Latest / International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better / Energy Wars, Iran Escalation, Hormuz Crisis, and the Hidden Global Power Shift Behind Today’s Conflict and Market Turmoil

Transcript

Energy Wars, Iran Escalation, Hormuz Crisis, and the Hidden Global Power Shift Behind Today’s Conflict and Market Turmoil · International Flavor: Where the Truth Tastes Better

• 0:00
  Hello, good morning, welcome.
• 0:01
  I am Samuel Trapp.
• 0:03
  This is International Flavor.
• 0:04
  You are listening to DAMN Radio.
• 0:07
  Very glad that you are.
• 0:08
  If you feel like calling in, no problem
• 0:10
  at all on my end.
• 0:13
  573-746-8020 So, once again, the sleepless,
• 0:22
  sleepless Sammy has, what did I get, maybe
• 0:25
  45 minutes last night.
• 0:26
  I am so tired and not sleeping.
• 0:29
  I can barely stand it, but I don't
• 0:32
  sleep very well, never have and hmm, I
• 0:36
  got, there's a lot of thoughts churning in
• 0:39
  my head yesterday.
• 0:40
  So, everybody knows that we've opened Civic Outlaws
• 0:44
  on, by the way, CivicOutlaws.com forward slash
• 0:50
  podcast.
• 0:51
  You can get all of our prior versions
• 0:53
  of Civic Outlaws, internationalflavor.com.
• 0:57
  You can go out there and check out,
• 1:00
  oh geez, I got a year and a
• 1:01
  half worth of shows out there now.
• 1:03
  Unbelievable, and I can't believe I've been doing
• 1:06
  it that long.
• 1:07
  I got a bunch more in Russian language
• 1:08
  if you feel like going out to my
• 1:10
  YouTube channel.
• 1:11
  I got 15,000 followers in Russia, mother
• 1:14
  of Russia, where they sometimes like to listen
• 1:17
  to the opinion of the Russian speaking American,
• 1:20
  Russian speaking American, American and anyway, I have
• 1:25
  a lot of fun doing that kind of
• 1:27
  thing and I've been negligent in probably the
• 1:32
  last three, four months in getting out steady
• 1:36
  content for my Russian speaking channel and I'm
• 1:44
  gonna, I'm gonna cure that at some point
• 1:46
  here.
• 1:46
  Maybe I should do it while I'm not
• 1:48
  sleeping, but I try to sleep.
• 1:50
  I really do.
• 1:52
  Last night I didn't sleep.
• 1:53
  There's a dog in my house and I
• 1:56
  like dogs, but you know what?
• 1:59
  I like dogs when they belong to other
• 2:00
  people.
• 2:03
  This dog does belong to other people.
• 2:06
  This is my sister's dog and they are
• 2:08
  in town taking care of some things and
• 2:11
  they were going elsewhere and they couldn't take
• 2:15
  the dog.
• 2:15
  And so I got the dog.
• 2:17
  So anyway, the dog didn't keep me up.
• 2:19
  Dog was very well-behaved.
• 2:21
  You know, it's a gentleman and a scholar,
• 2:22
  very nice dog and but I'm glad it's
• 2:26
  somebody else's, you know, it's kind of like
• 2:27
  when you're a grandpa, you can pass the
• 2:30
  children back.
• 2:32
  I like kids too.
• 2:33
  Kids are wonderful.
• 2:34
  So you got, you know, I like kids.
• 2:37
  I think they're funny and heck, I'm a
• 2:40
  kid myself when you get right down to
• 2:42
  it.
• 2:42
  Anyway, Civic Outlaws, we've had some pretty good
• 2:48
  response.
• 2:49
  Well, you know, it's almost a success story.
• 2:53
  So I probably should save this till Friday,
• 2:56
  but I'm not gonna do it.
• 2:57
  I'm gonna, you know, I told a little
• 3:00
  bit about going up to the Capitol last
• 3:03
  week or whatever to do some sunshine things
• 3:05
  and I've been researching a little bit and
• 3:08
  I received a phone call yesterday from Benny
• 3:12
  Cook.
• 3:13
  We had a nice conversation.
• 3:15
  I've done a little bit of studying up
• 3:17
  on him personally and I never meant to
• 3:20
  attack him and I don't think I did.
• 3:22
  You know, I might be a little blunt
• 3:25
  because that's just the way I am, but
• 3:26
  I don't mean anything by that.
• 3:28
  It's just you know, this has been true
• 3:33
  for my entire life.
• 3:34
  Either love Samuel Trapp or you just hate
• 3:37
  him.
• 3:38
  You can't stand him.
• 3:39
  There aren't any middle-of-the-roaders.
• 3:40
  Eh, I could take him or leave him.
• 3:42
  Nope.
• 3:43
  Screw that guy.
• 3:44
  Can't stand him or oh, he's a great
• 3:46
  guy.
• 3:46
  You know, there is no middle of the
• 3:47
  road.
• 3:48
  And so that is unfortunate, but true.
• 3:51
  I think I'd rather be one of the
• 3:53
  nameless, faceless many that just get to wander
• 3:56
  through life being ignored.
• 3:58
  And so of late I've been trying to
• 4:01
  be, you know, a better behaved citizen, you
• 4:04
  know, good human being, that kind of thing.
• 4:07
  And I've always been, you know, polite and
• 4:10
  decent to people, but I definitely stand up
• 4:12
  for myself and for others.
• 4:14
  I have no problem with that, but it's
• 4:16
  not from a point of view of, you
• 4:17
  know, I might sometimes call people I don't
• 4:20
  know names, you know, like important figures, like,
• 4:24
  geez, what a moron, you know, Lindsey Graham.
• 4:27
  What a nut.
• 4:28
  What the hell's wrong with that guy?
• 4:30
  You know, I heard him again yesterday, and
• 4:33
  he's always on the TV.
• 4:35
  This idiot is now wandering around going, oh,
• 4:37
  geez, we need to take over the island
• 4:39
  of Cork down there.
• 4:41
  We got, we got two, two, what do
• 4:44
  they call them, marine detachments going.
• 4:46
  That's 2,500 friggin' soldiers, okay?
• 4:49
  So you're gonna take two, 2,500, 5
• 4:51
  ,000 soldiers, right?
• 4:52
  And you're, I'm gonna take over Cork Island.
• 4:54
  Well, good for you.
• 4:55
  They're all gonna get slaughtered on there, because
• 4:58
  nobody's gonna allow you to hold that island,
• 5:01
  and you have zero defense left.
• 5:03
  You know, what are you gonna do?
• 5:05
  You can't hold the Straits of Hormuz.
• 5:07
  It's, it's, I watched a very interesting Ammanu's
• 5:11
  Hound when it comes over there, and I
• 5:12
  watched a lady, I should play part of
• 5:15
  it for you, because it was, was there
• 5:18
  are fuel shortages of massive quantities, and the
• 5:26
  price of, they call it petrol, or you
• 5:30
  know, or benzene, stuff like that, in Pakistan,
• 5:34
  and in northern India, and Afghanistan, and those
• 5:41
  places over there, that, you know, Pakistan relies
• 5:45
  on its fuel from other places, and they
• 5:48
  have a lot of people living over there.
• 5:49
  Those are large populations, and they, they say
• 5:54
  that the, the prices, so about Palki Sharma,
• 5:58
  or whatever her name is, from Times of
• 6:00
  India, and I like watching her.
• 6:02
  In fact, I, you know, I might look
• 6:03
  her up, and, and play a little bit
• 6:05
  of her, of her show, because she is
• 6:09
  very well spoken, and it's, you know, well
• 6:14
  worth the effort to listen to this Palki
• 6:17
  Sharma, and she had a very, very good
• 6:18
  show on Times of India last night.
• 6:21
  It went too long.
• 6:22
  I don't have time to, you know, I
• 6:24
  don't like that show.
• 6:26
  The Russian versions, I like watching those.
• 6:28
  That's an interest to me, and it improves
• 6:30
  my Russian language, or stuff like that, but
• 6:32
  Palki Sharma, that's all in English, and I
• 6:35
  don't really care.
• 6:37
  I can do that here, right, but I
• 6:38
  like watching Al Jazeera English.
• 6:40
  I like watching Times of India, and a
• 6:42
  couple other Indian programs over there, to get
• 6:45
  a different perspective on it, and so the
• 6:47
  Al Jazeera comes, normally, most of it comes
• 6:49
  out of the Qatar area, you know, but
• 6:53
  there's plenty of different Al Jazeera nodes around
• 6:56
  the world, and you just get a different
• 6:58
  perspective, okay, and the Indian perspective, I tell
• 7:02
  you what, it's, it's going on in the
• 7:08
  rest of the world.
• 7:09
  They think the old Trumpster is, he's out
• 7:13
  there.
• 7:14
  They think he's nuts, and they think he's
• 7:18
  lost his marbles, and you know, maybe he
• 7:23
  has.
• 7:23
  I don't know, but let me see if
• 7:25
  I can get to my history.
• 7:27
  I don't know what the hell I'm doing
• 7:28
  on the, on the old computer here in
• 7:31
  the office.
• 7:31
  I need to be doing this in somewhere
• 7:34
  else, where my history is, that I have
• 7:38
  watched before, because Palki Sharma, but I tell
• 7:42
  you what, while we, while we find it,
• 7:46
  because I want to listen to it, we're
• 7:47
  gonna listen to Chicharita and Tutulala.
• 7:51
  No, we won't do that.
• 7:52
  How about some Polish, some Polish deep house
• 7:57
  music, as they call it.
• 7:59
  That's what we're gonna do, whilst I find
• 8:01
  it, because I want to, I'm intended to
• 8:03
  find this and have it easily pull up
• 8:05
  -able, but so far it's not working out
• 8:08
  in my, to my advantage, so we're gonna
• 8:11
  play some, some Polish music here.
• 9:04
  My second service is done.
• 9:28
  I don't
• 9:46
  care who you are, I just think that
• 9:48
  music is, is pretty, you know, no matter
• 9:50
  how you slice it.
• 9:51
  That's 2026 Nocna Dżadza i Relax, Relaxing music.
• 9:56
  Muzyka do atomix, the automatic mix in Polish.
• 10:02
  Very good stuff.
• 10:04
  So, let's see.
• 10:05
  Here is Palki Sharma in her, let's see
• 10:11
  if we have her name right, make sure
• 10:13
  I haven't been calling her the wrong name
• 10:15
  this whole time, but I don't think I
• 10:18
  have, and we shall make sure, because she
• 10:21
  has quite a bit of interesting news that
• 10:24
  she likes to go through, and the, she,
• 10:28
  they're talking about Trump delaying the strikes in
• 10:32
  Iran, and the falsehood of that narrative, because
• 10:38
  what they're really saying is that you can't
• 10:42
  get these Marine Expeditionary Forces there for five
• 10:45
  days, and so if you can convince, according
• 10:49
  to all the international players anyway, all the
• 10:53
  international news sources, if Trump can convince people
• 10:56
  that he's just, you know, given a ceasefire,
• 11:03
  and by the way, he came out yesterday
• 11:05
  and said that, oh gee, we started having
• 11:08
  really good discussions with Iran, and then the,
• 11:11
  the price of oil went down, right?
• 11:14
  Two hours later, all the Iranians come out
• 11:17
  and go, what the hell is he talking
• 11:18
  about?
• 11:18
  We haven't had any discussions with him, nor
• 11:21
  do we intend to, you know, we don't
• 11:23
  have any intention of having conversations with him.
