Latest / Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar / 4/15/26: Lebanon Invasion Doomed, Scientists Go Missing, Professor Pape On Iran Ceasefire

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4/15/26: Lebanon Invasion Doomed, Scientists Go Missing, Professor Pape On Iran Ceasefire · Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

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Speaker 1: Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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Speaker 1: dot com. Joining us now is shaiall Ben Afrime. He
0:35
Speaker 1: is a geopolitical analyst and has put out a lot
0:38
Speaker 1: of interesting stuff on this new meeting between these Raelis
0:41
Speaker 1: and the Lebanese for a potential ceespire.
0:43
Speaker 3: Chill.
0:43
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it.
0:45
Speaker 4: Sure always a pleasure.
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Speaker 1: So let's go and put this up here on the
0:49
Speaker 1: screen d one. The Lebanese and Israeli diplomats held this
0:52
Speaker 1: face to face meeting here in Washington. It was the
0:56
Speaker 1: first of its kind in many, many years, but you
0:59
Speaker 1: are a very skep of some sort of a ceasefire.
1:02
Speaker 1: Could you maybe set the table for some of the
1:05
Speaker 1: history leading up to this moment and what you make
1:08
Speaker 1: of the development so far.
1:10
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, this is the first face to face meeting
1:14
Speaker 5: since the nineteen eighties, when also violence, extreme violence in
1:20
Speaker 5: the region led to a series of meetings under American
1:25
Speaker 5: pressure and through the mediation of other Middle Eastern countries,
1:31
Speaker 5: and that's again what happened here. The United States has
1:36
Speaker 5: put a lot of pressure on the Lebanese government and
1:40
Speaker 5: on Israel to discuss a ceasefire, but there's absolutely no
1:48
Speaker 5: chance of its succeeding because Israel has plans to its
1:53
Speaker 5: member Lebanon completely take over a security zone all the
1:57
Speaker 5: way up to the Litani River. And what the Lebanese
2:02
Speaker 5: want is just a ceasefire, just for Israel to stop firing,
2:06
Speaker 5: but Israel wants part of the country and wants Lebanon
2:12
Speaker 5: to try to dismantle Hesbela. Now, the public opinion in
2:18
Speaker 5: Lebanon is wildly against any kind of deal with Israel
2:23
Speaker 5: because the kind of deal that Israel and the United
2:25
Speaker 5: States are looking for involves normalization of the relationship and peace.
2:30
Speaker 5: While Israel takes away part of Lebanon's land, And even
2:35
Speaker 5: if the normalization involved giving up no land, there is
2:39
Speaker 5: very few people in Lebanon who are for normalization. Seventy
2:43
Speaker 5: to eighty percent depending on Paul, are against normalization without
2:47
Speaker 5: giving up land. With giving up land, you probably wouldn't
2:49
Speaker 5: find a single Lebanese person who would be willing to normalize.
2:54
Speaker 5: And meanwhile, Israel is demanding that Lebanon dismantle Hesbela, which
3:00
Speaker 5: there's no support for whatsoever in Lebanon, especially with this invasion.
3:05
Speaker 5: Before this invasion there probably would have been some support
3:07
Speaker 5: for it, but much less now. But even if Lebanon
3:10
Speaker 5: wanted to disinbantle Hesbella, they couldn't. Israel can't this man
3:14
Speaker 5: Bella with its massive army, and Lebanon couldn't. Lebanon's also
3:18
Speaker 5: on the verge of becoming a failed state. Since twenty
3:20
Speaker 5: twenty two, Lebanon has been involved in an almost complete
3:25
Speaker 5: economic collapse. Their currency has almost no value, They've lost
3:29
Speaker 5: fifteen percent of their population leaving, and that's mostly liberals
3:33
Speaker 5: and moderates who might want normalization.
3:35
Speaker 4: So the whole thing is a farce.
3:39
Speaker 6: Yeah, we can start rolling some of this footage in
3:41
Speaker 6: D two. This is recent strikes in southern Lebanon, and child,
3:45
Speaker 6: can you help us understand to your point about support
3:49
Speaker 6: previously for dismantling Hesbela defeating Hasbela, how significant these strikes
3:55
Speaker 6: have been and basically how they may have undermined the
3:59
Speaker 6: cause of actually squelching has Belah in Lebanon.
4:03
Speaker 3: Yeah.
4:04
Speaker 5: Well, I wouldn't want to over sell the prospects of
4:08
Speaker 5: anything happening regarding quelching has before all this happened. But
4:14
Speaker 5: as you can see, Israel is committing all sorts of
4:18
Speaker 5: war crimes and atrocities in Lebanon, the kind of atrocities
4:23
Speaker 5: that no country could put up with silently, and that
4:27
Speaker 5: public opinion absolutely will not allow to for the government
4:34
Speaker 5: to facilitate. You know, not only are has Israel killed
4:41
Speaker 5: all these people, a large portion of which are our
4:44
Speaker 5: children as usual, But and not only is Israel operating
4:49
Speaker 5: deep inside Libanon, but it's destroying entire villages. The first
4:52
Speaker 5: three lines of villages, and what you're seeing in that
4:57
Speaker 5: footage is the first line of villages. The first three
4:59
Speaker 5: lines of villages above Israel are slated for complete and
5:02
Speaker 5: total destruction. Every single building is going to be destroyed,
5:06
Speaker 5: and instead of those villages, Israel is going to build
5:09
Speaker 5: a network of military bases. There's a big debate in
5:14
Speaker 5: the IDF over whether to continue to destroy the next
5:18
Speaker 5: levels and the next levels and where these bases will be.
5:23
Speaker 5: The occupation Israel's planning is permanent. Every single person in
5:28
Speaker 5: Lebanon is very aware of that. And no matter what
5:31
Speaker 5: your feelings are about Hebela, no matter what your feelings
5:33
Speaker 5: are about the West and normalization, no one is willing
5:37
Speaker 5: to countenance this complete destruction of the Lebanese nation. And
5:44
Speaker 5: even people hate Hebela the most and hate the she
5:47
Speaker 5: unites the most, can imagine allowing this sort of thing
5:51
Speaker 5: to happen. Hesbela is the only force in Lebanon that
5:54
Speaker 5: is standing up to Israel, and that will increase their
5:58
Speaker 5: popularity among the people. And this isn't the first time
6:01
Speaker 5: it's happened. This happened also in the previous conflict and
6:06
Speaker 5: in much greater magnitude of order in the Second Lebanon War,
6:12
Speaker 5: and also in two thousand when Israel withdrew from Lebanon.
6:16
Speaker 5: That was also a big boon for Hesbla's popularity. Put
6:20
Speaker 5: Hesbel on the verge of controlling the entire country, and
6:23
Speaker 5: now with the Sietes being an even larger part of
6:25
Speaker 5: the population for demographic reasons because people from other sectors
6:30
Speaker 5: are leaving and because they have a higher birth rate,
6:34
Speaker 5: this will possibly once again turn Hesbel onto the leading
6:39
Speaker 5: political force in the country.
6:41
Speaker 4: And that's due to Israeli policy.
6:44
Speaker 1: And this is yeah, this is very important to underscore
6:47
Speaker 1: shial and one of the reasons we wanted to get
6:48
Speaker 1: into the nitty gritty is that this is vital to
6:51
Speaker 1: the success or, at least it seems of any sort
6:54
Speaker 1: of deal between the United States and Iran. A core
6:56
Speaker 1: tenant of that was a ceasefire with Lebanon. Now as
7:00
Speaker 1: you're explaining it, because I don't think people may understand
7:03
Speaker 1: all of the details, is that these talks are between
7:05
Speaker 1: the Lebanese government and the Israelis, but it is to
7:08
Speaker 1: resolve fundamentally a Hezbolah problem which they have at least
7:12
Speaker 1: a limited amount of control over from the Lebanese government,
7:15
Speaker 1: or maybe no control at all, because the Hezbolah has
7:17
Speaker 1: rejected this. So for some sort of tenable cease fire
7:21
Speaker 1: to occur from the Israeli side, it would effectively mean
7:25
Speaker 1: that the Lebanese government would have to agree to de
7:28
Speaker 1: facto annexation, occupation and control of half of this country.
