Latest / 775 Alive / Ep055: Persian Power Plays

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Ep055: Persian Power Plays · 775 Alive

• 0:00
  Scott - And as religion becomes the focal point, I think Iran adopts Israel as the great Satan.
• 0:05
  I don't think there's a direct thing that says if we get rid of Israel, all of Iran's problems are going to be solved.
• 0:08
  Crystal - Iran's never If they agree to stop building nuclear weapons, they're essentially saying, "We trust all of you to do the right thing by us." Scott - One of the things don't openly back Iran, what happens when they start turning against you?
• 0:25
  [upbeat theme music] Welcome to 775 Alive, a podcast focused on Nevada. From Vegas to Reno to Elko, we decode politics, economics, and critical global issues, offering common sense perspectives true to our Nevada roots. I'm Scott Gavorsky, PhD historian, and I'm Crystal Newton, business strategist. Let's get into it. [music ends] Scott - Okay, welcome back here to 775 Alive. Like a lot of you, Crystal and I have been following the international news, particularly with this Iran situation, right? Not just the economic impacts, trying to figure out how we got into this place and even what this means for the future of a whole range of issues going forward.
• 1:00
  Crystal - Yeah, this was particularly for Nevada. We're highly dependent on the price of fuel. Even Las Vegas, people fly in, airplane tickets are twice what they used to be. That's really damaging to that economy. And then, of course, you have the north, which farming and mining, which requires a lot of diesel and gas.
• 1:20
  So very important to us. Every day this goes on, it hurts a little bit more. So we thought it would be really important to dive into, like you said, how do we get here? How do we get out of this?
• 1:31
  Scott - Right. And looking at those impacts because it's not just the direct fuel. I mean, the US only imports something like 8% of its oil supply currently out of the Middle East. But a bigger concern that's emerging is how important some of those petroleum stocks, particularly natural gas, are in terms of fertilizer production. And I think that's something as this goes on that's got a lot of people concerned as we start crossing agricultural growing seasons. Crystal - Yeah, I think it's pretty obvious when you talk about fertilizer. If you're not having as much fertilizer out in the world, that must mean you're not growing as many crops, which, you know, between the energy commodity sector and the food commodity sector, those are two of the most important things to human survival worldwide. So, this is something that we should all be paying attention to. Definitely. And I do want to clear up one thing because you're right. We only get about 8% of our fuel out of the straight of Hormuz. And the biggest question I get, I don't know if you get this a lot, Scott, is why is our price really high if we've doubled our domestic production and we don't get that much fuel out of Iran? Well, the answer is the fuel price is global. So if there's scarcity anywhere, all of our suppliers will sell at that highest price. And that's why the price is high even though we're producing our own supply. So I just wanted to clear that up. A lot of people are puzzled about that. Scott - Yeah, fungible, I think, is the economic term and that's one of the things we're going to have to look at because that gets into a lot of the stuff with international relations, who's using the oil out of that region and that type of stuff. But locally, of course, this conflict starts pure geopolitics, right? Particularly the threat of Iran having nuclear weapons, stealing technology, and as is so often the case, our neighbor to the West, California seems to be right at the center of some of these shenanigans, right? Two big cases that have just come out over the last four or five months. You had the lady who was arrested at LAX for smuggling Iranian arms like drones and bombs and ammunition to the conflict in Sudan to support some of the militias there. And then just in June, right, this guy that has been accused of selling networking technology and coding and encryption software to Iran.
• 3:29
  Crystal - Yeah. No, the amount of shenanigans that comes out of that state. Just a full backstory on this guy, and this is just, you know, hold on to your boots, Nevada. This guy, we . . . China sold Iran a golden dome that didn't work. So, basically, when Iran was bombed, this dome didn't protect them at all. The software didn't work the way that they wanted them to. This guy out of California, who they arrested, was supplying the Iranians with the correct codes to make that thing work. To make it worse, he was in a $30 million mansion collecting welfare from the state of California Scott - And supposedly running a a licensed import-export company on top of all this, right? And of course, selling the secondary technology is something that we saw the Soviet Union do and presumably both the Soviet Union and or Russia and China continue to do this even nowadays, right? That they're going to keep the best stuff for themselves. But yeah, it's just . . .
• 4:23
  it's funny that while all this conflict's going on, all of a sudden, California seems to be at the middle of these Iranian spy rings, right?