• 11:25
  Nobody's even approached us about having conversations, and
• 11:29
  then Trump says that because they're having discussions,
• 11:32
  they're gonna have a five-day, you know,
• 11:34
  we're gonna have a five-day ceasefire.
• 11:36
  Well, that's because, according to everybody else around
• 11:40
  the world, that you can't get these two
• 11:43
  little tiny expeditionary forces of 2,500 apiece,
• 11:47
  they're in time to do anything, and what
• 11:50
  are 2,500 guys gonna do anyway, in
• 11:53
  truth?
• 11:54
  You know, and you got Lindsey Graham out
• 11:56
  there going, well, it's just like taking Iwo
• 11:59
  Jima.
• 12:00
  What the hell is wrong with this guy?
• 12:03
  Oh, yeah, you were there, right, Lindsey?
• 12:06
  You were there.
• 12:07
  Let's, we're taking over Iwo Jima.
• 12:10
  Here it comes.
• 12:12
  We said, we lost 26,000 soldiers at
• 12:15
  Iwo Jima, by the way, in that assault,
• 12:20
  and so it wasn't necessarily, for all involved,
• 12:24
  nothing but a victory.
• 12:25
  I mean, that's a callous dude.
• 12:27
  I mean, that is one callous guy, and
• 12:31
  just, just throw all kinds of bodies at
• 12:33
  it, long as it ain't me, and that,
• 12:36
  that is, I tell you what, I have
• 12:39
  zero respect for that guy, and I mean
• 12:42
  none.
• 12:43
  You know, in fact, the amount of respect
• 12:46
  I have is so low, you'd have to
• 12:48
  reach up to touch the bottom of the
• 12:50
  level of respect I got for him.
• 12:52
  It is less than zero, and that was
• 12:56
  a good movie, by the way.
• 12:57
  If you haven't ever seen the movie Less
• 12:59
  Than Zero, that was a good movie in
• 13:01
  the 80s, and I don't know why that
• 13:03
  just struck my mind, but, but Less Than
• 13:05
  Zero is the amount of respect I have
• 13:08
  for that raving lunatic.
• 13:11
  So, I'm gonna try to find the right,
• 13:16
  and she got talking about it right here.
• 13:20
  Where is it, and all the stuff that
• 13:23
  Trump delaying on the peace talks, and let's
• 13:26
  listen to her point of view.
• 13:27
  This, this come from India, right, and, and
• 13:30
  Palki Sharma, you can always find her out
• 13:31
  on First Post, and then she's got a,
• 13:34
  she used to be on, maybe she still
• 13:36
  is.
• 13:36
  I'm not sure how they all go, but
• 13:38
  look her up.
• 13:38
  It's P-A-L-K-I Sharma, S
• 13:40
  -H-A-R-M-A, and she's on
• 13:43
  First Post.
• 13:43
  She has, First Post has 9.47 million
• 13:47
  subscribers, and so it's, it's, this was streamed
• 13:52
  21 hours ago, okay, and, and I'm starting
• 13:56
  it a tiny bit in the middle, so
• 13:58
  let's hear what she has to say.
• 14:01
  Make sure I got the volume appropriately up,
• 14:05
  and hope that it's not too loud for
• 14:07
  us all to go deaf upon, but a
• 14:10
  different point of view for you, okay?
• 14:13
  President has delayed his latest attacks.
• 14:15
  Instead, he's focusing on diplomacy.
• 14:17
  He says talks are underway.
• 14:19
  Wait, we got to go back a little
• 14:21
  bit.
• 14:24
  ...were killed in this accident, while several others
• 14:26
  were injured.
• 14:27
  The collision took place on Sunday night, after
• 14:29
  which all flights at the airport were grounded.
• 14:32
  The long-awaited trial into Greece's worst train
• 14:35
  tragedy begins, but the hearing was adjourned to
• 14:38
  the 1st of April, due to court-ruled
• 14:39
  chaos.
• 14:39
  Well, we're getting some extra news, because I
• 14:41
  can't control this.
• 14:41
  The room was too small to handle the
• 14:42
  huge interest in this case.
• 14:43
  57 people had died in the train collision
• 14:46
  in 2023.
• 14:49
  A new rule in Hong Kong forces people
• 14:52
  to share their phone or computer passwords with
• 14:55
  the police.
• 14:56
  This relates to investigations linked to the national
• 14:58
  security law, which was imposed by China in
• 15:01
  2020.
• 15:02
  Those who refuse to do so will face
• 15:04
  one year in jail.
• 15:07
  And a top German court rejects a landmark
• 15:10
  climate case.
• 15:11
  Environmentalists wanted BMW and Mercedes-Benz to stop
• 15:14
  selling combustion engine cars from 2030, but the
• 15:17
  court ruled that citizens' personal rights were not
• 15:21
  affected by the business activities of the auto
• 15:23
  giants.
• 15:28
  Finally, here we go.
• 15:30
  Sorry about that.
• 16:02
  It's week four of the West-Asia war.
• 16:04
  After 24 days of fighting, there is some
• 16:07
  hope, some indications of de-escalation, and it
• 16:10
  came from Donald Trump himself.
• 16:12
  The US president has delayed his latest attacks.
• 16:15
  Instead, he is focusing on diplomacy.
• 16:17
  He says talks are underway for a complete
• 16:20
  resolution.
• 16:22
  And this is coming after a brutal weekend
• 16:24
  of fighting.
• 16:26
  We saw missiles thudding into Israeli cities, we
• 16:28
  saw threats and deadlines from the White House,
• 16:30
  and as usual, defiance from Tehran.
• 16:34
  So will this lead to a meaningful de
• 16:36
  -escalation?
• 16:37
  Let's look at Trump's message first.
• 16:40
  I am pleased to report that the United
• 16:42
  States of America and the country of Iran
• 16:44
  have had, over the last two days, very
• 16:47
  good and productive conversations regarding a complete and
• 16:50
  total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle
• 16:52
  East, based on the tenor and tone of
• 16:55
  these in-depth, detailed and constructive conversations, which
• 16:59
  will continue throughout the week.
• 17:01
  I have instructed the Department of War to
• 17:03
  postpone any and all military strikes against Iranian
• 17:07
  power plants and energy infrastructure for a five
• 17:10
  -day period.
• 17:13
  And that is certainly written by Trump.
• 17:16
  Look at all the typos.
• 17:19
  Pleased to report, instead of pleased to report.
• 17:22
  And which, from Harry Potter, instead of W
• 17:24
  -H-I-C-H.
• 17:26
  So rest assured, this is Trump talking.
• 17:30
  How do you like to be corrected in
• 17:33
  English by a foreign news journalist who doesn't
• 17:39
  speak English as her native language?
• 17:42
  That is depressing, isn't it?
• 17:47
  By the way, last week he called it
• 17:49
  the straight.
• 17:50
  The Hormuz.
• 17:51
  Straight.
• 17:53
  S-T-R-A-I-G-H-T.
• 17:56
  Straight.
• 17:56
  Oh, goodness.
• 17:59
  I can't take it.
• 18:00
  Sunday, Trump had issued a serious threat.
• 18:02
  He asked Iran to open the Strait of
• 18:04
  Hormuz within 48 hours.
• 18:05
  If not, he threatened to destroy Iran's power
• 18:08
  plants.
• 18:10
  Basically, plunge the country into darkness.
• 18:13
  That 48-hour deadline was supposed to expire
• 18:16
  tomorrow morning, but now Trump has delayed it
• 18:18
  by five days.
• 18:21
  What's more, he says talks are underway to
• 18:23
  end the war.
• 18:24
  Now, just to be clear, only attacks on
• 18:26
  power plants have been delayed.
• 18:28
  The other attacks and operations continue.
• 18:32
  And yet, this is a sudden and stunning
• 18:34
  climb down.
• 18:36
  And what is Iran saying?
• 18:38
  Well, they have not confirmed direct or indirect
• 18:40
  talks.
• 18:41
  But their foreign ministry says efforts are underway
• 18:44
  to decrease tensions with the United States.
• 18:48
  So who exactly is Donald Trump talking to?
• 18:50
  The president says his team is speaking to
• 18:52
  a top leader, but not the supreme leader
• 18:55
  in Iran.
• 18:56
  He says if the talks succeed, the war
• 18:58
  will end soon.
• 19:00
  It's probably Lindsey Graham or Benjamin Netanyahu.
• 19:06
  We have had very, very strong talks.
• 19:09
  We'll see where they lead.
• 19:10
  We have major points of agreement.
• 19:13
  I would say almost all points of agreement.
• 19:15
  If they carry through with that, it'll end
• 19:19
  that problem, that conflict.
• 19:22
  And I think it'll end it very, very
• 19:23
  substantially.
• 19:24
  They want very much to make a deal.
• 19:26
  We'd like to make a deal, too.
• 19:28
  We're going to get together today by probably
• 19:32
  phone because it's very hard to find a
• 19:36
  country.
• 19:36
  It's very hard for them to get out.
• 19:38
  Will Iran still be able to control the
• 19:39
  oil?
• 19:41
  Be jointly controlled.
• 19:43
  By whom?
• 19:44
  Maybe me.
• 19:46
  Maybe me.
• 19:47
  Me and the Ayatollah, whoever the Ayatollah is,
• 19:50
  whoever the next Ayatollah.
• 19:52
  Look, and there'll also be a form of
• 19:54
  a very serious form of a regime change.
• 19:58
  Now, in all fairness, everybody's been killed from
• 20:01
  the regime.
• 20:02
  They're really starting off.
• 20:03
  There's automatically a regime change.
• 20:09
  Nothing is clear yet.
• 20:10
  Some Israeli sources say the U.S. is
• 20:12
  talking to Iran's parliament speaker.
• 20:14
  His name is Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.
• 20:18
  Reports say he's exchanging messages via Pakistan, Turkey
• 20:21
  and Egypt.
• 20:22
  And if true, this is big news.
• 20:24
  The markets are already cheering Trump's statement.
• 20:26
  It's the first indication of de-escalation and
• 20:29
  talks.
• 20:29
  The question is, what led to it?
• 20:32
  Look at what happened on Saturday.
• 20:34
  Israel and the U.S. hit Iran's nuclear
• 20:37
  sites.
• 20:38
  These are located in the city of Natanz
• 20:40
  in central Iran.
• 20:41
  These nuclear sites were hit.
• 20:44
  In response, Iran fired a massive volley of
• 20:47
  missiles at Israel.
• 20:50
  Two of those missiles slammed into Israeli cities,
• 20:52
  Arad in the south and Dimona in the
• 20:54
  Negev desert.
• 20:56
  More than 180 Israelis were injured in this
• 20:58
  attack.
• 21:12
  Showing some Dimona here.
• 21:14
  It's not good.
• 21:25
  At any rate, if you like to get
• 21:28
  a different perspective from someone that speaks from
• 21:31
  the other side of the planet and from
• 21:33
  somebody who doesn't have necessarily a vested interest
• 21:40
  in...
• 21:42
  I don't know what.
• 21:44
  Certainly in escalation.
• 21:46
  But they're talking about...
• 21:47
  So the big deals on her show.
• 21:50
  And her show is way too long to
• 21:52
  part off all the parts that I want
• 21:54
  to get.
• 21:55
  And to go to, for example, what is
• 22:01
  important for India right now.
• 22:05
  Because the rest of the planet, at least
• 22:10
  in the Western Asia side of the planet,
• 22:15
  and including India.
• 22:17
  So India, Sri Lanka, all of the places
• 22:23
  over in that general area.
• 22:26
  All the Stan countries, Georgia, all the way
• 22:30
  through Afghanistan and Azerbaijan and then into Iran
• 22:34
  and all of those places over there.