7:32
Speaker 5: Is that correct, That is correct, Yes, Lebanon, it would
7:36
Speaker 5: have to completely surrender the sovereignty of part of the country.
7:41
Speaker 4: That is an Israeli demand.
7:43
Speaker 5: They're giving Lebanon a map and they're saying in the
7:46
Speaker 5: south there's going to be three different zones, one where
7:48
Speaker 5: we completely directly control and destroy everything, another one where
7:53
Speaker 5: we have blink control, and one where Israel has the
7:56
Speaker 5: ability to operate freely. There's no government in the world
8:00
Speaker 5: that can agree to that formally, even if they agreed
8:03
Speaker 5: to it the facto, which is also unlikely. Agreeing to
8:06
Speaker 5: it formally is like you committing suicide for the government
8:11
Speaker 5: of any sovereign nation. And you hit on another very
8:15
Speaker 5: important point, which is that even if Lebanon wanted a ceasefire,
8:18
Speaker 5: they can't have a ceasfire because the Lebanese government and
8:21
Speaker 5: the Lebanes Army are not fighting against Israel. Hesbalis, the
8:25
Speaker 5: Americans and Israelis know this perfectly well. So Lebanon can't
8:29
Speaker 5: deliver what Israel is asking for even if it wanted to,
8:33
Speaker 5: and it wouldn't want to because they want Israel to
8:36
Speaker 5: leave its territory, as any sovereign nation would. So this
8:41
Speaker 5: is really one of the most ridiculous negotiations imaginable between
8:46
Speaker 5: a government that not only is not the one firing,
8:49
Speaker 5: but also it isn't able to stop the firing, but
8:52
Speaker 5: also it doesn't have the legitimacy to reach the deal
8:56
Speaker 5: that the United States and Israel wanted to. So the
8:59
Speaker 5: only reason Israel agreeing to this is because it gives
9:02
Speaker 5: a cover to continue its operation in Lebanon with some
9:06
Speaker 5: American support, because Americans have been pressured into stopping this
9:12
Speaker 5: from some of their Arab allies. And that's the only
9:16
Speaker 5: reason it exists. It's it's a fig leaf, and people
9:19
Speaker 5: are talking about how staric it is and the whole
9:20
Speaker 5: thing is a joke.
9:22
Speaker 6: Well, I was just going to say Reuter's headline coming
9:24
Speaker 6: out of yesterday, US hosts Rare Israel Lebanon talks quote
9:28
Speaker 6: progress unclear. And then as soon as we're done with
9:33
Speaker 6: that headline, we can put the BBC headline from a
9:35
Speaker 6: couple of days ago up on the screen, quote Israel
9:37
Speaker 6: steps up strikes on Lebanon and HESBLA attacks continue as
9:41
Speaker 6: talks loom. So to your point, shy'all, that's stunning. I mean,
9:47
Speaker 6: if you're reading the tea leaves, and I'm curious for
9:49
Speaker 6: your take on what we've heard after the meetings that
9:52
Speaker 6: were hosted here in DC yesterday brokeer by Secretary of
9:55
Speaker 6: State Marco Rubio, it confirms you're just or it seems
10:00
Speaker 6: to really confirm your suspicion that this is a fig leaf,
10:03
Speaker 6: that this is a cover to continue with US TACIT
10:06
Speaker 6: backing strikes in southern Lebanon. Is that what you're reading
10:10
Speaker 6: after coming out of the last twenty four hours hearing
10:12
Speaker 6: from israelis seeming to double down in their position after
10:15
Speaker 6: they left the meeting. I mean, that's what it seemed
10:17
Speaker 6: like to me. But I'm curious as an expert what
10:19
Speaker 6: you made of it.
10:20
Speaker 5: Yeah, So regarding American motivations, to me, Frank, sometimes it
10:24
Speaker 5: seems like the American officials making the decisions Michael Rubio
10:28
Speaker 5: maybe doesn't fall into this category. Sometimes are too clueless
10:32
Speaker 5: about the Middle East to really understand what they're doing.
10:35
Speaker 5: Sometimes what seems like being nefarious is actually complete ineptitude
10:40
Speaker 5: on their part. From the Israeli point of view, they
10:44
Speaker 5: know exactly what they're doing. They have no intention whatsoever
10:50
Speaker 5: of stopping or slowing down. And yes, the level of
10:57
Speaker 5: strikes that we're seeing in Lebanon greatly increased once the
11:01
Speaker 5: United States reached a deal with Iran in order to
11:06
Speaker 5: try to derail it. They wanted this war anyway, and
11:11
Speaker 5: this isn't the reason for the war in order to
11:13
Speaker 5: in order to derail it, but that's a great bonus
11:15
Speaker 5: that they can get to derail it. So a thig
11:18
Speaker 5: leaf is even being charitable. Israel is using this war
11:23
Speaker 5: in these negotiations as a means of sabotaging the wider
11:28
Speaker 5: Iranian deal, and they are offering Lebanon basically what they
11:35
Speaker 5: are going to enforce either way, which is carving up
11:39
Speaker 5: their entire country. So yes, the whole thing is a
11:43
Speaker 5: fig leaf, and it's a joke, and I am almost
11:47
Speaker 5: surprised that Lebanon is agreeing to this.
11:50
Speaker 4: They must be.
11:51
Speaker 5: Under a lot of pressure from other countries, France, the
11:55
Speaker 5: United States, some of their some of their Arab partners
11:58
Speaker 5: to do this because they're fully aware of what Israel
12:02
Speaker 5: is doing. The only country that benefits from the existence
12:05
Speaker 5: of these talks, aside from the United States is Israel.
12:09
Speaker 5: They're basically lev is basically legitimizing what it's doing, even
12:12
Speaker 5: if they're not agreeing to it, just by talking to them.
12:14
Speaker 1: That's an important point. Now, child, here's the big question.
12:17
Speaker 1: If they agree to some sort of a ceasefire, which
12:20
Speaker 1: is occupation control of half of the country, how would
12:25
Speaker 1: Iran view that? Iran And because ultimately they have to
12:28
Speaker 1: see it as a ceasefire not just of on Hezbolah,
12:32
Speaker 1: but of not de facto occupation control, is that acceptable
12:36
Speaker 1: to them? Like, is this such a long term problem
12:38
Speaker 1: that any tenable solution either would include Israeli withdrawal or
12:42
Speaker 1: the continuation of the war. How do you see that?
12:44
Speaker 5: Well, to the Iranians, they absolutely can't agree to Israel
12:50
Speaker 5: achieving these goals officially, but unofficially for Iran this is
12:58
Speaker 5: a good thing. Unofficially for Iran, this strengthens Hesbela and
13:05
Speaker 5: the grip that they have on Lebanon at a time
13:08
Speaker 5: when they were very, very weak. You know, after the
13:13
Speaker 5: last round of conflict. Israel had won that round. They
13:18
Speaker 5: managed to get a ceasefire that was very much on
13:22
Speaker 5: American Israeli terms, and they managed to convince a lot
13:28
Speaker 5: of people in Lebanon that, of course Israel is aggressive
13:31
Speaker 5: towards Lebanon. But Hesbela brought on Israeli aggression by getting
13:37
Speaker 5: involved in a war when Israel was at its most
13:39
Speaker 5: vengeful point after October seventh. So it looked like a
13:43
Speaker 5: terrible strategic mistake for Hesbelon, for Lebanon what had happened,
13:48
Speaker 5: But Israel squandered that by breaking the ceasefire repeatedly and
13:55
Speaker 5: by now trying to completely destroy it appears a state
13:59
Speaker 5: of Lebanon. This is all great for Iran. You know,
14:03
Speaker 5: Iran was really on the rock before this war, but
14:07
Speaker 5: this war has paradoxically revived their fortunes in the Middle East.
