: was the other thing that we were told explicitly was
27:29
Speaker 3: an objective here, So that then he's the way he
27:32
Speaker 3: frames it was, So they're going to spend hundreds of
27:34
Speaker 3: billions of your taxpayer dollars, get a whole bunch of
27:36
Speaker 3: Americans killed, and a hardline regime, probably a more anti
27:40
Speaker 3: American hardline regime will still be in charge.
27:44
Speaker 4: And he says, okay, so what are the goals?
27:45
Speaker 3: He says, it seems primarily destroying lots of missiles and
27:48
Speaker 3: boats and drone factories. But the question that stumped them
27:52
Speaker 3: what happens when you stop bombing and they restart production.
27:57
Speaker 3: They hinted this is the planners. They hinted at more bombing,
28:01
Speaker 3: which is, of course, as he says, endless war. And
28:04
Speaker 3: then on the straight of her moves, as we talked
28:06
Speaker 3: about in the last seven they had they had no plan.
28:10
Speaker 3: So that does that does actually fit with what we've
28:14
Speaker 3: been thinking about as the actual strategy in place here,
28:16
Speaker 3: which is not to liberate the Iranian people, has nothing
28:20
Speaker 3: to do with the nuclear program. We're not we're not
28:22
Speaker 3: doing nation building anymore because we you know, the public
28:25
Speaker 3: has said we don't want to do quote unquote nation building.
28:28
Speaker 4: Anymore. So we're just gonna do nation destruction. We're going
28:32
Speaker 4: to nation unbuild this thing.
28:33
Speaker 3: We're gonna try to cause as much damage as we
28:37
Speaker 3: possibly can. Then we're going to stop, and in the
28:40
Speaker 3: second that they try to start rebuilding anything, we're going
28:43
Speaker 3: to attack them again.
28:45
Speaker 4: That explains why the Iranians feel like.
28:48
Speaker 3: They have to take a huge cost from us, so
28:52
Speaker 3: that we don't think that that's actually an okay thing
28:56
Speaker 3: to do to another country, to just keep mowing the lawn,
28:58
Speaker 3: to just just kill them when whenever we feel like it,
29:01
Speaker 3: for as long as we feel like it.
29:02
Speaker 5: But also not a strategy that is going to fly
29:05
Speaker 5: with the American people in the long term.
29:08
Speaker 6: I mean, well, it's not.
29:09
Speaker 5: Let's say, it may be electorally palatable because people are
29:14
Speaker 5: suffering at home and have a million different priorities, but
29:16
Speaker 5: it's not the priority of the American people.
29:18
Speaker 4: It's so expensive too, it's so expensive.
29:20
Speaker 5: But to be bogged down in a never ending conflict
29:26
Speaker 5: because of a policy choice, no, yes, that's most people
29:30
Speaker 5: would If you explain that, most people would be like,
29:32
Speaker 5: why are we doing this? Why are we doing this
29:34
Speaker 5: after the last twenty thirty years, Why are we doing.
29:36
Speaker 3: This, and so Pete Hegseth, our war secretary, as he
29:41
Speaker 3: calls himself.
29:42
Speaker 6: Again, much more accurate. You heard it here first, there
29:44
Speaker 6: you go.
29:45
Speaker 3: Not a declaration of war. Is our military Operations secretary,
29:49
Speaker 3: I guess the Department of Military Operations saying that we
29:54
Speaker 3: are only intensifying the attacks.
29:56
Speaker 4: Let's roll heg Seth.
29:57
Speaker 8: For example, today will be yet again our most intense
30:02
Speaker 8: day of strikes inside Iran, the most fighters, the most bombers,
30:07
Speaker 8: the most strikes, intelligence, more refined and better than ever.
30:13
Speaker 8: So that's on one hand. On the other hand, the
30:15
Speaker 8: last twenty four hours have seen Iran fire the lowest
30:19
Speaker 8: number of missiles they've been capable of firing yet, just
30:25
Speaker 8: the bifurcation, just the trend lines that we talked about
30:28
Speaker 8: on our first briefing.
30:30
Speaker 3: Steve Witkoff was asked about the claims that Russia is
30:34
Speaker 3: helping Iran.
30:34
Speaker 4: Let's roll some wit coough here.
30:36
Speaker 9: Yesterday on the call with the President, the Russians said
30:40
Speaker 9: that they have not been sharing's that's what they said,
30:42
Speaker 9: so you know, we can take them at their word.