• 4:34
  Crystal - Yeah. Thanks, California.
• 4:40
  because the most obvious one that everybody talks about, I think, is the oil prices, but as you were saying before, oil is fungible. It's a global demand, right? If there's increased demand in Asia or Europe, prices go up across the board, whether they're being produced locally or not because the US is connected here into these systems. I think one of the things we've been seeing in some ways out of the Trump administration is efforts to open up these alternative sources. We've seen this to be a recurring pattern, right? If you shut off the oil supply out of the Middle East or you shut it off from some place like Venezuela, which of course was back in the news earlier this year with the US effort to grab Maduro, that this causes . . .
• 5:14
  this really presents a tool, an arrow in the quiver of countries that can't compete with the US militarily can try to cripple it economically.
• 5:27
  So I think one of the things we're actually seeing that's interesting out of this is that focus on oil even as US domestic supplies are expanding dramatically, which leaves open to question who then is dependent on this oil? Why is the US involved if it might not need that oil directly?
• 5:43
  And the question, the obvious question isn't even so much Europe, but it really seems to be our Asian partners, right, Japan certainly but also China is heavily dependent on that Middle Eastern oil.
• 5:54
  Crystal - I think we really need to talk about why we're in this conflict to begin with. Iran seems almost belligerently mad and they have for a long time and, at the end of this conversation I believe that the United States is in the right. But I do think that we need to talk about why Iran's so mad.
• 6:11
  Do you think we should start at the death of the Ottoman Empire and the way that region was destabilized as kind of the beginning place of where all this happened or do you want to start a little later on the conflict, like World War II?
• 6:21
  Scott - I think it's twofold. When the Ottoman Empire fell, that buffer there between European powers and the Middle East, or Southwest Asia, wherever one puts Iran, sort of collapsed. So that's a good starting point. But I think the more direct conflict is really the development in the late '30s of Iranian oils production in the Caucus mountain ranges. I think that's really what started bringing powers in very extensively western powers, right? So we have of course Britain and the United States. So that's really I think what put Persia, Iran on the global map as it goes back to the oil supplies. And then once we get into the Cold War, these issues just continue. So by 19 . . .
• 7:01
  Crystal - I mean in order to access the global market I'm pretty sure that they used Britain, France to come in and help facilitate it, which turned into them managing it, which turned into Iran not getting any benefit from it. Which I personally think is where they started with their antagonism and hate of the West. Does that sound like . . .
• 7:26
  Scott - Well, yes and no. They did get benefit because those imperial powers, you know, they're providing the oil infrastructure that Iran couldn't build itself, the processing capacities, pipelines, ports, harbors. But I think where it goes to is that a lot of these issues just aren't economic.
• 7:38
  And I think that's one of the things that tends to blind us in dealing with these issues. So even though there's this effort of these foreign countries to come in and get the oil supplies, that itself is not really what they're mad about. It's how those countries tend to get involved with their local politics. Iran in, what, '53, there's an effort to overthrow the ruling dynasty which the US in particular and Britain get involved with to stop, right? So they keep a power that's friendly to the US and Britain in power in Iran and that starts the long process of discontent that continues throughout most of the Cold War.
• 8:11
  Crystal - Yeah. I see the two as tied together because you need a government and power that's cooperative if you're managing their exports and their resources. And so I, if outside power throws out your government so that they can capitalize on your economy better.
• 8:29
  I think even Americans can see where they started to get belligerent and antagonistic and ultimately decide that you needed a nuclear weapon at some point in the escalation. I think that started in the 70s or 80s. But, holy cow, we took over their government a few times. We took over their infrastructure a few times. This has been going for a while.
• 8:50
  though, in this. But I think it's . . . and that that step is of course the '79 Revolution that overthrew the Shah of Iran, right, during the Carter administration. And in that case, and that's why . . . notice that when we talked about this background, we didn't really mention religion, which is the one thing everybody thinks about. But that gets to a point where religion comes in is actually the issue where political Islam seems to grow out of particularly in the late '60s, 1970s as a way to fight back against these western powers or these western systems of government that really don't seem to follow the beliefs of the people. And that was the argument in the '79 Revolution.