• 22:37
  They rely very heavily on products that come
• 22:42
  through the Straits of Hormuz or through the
• 22:45
  Red Sea and through the Indian Ocean.
• 22:50
  And so there was a long discussion on
• 22:53
  this.
• 22:55
  And there was a talk about the current...
• 23:03
  Their planting season is starting right now for
• 23:06
  all of the big grains.
• 23:08
  Your rices, your corns, all that stuff.
• 23:11
  This is when the monsoon season begins over
• 23:13
  there.
• 23:13
  And so they want to get all the
• 23:14
  rain.
• 23:15
  They want to get as much rain as
• 23:17
  they can.
• 23:18
  But fertilizer is extremely important.
• 23:20
  That they got to have this fertilizer.
• 23:22
  And all the fertilizer comes through those areas.
• 23:27
  So they're down on fertilizer.
• 23:29
  And their conflicts, including oil, talk about cooking
• 23:35
  oil all comes through there too.
• 23:38
  And different products of...
• 23:41
  I forget what they call it.
• 23:42
  It's another shortened version, an acronym, like liquid
• 23:49
  natural gas, LNG.
• 23:53
  But there's also liquid cooking gas.
• 23:55
  It's a different acronym.
• 23:57
  But that all comes through there too.
• 24:00
  And so restaurants are shutting down.
• 24:05
  And they're open so many hours a day.
• 24:09
  And that's it.
• 24:11
  And the same is going on in Pakistan.
• 24:13
  And so the harm that this is causing
• 24:17
  the rest of the world for the U
• 24:20
  .S. to take over the energy infrastructure of
• 24:23
  Iran, which I don't see happening.
• 24:26
  Trump is far more positive about that end
• 24:32
  result than I am.
• 24:34
  I don't believe it.
• 24:37
  And I've heard far too many stories.
• 24:40
  And she's pretty middle of the road.
• 24:43
  Al Jazeera?
• 24:44
  They're not.
• 24:47
  Russian?
• 24:48
  Not.
• 24:49
  And all of those things that are going
• 24:52
  on are certainly worthy of understanding.
• 24:56
  Turkish TV, not.
• 24:58
  Because they have English versions of Turkish TV
• 25:02
  too.
• 25:03
  And I like to watch various and sundry
• 25:06
  places where it comes in.
• 25:07
  And it's nice to get a different perspective,
• 25:10
  is all I'm saying.
• 25:12
  And some of these perspectives, well, most of
• 25:16
  them, do not agree with all of the
• 25:19
  crap that is pumped down our, well, pumped
• 25:23
  into our ears.
• 25:25
  You know, the sunshine in very dark places.
• 25:29
  That are being pumped into places, you know,
• 25:34
  that it doesn't belong.
• 25:36
  And so I don't know.
• 25:38
  I'd like to see this over.
• 25:41
  I'd like to see Trump.
• 25:43
  I don't know what he's actually gotten out
• 25:45
  of it.
• 25:46
  Okay, so what has been obtained here?
• 25:50
  Well, we got regime change.
• 25:52
  That's not what you said you were after.
• 25:55
  At least the first day.
• 25:57
  You know, the next day you said, you
• 25:58
  know, it's changed so many times, we don't
• 26:00
  know what now we're after.
• 26:02
  And I kind of believe along the lines
• 26:04
  of what I said yesterday, and I was
• 26:08
  leaning that way anyway, but after listening to
• 26:11
  the weekend, or over the weekend to a
• 26:14
  bunch of people who might understand the Iran
• 26:18
  situation a little better than me, I certainly
• 26:21
  believe it now.
• 26:24
  And if...
• 26:25
  I still think that we were kind of...
• 26:28
  not dragged kicking and screaming.
• 26:31
  We want to be there too.
• 26:32
  You know, you got our military industrial complex.
• 26:36
  Boy, they really want that extra $200 billion.
• 26:39
  And they want it.
• 26:41
  And so, you know, they're for any war.
• 26:43
  Whatever you got, let's do it.
• 26:46
  If it means we're going to get to
• 26:47
  $40 trillion in debt sooner, well, more power
• 26:50
  to us, let's do it.
• 26:52
  Because we don't have to pay that back.
• 26:54
  You know, the people running the show anyway,
• 26:58
  they don't have to pay it back.
• 27:00
  You know, America has to pay it back.
• 27:02
  And so that, you know...
• 27:05
  I had a discussion with...
• 27:06
  So now I've had it with several people,
• 27:08
  because I've been floating this idea to people
• 27:11
  after somebody else floated the idea to me,
• 27:13
  that all the debt is going to be
• 27:17
  done.
• 27:19
  Debt will disappear by the time Trump leaves
• 27:24
  office.
• 27:24
  There will be $0 in debt.
• 27:28
  And I've heard more than one person allege
• 27:31
  this.
• 27:35
  A curious, curious concept.
• 27:39
  You know what?
• 27:39
  I'd love to see it.
• 27:41
  You know, it'd be great.
• 27:42
  Maybe you do it by pumping the gas
• 27:44
  prices up so high that you can sell
• 27:46
  the U.S. surplus for a larger amount,
• 27:49
  but then all the only people that get
• 27:51
  it are private people.
• 27:53
  So I'm not so sure I believe it.
• 27:56
  I don't get it.
• 27:57
  Tariffs, I don't think tariffs are going to
• 27:59
  get us there.
• 28:01
  I'm pretty confident of that small deal.
• 28:06
  You know, tariffs are not going to get
• 28:09
  us there.
• 28:10
  And I'm a little bit on the low
• 28:13
  -volume side.
• 28:14
  I wonder what's going on there.
• 28:16
  Hmm.
• 28:18
  Well, I think somebody wears these headphones very
• 28:23
  loud.
• 28:23
  Maybe that's the problem.
• 28:24
  Anyway, I'm rambling, and I apologize for that,
• 28:27
  but we're going to get into some world
• 28:31
  news.
• 28:31
  I have been kind of all over this
• 28:33
  place, and there was a report in the
• 28:41
  New York Times, and here's another foolish, foolish
• 28:44
  deal.
• 28:45
  U.S. considering sending airborne troops to Iran.
• 28:50
  This is according to the New York Times.
• 28:53
  A brigade of some 3,000 paratroopers, U
• 28:58
  .S. military officials, are looking into the possibility
• 29:02
  of deploying airborne troops to capture Karg Island.
• 29:06
  The New York Times is reporting, citing American
• 29:10
  defense sources, the U.S. struck military targets
• 29:13
  on the island around 15 miles from the
• 29:16
  Iranian coast in mid-March, but has refrained
• 29:21
  from hitting the energy infrastructure on that island.
• 29:25
  Reports have been circulating since then, claiming that
• 29:28
  Washington plans to launch a ground operation and
• 29:32
  take control of the key oil hub in
• 29:35
  an attempt to cripple Tehran's economy after three
• 29:39
  weeks from the start of the U.S.-Israeli
• 29:42
  war.
• 29:43
  Why don't we call it what it is,
• 29:46
  you know?
• 29:47
  New York Times.
• 29:49
  The unprovoked, full-scale, massive war of aggression
• 29:56
  by Trump's war of aggression.
• 29:59
  Or are we going to be a Trump
• 30:01
  stooge if we say that?
• 30:02
  We're going to be a puppet of Trump
• 30:04
  if we say anything other than that?
• 30:07
  You know, if you don't claim it to
• 30:09
  be that, maybe you're a Trump puppet, right?
• 30:13
  Iran has been warning that it would set
• 30:16
  oil and gas facilities in the Gulf nations
• 30:19
  on fire if a move against Karg Island
• 30:22
  is made.
• 30:22
  And on Monday, it threatened to retaliate by
• 30:26
  mining the Strait of Hormuz and all the
• 30:28
  waterways in the region.
• 30:29
  So last night I watched another video that
• 30:33
  was quite interesting on what they call micro
• 30:38
  -submarines, okay?
• 30:41
  And Iran in the Hormuz, in that area,
• 30:48
  near the Straits of Hormuz in the Gulf,
• 30:50
  they have 10 or 12 micro-subs.
• 30:58
  And so they're extremely hard to detect because
• 31:02
  of their size, they're so small, because of
• 31:05
  the traffic that goes on there.
• 31:07
  A U.S. sub would have an extremely
• 31:09
  difficult time maneuvering in there in any realistic
• 31:14
  way because it's somewhat shallow in there and
• 31:18
  they're easily detectable because of their size.
• 31:22
  And what these micro-subs, I forget the
• 31:27
  nomenclature of them, but these micro-subs have
• 31:30
  a small crew, they're fast underwater submarines, and
• 31:34
  they can lay mines all over the place.
• 31:38
  And so they can go in and set
• 31:40
  these.
• 31:41
  And this is the risk in escalation that
• 31:44
  everybody has been warning about, is taking the
• 31:47
  Straits of Hormuz.
• 31:49
  And, you know, nobody wants to go, nobody
• 31:56
  wants to get into this.
• 31:57
  So Oman is on one side of the
• 31:59
  Straits of Hormuz and Iran's on the other,
• 32:03
  and technically those waters are international in nature.
• 32:08
  And nobody's paid to go through those ever.
• 32:12
  But an Indian transport ship with one of
• 32:19
  the types of oil, and I forget which
• 32:21
  one, whether it was regular oil or whether
• 32:24
  it was the cooking oil or one of
• 32:28
  those varietals of some sort, they paid $2
• 32:35
  million.
• 32:36
  Well, they've been letting them go through.
• 32:40
  Or they said that that strait used to
• 32:44
  take upwards of 30 to 40 ships a
• 32:52
  day going through there.
• 32:53
  And I don't know if any of you
• 32:55
  have ever seen the Bosphorus Straits, but I'm
• 32:57
  telling you that is incredible to watch.
• 33:02
  I've been to Turkey a bunch of times,
• 33:05
  and I like sitting on there.
• 33:06
  They have great restaurants up and down there
• 33:09
  in Istanbul, and there are fantastic walkways along
• 33:14
  the Straits of Bosphorus.
• 33:16
  I've taken a couple.
• 33:17
  So if you fly Turkish Airways and you're
• 33:20
  going to Russia or you're going to India
• 33:22
  or you're going to Australia or wherever, you
• 33:25
  can fly, like, Miami, Istanbul, and then on
• 33:30
  further, right?
• 33:31
  And you go Turkish Airways, and they have
• 33:32
  great airlines, and they have excellent food and
• 33:35
  very comfortable new planes.
• 33:39
  They're not like old crappy U.S. planes.
• 33:42
  It's good stuff, and you can get in
• 33:45
  there, and they really take care of you.
• 33:46
  And Turkish Airways, if your flight is overnight,
• 33:51
  like if you have a layover that's overnight,
• 33:54
  they give you a hotel room included with
• 33:56
  the price of your ticket.
• 33:58
  Or if you arrive, because a lot of
• 34:01
  times you fly out of Miami at nighttime,
• 34:03
  right?
• 34:04
  And so if you fly out of Miami
• 34:05
  at nighttime, and it's about an 8-hour,
• 34:08
  10-hour flight to Istanbul, and you fly
• 34:11
  to Istanbul and you stop and you get
• 34:13
  there in the morning, well, your flight might
• 34:15
  not be, for example, to Ufa or to
• 34:18
  Kazan or wherever inside of Russia or even
• 34:21
  up to Moscow or wherever.
• 34:24
  You have a day trip in there, and
• 34:29
  they take you on an excursion.
• 34:33
  Did I just say excursion?
• 34:35
  Excursion of the city of Istanbul.
• 34:40
  And Istanbul's huge.