30:46
Speaker 9: But they did say that, and yesterday morning and yesterday
30:50
Speaker 9: morning independently, Jared and I had a call with Ushakov,
30:56
Speaker 9: who reiterated the same So, I you know, that's a
31:01
Speaker 9: better question for the intel people. But let's hope that
31:04
Speaker 9: they're not sharing.
31:05
Speaker 6: So how do you see this ending this war?
31:12
Speaker 9: I don't know, Sarah. I know this that President Trump
31:16
Speaker 9: is the wrong guy to go up against. That's what
31:18
Speaker 9: I know.
31:19
Speaker 4: All Right.
31:19
Speaker 3: We've got Jeremy Scale Scalehills standing by, and so let's
31:23
Speaker 3: ask him a little bit more about, you know, how
31:26
Speaker 3: the back and forth is going, because Tel Aviv is
31:30
Speaker 3: also getting absolutely hammered overnight last night.
31:33
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, well, Heikesa's prediction proved to be true
31:37
Speaker 5: that it would be the most intense day. That's why,
31:40
Speaker 5: again the transition from Secretary of Defense to Secretary of
31:43
Speaker 5: War much more accurate, came at the perfect time because
31:47
Speaker 5: the entire lie of this being a defensive war only
31:52
Speaker 5: this is exclusively about national defense has been exposed in
31:58
Speaker 5: a pretty obvious, flamboyant way. And if we're supplying the
32:02
Speaker 5: intel for the Ukrainian strikes on Russia right now, we're
32:07
Speaker 5: just Steve Wikoff is now having these conversations about whether
32:11
Speaker 5: Russia is cooperating with Iran an intelligence sharing.
32:14
Speaker 6: It's the entire approach to.
32:17
Speaker 5: This has been I don't need to continue saying it,
32:20
Speaker 5: but it's it's so obviously a disaster.
32:22
Speaker 3: Yes, and we didn't we didn't see to your pants, Yes,
32:25
Speaker 3: totally and we did. We didn't have time to get
32:26
Speaker 3: into a full block on Sudan today, but I did
32:29
Speaker 3: want to update people. And if you've been following our
32:32
Speaker 3: coverage of it, you know that the RSF, which is
32:35
Speaker 3: the kind of which has been on a kind of
32:37
Speaker 3: genocidal rampage throughout Sudan, is backed to the hilt by
32:42
Speaker 3: the UAE, and the US has been being pressured to
32:47
Speaker 3: put some pressure on the ue AS to to then
32:50
Speaker 3: withdraw support from the RSF in order to bring this
32:54
Speaker 3: conflict to a final resolution. Instead, now that the US
32:58
Speaker 3: is kind of deeply indebted to the m RA, we
33:00
Speaker 3: get the opposite. The US put out a statement yesterday
33:05
Speaker 3: saying that they are designating the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood as
33:13
Speaker 3: a specially designated Global Terrorist group, which they have not
33:16
Speaker 3: done to the RSF. This is a huge boon to
33:20
Speaker 3: the RSF. So basically you can imagine what happened. Haabn's
33:24
Speaker 3: e is like telling Trump like you want you want
33:26
Speaker 3: my cooperation here.
33:27
Speaker 4: You like what I need from you.
33:30
Speaker 3: I need your help in Sudan, get off my back
33:32
Speaker 3: about the RSF, and in fact I want you going
33:35
Speaker 3: after the rsf's enemies and Trump.
33:37
Speaker 4: It's like, what is he? I don't care? Fine, whatever,
33:42
Speaker 4: So we'll have more on.
33:44
Speaker 3: That at a further data as the implications of.
33:48
Speaker 4: The of the war kind of spill out into Sudan.
33:51
Speaker 4: But let's bring in next Jeremy Scalhill.
33:57
Speaker 3: Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said that last night would
34:00
Speaker 3: be the most ferocious attacks by the US and Israel
34:03
Speaker 3: on Iran. But on the other side, the Golf States
34:07
Speaker 3: and Israel are facing increasingly difficult nights as well. We're
34:11
Speaker 3: getting very little footage either either from phones or from
34:16
Speaker 3: news broadcasts, as Israel and the Golf States are clamping
34:21
Speaker 3: down on the ability of the public or the media
34:23
Speaker 3: to share what's going on. But we did get an
34:25
Speaker 3: interesting kind of clip through Fox News. It kind of
34:28
Speaker 3: gives you an indication of both of those elements. Let's
34:31
Speaker 3: roll this one.
34:31
Speaker 6: We have sirens in Tel Aviv.