• 9:26
  That by turning to Islam what they can do is create a system that wasn't subject to western powers. And, of course, we had the kidnapping of the people at the American embassy and that got us into a whole range over a decade of of conflicts with the Reagan administration, the Iran-Contra controversy, and all this other stuff. But it comes out of, and it's out of that there that the nuclear power argument comes, is that a form of political Islam becomes a counter to western colonial or neocolonialism movements. And that I think is much more important as the root of the conflict. It's not just religion, right? It's religion mixed with the economics mixed with the political.
• 10:03
  Crystal - I think a lot of people understand that Israel is a big part of this. And of all the explanations that we just went through or mostly you just went through. How does Israel interject itself into all of this? Did this . . . this started with Israel got formed in, what, 1947?
• 10:19
  Scott - '47.
• 10:29
  This is one of the problems is that there's this belief that if we just get rid of Israel, somehow the Middle East will just stop all this. And like I said, I don't think that's actually the root of a lot of these problems, right?
• 10:36
  Crystal - But Iran states, though, that that United States is the great Satan and Israel is its proxy in the middle of of their land.
• 10:49
  right? But Israel doesn't have any economic holdings. Never had, as far as I know, in Iran.
• 10:57
  It never attempted to conquer Iranian territory. We can argue about the Jordanian, the Lebanese and Syrian and Egyptian territory Israel's taken, but again, those are all Sunni Muslim lands that are Arabic. Iran, after '79 as religion becomes the focal point, I think, adopts Israel as the great Satan, right? But that . . .
• 11:15
  I don't think there's a direct thing that says,"Okay, if we get rid of Israel, all of a sudden all of Iran's problems are going to be solved." Because it wasn't ever about Israel. Israel was just a convenient proxy. It was another way, I think, to get back at the US and the Western powers through supporting groups like Hezbollah, right? And I think where Israel is involved now is, I would argue, the argument is Iran attacked first and Israel is defending itself. But if you looked at '47, Israel is nowhere near Iran. Iran wasn't involved in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, that a lot of people point to creating this process.
• 11:52
  They weren't involved in the '47 formations of a state. They're not involved in the Six- Day War. They're not involved in the Yom Kippur War, right? Israel isn't the problem. It's the propaganda piece that Iran uses to justify actions.
• 12:02
  Crystal - So, who is the IRGC?
• 12:09
  Revolutionary Guard.
• 12:09
  Crystal - Yeah.
• 12:18
  and Marines, right? They're basically an internal paramil . . . they're not even paramilitary, they're a military force that seems to be directing a lot of Iran's foreign policy, right? But structurally, they're in some ways no different than, like I said, the CIA, the Marines, whatnot, right? Hamas is a separate group that sometimes they use for their proxy war, other times they just totally ignore. Hezbollah is a paramilitary group that the IRG largely funds just to screw around with Israel and create chaos in the region, right? But one of the problems Iran has . . . the Iranian government's claiming it's hardline factions in the IRG started this latest round of attacks, right? And what that does is like the US saying the CIA just went out and did this without permission of US government. Nobody's going to buy it. Nobody buys it, right?
• 13:09
  But it does create a problem if they've created this sort of these groups that think they could operate independently. And that's far scarier that a country has lost control.
• 13:18
  Crystal - Yeah. Then that's actually behind a lot of when I hear the Trump administration announce a deal, I go with who? Because if you made a deal with the president, it's no good because nobody takes direction from the president in Iran. [laughter] Scott - It depends on the president. But uh . . .
• 13:37
  again with who?
• 13:37
  Scott - Yeah, with who. But no, you're exactly right in that fact that who's actually in control of Iran and that's a very open question right now. Very open question. And how do you deal with that? But the US has been dealing with this. I would argue that this is actually another one of these 50, 60 year old things. The idea of these non-state actors that are actually causing a lot of problems that we don't have an idea how to get to. How do we get at al-Qaeda? How do we get to some place like Tren de Agua or MS-13 that don't have state actors? And we have an international system that's based on the idea of negotiating with other fellow state actors in an attitude of equality and then these non-state actors are problematic and I don't think necessarily that we have the clear solution. But I have to admit I think the Trump administration, much more so than earlier administrations, are taking that factor into account.
• 14:36
  think that's something that's missing in most people's idea of how the world works is the criminal and the black market elements. And just in some countries, they're very powerful. They rival the government. And from the white market perspective, 192 countries with governments and heads of states, and you just assume that these are the people running things. Some countries, it's not the case. That's just a figurehead. And I actually saw this in Mexico when Trump came in this last time into office. I think he had a conversation with Claudia Sheinbaum and all of a sudden, he declared cartels terrorists of some sort. You remember this?