• 34:42
  There's like four or five international airports there.
• 34:46
  The entire, the city has got like, I
• 34:49
  don't know, 12 million, 14 million.
• 34:51
  It's huge, and it is enormous, and it
• 34:55
  is packed, and it is very clean, very,
• 35:00
  I mean, awesome.
• 35:03
  You know, it's really cool.
• 35:05
  And there's plenty of touristy places, and there's
• 35:07
  plenty of wharf areas to go, and there's
• 35:09
  lots of mosques that were built hundreds and
• 35:13
  hundreds of years ago, sometimes thousands of years
• 35:16
  ago.
• 35:16
  And they got the, there's huge soccer fields
• 35:20
  down there that you can go and tour
• 35:21
  in, and you can walk just about everywhere.
• 35:24
  You wouldn't want to because it's so long.
• 35:26
  But you take, you know, they have all
• 35:30
  kinds of public transportation.
• 35:32
  But if you fly into the international airport,
• 35:36
  then you can, you get a free day
• 35:40
  trip through there.
• 35:41
  So you can watch these things go.
• 35:43
  And so if you get to go over
• 35:46
  there, then you definitely should get an example
• 35:50
  to see what goes on over there.
• 35:54
  But it is phenomenal the amount of ships
• 35:56
  that go through there.
• 35:57
  So when you compare that and the amount
• 36:00
  of ships, the amount of traffic out there
• 36:02
  in the Bosphorus Straits is unbelievable.
• 36:06
  And we're talking huge, huge ships, and they're
• 36:11
  everywhere.
• 36:12
  Now, those, somebody said is about three times,
• 36:16
  four times the size of what goes on
• 36:20
  in the Straits of Hormuz.
• 36:22
  And Turkey charges to go through the Bosphorus
• 36:27
  Straits up to 250 to 400 to 500,
• 36:33
  half a million dollars, passage for a cargo
• 36:37
  ship goes through there to go through the
• 36:41
  Bosphorus Straits.
• 36:42
  Panama Canal, 250 to 500,000 for a
• 36:46
  ship to go through there.
• 36:48
  So, I mean, this is a big deal.
• 36:50
  Zero to go through the Straits of Hormuz.
• 36:57
  And they don't, between Oman and Iran, they
• 37:02
  don't charge anything.
• 37:03
  Now, that one is declared an international throughway
• 37:07
  and a critical world thing.
• 37:09
  But Iran's never signed on to that, you
• 37:11
  know, that agreement.
• 37:13
  And just like Panama hasn't signed on to
• 37:17
  keep theirs open.
• 37:18
  I mean, they charge people.
• 37:20
  Bosphorus Straits, they keep it.
• 37:21
  There's a Straits around Indonesia.
• 37:24
  I forget the name of it.
• 37:25
  But between Indonesia and the other islands in
• 37:28
  there, to get through there, those places charge
• 37:30
  money too.
• 37:31
  And a lot of people, I mean, there's
• 37:35
  Canadian ones that charge you to get through
• 37:38
  those, you know, Great Lakes and whatnot.
• 37:42
  You know, those aren't just open.
• 37:43
  People charge.
• 37:44
  You got to pay a fee to go
• 37:45
  through.
• 37:47
  But not so in the Straits of Hormuz.
• 37:49
  Well, just the last couple of weeks, the
• 37:54
  traffic has gone down from, call it 40
• 37:57
  a day, to the total amount of ships
• 38:02
  that have gone through in the last three
• 38:05
  weeks is about 25, 24, 25.
• 38:10
  According to Palki Sharma in the show that
• 38:14
  I was playing for you there.
• 38:16
  She says that their total amount that have
• 38:20
  been going through, the total amount is, that
• 38:25
  is nothing.
• 38:27
  The total, it's like one to two a
• 38:29
  day.
• 38:30
  And one that went through yesterday, the only
• 38:33
  ones that are, they're letting them go free
• 38:35
  if they're coming through from Iran with Iranian
• 38:39
  products, going to Iranian customers like India and
• 38:45
  like China and places like that or with
• 38:48
  their products.
• 38:49
  They're letting them go through.
• 38:51
  But everybody else.
• 38:53
  Nope.
• 38:53
  You're either not getting through at all or
• 38:56
  over the last few days, they charge somebody
• 39:01
  two million bucks to get their ship through
• 39:04
  and they paid it.
• 39:05
  And, you know, it was a European bound
• 39:08
  ship that charged two million bucks.
• 39:10
  Now, it's quite a bit more than Turkey
• 39:12
  is going to charge you quite a bit
• 39:13
  more than Panama is going to charge you.
• 39:19
  But at least you can get through and
• 39:22
  you can get there.
• 39:23
  So I think I think we might be
• 39:25
  experiencing something different.
• 39:26
  I don't know.
• 39:27
  I'm interested to see what happens.
• 39:28
  But the you know, the US going over
• 39:31
  there and claiming they're going to, you know,
• 39:33
  control.
• 39:34
  You know, Trump says he and he and
• 39:36
  the next Ayatollah are going to come are
• 39:39
  going to control the Straits of Hormuz.
• 39:41
  But I don't know.
• 39:42
  We killed them all.
• 39:43
  We can deal with over there.
• 39:45
  We killed them all.
• 39:46
  And that's I don't know.
• 39:51
  I'm very interested to see what happens over
• 39:53
  there.
• 39:54
  There was reports that remember just in the
• 39:57
  last couple over the weekend, Qatar was going
• 39:59
  to help resolve the problems between the United
• 40:02
  States and Iran because Qatar has always been
• 40:05
  a good middleman.
• 40:06
  Qatar has refused as well.
• 40:09
  They don't want anything to do with it.
• 40:10
  And so, you know, there are no who's
• 40:13
  going to be the middleman.
• 40:15
  There's talk to Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping
• 40:17
  might be the middleman.
• 40:19
  Now, I doubt that, frankly, but I've seen
• 40:24
  reports about that.
• 40:25
  So but Iran, it's been saying if you
• 40:28
  if you if the Gulf states, the Gulf
• 40:32
  nations and the US and Israel, especially with
• 40:36
  the US attempt anything on Karg Island that,
• 40:39
  you know, three thousand soldiers aren't, you know,
• 40:42
  from the 82nd Airborne aren't going to be
• 40:45
  enough.
• 40:45
  You know, your immediate response force or your.
• 40:52
  Marine expeditionary group of twenty five hundred.
• 40:56
  That's the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, which has
• 40:59
  been on its way to the Middle East
• 41:00
  now for 10 days.
• 41:02
  Not there yet.
• 41:04
  This is a scenario where the paratroopers will
• 41:07
  augment the Marines.
• 41:08
  You know, said some officials from the Pentagon,
• 41:11
  according to New York Times.
• 41:13
  Anyway, despite being able to arrive swiftly, the
• 41:16
  airborne troops have no heavy equipment that that
• 41:20
  is actually possessed by the Marines.
• 41:22
  But even that's not really heavy equipment.
• 41:24
  It's like, you know, maybe Bradley style or
• 41:27
  even lighter than a Bradley that would need
• 41:30
  to repel possible Iranian efforts to take Karg
• 41:33
  Island back or just bomb the crap out
• 41:36
  of it because they couldn't stop that.
• 41:37
  And I've been saying this since this started,
• 41:41
  that if if if we're foolish enough to
• 41:43
  go and think that we would control the
• 41:46
  Karg Island, you can't control enough of the
• 41:50
  ground and the underground or those little.
• 41:56
  Many submarines and the.
• 42:02
  Missile abilities of Iran in a way sufficient
• 42:07
  to protect those soldiers, that's a death wish,
• 42:10
  you know, right there.
• 42:12
  And and what is the U.S. interest
• 42:14
  over there?
• 42:15
  Seriously.
• 42:16
  I mean, what is it?
• 42:19
  U.S. if the U.S. hadn't done
• 42:21
  this in the first place, the problem wouldn't
• 42:23
  exist.
• 42:24
  So I don't know.
• 42:26
  I.
• 42:28
  I'd like to think that there was a
• 42:30
  plan from the beginning.
• 42:31
  I'm one of those who just doesn't believe
• 42:34
  there was one that they thought it was
• 42:37
  going to be easier than it was.
• 42:38
  The decapitation.
• 42:39
  We're going to cut the head off the
• 42:41
  snake.
• 42:42
  And that's that.
• 42:43
  I don't believe that's been well thought out.
• 42:46
  The director of national counterterrorism, Joe Kent.
• 42:49
  Remember that guy who resigned last week, told
• 42:53
  The Washington Post on Monday that the American
• 42:56
  operation on Karg Island would be a disaster
• 43:00
  and would amount to giving Iran a bunch
• 43:04
  of hostages on an island that they could
• 43:07
  barrage, with drones and missiles.
• 43:10
  I don't agree with him completely, but I
• 43:12
  think it's a foolish move no matter how
• 43:15
  you slice it.
• 43:18
  I don't know.
• 43:19
  Belgium is jumping in.
• 43:21
  Belgium has deployed military to protect Jewish sites
• 43:25
  in major cities around the country.
• 43:28
  Belgian authorities announced last week that the armed
• 43:32
  forces will begin helping the police guard Jewish
• 43:35
  places of worship and educational institutions in the
• 43:41
  capital, as well as in Antwerp.
• 43:43
  And the leash and the decisions followed an
• 43:46
  attack on a synagogue and similar incidents in
• 43:50
  the Netherlands.
• 43:51
  And after the launch of the US, I
• 43:53
  mean, people are.
• 43:54
  People are reacting here.
• 43:56
  On Monday, Franken confirmed that the soldiers had
• 43:59
  begun their mission and posted a photo of
• 44:03
  soldiers in bulletproof vests and with rifles.
• 44:07
  You know, I don't know.
• 44:13
  Let's see.
• 44:16
  Right before that, right before Trump posted about
• 44:21
  Iran yesterday morning and said that he and
• 44:26
  I thought and I'm telling you, I thought
• 44:29
  about this the minute I heard it.
• 44:32
  And I heard it yesterday morning on this
• 44:35
  show is when I first saw it.
• 44:39
  I saw it.
• 44:41
  Five hundred and eighty million dollars in oil
• 44:46
  bets were placed right before Trump made his
• 44:53
  statement that caused the price of oil to
• 44:57
  go down.
• 44:57
  So these would be put contracts.
• 44:59
  Right.
• 45:00
  So oil traders placed more than half a
• 45:03
  billion dollars in bets minutes before Trump announced
• 45:10
  productive talks with Iran on Monday, said the
• 45:14
  Financial Times.
• 45:15
  The burst of activity followed a sharp price
• 45:19
  drop.
• 45:20
  Followed by a sharp price drop, raised questions
• 45:25
  about the possible advanced knowledge among market participants.
• 45:30
  About 6200 Brent and WTI futures contracts changed
• 45:36
  hands between six forty nine a.m. and
• 45:40
  six fifty a.m. in New York.
• 45:44
  A one minute flurry worth five hundred and
• 45:47
  eighty million dollars based on Financial Times calculations
• 45:52
  using Bloomberg data volumes in both benchmarks.
• 45:56
  Brent and U.S. West Texas Intermediate spiked
• 46:00
  simultaneously about twenty seven seconds before the six
• 46:04
  fifty a.m. while S&P 500 futures
• 46:08
  surged right afterward.
• 46:10
  The trades were roughly 15 minutes before Trump
• 46:13
  said on true social social that there had
• 46:15
  been productive conversations with Tehran to end the
• 46:19
  war in Iran.