34:33
Speaker 9: Let's go back to correspondent Nate Foy, who is on
34:36
Speaker 9: the ground there.
34:36
Speaker 6: High Nate.
34:39
Speaker 4: Hey, Martha.
34:40
Speaker 12: So yeah, as you can hear the sirens are going
34:41
Speaker 12: off here in Tel Aviv, something that we've seen several
34:44
Speaker 12: times throughout the entire day, and what we could see
34:47
Speaker 12: here momentarily are interceptor missiles fired off. We have seen
34:51
Speaker 12: it right over my shoulders several different times. Again, Iran
34:55
Speaker 12: continues to show an offensive capability launching missiles.
34:59
Speaker 4: At central is.
35:01
Speaker 12: We have one interceptor over my shoulder right now. We
35:04
Speaker 12: can't show you because we can't show landmarks, Martha. But
35:08
Speaker 12: something that has really changed here over the past couple
35:11
Speaker 12: of days is the use of these cluster munitions by
35:14
Speaker 12: Iran where the warhead breaks up into several different bomblets.
35:18
Speaker 12: And that's really important because not only does it spread
35:21
Speaker 12: the damage, but it makes it more difficult to defend
35:24
Speaker 12: against joining us.
35:25
Speaker 3: Now, is my colleague over at drop site, Jeremy Scahill.
35:29
Speaker 4: Jeremy, thanks for being here, Thanks for having me.
35:32
Speaker 6: I'm going to play the role of Tim Dillon in
35:34
Speaker 6: the segment.
35:34
Speaker 4: Yes, Jeremy and I were on Tim Dillon, Do not
35:37
Speaker 4: miss Do not miss that. There are a lot of
35:40
Speaker 4: jokes we can make about that. We're just going to
35:42
Speaker 4: skip those.
35:44
Speaker 3: So I want to put up the article that you
35:46
Speaker 3: wrote with Moz yesterday, the headline here Trump might want
35:52
Speaker 3: to end the war, Iran won't do it on his terms.
35:57
Speaker 3: So what are what are you guys hearing from Iranian
36:03
Speaker 3: officials about the overtures, whether they actually exist, from the
36:08
Speaker 3: United States, and how Iranian officials are feeling.
36:13
Speaker 4: About kind of re engaging them.
36:16
Speaker 13: Well, I mean, first on this issue of you know,
36:19
Speaker 13: negotiations or talk of a ceasefire, my understanding from speaking
36:23
Speaker 13: to senior Iranian officials is that there have been periodic
36:27
Speaker 13: periods of outreach from third countries to Iran asking about
36:33
Speaker 13: the possibility of a resumption of negotiations, and the Iranians
36:37
Speaker 13: have rejected those. The United States, you know, Trump and
36:41
Speaker 13: other officials have said, oh, the Iranians are desperate to
36:45
Speaker 13: talk to us, they want this to end. Iran is
36:48
Speaker 13: saying that's a total lie, and that in fact, it
36:50
Speaker 13: seems to be the United States that, through intermediaries, is
36:54
Speaker 13: trying to gauge Iran's interest. You see, what we're engaged
36:57
Speaker 13: in here, or what we're watching, is asymmetric war. You
37:00
Speaker 13: have a much more powerful, larger attack force. The United
37:04
Speaker 13: States and Israel and there's no doubt they have massive
37:07
Speaker 13: military superiority, and the so called war Secretary, Pete Hegseth,
37:12
Speaker 13: loves to get up every day like a drinking buddy,
37:15
Speaker 13: bragging about his exploits from the last weekend and talk
37:18
Speaker 13: about everything that they're bombing and how they're decimating Iran.
37:21
Speaker 13: And they're trying to convince the public that just by
37:24
Speaker 13: showing cool stuff blowing up that somehow that means that
37:27
Speaker 13: the United States and Israel are decisively winning this war.