• 15:15
  Crystal - And basically the newest cartel in Mexico, the new Jalisco cartel on the west coast got wiped out. And you can tell that there was a conversation between Trump and Sheinbaum that said, "You got to do something about this. If you don't, we will." And Claudia was like,"Let us clean our own house. Thank you very much." Worked a little better in Mexico than it did in Iran. [laughter] Iran's a different group of people.
• 15:39
  in Mexico is for all its problems with corruption and everything, Mexico still has a democratic government and Sheinbaum is ultimately answerable to the population. It seems to be a large part of the population that's upset with the cartels as well. I think part of it was Sheinbaum was forced to do something. The problem is we don't have that in Iran. You've brought up a couple times that one of the real tragedies here, and Trump's mentioned it, is we can't seem to be able to arm the Iranian people, who by all accounts don't like their government but have no way to overthrow them, right?
• 16:09
  Crystal - Yeah. I can't emphasize enough that people with guns always win.
• 16:09
  Scott - And, but this is I think this issue of non-state or semi-state actors. And again, I tend to view this conflict here in Iran currently as actually much more traditional than even we saw with the Venezuelan conflict with Maduro, right? I think what we're actually getting at, and I think a large part of this, is to get Iran just to stop all this stuff. It's not just about the Strait of Hormuz. It's not just about the nuclear program, although that's the most important factor. But I think it's at a point that everybody recognizes that Iran's supporting Hezbollah, that Iran supporting these other terrorist organizations. And I think we have an administration, particularly the Rubio branch of the administration, Marco Rubio, that is just this needs to stop. We're not going to be able to go on decades more like this, right? This is just not doing anything.
• 16:57
  Crystal - Yeah. And I appreciate the effort. I hate to say this, because we're all really worn out from the Iran war, but I see Venezuela, Iran, and possibly Cuba as Trump making an effort to give the people of those countries their resources back because these are three countries where the top people in charge take all the wealth of the country and don't give anything to the population.
• 17:27
  And I think it would be really great if we could get through all this and have Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba, the people of those countries actually get some revenue from the resources that are theirs. And I think that would be a wonderful turn to see in the world.
• 17:43
  is something to that the idea is that some of these conflicts need to end. Yeah. But I think the problem is going to be to resolve this whatever the political solution is. And again, I've long held, and it was Michael Smith pointed out, the Trump administration was trapped in the same situation the Clinton administration was with Kosovo back in '97. It got to the point that we just keep doing these sort of low-level kinetic actions and, is the modern phrase, and hoping that they'll eventually learn the lesson or do you just put your foot down and say, "Look, we just need to we need to take out the infrastructure. We need to take out anything and just force them to their knees." And I think where that's been encapsulated in the US foreign policy is I think we've had an interesting case where JD Vance as vice president has stood on the side of negotiation and low-key stuff. And I think Rubio has been arguing for a much harder stance against Iran. And I think one of the things we're seeing is that powered balance is shifting from Vance to Rubio. And I think the the Trump administration's frustrated enough and we're starting to see it. Some of the most recent strikes have been taking out, not just military targets, but also stuff like the control towers that's controlling the radar and the tracking and traffic control for the Strait of Hormuz, right? That's predominantly in some cases a civilian facility.
• 19:00
  renovation. You've got to tear out a bunch of stuff and the idea is that you'll get the surrounding countries to invest. that 300 billion. Ss a collection of countries willing to invest in Iran and rebuild the infrastructure with the idea that if their neighbors around Iran have an asset to protect inside of Iran that they are going to be the ones to rally around Iran if they start to go wayward again and course correct. And really the whole world, if they are as dependent on the Strait of Hormuz as they think they are, and they are, it's really everybody's job to fix this problem. And I think we've had a lot of lazy leaders that didn't want to get into this quagmire because it was going to be a quagmire no matter what. But I think Trump did the proper groundwork and he tried to take the shot at the best time that he could, but it was going to be a mess no matter what. And we can't have a country in the world running around wishing death on the Western civilization.
• 19:52
  Scott - Wishing death is one thing. that are doing stuff.
• 19:56
  Crystal - Or building a nuclear weapon. How much more clear do you need to be that you hate somebody?