• 46:19
  His seven oh four a.m. post triggered
• 46:22
  a sharp sell off in energy markets while
• 46:26
  S&P 500 futures and European equities rallied
• 46:29
  as investors paired their bets into a prolonged
• 46:32
  conflict.
• 46:33
  It was unclear who was behind the trades,
• 46:36
  said the Financial Times.
• 46:37
  It's hard to prove causality, but you have
• 46:41
  to wonder who would have been relatively aggressive
• 46:44
  at selling futures at that point.
• 46:48
  Fifteen minutes before Trump's post early in the
• 46:51
  morning on a Monday after he had just
• 46:54
  given a 24 hour 48 hour deadline over
• 46:58
  the weekend.
• 46:59
  I mean, there's a lot of money to
• 47:03
  be made, a lot of money to be
• 47:06
  made in this.
• 47:07
  And under the rules of CME Group, the
• 47:09
  Chicago Base Exchange, the Chicago Merchant Mercantile Exchange
• 47:13
  that hosts trading in benchmark Brent and WTI
• 47:17
  crude, large trader positions must be disclosed daily.
• 47:22
  The identity of specific traders is not publicly
• 47:25
  available in real time.
• 47:28
  The concentrated one minute spike stands out even
• 47:32
  against typically high trade volumes, which is usually
• 47:35
  do run into the hundreds of thousands of
• 47:37
  contracts over a full session.
• 47:39
  The timing of the trades and who could
• 47:42
  have benefited raises questions, though the White House
• 47:45
  pushes back, denying that any administration official illegally
• 47:49
  profited from the insider knowledge.
• 47:51
  I wonder if Nancy Pelosi made any money
• 47:57
  of this every time there's some crap or
• 47:59
  Lindsey Graham.
• 48:00
  Gee, everybody becomes a multimillionaire as soon as
• 48:03
  they become elected into Congress.
• 48:05
  You know, everybody does it.
• 48:06
  And so as soon as somebody knows, I
• 48:08
  guarantee you, they got somebody on the phone
• 48:10
  making trades.
• 48:11
  I have zero.
• 48:14
  Faith in the fact that these guys aren't
• 48:17
  doing it.
• 48:18
  None.
• 48:19
  I mean, zero.
• 48:21
  The only focus of President Trump and Trump
• 48:24
  administration officials is doing what's best for the
• 48:27
  American people.
• 48:28
  Spokesperson Kush Desai said calling any suggestion of
• 48:33
  insider profiteering baseless and irresponsible.
• 48:38
  Iran's parliamentary speaker, Mohammed Begir Ghalibaf, the one
• 48:43
  that Palki Sharma was talking about, denied any
• 48:48
  talks with Washington sent global that sent global
• 48:52
  stocks lower and lifted the energy markets.
• 48:55
  He said fake news was being used to
• 48:58
  manipulate oil and financial markets and to help
• 49:01
  the United States and Israel escape the quagmire
• 49:06
  they face in energy pricing.
• 49:08
  Now that I believe, you know, whether it's
• 49:12
  to benefit any particular person, I have no
• 49:16
  doubt that if Trump thought that was the
• 49:19
  the best thing to do for America, he
• 49:23
  would do it.
• 49:23
  If he you know, if he heard if
• 49:25
  he's listening to Sam show and Sam is
• 49:27
  sitting there going, man, four weeks ago, four
• 49:30
  short weeks ago, I was, you know, praising
• 49:34
  the fact that I was only paying two
• 49:35
  forty nine a gallon.
• 49:37
  And on my trip to Florida, I paid
• 49:38
  four bucks a gallon for regular unleaded.
• 49:44
  And, you know, I fill up like every
• 49:47
  third or fourth tank that was like four
• 49:49
  dollars and 30 cents, something like that.
• 49:52
  It might have been four dollars and 40
• 49:54
  cents.
• 49:56
  Crazy.
• 49:57
  But I have no doubt that if Trump
• 50:00
  thought that was the best thing to do,
• 50:02
  he might make a post on that and
• 50:04
  go listen.
• 50:05
  And him saying, you know what, I can
• 50:08
  lower the price of oil by saying this
• 50:10
  early on a Monday morning and my troops
• 50:13
  aren't going to get there all this week
• 50:14
  anyway.
• 50:15
  It's going to take five days for him
• 50:16
  to get there.
• 50:18
  And, you know, there this is how I
• 50:20
  can bring the price of oil down right
• 50:22
  now that I could almost bet he would
• 50:27
  do that.
• 50:27
  Why wouldn't he?
• 50:28
  But, you know, whoever makes the money, you
• 50:31
  don't care, you know.
• 50:32
  And but if there are people that actually
• 50:34
  knew about it and we're going to make
• 50:36
  some money off it, well, it wouldn't surprise
• 50:40
  me if somebody took that.
• 50:41
  So oil prices rebounded, went right back up
• 50:44
  the next day, Tuesday.
• 50:47
  Brent is now back at one hundred and
• 50:50
  three a barrel and the other WTI is
• 50:53
  91 because now it's still uncertain.
• 50:58
  Isn't that crazy?
• 51:00
  So Russia yesterday, let's see.
• 51:04
  There was big news out of Russia saying
• 51:06
  that their competitors, there was all kinds of
• 51:11
  news about a some sort of rocket going
• 51:19
  across the skies in northern Russia.
• 51:23
  Come to find out they announced that there
• 51:28
  and I forget what it's called, unfortunately, but
• 51:33
  their answer to Starlink was.
• 51:41
  Discussed and they have sent a they sent
• 51:45
  a couple of satellites up there, so there
• 51:49
  they are now starting to deploy their own
• 51:53
  above country competition for Starlink.
• 51:57
  And they've been pushing it to go faster
• 52:01
  because Elon Musk cut him off as he's
• 52:04
  gotten better at cutting off their their access,
• 52:09
  even in Ukraine with stolen Ukrainian terminals to
• 52:15
  use Starlink.
• 52:19
  And so I've been watching and everybody knows
• 52:23
  that I like to follow what's going on
• 52:25
  and I've been paying attention to it.
• 52:26
  And the fact is that the Russians have
• 52:30
  not been advancing as quickly lately, depending on
• 52:33
  the region.
• 52:35
  And Ukraine has been taking deep strikes inside
• 52:40
  of Russia with drones.
• 52:42
  So the big discussion yesterday was the U
• 52:45
  .S. supplying because one.
• 52:49
  So think about this.
• 52:50
  Ukraine has zero space technology.
• 52:54
  They got nothing.
• 52:55
  They have zero and they cannot.
• 52:59
  They don't have any ability to have satellite
• 53:04
  communications or anything like that.
• 53:07
  It just doesn't exist.
• 53:09
  Right.
• 53:10
  And.
• 53:11
  Not in Ukraine, but yesterday on social media
• 53:17
  inside a telegram on Instagram and all those
• 53:22
  things that Ukraine likes to put things out
• 53:24
  on.
• 53:24
  They were showing satellite pictures of Ukraine and
• 53:31
  their four hundred or so drones that went
• 53:36
  deep inside of Russia and all the way
• 53:40
  to St. Petersburg.
• 53:42
  Now, that's hundreds of miles.
• 53:44
  That's a long way to one of the
• 53:48
  biggest ports and oil port and oil supply
• 53:53
  zone loading, unloading storage, massive storage facilities and
• 54:00
  blew up a shit pot of Russian oil
• 54:05
  supply outside of St. Petersburg, right on the
• 54:08
  Baltic Sea there.
• 54:11
  And magically, the satellites showed the moment the
• 54:17
  fire was there.
• 54:19
  So somebody and it had to be the
• 54:21
  U.S. has parked these satellites above it
• 54:25
  and is helping Ukraine with the tracking data
• 54:28
  and all the stuff in real time and
• 54:31
  taking taking video of the whole thing.
• 54:34
  And so this is all over social media
• 54:36
  and all over Russian news that the U
• 54:40
  .S. is doing this now.
• 54:42
  Everybody says that Russia and China are giving.
• 54:46
  I ran the ability to to to bomb
• 54:51
  or find letting them use satellites, Chinese and
• 54:57
  Russian satellites to scout out sites in the
• 55:04
  Middle East, including in Israel.
• 55:08
  And and they've been condemned for that.
• 55:10
  You know, here's the West.
• 55:11
  This isn't your conflict.
• 55:13
  What are you doing there?
• 55:14
  Well, once again, rules for the but not
• 55:19
  for me.
• 55:20
  And it's and I don't know.
• 55:22
  I don't agree with any of it on
• 55:24
  any side.
• 55:24
  You know, I wish all the wars would
• 55:26
  just quit.
• 55:27
  Right.
• 55:27
  I don't think.
• 55:29
  But I'm a realist.
• 55:31
  You know, people on the U.S. side,
• 55:34
  we love war.
• 55:35
  You know, we've been in more war than
• 55:37
  anybody else in the last 80 years.
• 55:39
  Far more.
• 55:40
  I mean, far more.
• 55:42
  And we bring along our our lackeys in
• 55:45
  Europe with us usually when we go.
• 55:48
  You know, I don't know.
• 55:51
  There's a interesting, interesting world.
• 55:55
  We live in an oil refinery in Texas.
• 56:01
  Get this massive oil refinery explosion in Port
• 56:06
  Arthur, Texas.
• 56:08
  Now, Port Arthur is a you know, it's
• 56:10
  obviously a seaport footage from the eyewitness shows
• 56:14
  flames and thick smoke billing above the Valero
• 56:18
  facility.
• 56:19
  Police believe an industrial heater caused the blaze.
• 56:23
  Local residents described hearing a loud boom and
• 56:27
  their homes shaking miles away.
• 56:30
  First responders were dispatched to the plant and
• 56:33
  the explosion Monday evening.
• 56:36
  Shelter in place was issued for the west
• 56:38
  side of Port Arthur.
• 56:41
  The local sheriff said authorities were responding.
• 56:46
  The Port Arthur Fire Department confirmed there was
• 56:49
  an incident at this facility and the refinery
• 56:52
  is one of the major refining sites on
• 56:55
  the Texas Gulf Coast with crude oil processing
• 56:58
  of up to 430,000 barrels a day.
• 57:03
  So fuel prices in the U.S. are
• 57:05
  already spiking before the incident in Port Arthur.
• 57:09
  The American Automobile Association said the national average
• 57:13
  for a gallon of regular gas rose to
• 57:17
  $3.95 on March 23rd, up from $2
• 57:22
  .95 before the U.S. and Israel launched
• 57:25
  their bombing campaign on February 28th.
• 57:30
  So, the military and political dynamic around Iran
• 57:37
  has entered a more dangerous phase, but the
• 57:40
  diplomatic choreography now suggests that Washington isn't thinking
• 57:44
  in terms of punishment and pressure.
• 57:46
  They're thinking about economics.
• 57:48
  Since March 20th, the pattern is unmistakable.
• 57:51
  The U.S. and Israel have continued to
• 57:53
  widen the scope of their campaign against Iranian
• 57:56
  strategic infrastructure, their bombing nuclear facilities.
• 58:00
  Iran is answering by pushing retaliation toward symbols
• 58:04
  of Israeli nuclear deterrence.
• 58:06
  Somebody announced yesterday, and it's pretty funny because
• 58:09
  Israel has never admitted that they have nukes,
• 58:12
  but it's, you know, not a very well
• 58:14
  -hidden secret.
• 58:15
  They're not any part of non-proliferation.
• 58:18
  They're allowed to have nukes, but they're not
• 58:20
  part of any non-proliferation deal.
• 58:22
  They're just able to do whatever they want.
• 58:25
  Nobody would ever question that Israel gets nukes,
• 58:28
  and they just developed them on their own.