37:30
Speaker 13: But the reality is that for the less powerful military
37:34
Speaker 13: force to achieve quote unquote victory, they don't have to
37:36
Speaker 13: win militarily. They have to elevate the costs to such
37:40
Speaker 13: a degree that the stronger attacking party decides that it's
37:44
Speaker 13: not worth it anymore. But it's not just that, and
37:46
Speaker 13: this is what we're hearing from Iranian officials. Iran doesn't
37:49
Speaker 13: just want to stop the military onslaught by Israel and
37:52
Speaker 13: the United States. Iran wants to keep fighting so that
37:55
Speaker 13: the entire world, including the United States, understands that if
37:59
Speaker 13: you think, I think you can do this to Iran
38:01
Speaker 13: every four months, pretend you're negotiating, and then do surprise
38:05
Speaker 13: attacks that you have another thing coming. And so that's
38:08
Speaker 13: why the Iranians, now, in response to Trump making threats
38:11
Speaker 13: about the Strait of Hormuz, have started to be more
38:13
Speaker 13: aggressive IRGC naval vessels. Trump said that their entire navy
38:17
Speaker 13: was wiped out. Well, we now understand that the IRGC
38:20
Speaker 13: navy is giving warnings to ship and if the ships
38:22
Speaker 13: and if they don't heed them, they're stopping or attacking
38:25
Speaker 13: those ships. So what we're seeing here is that the
38:27
Speaker 13: Iranians are not just trying to inflict damage or continue
38:31
Speaker 13: to strike in Tel Aviv and elsewhere in Israel, or
38:34
Speaker 13: to continue to strike US military bases in the region.
38:38
Speaker 13: They're also saying we're not interested in a ceasefire on
38:40
Speaker 13: Trump's terms, and we think that they dramatically estimated Iran's
38:45
Speaker 13: will to fight, overestimated the potential for a domestic uprising,
38:49
Speaker 13: and dramatically underestimated Iran's weapons capacity. The Iranians are going
38:54
Speaker 13: into what they call a second phase of this war.
38:57
Speaker 13: They feel they have softened US defenses in the region,
39:00
Speaker 13: they don't need to fire as many rockets, and that
39:02
Speaker 13: they can continue to do damage with more powerful ballistic missiles,
39:06
Speaker 13: but with less frequent or less intense attacks.
39:09
Speaker 5: And obviously the calculus of sharing intelligence that led to
39:12
Speaker 5: the killing of Hamani with Israel was that you would
39:15
Speaker 5: decimate the command structure. I mean, we've heard people talking
39:18
Speaker 5: about this in the government right now, and thus create
39:20
Speaker 5: a mess and a power vacuum that's easier for the
39:22
Speaker 5: Kurds or whoever else to recipology to step into and
39:27
Speaker 5: change the regime or alter the regime, as they discovered
39:30
Speaker 5: they could do with Duci Rodriguez in Venezuela. So, jeremy,
39:34
Speaker 5: what is the command structure like right now? In terms
39:38
Speaker 5: of you having these conversations with officials about how they
39:42
Speaker 5: see their strategy. Did the United States severely hamper their
39:48
Speaker 5: ability to organize as the IRGC or as the Iroonian government?
39:53
Speaker 6: What does that look like right now?
39:54
Speaker 5: What is the sort of coherence organization strategically look like
40:00
Speaker 5: of the Iranian government as they are fighting back against
40:04
Speaker 5: the United States.
40:06
Speaker 13: Well, you know, the United States has not fought a
40:09
Speaker 13: modern nation state since really the end of World War
40:12
Speaker 13: II or the Korean War, And so I think there
40:15
Speaker 13: was a radical underestimation of how solid Iran's bureaucratic structure is,
40:20
Speaker 13: both on a civilian level and a military level. I mean,
40:23
Speaker 13: this is a government that has been building horizontal institutions
40:27
Speaker 13: since the nineteen seventy nine Islamic Revolution. And in fact,
40:31
Speaker 13: we reported even before the bombs started hitting on February
40:34
Speaker 13: twenty eighth, for weeks ahead of this, we were saying
40:37
Speaker 13: that the Iranians were very clear that they expected decapitation
40:41
Speaker 13: strikes the attempt. They expected that there would be an
40:44
Speaker 13: attempt that was likely to succeed in assassinating the Supreme
40:48
Speaker 13: Leader and the rest of the country's official top leadership,
40:52
Speaker 13: and so they created what they called the Mosaic Defense System.
40:55
Speaker 13: So in advance of the United States attacking Emily, what
40:58
Speaker 13: Iran did was they started to delegate further down the
41:01
Speaker 13: chain of command authority to launch attacks, and they had
41:05
Speaker 13: a predetermined bank of targets throughout the Persian Gulf and
41:09
Speaker 13: in Israel that if the United States and Israel attacked,
41:12
Speaker 13: they would be activated. And so what I'm told by
41:15
Speaker 13: Iranian officials who have access to the planning process in
41:18
Speaker 13: Iran is that in those first seventy two hours or
41:21
Speaker 13: so after the US and Israel began attacking, things were
41:25
Speaker 13: essentially on autopilot. When it came to the IRGC's Aerospace division,
41:29
Speaker 13: which is overseeing the launching of ballistic missiles and attack drones,
41:33
Speaker 13: of which Iran has many because they have their own
41:36
Speaker 13: domestic industry. And then once there was a sort of
41:39
Speaker 13: clearing of the dust that the reality was a full
41:42
Speaker 13: scale existential war was on. That's how Iran saw it,
41:46
Speaker 13: they started to then return to a more centralized strategic
41:50
Speaker 13: operation and that allowed them to sort of call audibles.