14:15
Speaker 5: Right now, between demographics and what Israel's doing, Hesbela are
14:19
Speaker 5: set to become once again the most important force in
14:22
Speaker 5: the country in a way that they haven't been since
14:25
Speaker 5: twenty twenty three. And that really allows Iran once again
14:30
Speaker 5: to rebuild its network of proxies, and with the support
14:36
Speaker 5: they now have from China and Russia, we actually could
14:39
Speaker 5: see Iran be the strongest that it's been in several years.
14:45
Speaker 5: They have other problems because Syria is now also starting
14:48
Speaker 5: to invade Lebanon.
14:50
Speaker 4: Israel's invading Lebanon, but.
14:51
Speaker 5: That will make Hesbeala the resistance there to all these
14:57
Speaker 5: all this imperialism against Lebanon. Either support has Bella or
15:01
Speaker 5: leave increasingly, that's all very good for Iran, so Ieran
15:06
Speaker 5: is going to want to see this through. They don't
15:09
Speaker 5: necessarily actually want to cease fire in Lebanon. De'll say
15:12
Speaker 5: that they do, but this is a process that plays
15:14
Speaker 5: into their hands.
15:15
Speaker 1: Makes sense. Well, chyl thank you very much for your time.
15:18
Speaker 1: Really enlightening and very interesting. Thank you, Thank you so much.
15:21
Speaker 1: Always a pleasure. Good to see you. Joining us now
15:26
Speaker 1: is Lauren Conlin. She's the East Coast contributor for LA magazine. Lauren,
15:29
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate your
15:31
Speaker 1: time so.
15:32
Speaker 7: Or thank you for having me and covering this story.
15:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's talk. I mean, we've had a great
15:36
Speaker 1: amount of interest, a lot of inquiries around all of
15:38
Speaker 1: these missing scientists and some of these mysterious circumstances. Let's
15:42
Speaker 1: put this latest one up here on the screen. We
15:45
Speaker 1: have a missing nuclear official becomes the tenth person tied
15:48
Speaker 1: to this dark pattern surrounding us secret So top line, Lauren,
15:52
Speaker 1: you've actually dug into the circumstances of these Is this
15:56
Speaker 1: a real story or is the Daily Mail or the
15:58
Speaker 1: tabloids are they making it out than it should be
16:01
Speaker 1: or should we all really be paying attention.
16:03
Speaker 8: I mean, I think we should all be paying attention.
16:05
Speaker 8: I think this is very important that this is coming
16:07
Speaker 8: to light. So I think the people that say, oh, well,
16:10
Speaker 8: you know, it's a coincidence because this happened in twenty
16:13
Speaker 8: twenty two. This happened in twenty nineteen. No one was
16:16
Speaker 8: paying attention then. But we're paying attention now. And what
16:19
Speaker 8: we're seeing is a pattern. And I don't want to
16:21
Speaker 8: sound cliche here, because I think what's going on beyond
16:26
Speaker 8: some of the mysterious circumstances of these deaths or of
16:30
Speaker 8: these disappearances, you know, we're seeing names like Michael David Hicks,
16:35
Speaker 8: who was a NASA scientist, And you know, off the
16:38
Speaker 8: top of my head, I'm like, well, I don't necessarily
16:41
Speaker 8: think that it's so odd that there's no cause of
16:43
Speaker 8: death listed. He didn't have an autopsy. You know, we
16:46
Speaker 8: don't know his religion, et cetera. But then when you
16:49
Speaker 8: see a pattern, you know, someone else whose deaths kind
16:53
Speaker 8: of echoed that, like Frank Maywold, you have to wonder
16:58
Speaker 8: is it one possible?
17:00
Speaker 7: And I'm speculating.
17:01
Speaker 8: You know, they did take their own life, and this
17:03
Speaker 8: is because out of respect for the family, they don't
17:06
Speaker 8: want this out there.
17:07
Speaker 7: Or is it the elephant in the room here? Is
17:10
Speaker 7: is it something bigger?
17:11
Speaker 8: Is it something connected to the government where these people
17:16
Speaker 8: have a lot of classified information, you know, And I
17:19
Speaker 8: don't even want to I've gotten a lot of heat
17:23
Speaker 8: for saying that, and I want to be clear, I
17:24
Speaker 8: don't have proof of anything, but I am just saying
17:27
Speaker 8: the elephant in the room.
17:30
Speaker 7: The government is not above this, and it doesn't always
17:33
Speaker 7: go through the president. The president doesn't always.
17:36
Speaker 1: Know what that means. They are gone, right, And so
17:40
Speaker 1: I go.
17:40
Speaker 8: Back to saying, you know, Tim Burchett, love him, love
17:44
Speaker 8: the guy, but he's like President Trump will disrupt, he
17:47
Speaker 8: will do this. Okay, go for it. We'll all be waiting.
17:50
Speaker 8: I just don't see that happening. President Clinton said he
17:53
Speaker 8: wanted to release the JFK files, you know, also the
17:56
Speaker 8: UFO files that never happened. Obama, you know, really wanted
18:01
Speaker 8: to release the UAP files. Talks very highly about Area
18:05
Speaker 8: fifty one. Nothing happened there. There's a reason for that, guys.
18:08
Speaker 8: And I know that whistleblowers have come out and said
18:12
Speaker 8: that we might be ready. Right as a society, we
18:16
Speaker 8: might be ready. I think it's twofold. I think it's
18:19
Speaker 8: a tough answer. What I will say why we want
18:22
Speaker 8: more transparency now and why the House Oversight Committee is
18:26
Speaker 8: demanding these forty six UAP videos is because we are
18:30
Speaker 8: at war, guys. I mean it is very important because
18:33
Speaker 8: if you look at this list of videos, you know
18:35
Speaker 8: they do indicate some videos or I'm sorry, some UAPs
18:40
Speaker 8: are flying over Iran in twenty twenty two Syria one
18:43
Speaker 8: shape like the cigar. We're talking about conflict areas. So
18:47
Speaker 8: we are not able to tell in real time if
18:50
Speaker 8: this is a drone, if this is a UAP, or
18:52
Speaker 8: if this is some kind of enemy defense. And so
18:55
Speaker 8: I think that you know, us getting transparency it he
19:00
Speaker 8: a big, big difference in whether or not we face
19:03
Speaker 8: disaster or defense.
19:04
Speaker 6: Well, let's get this next headline up on the screen.
19:06
Speaker 6: This is from the New York Post last week on
19:08
Speaker 6: the case of Michael Hicks, another mysterious NASA death, as
19:11
Speaker 6: ninth scientists linked to secret programs dies now, in the
19:15
Speaker 6: case of Michael Hicks. This death was in July of
19:18
Speaker 6: twenty twenty three. The Post reports, quote it is unclear
19:21
Speaker 6: if there's any foul play linked to hicks As death,
19:23
Speaker 6: but his obituary asks for donations in his memory to
19:26
Speaker 6: go to alcoholics anonymous. He joins eight other scientists or
19:30
Speaker 6: top officials who have died or disappeared recently. A couple
19:33
Speaker 6: of things I just want to zero in just from
19:35
Speaker 6: that last paragraph. First of all, the evidence of foul
19:38
Speaker 6: play limited in this case, looks like they're asking for
19:41
Speaker 6: donations to alcoholics anonymous. Secondly, when they say quote recently,
19:46
Speaker 6: this is a death back in twenty twenty three, people
19:48
Speaker 6: are going into the records, doing what journalists should do
19:51
Speaker 6: and trying to connect the dots see if there are
19:53
Speaker 6: any more dots to be found. Frankly, so are there
19:57
Speaker 6: similarities that stand out in these cases?