• 58:30
  There was no stop about, hey man, we
• 58:32
  can't give them hell.
• 58:34
  We probably helped them get them.
• 58:36
  We probably just slid them the secrets underneath
• 58:39
  and made sure that they had all the
• 58:40
  uranium that they could use, right?
• 58:42
  And, you know, we want them to be
• 58:45
  able to bomb the hell out of any
• 58:46
  part of the Middle East they want, right?
• 58:50
  The most revealing episode last weekend was Iran's
• 58:54
  strike on Dimona.
• 58:55
  That's in Israel.
• 58:56
  I told you about that yesterday and a
• 58:58
  little bit earlier in this show.
• 58:59
  Reuters reported that Iranian missiles hit the southern
• 59:02
  Israeli cities of Dimona and Arad, and Iranian
• 59:06
  state-linked messages framed the attack as a
• 59:08
  strike on military and security-related targets in
• 59:12
  South Israel.
• 59:13
  Now, they say, do the Iranians, that Dimona
• 59:20
  is inseparable from Israel's undeclared nuclear capability.
• 59:27
  And whether Tehran intended to direct a military
• 59:30
  message, a political signal, or both, the meaning
• 59:35
  was pretty clear.
• 59:36
  Iran was demonstrating that if its own nuclear
• 59:39
  infrastructure is being treated as a legitimate target,
• 59:42
  it is prepared to impose new and strategic
• 59:46
  costs on the Israeli side by moving the
• 59:50
  conflict closer to Israel's most sensitive geography.
• 59:55
  Nuclear, by the way.
• 59:57
  And this retaliation didn't emerge in a vacuum.
• 1:00:00
  On March 21st, the U.S. and Israel
• 1:00:02
  launched attack on Natanz uranium enrichment facility.
• 1:00:06
  This wasn't another round in a familiar exchange.
• 1:00:09
  It was a move against one of the
• 1:00:10
  core nodes of Iran's nuclear program.
• 1:00:13
  And so, against one of the central pillars
• 1:00:16
  of the Islamic Republic's strategic identity and bargaining
• 1:00:20
  capacity.
• 1:00:21
  And once Natanz was struck again, the logic
• 1:00:24
  of reciprocal signaling just keeps going up.
• 1:00:29
  It's always one-upsmanship, always.
• 1:00:31
  Tehran could not afford a response that looked
• 1:00:34
  routine.
• 1:00:34
  It needed one that restored the principle of
• 1:00:37
  deterrence by demonstrating that Israel has also nuclear
• 1:00:44
  geography and that it's no longer outside the
• 1:00:47
  circle of retaliation.
• 1:00:48
  So, on March 20th, the war has therefore
• 1:00:51
  been moving on two tracks at once.
• 1:00:54
  The first is operational escalation.
• 1:00:57
  The second is political reposition.
• 1:00:59
  On the escalation side, Reuters reports a widening
• 1:01:04
  conflict in which attacks on energy structure, missiles,
• 1:01:09
  military, nuclear sites are interacting with one another
• 1:01:13
  in a way that magnifies the regional risk.
• 1:01:17
  Earlier strikes on Iran's South Pars gas field,
• 1:01:21
  which is owned jointly with Qatar, and the
• 1:01:25
  Asayullah processing hub had already added a full
• 1:01:29
  energy dimension to the war.
• 1:01:31
  That matters because energy infrastructure, at least in
• 1:01:34
  this area, is not just another class of
• 1:01:36
  targets.
• 1:01:37
  It is the point at which regional warfare
• 1:01:39
  causes global economic problems.
• 1:01:43
  And so this is the background for Donald
• 1:01:47
  Trump's ultimatum regarding Iranian energy targets.
• 1:01:52
  Reuters reported on March 22nd that Trump threatened
• 1:01:54
  Iran with strikes on power plants, while Iran
• 1:01:58
  said, well, do that and we'll retaliate in
• 1:02:01
  kind against Gulf energy and water infrastructure if
• 1:02:05
  the attacks go ahead.
• 1:02:06
  In other words, Washington moves from a coercive
• 1:02:09
  rhetoric toward the edge of a decision that
• 1:02:11
  could have taken a regional war to a
• 1:02:15
  direct systemic shock for the entire area.
• 1:02:18
  Not just for oil and gas either, but
• 1:02:21
  maritime security, water for everybody, and allied infrastructure
• 1:02:27
  all the way across the Gulf.
• 1:02:29
  And then, yesterday, Trump announced that because negotiations
• 1:02:34
  had already been underway for two days, hmm,
• 1:02:38
  were they?
• 1:02:39
  And because there were, in his words, major
• 1:02:42
  points of agreement that he could postpone a
• 1:02:45
  decision on military strikes for another five days.
• 1:02:49
  Reuters, Axios, Washington Post, CBS, and other outlets
• 1:02:54
  all reflect the same central fact.
• 1:02:57
  The White House was no longer speaking the
• 1:02:59
  language of imminent escalation.
• 1:03:02
  It was trying to construct a political case
• 1:03:04
  for delay.
• 1:03:05
  Now, I believe it has something to do
• 1:03:07
  with the fact you can't get any soldiers
• 1:03:09
  over there anyway, not any time quick.
• 1:03:12
  The Iranian response was immediate.
• 1:03:17
  Tehran denied the negotiations were taking place, said
• 1:03:20
  that no meaningful communications had occurred with Washington.
• 1:03:24
  Iran publicly rejected Trump's characterization of talks, and
• 1:03:29
  Iranian officials stressed the country had not entered
• 1:03:31
  into any kind of channel that the American
• 1:03:36
  side was implying.
• 1:03:38
  Negotiation, reduction of hostilities, anything.
• 1:03:42
  This denial is central to understanding what's going
• 1:03:45
  on at present.
• 1:03:46
  Tehran does not want to give Trump an
• 1:03:49
  easy diplomatic headline, particularly one that can be
• 1:03:53
  presented domestically in the U.S. as proof
• 1:03:57
  that we're winning, as proof that military pressure
• 1:04:00
  has bent Iran to submission.
• 1:04:03
  That is why the mediation story matters.
• 1:04:06
  Axios said that Turkey, Egypt, and Pakistan have
• 1:04:10
  been passing messages between Washington, Tehran, and that
• 1:04:14
  senior officials from all three of these states
• 1:04:17
  have had separate contacts with White House envoy
• 1:04:20
  Stephen Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
• 1:04:27
  This shows that diplomacy is allegedly being rebuilt
• 1:04:30
  through a distributed architecture rather than a single
• 1:04:33
  channel.
• 1:04:33
  This kind of mediation allows both sides to
• 1:04:36
  test terms, map red lines, lower the temperature
• 1:04:39
  without paying a political price of direct acknowledgment
• 1:04:43
  that something is going on.
• 1:04:45
  It's diplomacy under conditions of mutual denial, and
• 1:04:49
  that is often the form diplomacy takes when
• 1:04:51
  both governments still need the conflict narrative for
• 1:04:54
  domestic reasons.
• 1:04:56
  I don't think we need it for direct
• 1:04:58
  reasons.
• 1:04:59
  I think we need to dial it down
• 1:05:01
  some here locally because the bulk of Americans
• 1:05:04
  are not for this conflict, not remotely.
• 1:05:08
  At the same time, there are parallel indications
• 1:05:11
  that Oman and Qatar are trying to shift
• 1:05:13
  the conflict back toward a diplomatic track, too.
• 1:05:16
  Reuters reported earlier mediation efforts by Oman as
• 1:05:20
  well as repeated Qatari calls for de-escalation
• 1:05:23
  and a political solution.
• 1:05:24
  Doha publicly emphasizes the need for dialogue, and
• 1:05:29
  Oman has long remained one of the few
• 1:05:31
  channels acceptable to both Washington and Tehran.
• 1:05:35
  Even where those efforts have stalled, been rejected,
• 1:05:39
  or publicly minimized, they form part of the
• 1:05:42
  same regional pattern.
• 1:05:46
  Trump's five-day pause is less a sign
• 1:05:48
  of his confidence than a sign of necessity.
• 1:05:48
  He needs to understand that once energy infrastructure
• 1:05:50
  is a routine target set, the war is
• 1:05:54
  no longer going to be contained to confrontation
• 1:05:57
  between Israel and Iran.
• 1:06:02
  It's going to threaten the entire Gulf.
• 1:06:05
  So from this angle, Trump's five-day pause
• 1:06:08
  is less a sign of his confidence than
• 1:06:11
  a sign of necessity.
• 1:06:13
  He needs a way to stop.
• 1:06:16
  He needs a way out.
• 1:06:17
  And he don't have one right now.
• 1:06:19
  Or at least freeze the current phase of
• 1:06:21
  the conflict without looking as though he stepped
• 1:06:23
  back.
• 1:06:24
  He still has to be the biggest bully
• 1:06:27
  in the room.
• 1:06:28
  He's got to be.
• 1:06:28
  That's the central political dilemma that he's facing
• 1:06:33
  right now.
• 1:06:34
  A simple de-escalation would be easy for
• 1:06:37
  his opponents to frame as a hesitation on
• 1:06:39
  his part.
• 1:06:40
  An uncontrolled escalation carries obvious military and economic
• 1:06:44
  risk.
• 1:06:46
  Financial especially.
• 1:06:47
  Especially if it expands in the sustained campaign
• 1:06:50
  against energy network or triggers further disruption around
• 1:06:54
  Hormuz.
• 1:06:57
  Trump requires something more specific than peace.
• 1:07:00
  He has to have victory.
• 1:07:03
  He has to keep on saying, we won.
• 1:07:08
  Hell, he declared victory two days in.
• 1:07:10
  We win.
• 1:07:11
  That's it.
• 1:07:12
  If we win, why in the world 24
• 1:07:15
  days later are we still fighting?
• 1:07:18
  Why in the world are we still exchanging
• 1:07:20
  missiles back and forth?
• 1:07:24
  That victory, that elusive victory, doesn't have to
• 1:07:28
  be substantive in strategic term.
• 1:07:31
  It just has to be legible to those
• 1:07:33
  who want him to win, to have a
• 1:07:35
  victory politically.
• 1:07:36
  Trump needs to be able to tell the
• 1:07:38
  electorate that force produced results, even though they
• 1:07:45
  haven't.
• 1:07:46
  That Iran was pushed toward concessions and American
• 1:07:49
  resolve restored deterrence and that he chose the
• 1:07:53
  timing of restraint from a position of strength,
• 1:07:57
  not because he had to.
• 1:07:58
  This is why the White House has focused
• 1:08:01
  on progress, productive contact, major points of agreement,
• 1:08:07
  and it went from one extreme to the
• 1:08:11
  other over the course of 24 hours.
• 1:08:14
  It is building a narrative for a pause
• 1:08:18
  that can still be marketed as success.
• 1:08:22
  There's a harder reason for this as well.
• 1:08:25
  Energy markets are too close to the center
• 1:08:28
  of this war.
• 1:08:28
  The conflict has disrupted output, set prices upward
• 1:08:32
  globally.
• 1:08:34
  Like what I was telling you about Pakistan
• 1:08:36
  and people not being able to get anywhere.
• 1:08:39
  Do you know an interesting story in Pakistan?
• 1:08:43
  They have huge soccer fields, huge cricket fields,
• 1:08:47
  and the season is upon it.
• 1:08:49
  They play cricket over there, and they have
• 1:08:53
  huge statements.
• 1:08:55
  Guess what they're doing?
• 1:08:56
  Even going on public transport, there will be
• 1:09:02
  no fans in the stadiums.