41:54
Speaker 13: I guess you could say they would assess the damage
41:56
Speaker 13: that was being done in places like Kuwait, in Qatar,
42:00
Speaker 13: United Arab Emirates, in Saudi Arabia. They knocked out a
42:04
Speaker 13: very expensive, vital piece of radar equipment in Jordan, another
42:08
Speaker 13: one in the Persian Gulf that quite significantly damaged the
42:11
Speaker 13: ability of the United States to have early warning detection.
42:14
Speaker 13: They took out two of the most important radars that
42:17
Speaker 13: are essentially the kind of artery of the defensive operations
42:21
Speaker 13: for the United States in the region, and by incapacitating
42:24
Speaker 13: those you started to see more successful hits that set in.
42:28
Speaker 13: On a political level, I think that the you know,
42:31
Speaker 13: the United States messaging on this has has evolved. Trump
42:35
Speaker 13: has gone from saying rise up dear Iranian people to saying, yeah,
42:39
Speaker 13: I would take a religious leader. I mean, it could
42:41
Speaker 13: be somebody who's internal and an eternal was the phrase
42:44
Speaker 13: that he used the other day. And so I think,
42:47
Speaker 13: you know, a little bit of reality pie is being
42:50
Speaker 13: served right now to the United States. That's not to
42:53
Speaker 13: say that they're not doing massive damage to Iran on
42:56
Speaker 13: a military level and on a civilian level, but it
42:59
Speaker 13: does seem like their calculations were way way off.
43:04
Speaker 4: Yeah.
43:04
Speaker 3: One thing that has struck me about this is that
43:07
Speaker 3: despite the fact that the US spends billions upon billions
43:11
Speaker 3: of dollars on intelligence and analysis, and also that the
43:15
Speaker 3: US has, you know, the I would assume the most
43:17
Speaker 3: well funded kind of media apparatus in the world.
43:21
Speaker 4: It's certainly in the Western world.
43:23
Speaker 3: They seemed to have been caught off guard by almost
43:26
Speaker 3: everything that has that has come along, even though Emily wasn't,
43:31
Speaker 3: for instance, like you know, you knew that even like
43:36
Speaker 3: Emily does not have a multi billion dollar intelligence and
43:39
Speaker 3: analysis operation, but you knew that Iran's plan was to
43:44
Speaker 3: turn this into a regional war and to and was
43:47
Speaker 3: to close the straight up hormoes because they said so
43:49
Speaker 3: publicly and Jeremy reported that, you know, repeatedly to the
43:56
Speaker 3: question of the Gulf states. I want to ask you
43:58
Speaker 3: about your other other piece that you had recently.
44:02
Speaker 4: We can put up what is a C two.
44:04
Speaker 3: This goes to the question, so you're you're reporting publicly
44:07
Speaker 3: and the US is US government is welcome to read
44:10
Speaker 3: the article or not if you know they want to
44:12
Speaker 3: have any idea. What's going on is that Iran way's
44:14
Speaker 3: tactical shift in purging golf strikes while intensifying attacks on Israel.
44:18
Speaker 3: So you reported here that the the Iranian assessment was
44:23
Speaker 3: that they had done that in some ways.
44:26
Speaker 4: I don't want to put words in their mouth.
44:28
Speaker 3: You know, mission was accomplished in a lot of these
44:30
Speaker 3: golf states, that they had sufficiently deterred and degraded the
44:34
Speaker 3: US capacity there, but that there were two countries, two
44:38
Speaker 3: golf countries that were that assessment was not met and
44:41
Speaker 3: they were going to continue hitting them. But otherwise they
44:44
Speaker 3: were going to back off some of these golf countries
44:46
Speaker 3: and focused more on kind of pumbling pumbling Israel and
44:50
Speaker 3: on you know, restricting traffic through the straight up from moves.
44:55
Speaker 3: Since you've reported that, what have you seen kind of unfolded.
44:58
Speaker 3: Is there anything you can add to that from your
45:00
Speaker 3: sources since then, you.