• 20:04
  Scott - They of course the Iranians would argue to nuclear weapons for self-defense against the United States, right? But that's part of a much larger discussion. But I don't think . . . nuclear weapons were and still remains the priority. I think if the nuclear weapons, if Iran, not that they're going to do it, but if tomorrow they said, "Okay, come in, take all the nuclear stuff, if we need to set up a nuclear reactor, we'll just buy the stuff off of you." I think all of a sudden a lot of this dies down, right? Not all of it, but a lot of it. And then I think it becomes easier to work on this stuff such as pulling back Hezbollah, pulling back some of this other terrorist financing. Again, the lady in LA, she's selling Iranian arms to the Sudan, right? A country or region, I should say, because now it's at least two countries that's been divided by a civil war that Iran and other powers have been pumping arms and finances in for over a generation.
• 20:58
  going to take the nuclear weapon off the table. They have no reason to trust us, and they don't, and they won't. Which is . . . that's a tough place. What do we do now?
• 21:02
  Scott - And I think you're right in terms of the government, the current government of Iran, but if you would have looked at Iran back into the late '60s, early '70s it was largely considered a very modern nation, right? Yes there was a lot of exploitation of oil by Aramco and Britain and the United States. There was fiddling with the politics. It was quite clear that the Shah's regime at times was engaged in of autocratic activities, right, as too many governments the US ended up supporting at the time against communists ended up doing. But in some ways, Iran was in much better shape in the '70s before the Islamic Revolution than they've been since. And they had no desire. But the Shah's position was like so much of that post-World War II world, this idea of coexistence, right? In the sense, not of the bumper sticker, but in the sense that we're going to be part of a global community and if we can get to a point where we can freely exchange this stuff we'll be okay. The current government of Iran, though, a lot of this ideology that's coming out of this political Islam is the policy that's not just happy to exist in part of a global world. It wants to actively change that world into something of its own making. Now we can argue the US is doing the same. I'm not denying that. But I think that's one of the things that I think separates and drives this this question for nuclear weapons. I don't think it's just self-defense or an effort to make sure that Iranian oil's for Iranians.
• 22:30
  I think there is a very problematic ideology, that this is a projective project, right? That this nuclear weapon, there's no guarantee it's going to be used only as a deterrent standoff, that it could be used offensively.
• 22:42
  Crystal - Yeah. And those If I could overlay this idea onto an American situation to try to . . . just at least express that this is an impossible situation. If liberals were to take office in 2028 and somehow they figure out a way to take our guns from us and they say to us conservatives, "Give us your guns. We're a peaceful society. We don't need them anymore. Trust us. We will do the right thing." How would you respond as a conservative?
• 23:16
  Scott - No, I'd think that you . . .
• 23:20
  Crystal - I trying to say like telling Iran, give up your thing by you.
• 23:25
  Scott - But I think where you're making you addressing with that? I think the people that are elite are in a bind, that if they give up the nuclear weapons or give up their pretense of being a global power, that their own population might overthrow them.
• 23:40
  Crystal - Yeah. People are not localized to Iran. we're not just targeting a group of people that are problematic in Iran. This is a network expanding across the Middle East. So, that's why this becomes so problematic. It really doesn't matter what the people of Iran want because this power structure is dead intent that the Western world cannot be trusted and a nuclear weapon is their only card that will save them.
• 24:07
  Scott - I'm going to disagree a bit. This is the United States versus the state of Iran, right? The Iranian Republican Guard is a unit of the Iranian government that's controlled by the Ayatollah, so on and so forth. This is not some nebulous group like with Hezbollah or even early al-Qaeda, where there's not somebody that you can contact with, that if you cut off this head, this group, this cell is going to go up. So, I think that's a huge change. Theoretically, if the US went in there and just invaded and took out every member of the Iranian Republican Guard, the situation ends, right? Now, that said, it . . . key component of post-World War II international relationships is you can negotiate with people, that leadership has a rational interest in staying in power and are willing to moderate their actions in order to maintain that power. I think that is what has become disjointed in the Middle East. I don't think they feel like they have to be rational because they haven't really as states been held responsible, right? A reporter asked Mr. President, you talked about a year ago that you could work with the Iranians, that this is a way to get a conclusion. You've been talking about this memorandum of understanding back in April, that you could close this. And so in your mind, what's changed? Why don't you think you can work with these people any anymore? And Trump's response was pretty much I've had to deal with them . . . basically experience. And the funny part is that Rubio about laughs . . . loses it laughing over Trump's shoulder at that response. The truth is I think what you're seeing is an evolving policy that's saying we tried to deal with these people on a rational basis. Give them the $300 [billion] to rebuild. They're not going to take it. But we can't just step back and say, "Okay, our mistake. Go ahead and do what you're going to do anyway." So I think that's what's going to make this a little bit more dangerous.