• 1:09:05
  Why?
• 1:09:06
  Because they have to reduce the amount of
• 1:09:11
  guests.
• 1:09:11
  They don't want people coming there.
• 1:09:12
  They don't want any cooking to go on.
• 1:09:15
  They want people to stay at home and
• 1:09:17
  watch them.
• 1:09:17
  I mean, they're going through some stuff.
• 1:09:20
  We've gone up by 25%, how much our
• 1:09:26
  gas costs, but over there, they aren't even
• 1:09:28
  allowed to go.
• 1:09:30
  The government curtailed it and said, nope, these
• 1:09:35
  venues are closed.
• 1:09:37
  We still want the games.
• 1:09:38
  They held the games, which used to be
• 1:09:40
  held all over the country, are now only
• 1:09:42
  held in two cities.
• 1:09:46
  All the games will be held in two
• 1:09:47
  cities, and then televised, and no fans in
• 1:09:51
  the stadium.
• 1:09:52
  None.
• 1:09:54
  So people can still enjoy their cricket, but
• 1:09:57
  they've got to do it from home.
• 1:09:58
  Nobody can go anywhere to watch a cricket
• 1:10:01
  game.
• 1:10:01
  Soccer, too.
• 1:10:02
  That's what they've been doing.
• 1:10:03
  So the conflict has disrupted output.
• 1:10:07
  Prices are astronomical.
• 1:10:09
  Strikes on energy facilities across the gulf highlight
• 1:10:12
  just how quick regional confrontation tears out a
• 1:10:16
  global market emergency.
• 1:10:18
  I don't think America significantly thought about it
• 1:10:22
  before they did this.
• 1:10:23
  I really don't.
• 1:10:24
  Or the arrogance, just like in Ukraine.
• 1:10:29
  Oh, geez, all we've got to do is
• 1:10:30
  push.
• 1:10:31
  We're the West.
• 1:10:32
  We helped Ukraine build a million-man army.
• 1:10:36
  Where is it now, friends and neighbors?
• 1:10:38
  Where is it?
• 1:10:40
  Same thing's going on in the gulf.
• 1:10:43
  The expected result didn't occur as quickly as
• 1:10:48
  they thought it would overnight.
• 1:10:50
  And in fact, it could go on for
• 1:10:53
  quite a bit longer.
• 1:10:54
  Washington cannot treat escalation against Iranian power and
• 1:10:59
  energy assets as a purely military option.
• 1:11:03
  It's a decision about inflation, shipping, vulnerability of
• 1:11:08
  their own allies, and the political economy of
• 1:11:11
  the U.S. itself.
• 1:11:13
  You've got people like Samuel Trapp saying, what
• 1:11:17
  in the hell is this?
• 1:11:18
  Why in the world am I paying more
• 1:11:21
  than a dollar more a gallon than I
• 1:11:24
  was paying a month ago?
• 1:11:25
  You destroyed everything that you had done this
• 1:11:30
  year.
• 1:11:32
  So 2025, I thought Trump, there were things
• 1:11:36
  I was unhappy with, but I thought he
• 1:11:37
  had done a pretty good job.
• 1:11:39
  Things were looking pretty good.
• 1:11:41
  I liked most of the U.S. things
• 1:11:45
  that he has done.
• 1:11:46
  I've never been much of a Trump fan
• 1:11:49
  as far as international politics.
• 1:11:54
  International diplomacy is not a business deal.
• 1:11:58
  It just isn't.
• 1:11:59
  It's a different set of skills.
• 1:12:02
  It's a different reality.
• 1:12:04
  And I think he is less than stellar
• 1:12:09
  at this.
• 1:12:10
  You can't treat people like you're the real
• 1:12:15
  estate mogul from New York when you're supposed
• 1:12:18
  to be the President of the United States.
• 1:12:20
  And he's dictated to everyone around the world
• 1:12:25
  what they will do.
• 1:12:26
  And I think he's given up on some
• 1:12:30
  of the key things that he said he
• 1:12:34
  wouldn't do, namely war.
• 1:12:36
  I'm the President of Peace.
• 1:12:38
  I played that for you last week.
• 1:12:40
  I should play it again.
• 1:12:42
  You can go out on YouTube and find
• 1:12:45
  this video.
• 1:12:45
  It's called whatever it is, four minutes of
• 1:12:48
  Trump saying no more war.
• 1:12:52
  Reality is especially important for Trump.
• 1:12:55
  He is not simply managing the war.
• 1:12:57
  He's managing domestic consequences of war in a
• 1:13:02
  political system that is quite sensitive to fuel
• 1:13:07
  prices, market volatility, perceptions of strategic international drift.
• 1:13:15
  A strike package against Iranian energy infrastructure might
• 1:13:20
  satisfy the logic of coercion in a narrow
• 1:13:24
  military sense, but it could also ignite exactly
• 1:13:28
  the kind of market turbulence that weakens his
• 1:13:31
  broader political position.
• 1:13:32
  The result is a familiar but quite unstable
• 1:13:37
  pattern.
• 1:13:38
  The White House escalates rhetoric to maximize leverage,
• 1:13:42
  then searches for an exit ramp before the
• 1:13:44
  economic aftershock becomes more damaging than the original
• 1:13:49
  problem was.
• 1:13:51
  The contradiction, however, is that Iran sees this
• 1:13:54
  vulnerability, too.
• 1:13:56
  Tehran understands that Washington wants coercive leverage without
• 1:13:59
  a prolonged energy crisis.
• 1:14:01
  That makes American urgency quite visible.
• 1:14:04
  And once urgency is visible, it can be
• 1:14:06
  used against them.
• 1:14:07
  This is one reason Iran has publicly denied
• 1:14:10
  the talks that Trump says occurred.
• 1:14:13
  But by rejecting the image of active negotiation,
• 1:14:16
  Trump has denied the public relations de-escalation
• 1:14:22
  dividend that he would get.
• 1:14:25
  Now, the price dividend lasted for a little
• 1:14:28
  while, but then went right back up after
• 1:14:30
  Iran denied it.
• 1:14:32
  It also preserves Iran's own claim that resistance,
• 1:14:34
  not accommodation, forced Washington to hesitate.
• 1:14:37
  In this contest, native control of the narrative
• 1:14:42
  is not secondary to the military action.
• 1:14:45
  It's part of the battlefield.
• 1:14:47
  And we haven't even discussed Israel.
• 1:14:51
  For its part, it reads the current moment
• 1:14:55
  through quite a bit of a different lens.
• 1:14:59
  Israeli decision-makers, the value of continued pressure
• 1:15:03
  on Iran for nuclear and strategic purposes is
• 1:15:07
  obvious.
• 1:15:07
  Every day, the sustained attrition degrades capability, complicates
• 1:15:11
  recovery, and creates new opportunities for future leverage
• 1:15:15
  and future stealing and opening up new territories
• 1:15:19
  for Israelis to go in and beat the
• 1:15:21
  crap out of people and take their stuff,
• 1:15:24
  take their land.
• 1:15:25
  Israel can accept a higher degree of regional
• 1:15:28
  tension if it believes the campaign is going
• 1:15:30
  to produce some sort of long-term security
• 1:15:33
  effect.
• 1:15:33
  But Washington also has to reckon with alliance
• 1:15:36
  management.
• 1:15:38
  Gulf stability, energy market, domestic macroeconomics, that difference
• 1:15:42
  does not automatically produce rupture, but it does
• 1:15:45
  create divergence in the preferred end state.
• 1:15:48
  This is why the period since March 20th
• 1:15:52
  matters so much.
• 1:15:53
  It's only been three and a half days,
• 1:15:56
  but it exposes the limits of purely military
• 1:16:00
  actions.
• 1:16:02
  The strikes continue.
• 1:16:05
  Iran retaliates.
• 1:16:06
  Trump threatens new attacks.
• 1:16:08
  Iran answers with warnings of their own.
• 1:16:11
  And almost immediately afterward, a diplomatic scramble is
• 1:16:15
  accelerated through multiple mediators.
• 1:16:17
  This is instructive for the rest of us.
• 1:16:20
  The war did not produce clean or clear
• 1:16:23
  hierarchy of dominance.
• 1:16:25
  It produces a confrontation in which each side
• 1:16:27
  can still impose significant cost upon the other.
• 1:16:31
  An escalation threatened to damage actors will occur
• 1:16:37
  well beyond the immediate battlefield.
• 1:16:40
  They're going to keep threatening the other countries.
• 1:16:45
  Europe was all up in arms yesterday.
• 1:16:47
  I forget the name of the island in
• 1:16:53
  the Indian Sea.
• 1:16:54
  Diego?
• 1:16:56
  I can't remember.
• 1:16:57
  It's like 4,000 kilometers from Iran.
• 1:17:00
  And it's in the Indian Sea.
• 1:17:03
  And it's in the U.S. Well, the
• 1:17:05
  U.S. has been begging Keir Starmer to
• 1:17:10
  let them have it.
• 1:17:11
  And he initially said no.
• 1:17:12
  Well, then Trump posts a comedy thing of
• 1:17:17
  him.
• 1:17:18
  I mean, he's insulted him twice.
• 1:17:20
  Trump has downright insulted Keir Starmer twice.
• 1:17:24
  And Keir Starmer still gave him the airfields,
• 1:17:31
  let him do it.
• 1:17:32
  And then Iran bombed it, those airfields.
• 1:17:35
  And it's 4,000 kilometers from Iran.
• 1:17:39
  And so now Europe is all up in
• 1:17:41
  arms, and especially in Ukraine, because Ukraine is
• 1:17:44
  saying, geez, they could bomb us from Iran
• 1:17:48
  right now.
• 1:17:49
  Iran has that capability.
• 1:17:51
  And Europe is all freaked out about it.
• 1:17:56
  And so for Trump, the imperative is not
• 1:17:58
  simply to continue or to stop.
• 1:17:59
  It's to stop in a way that looks
• 1:18:02
  like he caused the stop.
• 1:18:04
  That he needs to preserve his image of
• 1:18:08
  pressure while increasing the weight of mediation.
• 1:18:13
  He has to claim that Iran begged him
• 1:18:16
  to stop first, because that's what he's been
• 1:18:18
  saying, even if the practical mechanism is contact
• 1:18:24
  through third countries like Pakistan, like Turkey.
• 1:18:27
  He needs a diplomatic pause that he can
• 1:18:30
  sell as a product of his coercive success.
• 1:18:33
  I told him I was going to stop
• 1:18:36
  him.
• 1:18:36
  And he needs it quickly, because every day
• 1:18:38
  of uncertainty and energy raises the economic and
• 1:18:42
  political cost of keeping the war open-ended.
• 1:18:45
  The next few days, let's check out what
• 1:18:48
  happens this week.
• 1:18:50
  If the Marine Expeditionary Forces and the 82nd
• 1:18:54
  Airborne arrive and take over Khark, it's all
• 1:18:58
  a scam.
• 1:18:59
  This has all been a scam, and that's
• 1:19:00
  that.
• 1:19:01
  So this has all been just talk, and
• 1:19:05
  it'll be there.
• 1:19:09
  Next few days, real question isn't whether either
• 1:19:14
  side can escalate.
• 1:19:16
  They can, for sure.
• 1:19:18
  The real question is whether the mediation efforts,
• 1:19:23
  Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, Oman, Qatar, and anybody else
• 1:19:28
  can produce enough diplomatic leverage for Washington and
• 1:19:33
  Tehran to step back without either one openly
• 1:19:37
  admitting defeat or retreat.
• 1:19:40
  That is often how crises are managed.