45:02
Speaker 13: Know, the other day also the Iranian Foreign minister retweeted
45:06
Speaker 13: scentcom picture showing missiles being launched from the desert of
45:12
Speaker 13: one of those countries, and he said, thank you for
45:14
Speaker 13: confirming that you are using the territory of some of
45:18
Speaker 13: these countries that claim that they weren't going to allow
45:20
Speaker 13: their territory.
45:21
Speaker 4: To be used.
45:22
Speaker 13: We've seen a pretty substantial decrease though, in the number
45:26
Speaker 13: and volume of strikes that have been unleashed against the
45:29
Speaker 13: Persian Gulf. Yes, they're still happening, particularly in Bahrain, which
45:33
Speaker 13: I had guessed was one of the countries that the
45:35
Speaker 13: Iranians were referring to when they told me that it's
45:37
Speaker 13: the headquarters of the fifth Fleet, and is you know,
45:41
Speaker 13: one of the main countries whose infrastructure is being used
45:44
Speaker 13: to launch these attacks from both its coastal waters and
45:47
Speaker 13: its territory. And you do still see some strikes happening,
45:51
Speaker 13: but you know, my sense from speaking to Iranian officials
45:53
Speaker 13: is that they feel that they've sent a message, that
45:55
Speaker 13: they've softened it, that they're going to require the US
45:58
Speaker 13: to replenish. It's interceptors. In fact, we saw images yesterday
46:03
Speaker 13: of the US actually moving some of its defensive missile
46:06
Speaker 13: capacity away from South Korea to try to transfer it
46:10
Speaker 13: to the Middle East to try to make up for
46:11
Speaker 13: the damage that the Iranians had done. I think also
46:14
Speaker 13: there is a propaganda component to this in the information war,
46:18
Speaker 13: which is that I think that these Gulf states that
46:21
Speaker 13: have cozied up to Trump, that have lucrative business deals
46:23
Speaker 13: with the Trump family, including Jared Kushner, I think they
46:26
Speaker 13: were totally and completely shocked by what happened. I think
46:31
Speaker 13: they knew there were going to be attacks. I think
46:33
Speaker 13: that they had dramatically underestimated the capacity of Iran to
46:37
Speaker 13: just cause panic and terror to rip through their societies,
46:40
Speaker 13: and they're watching as the United States has effectively just
46:44
Speaker 13: allowed it to happen, while pouring and emergency rushing as
46:48
Speaker 13: many interceptors and other defensive missile capacity to Israel as possible.
46:54
Speaker 13: There is I understand, backdoor diplomacy going on between these
46:58
Speaker 13: golf countries and Iran. You know, Pete Hegsath said something
47:02
Speaker 13: yesterday that I've heard from officials in some of these
47:04
Speaker 13: golf countries just caused, you know, fury which is he
47:08
Speaker 13: said that Golf countries, far from running away from this,
47:13
Speaker 13: are now going on the offensive. And he said, and
47:15
Speaker 13: they're giving us access rights and overflight rights. This was
47:20
Speaker 13: from the beginning, even before February twenty eighth and the
47:23
Speaker 13: start of this, all these countries were yelling to anyone
47:25
Speaker 13: who would listen, no access rights, no use of our territory,
47:29
Speaker 13: no overflight, no use of our airspace. And then Pete
47:31
Speaker 13: Heigseth yesterday is boasting and he says, oh, no, no, no, no, no.
47:35
Speaker 13: Iran's actions in the region have caused them to go
47:37
Speaker 13: to our side. This is the total opposite of the
47:40
Speaker 13: messaging coming from the Golf Yes, the Golf States are
47:43
Speaker 13: portraying Iran as the aggressor, and they're saying almost nothing
47:46
Speaker 13: whatsoever critical of the United States or Israel. That's becoming
47:50
Speaker 13: a problem among their domestic population. And so by if
47:53
Speaker 13: Iran is basically able to say to those countries, look,
47:57
Speaker 13: we understand that there was some civilians that was hit,
48:00
Speaker 13: and we apologize for that, but overwhelmingly we've been attacking
48:04
Speaker 13: the US military infrastructure in your country. I think the
48:07
Speaker 13: Iranians are calculating that the public relations component of this
48:11
Speaker 13: the killing of civilians, the idea that you're serving Zionism
48:15
Speaker 13: by supporting this in Arab Muslim countries, that they're going
48:18
Speaker 13: to sort of be able to drive the wedge that
48:20
Speaker 13: the US and Israel thought they were succeeding and driving
48:23
Speaker 13: at the beginning of this. That's what I think is
48:25
Speaker 13: the strategy.