20:00
Speaker 1: I have seen a couple of them where it.
20:03
Speaker 6: Seems like maybe there's a substance pre existing substance condition
20:08
Speaker 6: but that doesn't or substance abuse condition, but we don't
20:10
Speaker 6: have any confirmation. We don't know what that actually could
20:13
Speaker 6: mean in the context of the deaths and disappearances. Even
20:17
Speaker 6: that question of which of these are deaths and which.
20:19
Speaker 1: Of these are disappearances.
20:21
Speaker 6: Now that we're up to ten, it's sort of all
20:22
Speaker 6: hard to wrap your head around. So maybe help us
20:25
Speaker 6: find patterns that you've noticed.
20:27
Speaker 8: Yeah, you're right about that, and we don't have enough info.
20:31
Speaker 8: I am in the process of reaching out to certain
20:33
Speaker 8: family members that I can find some of these deaths, though,
20:37
Speaker 8: and I'm talking specifically about the deaths that we are
20:39
Speaker 8: one hundred percent confirmed on, Like Carl Grillmer, these are
20:43
Speaker 8: very fresh. I don't feel, you know, as a human being,
20:46
Speaker 8: just you know, comfortable reaching out to a widow right away,
20:50
Speaker 8: right But you know, Michael David Hicks, it's been a
20:53
Speaker 8: few years, and I go back to saying, I don't
20:56
Speaker 8: necessarily think that his death is direct connected to let's say,
21:01
Speaker 8: General mccaslin's death. I think Michael David Hicks's death could
21:05
Speaker 8: be more connected to Frank Maywald and possibly yes, they
21:09
Speaker 8: were dealing with substance abuse issues and that could be
21:13
Speaker 8: connected to everything that they were working on that they knew, and.
21:18
Speaker 7: I don't have proof of that, but go ahead, Can.
21:20
Speaker 1: You just explain a little bit If people aren't super
21:23
Speaker 1: familiar like General mccasklin. We you and I are familiar
21:26
Speaker 1: Frank Maywold as well. What were they working on? What's
21:28
Speaker 1: the possible connection? Because you've done a great job of
21:30
Speaker 1: actually highlighting the suspicious circumstances around these Yeah.
21:34
Speaker 8: So Frank Maywald, he was a NASA JPL scientist. He
21:37
Speaker 8: was a principal researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, and
21:41
Speaker 8: so he was trying to detect signs of human life
21:44
Speaker 8: on other planets. I obviously don't know what he found.
21:48
Speaker 8: He knows what he found. I'm assuming of a handful
21:52
Speaker 8: of people know what he found. I don't think Congress
21:55
Speaker 8: knew what he found, but I don't know. And Carl
21:57
Speaker 8: Grillmer what I will say about his death. I connect
22:01
Speaker 8: Carl grill Mayer's Oh I'm sorry, let's go back. I
22:04
Speaker 8: will say Neil mccaslin's death. General Neil McCaslin, he was
22:08
Speaker 8: retired Air Force general, and he retired a number of
22:12
Speaker 8: years ago. But he was stationed at one point at
22:15
Speaker 8: Wright Patterson that's in Ohio, And if you're not familiar,
22:19
Speaker 8: reportedly they hold extraterrestrial debris from the nineteen forty seven
22:24
Speaker 8: Roswell crash there again, I've never seen it with my
22:26
Speaker 8: own eyes. But he also worked with Monica Rasa there,
22:29
Speaker 8: and she was a rocket science She co patented the
22:35
Speaker 8: Mondoloi or co invented the Mondeloy. So she was very
22:38
Speaker 8: very intelligent, as was General McCaslin. And Monica Raisa disappeared
22:44
Speaker 8: while hiking in June of twenty twenty five in California,
22:47
Speaker 8: and Neil McCaslin disappeared in February of twenty twenty five,
22:51
Speaker 8: just walking out of his house in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
22:55
Speaker 8: So these are months apart. Monica Raisa gives me chills.
22:59
Speaker 8: Number One, she seemed to have disappeared into thin air.
23:03
Speaker 8: She was behind a friend or two while hiking about
23:06
Speaker 8: thirty feet. It's kind of like they look back and
23:08
Speaker 8: they're like hey, and then a second later, or I
23:10
Speaker 8: don't even know, you know, a minute later, she's gone
23:13
Speaker 8: vanishes into thin air. There's very little known about this search,
23:17
Speaker 8: but what I could find was that they had a
23:19
Speaker 8: canine dog. They were sniffing around. They found a hat.
23:22
Speaker 8: Her scent stopped at this hat. I mean what, And
23:27
Speaker 8: she was actually marked deceased and had like some kind
23:30
Speaker 8: of biodegradable burial. And I know that anybody can go
23:33
Speaker 8: online and do this, you know, I understand how that works.
23:36
Speaker 8: But that's very odd that someone would do that when
23:39
Speaker 8: there was no body and there was no statement from NASA,
23:42
Speaker 8: no nothing. We just kind of skimmed over this. And
23:46
Speaker 8: what I'll say is, and again I don't have proof,
23:49
Speaker 8: but former FBI agent Chris Swecker, he has a lot
23:52
Speaker 8: of great information and a lot of great intel about
23:55
Speaker 8: what happens when these people are possibly kidnapped and tortured
23:59
Speaker 8: for in intelligence. And he's not saying it's by our
24:02
Speaker 8: own government, right, we don't know who it is.
24:06
Speaker 7: We're not saying that it's not right. But there's all
24:09
Speaker 7: these options.
24:10
Speaker 8: And then Neil McCaslin, this is very similar to the
24:13
Speaker 8: tenth person missing. The tenth officials Steven Garcia. Both of
24:17
Speaker 8: them were last seen in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I mentioned
24:21
Speaker 8: General McCaslin walked out of his home. At the time,
24:25
Speaker 8: his wife didn't know if any guns were missing from
24:28
Speaker 8: his gun safe, but officials from the sheriff's office later
24:31
Speaker 8: reported that he was missing a revolver. He didn't take
24:34
Speaker 8: his phone, didn't take his wallet, nothing that he would
24:38
Speaker 8: need not his glasses. And Steven Garcia, and I think
24:42
Speaker 8: I mentioned this was February of twenty twenty six. Steven Garcia,
24:46
Speaker 8: he is another official tied to He worked. He had
24:50
Speaker 8: top security clearance at Casey nsc Out of New Mexico.
24:54
Speaker 8: He was in charge of all of the classified equipment
24:57
Speaker 8: and assets tens of thousands of dollars.
25:00
Speaker 7: And you know this is through a source.
25:02
Speaker 8: I do not know his job description, you know verbatim here,
25:07
Speaker 8: but he also was last seen walking around New Mexico
25:11
Speaker 8: with a handgune and so you know, with Steven Garcia,
25:15
Speaker 8: it was stated by officials he could be a danger
25:18
Speaker 8: to himself. Neil McCaslin, there was a silver alert and
25:21
Speaker 8: his wife in this very in my opinion, disturbing nine
25:25
Speaker 8: one one call kind of indicates that quote he may
25:28
Speaker 8: not want to be found. She said he deliberately changed
25:32
Speaker 8: his clothes before he left. She said he was experiencing
25:36
Speaker 8: this brain and mental fog, and this is one of
25:39
Speaker 8: the reasons that he retired. And she just said he
25:42
Speaker 8: was getting frustrated. But she never would have thought that
25:46
Speaker 8: it would have meant this, and she's been criticized about this.