• 1:19:44
  But Iran doesn't want something that doesn't finalize
• 1:19:48
  this.
• 1:19:49
  They already did that last year, and this
• 1:19:51
  one started without anything.
• 1:19:56
  It just started.
• 1:19:58
  They were in the middle of negotiations, and
• 1:20:00
  right in the middle of it.
• 1:20:01
  And everybody knew, at least on the American
• 1:20:04
  side, that Israel was going to bomb the
• 1:20:06
  crap out of them anyway, whether or not
• 1:20:08
  there was success or anything like it.
• 1:20:12
  That's just how it went.
• 1:20:14
  And that's unfortunate, really.
• 1:20:18
  Having worked in that field, having sat at
• 1:20:23
  the table with our own nuclear weapons treaties,
• 1:20:28
  both INF, the Threshold Test Ban Treaty, and
• 1:20:34
  the Start of Start Treaties, I'm not saying
• 1:20:41
  that you should be foolish enough to believe
• 1:20:43
  every single word the guy across the table
• 1:20:46
  from you is saying, because each country has
• 1:20:49
  its own interests at heart.
• 1:20:57
  But if you can't at least agree to
• 1:21:03
  be somewhat transparent with these guys, if you
• 1:21:10
  don't have the same interests, you shouldn't be
• 1:21:13
  sitting at the table.
• 1:21:14
  And right now, Iran has no reason to
• 1:21:18
  believe anything that Israel is going to say.
• 1:21:22
  Israel will start this back up in another
• 1:21:24
  year.
• 1:21:24
  No problem.
• 1:21:25
  They'll just wait, and then they'll do it
• 1:21:27
  again, and then everybody will blame Iran again.
• 1:21:32
  That's just how it goes.
• 1:21:34
  And I'm not saying they're not to blame.
• 1:21:37
  I'm just saying Israel definitely gets away with
• 1:21:41
  it, for sure.
• 1:21:42
  But what is now visible is that Trump
• 1:21:44
  is looking for a reason to stop the
• 1:21:46
  conflict before it imposes costs that he doesn't
• 1:21:49
  control.
• 1:21:50
  But he can't just stop.
• 1:21:52
  He has to show success first.
• 1:21:55
  And so far, he cannot.
• 1:21:56
  That is why the language of progress has
• 1:21:59
  appeared so suddenly.
• 1:22:02
  That's what I believe.
• 1:22:03
  That is why the five-day delay matters.
• 1:22:06
  And this is why the denials from Tehran
• 1:22:08
  are equally important.
• 1:22:10
  One side is trying to manufacture a victory
• 1:22:12
  before de-escalation.
• 1:22:14
  The other is trying to deny that a
• 1:22:16
  victory is still leaving room for maneuvering.
• 1:22:19
  Between these two lies the present diplomatic opening,
• 1:22:24
  which is very narrow, but also real, shaped
• 1:22:27
  by oil, optics, and political calculation.
• 1:22:33
  In the end, the Trump administration appears to
• 1:22:37
  have walked into a trap set by a
• 1:22:39
  political logic of Israel's current leadership.
• 1:22:43
  I believe that.
• 1:22:44
  This is not America's war.
• 1:22:48
  It never was.
• 1:22:50
  This is a conflict in which there are,
• 1:22:52
  in reality, no true winners of any of
• 1:22:55
  the major states directly exposed to the consequences
• 1:22:59
  of it.
• 1:23:00
  The United States is strategically overstretched.
• 1:23:05
  There's higher energy prices and a new cycle,
• 1:23:09
  a brand new one, of regional instability.
• 1:23:14
  Iran faces mounting military, economic, and political pressure
• 1:23:17
  with no guarantee that endurance alone will improve
• 1:23:21
  its position.
• 1:23:21
  But they're in a, what do they call
• 1:23:23
  it, an existential fight.
• 1:23:26
  That's what they believe.
• 1:23:28
  They believe, you know what, if we agree
• 1:23:30
  to something right now, here's exactly what's going
• 1:23:32
  to happen.
• 1:23:33
  Year from now, Israel's going to come bomb
• 1:23:36
  us again, and the U.S. is going
• 1:23:37
  to jump in again and blame it all
• 1:23:40
  on us.
• 1:23:42
  Right in the middle of negotiations, you know,
• 1:23:44
  just like Israel has a habit of doing.
• 1:23:47
  You know, you don't like what's going on,
• 1:23:48
  or you don't like a leader, you bomb
• 1:23:50
  Qatar to blow the guy up, or try
• 1:23:52
  to.
• 1:23:53
  The wider region is forced to absorb the
• 1:23:56
  shock of insecurity, market disruptions, the danger of
• 1:24:00
  uncontrolled escalation.
• 1:24:02
  Even ordinary Israelis are unlikely to emerge from
• 1:24:06
  this confrontation from a position of strength, because
• 1:24:11
  prolonged war also means, for them, fear, loss,
• 1:24:14
  economic strain, normalization of permanent emergency.
• 1:24:18
  But for the ultra-right forces in the
• 1:24:20
  Israeli government, that picture's different.
• 1:24:24
  For them, the conflict can still be presented
• 1:24:27
  as a form of political victory, because Netanyahu
• 1:24:31
  has already said, I've been waiting for this
• 1:24:34
  for 40 years.
• 1:24:35
  I've been wanting to do this for, I've
• 1:24:37
  been threatening to do it and telling everybody
• 1:24:38
  what I'm going to do for 40 years.
• 1:24:41
  Why was anybody surprised, really?
• 1:24:43
  And we all knew that the U.S.
• 1:24:45
  was going to jump right in bed with
• 1:24:46
  them, and that's exactly what we did.
• 1:24:48
  Because every new round of escalation brings Israel
• 1:24:51
  closer to the long-standing goal of permanent
• 1:24:55
  confrontation, maximum security, centralization, and the destruction of
• 1:25:01
  any compromise.
• 1:25:02
  In that sense, Washington is now trying to
• 1:25:05
  escape a crisis whose costs are broadly shared,
• 1:25:09
  but the actors most ideologically invested in escalation
• 1:25:14
  continue to see it not as a disaster,
• 1:25:17
  but as an opportunity to finalize it.
• 1:25:20
  Now, most of that, there was a lot
• 1:25:23
  of commentary of my own in there, but
• 1:25:25
  most of that thought process came from a
• 1:25:28
  guy who's the president of Middle Eastern Studies
• 1:25:31
  and a visiting lecturer, a guy named Murad
• 1:25:35
  Sadigadze.
• 1:25:37
  And he's got a Telegram channel, if you're
• 1:25:39
  interested in that.
• 1:25:40
  But it's an interesting take on that.
• 1:25:46
  So, the EU is trying to control the
• 1:25:51
  elections in Hungary for Viktor Orban.
• 1:25:54
  They're coming up, I forget when, it might
• 1:25:57
  even be in April.
• 1:25:58
  But Hungarian foreign minister has been wiretapped by
• 1:26:02
  EU spies.
• 1:26:03
  He accuses political opponents of working with the
• 1:26:06
  EU to spy on his government.
• 1:26:08
  And he ordered an investigation into the alleged
• 1:26:10
  wiretapping of foreign minister Peter Szijjarto by one,
• 1:26:15
  at least, EU member state.
• 1:26:18
  The operation was aided by a Hungarian opposition
• 1:26:20
  journalist, and the probe was announced on Monday
• 1:26:23
  after the Post and Politico published reports claiming
• 1:26:26
  that Szijjarto phoned foreign minister of Russia Sergei
• 1:26:31
  Viktorovich Lavrov during breaks in the EU meetings
• 1:26:34
  to give Lavrov live reports on what had
• 1:26:36
  been discussed.
• 1:26:37
  The report cited unnamed European security officials.
• 1:26:42
  Szijjarto dismissed the claims as lies and fake
• 1:26:45
  news, but Hungarian conservative outlets revealed on Monday
• 1:26:49
  that Szijjarto's contact details had been passed to
• 1:26:51
  EU security officials by an opposition journalist in
• 1:26:57
  Hungary.
• 1:26:57
  In the audio file, Pányi can be heard
• 1:27:00
  telling a source how he gave the phone
• 1:27:02
  number to a state organ of an EU
• 1:27:04
  country.
• 1:27:05
  Then he explains that once the agency he
• 1:27:08
  spoke to has a person's phone number, they
• 1:27:10
  can extract information about who that number spoke
• 1:27:13
  to and they see who is calling that
• 1:27:15
  number or who that number is calling.
• 1:27:17
  In a Facebook post on Monday, Pányi confirmed
• 1:27:20
  that he was the person on the recording.
• 1:27:22
  He said that he was asking his source
• 1:27:24
  whether she knew of any alternate numbers used
• 1:27:27
  by Szijjarto or Lavrov so I could compare
• 1:27:30
  them with information I received from the National
• 1:27:33
  Security Service of a European country.
• 1:27:36
  Can you imagine that?
• 1:27:37
  That's like leaking money from the CIA to
• 1:27:41
  the Washington Post.
• 1:27:43
  It's nonsense.
• 1:27:44
  We are dealing with two serious issues, said
• 1:27:47
  Orban.
• 1:27:47
  There's evidence that Hungary's foreign minister was wiretapped
• 1:27:51
  and that he was having indications of who
• 1:27:53
  may be behind it.
• 1:27:55
  This must be investigated.
• 1:27:56
  Later in the file, Pányi tells his source
• 1:27:59
  that he has a quasi-friend of Anita
• 1:28:02
  Orban, a member of the opposition party and
• 1:28:06
  Magyar's pick to replace Szijjarto as foreign minister.
• 1:28:09
  Wow.
• 1:28:11
  Tell you what, these are very, very interesting
• 1:28:15
  times.
• 1:28:17
  Well, I have a lot to do today.
• 1:28:19
  Still haven't slept, obviously, unless I can do
• 1:28:22
  my show in my sleep.
• 1:28:23
  I tried that last week.
• 1:28:25
  It really didn't work out that well.
• 1:28:26
  And so I have not been asleep.
• 1:28:30
  But I would like to get some sleep,
• 1:28:31
  but that's not happening.
• 1:28:32
  I've got too much to do today.
• 1:28:33
  I've got a couple of meetings that are
• 1:28:35
  going to take place.
• 1:28:36
  It's going to be a lot of fun.
• 1:28:38
  Tomorrow is the biggest day in radio.
• 1:28:41
  Undamnedradio.com forward slash live.
• 1:28:45
  Happens to be Wednesday.
• 1:28:48
  Lots of shows.
• 1:28:49
  Lots of good stuff.
• 1:28:52
  And plenty of good talk for you to
• 1:28:56
  listen to.
• 1:28:57
  If you want to keep listening, Undamnedradio.com
• 1:28:59
  forward slash live.
• 1:29:00
  Tomorrow's a good day to do so.
• 1:29:02
  You can go to Undamnedradio.com forward slash
• 1:29:06
  podcasts and listen to all of the great
• 1:29:11
  content here.
• 1:29:12
  You can listen to music 24-7 by
• 1:29:15
  Undamnedradio.com forward slash live.
• 1:29:17
  You ever want to listen to international flavor?
• 1:29:20
  In its entirety, from any place you would
• 1:29:24
  like to, all you got to do is
• 1:29:26
  go to internationalflavor.com.
• 1:29:29
  Friday, we will have Civic Outlaws.
• 1:29:33
  Full show going from 7 a.m. to
• 1:29:36
  8.30 a.m. And I hope you
• 1:29:40
  join us then.
• 1:29:42
  I very much look forward to chatting with
• 1:29:45
  you again tomorrow.
• 1:29:45
  Have a very nice day.