• 25:51
  Crystal - Yeah. And we're starting in America to see a couple generations where people are starting to adopt more extremist views. And I think it's important to look at something like the IRGC and you get a couple generations, a couple centuries down the road and that kind of hatred and absolutism gets embedded into the cultural values and it makes it very hard to get rid of them because I could we could go in and take out all of the IRGC, but they have sons and daughters and aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters and people that were directly exposed to that culture. So there's cultural remnants, the remnants, there's the root system to that hatred and that extreme viewpoint that still is in the culture. And I just wanted to point that out because Iran's in a really tough place right now. But America is starting down the road of really intractable opposition and we're slowly weeding out our ability to understand each other and talk to each other and be reasonable. And if you get too far down the road, all of a sudden you have generations that know nothing different than to take strong oppositional stances and to be constantly at conflict culturally. So I look at Iran from more than just this is a conflict we need to get out of and manage, but also this is how far human beings can get culturally if you let it slide.
• 27:08
  Scott - Well, I'm going to disagree emerged since '79. I think there's plenty of people in Iran that don't think that way around the West.
• 27:18
  Certainly, they didn't think that way around the West in the early 1970s, right? I think what we're seeing, again, I think this is actually a much more direct state-to-state problem, that if you can go in there and either force this government to behave, which I don't think is likely, or create the conditions where the government is just in such dire straits that it becomes possible for the population to overthrow them, I think you're going to see something emerge. It's not going to be perfect and it's going to be a rough process. No doubt about that. And I think again in Iran, either its state or its population realizes that it needs to be networked into the international world, right?
• 27:57
  Crystal - Yeah. And I've said that a few times. I go a long way. But China's the biggest purchaser of Iranian oil and the largest amount of their income comes from China. And in that case, it would be very easy for the buyer of Iranian oil to make demands of changes from Iran. And that's probably the only people that they would listen to is because if China stopped buying their oil, they would be in really dire straits economically. So, it would be awesome if China could get involved with this and demand better things from Iran in order for them to keep purchasing oil. I can't understand why China hasn't done so because supposedly they're marketing themselves as this evolved great leader. I can't understand why they're continually giving money to Iran even though they're acting this way on the global stage. Do you have any insight as to why China isn't doing more to help mitigate Iran?
• 28:58
  Scott - It's realpolitik, the German sort of real politics. I think China's in a position that, A, by continuing to support Iran even now it's a thorn in the side of the US which China considers an enemy. So it's a form of proxy war. The US hasn't shifted the dynamic enough where it would hurt China to continue that policy, right, that President Trump announced this week. A lot of those ships are going to go to China and the US has openly said we're not interested in trying to cut off Chinese supply of oil, right? It's the Iranian ability to get paid for that oil we're after. But I think one of the things that China is very worried about as well is that if they don't at least nominally keep quiet or openly back Iran, if they actually make themselves an enemy of Iran, I think part of what they're afraid is a lot of the terrorist activity we're seeing elsewhere might be turned against China. And that's one of the side effects of the proxy war model, right? What happens when they start turning against you? So I think there's a lot of reasons for China not to get heavily involved at this point. Particularly if the US can guarantee some modicum of fuel supplies.
• 30:07
  Crystal - What if we bought all of Iran's oil, if we would get control over them, we make them dependent economically.
• 30:15
  Scott - Yeah. That economic model you're describing, if we control it, is what people refer to as neocolonialism, right? That the old direct colonialism from before World War II is replaced during the Cold War. This neocolonialism where the same European powers just continued, with the addition of the United States and the Soviet Union, are just continuing to exploit the resources.
• 30:35
  They're just not calling it.
• 30:35
  Crystal - Oh, totally. No, I've products loan to private people. And some of these financial products out there, once you take them on, you're basically an indentured servant. You have to work to pay them off. And some of them can look a lot like it's a new slavery. Scott - And I don't know if we want to go too far about that.
• 30:56
  This gets into some some high-end stuff. But that being said . . .