48:25
Speaker 6: In part I want to get your reaction to some updates.
48:29
Speaker 5: Here, Jeremy, we can put this next piece of video
48:32
Speaker 5: up on the screen. This is C three IDEF says
48:36
Speaker 5: it Eliminited hasbla commander and an airstrike on the town
48:41
Speaker 5: in southern Lebanon, and he had already taken command after
48:44
Speaker 5: his predecessor was killed in twenty twenty four, according to
48:47
Speaker 5: the military. This is what Open Source Intel posted on
48:50
Speaker 5: x Also, we have video here that drop Site posted.
48:54
Speaker 5: This is from the Iranian side. This is our next
48:57
Speaker 5: element we can put up on the screen. This is
49:00
Speaker 5: video released by Iranian media of missiles being launched during
49:05
Speaker 5: the thirty sixth wave of Operation True Promise for Drop Site.
49:09
Speaker 5: Rights Around once again warned that US and Israeli attacks
49:11
Speaker 5: on Iranian infrastructure and civilians quote will not go unanswered.
49:15
Speaker 5: Now their days and nights are limited to science, sounds,
49:17
Speaker 5: fleeing and shelters.
49:18
Speaker 6: We will not let them go.
49:20
Speaker 5: So jeremy all of this in what roughly the last
49:23
Speaker 5: twenty four hours. What does this tell us about As
49:28
Speaker 5: we're starting to see chatter from Republicans about just you know,
49:31
Speaker 5: going on the ship doing the mission accomplished banner more
49:35
Speaker 5: like an arrested development sketch. Actually, but they're ready to
49:38
Speaker 5: do it, what does that all tell us about the
49:41
Speaker 5: plausibility or their ability to sell that to the public.
49:45
Speaker 13: Yeah, I mean, this is this is quite rapidly becoming
49:49
Speaker 13: a quagmire for Trump on multiple fronts. But also Emily,
49:53
Speaker 13: remember Israel assassinated the secretary general of Hesbalah, Hassam Nosrala.
49:58
Speaker 13: They did the pager bomb lot. Since the November twenty
50:02
Speaker 13: twenty four so called ceasefire, Israel has just continued to
50:05
Speaker 13: bomb Lebanon and claiming that they're even further degrading Hesbela's capacity.
50:10
Speaker 13: I mean, Israel and the United States basically said that
50:12
Speaker 13: Hesbelah was largely incapacitated and massively damaged. When Hesbelah, you know,
50:18
Speaker 13: last week, entered this war, Israel was completely caught off
50:22
Speaker 13: guard by how ferocious the attacks were, and how intact
50:26
Speaker 13: Hesbela's military capacity actually seems to be in some ways.
50:31
Speaker 13: You know, Hesbela's entry into this pose is the wild
50:34
Speaker 13: card because they have the high ground. They've already inflicted
50:37
Speaker 13: casualties on the Israelis. They are repelling attempted Israeli invasions
50:41
Speaker 13: right now. It's becoming a very serious problem. Israel has
50:44
Speaker 13: had to evacuate settlers and other Israelis from the northern
50:49
Speaker 13: border with Lebanon. It's becoming a very real problem, and
50:52
Speaker 13: Iran saying, you know, we have ten times the targets.
50:55
Speaker 13: What Iran has said from the beginning is that they're
50:58
Speaker 13: going to respond proportionately, meaning that if their civilian infrastructure
51:02
Speaker 13: starts to get targeted by the US and Israel, then
51:05
Speaker 13: they're going to go after the similar infrastructure in the region.
51:08
Speaker 13: There's been talk of them also going after tech companies
51:11
Speaker 13: that are servicing this war, like Google and others and
51:14
Speaker 13: some of their outposts in the region. And so you know,
51:17
Speaker 13: we've seen desalination plants hit in Iranian territory, the Iranians
51:22
Speaker 13: then responding in kind. You could see a massive expansion
51:25
Speaker 13: of this and if the war drags on, and Iran
51:29
Speaker 13: continues to show that it's not just you know, sort
51:31
Speaker 13: of propaganda their claims about their enduring capacity. It's going
51:36
Speaker 13: to tilt very heavily in favor of the smaller side.
51:39
Speaker 13: It's ultimately what caused the US to withdraw from Afghanistan.
51:43
Speaker 13: It's why the United States militarily lost the Vietnam War.