25:49
Speaker 7: Nine one one call, And.
25:50
Speaker 8: I don't want to criticize her because she called immediately,
25:54
Speaker 8: you know, when she realized he was gone, and everybody
25:57
Speaker 8: reacts differently. I don't think that she would have thought
26:02
Speaker 8: that it would have been anything like this. She just
26:03
Speaker 8: said he was kind of frustrated. The last thing I'll say,
26:06
Speaker 8: The last thing I heard from authorities was that they
26:08
Speaker 8: found an Air Force sweatshirt a couple of miles away,
26:12
Speaker 8: but they have not confirmed whether or not that belongs
26:15
Speaker 8: to General McCaslin. So I've got to make some calls.
26:18
Speaker 8: And then lastly, I know I am blabbing so.
26:20
Speaker 1: Hard right now.
26:22
Speaker 8: Yeah, one of the deaths that I am very very
26:26
Speaker 8: invested in, and I think this is this kind of
26:30
Speaker 8: crosses over into some other things we're mentioning in society
26:33
Speaker 8: right now. But Carl Grillmaer, he was a Caltech astrophysicist,
26:38
Speaker 8: reportedly a genius who's doing amazing work and finding water
26:42
Speaker 8: on other planets. He lived in Lano, California, and a
26:46
Speaker 8: very isolated area. I mean you can pull up the
26:49
Speaker 8: map and you can just see his house. Very isolated.
26:52
Speaker 8: So in December of twenty twenty five, he sees a
26:55
Speaker 8: guy walking on his property. Who we now know is
26:58
Speaker 8: Freddie Snyder carrying a rifle, and he's freaked out, obviously,
27:02
Speaker 8: so he calls nine to one one. Freddy Snyder gets arrested.
27:05
Speaker 8: He says, oh, I was going to the post office.
27:07
Speaker 8: I just needed this to protect myself against wild animals. Well,
27:10
Speaker 8: the post office was the other way, and he gets arrested,
27:14
Speaker 8: and for whatever reason, you know, they give him a
27:16
Speaker 8: felonies charge, and I shouldn't say for whatever reason, for
27:21
Speaker 8: whatever reason is, they let him go. They release him
27:24
Speaker 8: roar after that felony's charge, and by February sixth, prosecutors
27:29
Speaker 8: drop the charge entirely.
27:32
Speaker 7: The judge drop the charge entirely.
27:34
Speaker 8: There's some kind of California penal code where essentially it says,
27:39
Speaker 8: in lai terms, if you don't have any priors, you know,
27:43
Speaker 8: something like this would make sense, we're gonna drop this.
27:45
Speaker 8: We're not going to keep you coming back to court,
27:46
Speaker 8: et cetera. Well that was February fifth. By February sixteenth,
27:51
Speaker 8: Freddie Snyder allegedly goes back and shoots Carl Grillmer in
27:55
Speaker 8: the torso on his porch at his home. And now
27:59
Speaker 8: Freddy Snyder is sitting at Twin Towers. I'm assuming, you know,
28:02
Speaker 8: pretty close to Nick Reiner and waiting arraignment. He gets
28:05
Speaker 8: arraigned April twenty ninth. So what's crazy is that California
28:10
Speaker 8: is so ridiculous with their court dockets and their papers.
28:14
Speaker 8: I've had to write letters to get indictments. I've had
28:17
Speaker 8: to send Foyer request here. But one thing I will
28:20
Speaker 8: say is Carl Grillmayer's wife has spoken out. I was
28:24
Speaker 8: right before I went on News Nation last week. The producers,
28:27
Speaker 8: we were all kind of diving in. They were making calls,
28:29
Speaker 8: and his wife said, it's not connected to any of
28:33
Speaker 8: these other scientists.
28:35
Speaker 7: That's her belief.
28:36
Speaker 8: Neil maccason's wife came out and said it's not connected.
28:39
Speaker 8: The Bernalillo County's Sheriff's office in New Mexico has said
28:43
Speaker 8: enough with the conspiracy theories.
28:45
Speaker 1: I get it.
28:45
Speaker 7: I totally get it.
28:47
Speaker 8: Neil mccason's wife also works in aerospace research. And Carl
28:51
Speaker 8: Grillmaer's wife, she's a widow. She probably saw this crazy
28:55
Speaker 8: person with her own eyes. But my question is why
28:59
Speaker 8: was he released? Why was he there? He was absolutely
29:03
Speaker 8: targeting him for a reason. This house is way too
29:07
Speaker 8: isolated and reportedly he did live in the area, this
29:10
Speaker 8: Freddie Snyder guy and neighbors. I say neighbors because it's
29:13
Speaker 8: miles apart. They said he was a little unhinged. I mean,
29:17
Speaker 8: it's bothering me. I can't help it saying.
29:20
Speaker 1: And if you look at every individual case, it is
29:23
Speaker 1: a possible explanation. And yet in no way you know
29:26
Speaker 1: the widows, of course, they don't want to be harassed.
29:27
Speaker 1: And anybody's watching this, please don't harass these people, right and
29:31
Speaker 1: you know, and leave them alone at the very least.
29:33
Speaker 1: Let's let's go to the authorities, and those are the
29:36
Speaker 1: people who he can ask. But as you said, members
29:38
Speaker 1: of Congress and others, they're worried about this. That seems
29:42
Speaker 1: to be maybe an indication of something, or maybe they're
29:45
Speaker 1: just responding to media pressure. But from your view, maybe
29:48
Speaker 1: not each individual case. In totality you see some sort
29:51
Speaker 1: of pattern you originally opened with UFOs. Why did you
29:55
Speaker 1: make that connection to UFO.
29:57
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's funny because I always grew up thinking that
30:01
Speaker 8: their bogus's they're just something in an alien movie. And
30:05
Speaker 8: the more research you do, the more you realize how
30:08
Speaker 8: important it is that we understand what a UAP is,
30:13
Speaker 8: and I'm calling it a UAP because it just sounds
30:16
Speaker 8: less crazy.
30:17
Speaker 7: It really does, and I do.
30:19
Speaker 8: I just feel like it's we're past the point of thinking, yes,
30:24
Speaker 8: aliens are going to come and invade our country.
30:26
Speaker 7: It's not about that.
30:28
Speaker 8: The House Oversight Committee wrote this letter in March, but
30:32
Speaker 8: they were stemming it from a congressional meeting they had,
30:35
Speaker 8: I think it was back in September. They really started
30:37
Speaker 8: to push again for transparency. And again, this is for
30:42
Speaker 8: the national security reasons.
30:44
Speaker 7: This is a threat. We need to know what is
30:47
Speaker 7: going on in.
30:48
Speaker 8: Order to defend ourselves as Americans, and I think it's
30:52
Speaker 8: really important. And what's so frustrating is that the list
30:57
Speaker 8: of UAPs that were actually due on oh I'm sorry,
31:01
Speaker 8: it was yesterday, April fourteenth. They were due, no one
31:04
Speaker 8: from the Pentagon responded until Rep. Anna Luna had to
31:08
Speaker 8: reach out and apparently, I mean I was born at night,
31:12
Speaker 8: but not last night. Someone didn't pass the letter on
31:15
Speaker 8: to the proper authorities, so we're.
31:17
Speaker 7: Not getting it yet. But they claim that this is coming.
31:21
Speaker 8: This is coming, and the President authorized this release, so
31:25
Speaker 8: we're going to see it soon. I'm just like Okay, guys,
31:28
Speaker 8: release another Epstein dump for us, so we look this
31:30
Speaker 8: way while you guys scramble.