• 30:56
  Crystal - You got to look at how the world actually works. There's a whole bunch of deals everywhere where people's needs are getting met in different ways. And looking at how those agreements and deals are made.
• 31:08
  Sometimes things can get improved if you make slightly different deals with slightly different people. And I'm like looking at this and just what kind of a different deal. You've really got to get creative. This has been going on for almost 50 years.
• 31:17
  Scott - But I think that's the problem. I think there's been a lot of creativity, right? I don't think it's worked because you're you're assuming, again, this is the criticism for political scientists towards economist, right? You're assuming that there's some rational basis under which the Iranian government's operating that they just want the money. They want to stay in power. And what I'm arguing is that in some ways, I think there's an ideology at work that wants to expand power. And you don't expand power by being subject to somebody else, right? So this idea that somehow you're going to shift these chessboard agreements and get Iran to start behaving I think is what's been proven as fundamentally flawed.
• 31:58
  And I think . . . again, I think the Obama administration proved that. The Obama administration through the JOPCA released a lot of Iranian assets that were being held since the revolution in '79 and made all these steps to bring it into the system and Iran continued to do the nuclear enrichment. No doubt about that. None of this stuff just popped up in January 2025 when Trump took office for a second term. They didn't start back up on January 2017 when he took office on his first term. This has been going on consistently. Because they were convinced, again, that 40-some years at that point of experience told him that the West wasn't going to be serious to do what it would take to stop them. You do stuff to aggravate them. They launch a couple strikes. You say, "Okay, mea culpa and keep doing what you're going to do." I think part of where the Trump administration is trapped is that they, A, know they have to change that dynamic. I'm not sure they quite yet have the stomach to do what it takes to change that dynamic.
• 32:51
  Crystal - Yeah. And I am also thinking that this Iran thing, this burgling up is in some part related to Russia invading Ukraine. I don't know if everyone's emboldened to go to war now, but I'm wondering if the Russia-Ukraine War ends sometime soon, if that'll take some of the wind out of Iran's sails. Scott - I would think not. Again, I think you're partially right that Russia launched Ukraine because they didn't think the US was going to stand up to them.
• 33:18
  And at least there at the beginning, Biden should have never let it happen. But I will give his team credit for organizing the initial resistance out of Europe, right? But again, there was never a discussion of how to end the war. And that's that I think is is been the problem there. But I think the the it's not that Russia, the Russian war has convinced Iran that it could get away with the war. I think it has convinced Iran that with the curtailment of Russian oil because of the Ukraine War, the Western powers aren't going to be willing to move against it and risking Iranian oil supplies, right? And I think that's a factor in their calculations. If they can string this on, oil supplies will get so bad that the US will be forced to back out, right? So, right now, we're in this game of chicken.
• 34:03
  Crystal - And I do think that plays into a lot of President Trump's language. And I know a lot of people are flabbergasted at his language sometimes, but it is a game of chicken here with Iran. And they're acting completely crazy with, it seems, like no moral moorings at all. They're willing to do whatever. So, I think Trump's trying to reflect back to them, and this is something you do in business negotiations. You try to get where someone's at. You got to connect with them first, and then you work out the differences. But how do you make a deal with people that are . . . I guess they just have a different value system than we do? And it's so foreign to us that we're it's really hard to deal with. So, we're just trying to speak their language. That's what it it comes across to me. And I think it's really important to Trump that Iran thinks, "Oh crap, we're dealing with something different here." They are not going to squirm out of this. The domestic pressures aren't going to work with this guy. He's going to hold firm. I think that's part of what he's trying to project there with the language like calling him crazy bastards. [laughter] Scott - I agree with you is that distinct. If we go back, you know, if you allow the historian a bit of personal preference, if we go back to the Thucydides, the History of the Peloponnesian War, the Melian Dialogue, right, where there's this long discussion with this small island city-state, Milos, Venus de Milo, that trying to keep the Athenians from coming in and so they give all these reasons why the Athenians shouldn't be involved with their little city-state and getting involved. And Athens at the end of the day finally just sets down what becomes sort of the dominant, one dominant strand of thought in foreign relations, which is the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must, right? I think that's the discussion that's going on in Iran now. Does the US have the gumption just, they're obviously stronger than Iran. Do they have the gumption just to take them out and in this? Or does Iran think they can force the US to back down? And I'm not really sure that the US, the Trump administration, is willing to back down on this.