51:47
Speaker 13: It's also to an extent, why the US had to
51:48
Speaker 13: leave Iraq, which is that if you're fighting insurgents in
51:52
Speaker 13: a guerrilla war and it goes on, it becomes a
51:55
Speaker 13: war of attrition, and your own population starts to see
51:58
Speaker 13: body bags and tin coffins coming home home, and economic
52:01
Speaker 13: impact starts hitting ordinary Americans at the pump, at the
52:04
Speaker 13: grocery store, and then all of your friends, and in
52:06
Speaker 13: the case of Trump, including those that are linked up
52:09
Speaker 13: with your son in law's business and other family business stuff.
52:11
Speaker 13: If they start saying you are ruining the entire project,
52:15
Speaker 13: they're in big trouble. And so then that's why the
52:17
Speaker 13: Iranians say, this doesn't end on Trump's terms, it ends
52:21
Speaker 13: on ours, and the Iranians are obsessed with this idea.
52:24
Speaker 13: We will not allow them to think that they can
52:26
Speaker 13: end this without a clear guarantee that they don't believe
52:30
Speaker 13: they can keep doing this every four months. And the
52:32
Speaker 13: only way the Iranians believe they can do that is
52:34
Speaker 13: by sending a message to the region and to Americans,
52:38
Speaker 13: ordinary Americans that when you do this, everything becomes miserable
52:42
Speaker 13: and more expensive for you.
52:44
Speaker 3: So, from your conversations with them, have they made any
52:48
Speaker 3: attempts to kind of define what that looks like or
52:51
Speaker 3: is it more of a we'll know it when we
52:53
Speaker 3: see it, like, how do they How do Irani officials
52:56
Speaker 3: assess that Israel and the US governments have paid a
53:01
Speaker 3: sufficient cost such that they will not want to pay
53:04
Speaker 3: it easily again?
53:06
Speaker 4: You know, they're they're there.
53:09
Speaker 13: It's interesting because I have talked about this, and you know,
53:12
Speaker 13: at the very beginning of it, there was a lot
53:14
Speaker 13: of disdain for the role of the United Nations, and
53:17
Speaker 13: they pointed to, uh, this is Iranian officials, and they
53:20
Speaker 13: pointed to what happened with Trump's so called Board of
53:23
Speaker 13: Peace in Gaza and saying that, you know, there is
53:25
Speaker 13: no actual international guaranterer of.
53:27
Speaker 11: All of this.
53:28
Speaker 13: In recent days, I've been starting to hear Iranian officials
53:31
Speaker 13: talk more about a United Nations Security Council process and
53:35
Speaker 13: other international guarantees. You know, China also doesn't like this.
53:39
Speaker 13: Trump's gonna scheduled to go to China soon. Russia, of course,
53:43
Speaker 13: is certainly assisting Iran with intelligence and maybe in other
53:47
Speaker 13: ways as well. I think the the Iranians don't want
53:50
Speaker 13: to replay what they saw as the Gaza scenario where
53:53
Speaker 13: Trump creates this sort of fictitious path and it allows
53:56
Speaker 13: a colonial agenda to remain in place. So i'd I
54:00
Speaker 13: don't think that there's any reasonable guarantee in a world
54:03
Speaker 13: where the US is acting as it is under Trump,
54:05
Speaker 13: where the Iranians can say this agreement is worth something.
54:08
Speaker 13: I think what they're more looking at is inflicting enough
54:11
Speaker 13: pain and damage so that that is the motivating factor
54:14
Speaker 13: to any political framework that they will want to also
54:17
Speaker 13: include long term guarantees and a long term, established internationally
54:22
Speaker 13: certified agreement. But they're not going to accept the ceasefire
54:25
Speaker 13: like they did in the so called twelve Day war
54:27
Speaker 13: in June, which, by the way, US and Israel asked
54:29
Speaker 13: for not Iran.
54:31
Speaker 3: All right, well, interesting stuff, and again Jeremy, her reporting
54:34
Speaker 3: has been so helpful throughout this If you really wanted
54:37
Speaker 3: to know what Iranian officials were thinking, which you would
54:41
Speaker 3: think if you're an American war planner, you would want
54:43
Speaker 3: to know that you'd be wrong, but be a fair assumption,
54:47
Speaker 3: you'd want to know what the other side is thinking.
54:50
Speaker 3: Your reporting would be the place to find it. Drop
54:52
Speaker 3: site news dot com, where you can find the latest piece.
54:56
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for joining us.
54:58
Speaker 13: Thank you guys you want to put take