31:32
Speaker 7: It's just coming. You know, it's so annoying.
31:34
Speaker 8: It's just it's it's irritating, and it's like, this is
31:37
Speaker 8: our tax money. Also, this is our money, you know,
31:40
Speaker 8: going to this. I don't know how much I'd like
31:43
Speaker 8: to know. I don't think we'll be told the truth,
31:45
Speaker 8: but I think again, it's important to know that it's
31:48
Speaker 8: not just about independent state aliens sitting in glass, you know,
31:52
Speaker 8: cages in water. It's more than that. This is war,
31:55
Speaker 8: this is this is America's national defense.
31:58
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, Lauren, thank you so much for your time.
32:00
Speaker 1: We got another guest standing by. You were phenomenal. Everybody
32:02
Speaker 1: go follow her on Twitter. We'll have a link down
32:05
Speaker 1: in the description. Appreciate your time and thank you for
32:07
Speaker 1: the work on this case.
32:08
Speaker 7: Thank you so much for having me and discussing it.
32:10
Speaker 4: Yeah.
32:13
Speaker 1: Very excited now to be joined by our great friend
32:15
Speaker 1: of the show, Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago,
32:18
Speaker 1: author of The Escalation Trap on Substack, which everybody should
32:21
Speaker 1: go subscribe to. Thank you very much for joining us, sir.
32:24
Speaker 1: We appreciate your time.
32:25
Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely, always great to talk to you.
32:27
Speaker 1: So let's go ahead and start with some of the
32:29
Speaker 1: latest news from the Washington Post. We'll put it up
32:31
Speaker 1: here on the screen. It appears now some thousands more
32:34
Speaker 1: US troops are heading to the Middle East as Trump
32:37
Speaker 1: seeks to squeeze Iran. Professor, you have long held that
32:41
Speaker 1: these cease fire talks and others remain either a cover
32:45
Speaker 1: or a delaying to the inevitable escalation to ground troops.
32:48
Speaker 1: Just confirm your hypothesis. How are you looking at this structurally?
32:51
Speaker 3: Oh? Absolutely, yeah, this is exactly what I'm saying. So
32:55
Speaker 3: we can pay attention to the rhetoric, which is the noise,
32:59
Speaker 3: or we can pay attention to the movement of troops,
33:02
Speaker 3: which is the signal. And what you are seeing is
33:06
Speaker 3: over and over and over again. Uh, this now in
33:09
Speaker 3: our seventh week of this of this war. There's all
33:13
Speaker 3: this noise about back and forth rhetoric, what does this
33:16
Speaker 3: mean or that mean coming out of the White House.
33:19
Speaker 3: But what you see are troop movements, and those troop
33:21
Speaker 3: movements are going in one direction. There's not troop movements
33:25
Speaker 3: coming out. There's troop movements going in, and they're going
33:29
Speaker 3: in just as I said, they're going to be limited,
33:31
Speaker 3: They're going to go in salami slicing essentially, And that
33:35
Speaker 3: is what you are seeing. We are not on a
33:39
Speaker 3: path of peace. We are on a path the war
33:43
Speaker 3: is metastasizing, and we are seeing thresholds being broken. There's
33:50
Speaker 3: multiple and I'm glad to talk about those. But what
33:53
Speaker 3: you are what you are really seeing is a path
33:56
Speaker 3: of escalation and uh, it is toward that stage three
34:01
Speaker 3: and this is just going to build.
34:04
Speaker 6: Right and so actually that's if you could break that
34:07
Speaker 6: down for us, that would be very helpful. I'm sure
34:09
Speaker 6: everybody what you said I could do it. Everyone in
34:10
Speaker 6: the audience was like, yes, please, including us.
34:13
Speaker 4: Professor, that's right.
34:14
Speaker 3: So as and our audience really is familiar with stage one,
34:18
Speaker 3: stage two, stage three, where stage three is coming to
34:21
Speaker 3: the limited ground operations, which could expand. But let me
34:24
Speaker 3: just unpack what I mean by breaking threshold. So what
34:27
Speaker 3: we are seeing since the talks, since JD Vance came
34:31
Speaker 3: out of Pakistan in his three minute speech, which everybody
34:35
Speaker 3: should go and listen to. That three minute speech was
34:40
Speaker 3: important for a couple reason. Number one, he made absolutely
34:43
Speaker 3: blisteringly clear that we are not going to make concessions.
34:48
Speaker 3: The United States, We're going to choose escalation over concessions.
34:53
Speaker 3: And number two, he made blisteringly clear he personally is
34:57
Speaker 3: on board with the escalation. The hope that we were
35:01
Speaker 3: had JD Vance was going to kind of push us
35:03
Speaker 3: over to another side that really has disappeared. Now what
35:07
Speaker 3: you are seeing with the military blockade is and I
35:11
Speaker 3: can understand why people are confused. I've studied these for
35:15
Speaker 3: thirty years. This is part of that repertoire of what
35:17
Speaker 3: I study. What you are seeing isak it's breaking thresholds,
35:22
Speaker 3: including just this morning with the news out of Iran.
35:26
Speaker 3: So number one, it's breaking a threshold in the region
35:29
Speaker 3: where now the United States is using military force to
35:34
Speaker 3: shut down horror moves against Iran, and what that is
35:39
Speaker 3: doing is widening the war inside of the region because Iran,
35:43
Speaker 3: as completely predictably, has just responded by you do this,
35:48
Speaker 3: We're going to shut down that other choke point or
35:52
Speaker 3: try They'll try that other choke point in the Red Sea.
35:55
Speaker 3: So that would take another hunk of oil off the
35:59
Speaker 3: market here if they do that, and the houthis they
36:02
Speaker 3: have the excellent proxy with which to do that, and
36:05
Speaker 3: of course they have their missiles and drones. But number two,
36:08
Speaker 3: another threshold that's being crossed here is notice that it's
36:14
Speaker 3: China who gets a lot of the oil and who
36:17
Speaker 3: has flag some ships. So what this means is that
36:21
Speaker 3: US naval blockade is now going right up against China. Now,
36:27
Speaker 3: we have not sunk a ship, we have not you know,
36:31
Speaker 3: but this is an act of war. A naval blockade
36:34
Speaker 3: is not a political statement. It's an act of war.
36:39
Speaker 3: It says you either go back or we sink you,
36:44
Speaker 3: we shoot you. That is a very very important threshold
36:48
Speaker 3: because obviously China now is this is another actor and
36:53
Speaker 3: that actor's got six hundred nuclear weapons. So we need
36:58
Speaker 3: to understand this is not again going up against you know, Panama, Greenland.
37:04
Speaker 3: We're breaking real thresholds here. And then there's the third threshold,
37:08
Speaker 3: which is when you bottle up the entire strait of
37:11
Speaker 3: horror moves and then possibly also now the Red Sea
37:14
Speaker 3: gets in gets bottled up with this. This is essentially
37:18
Speaker 3: another threshold here where you're locking in the consequences for
37:23
Speaker 3: the world's economy for at least weeks, if not months
37:27
Speaker 3: from now. And there's already the stories the different economic
37:32
Speaker 3: organizations are starting to come out on my substack this week.
37:35
Speaker 3: I have a very I wrote this on the plane
37:38
Speaker 3: back and forth from London, so I have this long
37:40
Speaker 3: explanation of what happens in these blockades so people can
37:43
Speaker 3: understand the consequences for the world's economy over time forty
37:49
Speaker 3: five day, sixty day, ninety day. And this is just
37:53
Speaker 3: now locking in that analysis here. So we are really
37:57
Speaker 3: heading to not just it won't just be like one
38:02
Speaker 3: giant cliff. I'm explaining, there's a series of decline, a
38:05
Speaker 3: little bit like roller coaster, a series of these declines
38:08
Speaker 3: which you need, which we need to expect, and the
38:10
Speaker 3: markets just simply aren't paying attention.
38:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, professor, I saw your comments, Will Yeah, And I
38:14
Speaker 1: think it's very important to underscore what you're trying. The
38:17
Speaker 1: Trump administration has done, I mean and honestly a shockingly
38:20
Speaker 1: good job of job owning the oil markets and the
38:23
Speaker 1: stock market. They have convinced them that the blockade or
38:26
Speaker 1: a ceasefire will inevitably lead to some sort of memoranding
38:30
Speaker 1: understanding that will return to normal. You have consistently maintained
38:34
Speaker 1: that is absolutely not going to happen. And yeah, I
38:37
Speaker 1: do want to go a little bit into your first thesis,
38:41
Speaker 1: which I think really struck a lot of our viewers
38:43
Speaker 1: and myself, is you're about how Iran has become this
38:46
Speaker 1: new world power. And a piece of news that I
38:49
Speaker 1: instantly thought of you with is F four. Let's put
38:52
Speaker 1: this up there on the screen. Was this US carrier,
38:55
Speaker 1: the George H. W. Bush, which it has been revealed
38:59
Speaker 1: has had to sail around the entire continent of Africa
39:03
Speaker 1: rather than transit through the Red Sea, specifically because of
39:07
Speaker 1: fear of the hoothies in the Bab al Mendeb strait.
39:10
Speaker 1: I mean, what do you make of that? For this,
39:13
Speaker 1: you know, reflection of power that Iran can project to
39:16
Speaker 1: force a multi billion dollar you know, multi multi billion
39:20
Speaker 1: dollar here if you are just.
39:22
Speaker 3: So on it, and I really this is one of
39:24
Speaker 3: the reasons I love coming on because you're not just
39:26
Speaker 3: hearing my words, you're seeing the implications with the new
39:30
Speaker 3: piece of information. So what you are seeing here is
39:34
Speaker 3: a power projection capability by Iran. So we are used
39:40
Speaker 3: to thinking of Iran back in pre twenty February twenty
39:45
Speaker 3: twenty eight time period where we're thinking we've been told
39:48
Speaker 3: Iran is crushed, it's on its last legs, just one
39:53
Speaker 3: more nudge, and there's this pro democracy movement that's totally
39:58
Speaker 3: going to take over. This was all always extremely unrealistic.
40:02
Speaker 3: It was the most exaggerated version of the weakness of Iran,
40:07
Speaker 3: which was just right. Well, what the reality is, and
40:10
Speaker 3: you see this with their drones here, is that as
40:13
Speaker 3: their drones have reached, they can and missiles have reached.
40:18
Speaker 3: It's not just about a short term thing. They have
40:21
Speaker 3: reached across the region and even further than that. You
40:25
Speaker 3: would not have our carriers essentially a thousand miles away
40:31
Speaker 3: here if it was not for Iran's power projection capability. Well,
40:36
Speaker 3: power projection is what we define well, one of the
40:40
Speaker 3: leading indicators of a world power and noticed a Secretary
40:45
Speaker 3: Higgseth said in his briefings, which he has now stopped
40:48
Speaker 3: giving of course, but what he said in his briefings
40:51
Speaker 3: was we've taken away their power projection capability. No, we haven't.
40:58
Speaker 3: That's that victory rhetoric eating escalation reality which you're now
41:02
Speaker 3: demonstrating here. And this is also, by the way, when
41:06
Speaker 3: the Iranians are making their threat this morning, they're not
41:10
Speaker 3: simply saying this is only going to be a threat
41:13
Speaker 3: to the Red Sea choke point with the Hoothies. We
41:16
Speaker 3: need to understand those destroyers here that are within range.
41:20
Speaker 3: Now there are three hundred sailors on those destroyers. Now,
41:23
Speaker 3: they don't have to be sunk for those people to
41:26
Speaker 3: be hurt and killed. You can have fires, you can
41:28
Speaker 3: have a lot of things happen under those attacks, which
41:32
Speaker 3: is why none of the oil tankers themselves want to
41:35
Speaker 3: go through and risk this. You see. So this is
41:37
Speaker 3: an extremely tense situation. So we are not de escalating
41:43
Speaker 3: the situation. We are escalating the situation. And let me
41:48
Speaker 3: just add one more point here if I might, because
41:50
Speaker 3: I'm getting this in emails from some really smart people
41:55
Speaker 3: who aren't yet ready to say we can I can
41:57
Speaker 3: identify them, and we can apply. But these are not
42:00
Speaker 3: These are really really smart people. And what they're asking
42:03
Speaker 3: me is why exactly, Bob, that's what they call me, Bob,
42:07
Speaker 3: Why exactly won't the Iranians make the concession? Because, after all,
42:12
Speaker 3: aren't they facing all of this pressure. And here's the
42:16
Speaker 3: fundamental thing that people need to hear, which is, if
42:20
Speaker 3: Iran makes a concession, say, gives up its nuclear material
42:26
Speaker 3: or gives up the power over the Strait of Hormuz.
42:30
Speaker 3: That makes Iran more vulnerable. You see the problem here
42:37
Speaker 3: is that the United States and Israel, if they get more,
42:43
Speaker 3: if they get concessions, they can pocket those concessions and
42:48
Speaker 3: that weakens Iran. Those are actual power tool power assets
42:53
Speaker 3: for Iran, and it makes Iran more vulnerable. It's more
42:59
Speaker 3: likely that Iran will be attacked by Israel and the
43:03
Speaker 3: United States directly if it doesn't have a nuclear deterrent.
43:07
Speaker 3: It just is. It's also more likely that it will
43:11
Speaker 3: be attacked in one way or another for whatever reason,
43:15
Speaker 3: if it gives up world power. And we have history here.
43:18
Speaker 3: The Ukrainians gave up their nuclear weapons, Kadafi gave up
43:23
Speaker 3: his movement toward nuclear weapons, and look at what to
43:26
Speaker 3: happen to those states. Okay, this is not a good history.
43:30
Speaker 3: You can also look at the Soviet Union, the Soviet
43:33
Speaker 3: Union at the end of the Cold War. You can say, well,
43:34
Speaker 3: they gave up world power, global power. What they're a
43:39
Speaker 3: basket case right now. Putin is barely keeping two percent
43:44
Speaker 3: of it used to be. The Soviet had fifteen percent
43:47
Speaker 3: of the world's economy. Now they have two percent. And
43:49
Speaker 3: what is Putin doing? He's fighting back to get it back.
43:52
Speaker 3: So you look at the history of all this, and
43:55
Speaker 3: that history is you may and by the way, the
43:58
Speaker 3: United States promise and all those three cases, you were
44:01
Speaker 3: gonna have an enormously beautiful future, just like Donald Trump.
44:06
Speaker 3: I mean literally those other presidents right out at Donald
44:09
Speaker 3: Trump page of It's gonna be beautiful, and it's not
44:14
Speaker 3: because they're vulnerable. So this is really the problem. We're
44:18
Speaker 3: asking Iran to take sucker deals that other states have
44:23
Speaker 3: taken in the past in their lifetime, and it just
44:28
Speaker 3: is not working out. Because what's happening is when the
44:32
Speaker 3: Soviet Union basically gave up power, we rode NATO right
44:36
Speaker 3: up to its doorstep. You see. That is what I
44:39
Speaker 3: mean by vulnerability. So if Iran gives this stuff up,
44:44
Speaker 3: this is not making Iran safe. This means Iran has
44:48
Speaker 3: a really, really even worse future over the next five
44:53
Speaker 3: or ten years.