• 36:04
  in that it would be much easier for them just to settle down and wait out the Trump administration, knowing that they're probably going to be someone new in office. And there will be someone new, but you don't know if it's going to be Democratic or Republican. But it's not a long wait to wait for two years to see what you get with the next US president. And I can't understand why Iran doesn't just settle down and wait because I wouldn't want to mess. I'd be like,"This guy's too volatile for me. I'm going to wait for the next Democrat to get in office." Scott - I actually think that's exactly what they were going to do. I don't think Iran has done something to spark this. I think Iran's done what it's always done under strong American administrations, whether it's been Reagan, whether it's been Bush, whether it's been the first Trump administration.
• 36:45
  I think what they did initially when Trump took office in early 2025, I think the idea was, okay, we're just going to, we're not going to do anything that's that majorly irritates people.
• 36:56
  We'll just keep working on our nuclear program and they'll just stay away and keep our head down. I think October 7th in Israel changed that a bit, right? I think Hamas upset that plan. Remember Hamas is Muslim Sunni Arabic, right? But I think when Iran decided to support Hezbollah, that started shifting the dynamic. But I don't think they thought the US would go after them directly.
• 37:19
  And then they thought after the nuclear weapon bombing, the US has got it out of the system, we can wait another couple years. And I don't think the Trump administration is willing to wait.
• 37:26
  They're not willing to play the game. Okay, let's go talk about, let's have a meeting in six months and we'll work all this out. I think the Trump administration is like, "No, we're going to solve this." So, I think the Trump administration's not willing to give Iran the two years to wait.
• 37:39
  Crystal - Yeah. And I can only imagine just this rotating chain of command that's happening in Iran, just how confusing and disorienting it would be to you get people taken out all the time. You're like, who do I report to now? And I don't understand how they're even able to summon any kind of coherent response, but somehow they are. But I think if Trump holds on, I don't think they'd have much left.
• 38:00
  Scott - And the ability to hold on is going to be of the things . . .
• 38:05
  Crystal - Midterms. It's the only problem we have right now is we're up against the midterms.
• 38:10
  Scott - There's also an interesting dimension out of this. I think that's far more than just the midterms, right? So you've got the US strategic oil reserves potentially being drained. The US has opened up increased production, increased shipping. Of course, the Trump administration has promised to ensure ships and now openly escorting them. But that being said, there's an interesting issue that's starting to track a lot of people's attention, and that's the fact that Iran's is not just supplying the oil that's used for transportation, right, or plastics or everything is that a lot of their natural gas production was being used for fertilizer. And there are some concerns that it, now that we're 6 months into it, we're starting to approach the end of a growing season, right? And so if an agricultural system picks up without the fertilizer that would have been supplied out of, or fertilizer feed stock, I should say that would be supplied out of Iran, you could have some real global repercussions. So I think that's actually might be a bigger impetus than just the US midterms.
• 39:04
  Crystal - Yeah, I think something that strait. And to me, 30% drop in fertilizer means 30% drop in crops. So, we got a whole another issue coming down the line. [laughter] Scott - But that being said, I think this Iranian situation is having some major repercussions. It's marking a fundamental change in where the world is. Again, I've felt for years that we're just . . . we're seeing the post-World War II global order breakdown. I don't necessarily think that's necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. I think it's ossified and it isn't working particularly with this issue of non-state actors. But, you know, the problem is we're not really sure where we need to go and I don't think anybody's got the answer.
• 39:52
  it should be pointed out that's always been the case there's always some global reordering going on and nobody ever quite knows how it's going to look on the other side and I actually think this is one of the coolest parts about being a human being is we, every generation gets a whole new set of problems to make of it what they will.
• 40:07
  Scott - What's the joke about the the ancient Chinese curse.
• 40:11
  May you live in interesting times. So again, this is this is something we'll probably be following again. We've certainly talked about the Iran situation before. We'll probably talk about it again. But if you want to get a hold of Crystal and I, go ahead and shoot us an email at info@775alive.com and we'll try our best to go ahead and answer you. But next time, I'm Scott Gavorsky.
• 40:29
  Crystal - And I'm Crystal Newton. Scott - And we'll see [upbeat theme music] Thank you for listening to 775 Alive, Nevada Roots, Global issues. Subscribe on YouTube or X and on most podcast streaming services. You can email us at info@775alive.com or send us a message via carrier pigeon. [music ends]