44:53
Speaker 6: And we're hearing these really right already talking about Turkey,
44:56
Speaker 6: no surprise there, but oh.
44:57
Speaker 3: There you go. This is another and Turkey he doesn't
45:00
Speaker 3: have nuclear weapons. Yeah, okay, So I'm just pointing out
45:05
Speaker 3: that we are teaching the world, you know, uh, yeah,
45:09
Speaker 3: it's it's nice to be uh, you know, send Donald Trump, Uh,
45:12
Speaker 3: you know, some presence, but better get a bomb.
45:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
45:17
Speaker 6: And Professor I wanted to ask, actually, we're shifting through
45:19
Speaker 6: this enormous amount of propaganda, what do you think actually
45:23
Speaker 6: is the sticking point at the end of the day
45:25
Speaker 6: for both the Trump administration and the Iranians? Just looking ahead?
45:28
Speaker 6: Because as we look at what seems to have fizzled
45:32
Speaker 6: last weekend, what could that tell us about if I.
45:37
Speaker 3: Again, Yeah, that's a great question, and I would say
45:40
Speaker 3: again the three minute clip by jd Vance when he
45:44
Speaker 3: came out is really important here for everybody to watch.
45:49
Speaker 3: It's not just another one of the clips here, because
45:53
Speaker 3: what jd Vance did is he zeroed in directly on
45:57
Speaker 3: the nuclear enrichment that Iran is going to become a
46:02
Speaker 3: nuclear weapons state. And I've been saying here in the substack,
46:08
Speaker 3: in the live briefings on the sub stack, this is
46:10
Speaker 3: actually the tap roote, not just of this crisis, but
46:14
Speaker 3: the whole military antagonistic relationship with Iran going back to
46:18
Speaker 3: two thousand and two and two thousand and three. We
46:21
Speaker 3: had a politically antagonistic relationship from seventy nine to two
46:26
Speaker 3: thousand and two, but once Iran started to enrich uranium,
46:29
Speaker 3: this really took it to a new level. And what
46:33
Speaker 3: you see is all this talk that, all this confusion
46:37
Speaker 3: about the goals. Yeah, absolutely, Donald Trump's all over the
46:42
Speaker 3: place and what he posts, but there is a core
46:45
Speaker 3: through line here, and that core through line is Iran
46:49
Speaker 3: is enriching uranium and we are teaching it, by the way,
46:54
Speaker 3: in these twenty five years, that their only chance of
46:57
Speaker 3: real survival is to get that, is to trans into
47:00
Speaker 3: a weapon. And what you're seeing is jd. Vance is
47:04
Speaker 3: right on that. He's explaining that, and that is what
47:08
Speaker 3: the Trump administration really is going to have to concede.
47:12
Speaker 3: They're going to have to they can make a choice.
47:13
Speaker 3: They're going to have to make a choice. If they
47:15
Speaker 3: want to get Iran to allow ships to pass through
47:18
Speaker 3: the straight of hor moves here, then that is going
47:21
Speaker 3: to come at the expense of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons
47:24
Speaker 3: in about a year, maybe a year and a half.
47:27
Speaker 3: And they can talk out of both sides of their
47:29
Speaker 3: mouth all they want to, but the bottom line is
47:32
Speaker 3: this is what is becoming more and more in Iran's
47:36
Speaker 3: rational security interest. And if we had a hope of
47:40
Speaker 3: this not happening. It was the Obama deal and everything
47:44
Speaker 3: since Trump ripped that up has been making everything worse.
47:48
Speaker 1: Professor, last question for you on my end here is
47:52
Speaker 1: it's possible that we get no deal and Trump just
47:55
Speaker 1: declares some sort of unilateral walk away in a permanent blockade.
48:00
Speaker 1: What do you think would happen as a result of that?
48:02
Speaker 1: Iran would attack, you know the Babel mendep straight, they
48:05
Speaker 1: would escalate, maybe they wouldn't. Then they would just suffer
48:08
Speaker 1: economic pain.
48:09
Speaker 3: That will just go. Yeah, that will just be that path.
48:12
Speaker 3: So there's path four, which is we let Iran become
48:16
Speaker 3: the fourth center of world power. You're seeing Trump doesn't
48:19
Speaker 3: want to do that, but that there's only two choices.
48:21
Speaker 3: Either you do path four Stage four, or you do
48:24
Speaker 3: stage three. There's no going back to Feb twenty seven.
48:28
Speaker 3: So stage three is where you're moving along the path
48:31
Speaker 3: of escalation. And the real consequences here of you say that,
48:36
Speaker 3: you know what we're talking about that's permanent blockade is
48:39
Speaker 3: going to be that first of all, within the region,
48:42
Speaker 3: the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Cutter, Kuwait, they're all going to
48:46
Speaker 3: see their GDPs declined by twenty thirty percent or more
48:52
Speaker 3: here in the next in the next coming months, it's
48:54
Speaker 3: all going to go over a clip for them. But
48:57
Speaker 3: then also you're going to see that for the world economy,
49:01
Speaker 3: you're going to see that this pattern here. And basically
49:04
Speaker 3: what happens is up till day forty five of a
49:09
Speaker 3: oil blockade of some kind, you have prices go up.
49:13
Speaker 3: Then from forty five to day sixty you start to
49:16
Speaker 3: get actual shortages. And then from day sixty to ninety
49:20
Speaker 3: that's when you get economic contraction, and then you get
49:24
Speaker 3: the prices keep going up, the shortage is cut worse,
49:27
Speaker 3: and the contractions start to happen, and that gets baked in.
49:31
Speaker 3: And what we're going to see here if you just
49:33
Speaker 3: take that blockade as like a permanent blockade, is yes,
49:37
Speaker 3: you will stop Ron from becoming that world center of power,
49:41
Speaker 3: at least without them fighting for it. But at the
49:44
Speaker 3: price here of taking the world's economy over the cliffs,
49:50
Speaker 3: and that is not going to make the world happy,
49:53
Speaker 3: with the United States.
49:54
Speaker 6: And probably losing American more American soldiers.
50:00
Speaker 3: Stuff surely here because the idea that Iran will not
50:05
Speaker 3: Iran was willing to attack the Gulf States. They were
50:08
Speaker 3: also willing to kill twenty to thirty thousand of their
50:11
Speaker 3: own people, So the idea that and they also have
50:14
Speaker 3: already bombed American bases, so what those vessels are are
50:19
Speaker 3: essentially floating American bases. So if Iran was willing to
50:24
Speaker 3: bomb American bases in the region, I really think the
50:28
Speaker 3: idea they they're going to be scared to bomb the
50:32
Speaker 3: ships here, I don't think so. I think they're going
50:35
Speaker 3: to be probably playing some tactical games here. They're going
50:39
Speaker 3: to be thinking through what's their best way to go forward,
50:43
Speaker 3: and they probably would really like China to go through
50:47
Speaker 3: and force the blockade, to confront China, because all that
50:52
Speaker 3: does is put China even more deeply in their camp.
50:55
Speaker 3: So if you're wondering why they're not already firing back
50:58
Speaker 3: and forth, it's because there really are. You know, there's
51:02
Speaker 3: a long game here, and Iran has played it pretty
51:06
Speaker 3: well so far, We're not playing it very well. And
51:09
Speaker 3: as we go forward here, getting China more deeply on
51:14
Speaker 3: Iran's side, you know, it's already got Pakistan working with it,
51:18
Speaker 3: and I've got sixty to one hundred nuclear weapons. You
51:21
Speaker 3: bring in China, that's six hundred and now of course
51:24
Speaker 3: you've got poot, so you're really building this coalition here
51:28
Speaker 3: for Iran. We are helping Iran build it.
51:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, professor, as always, you're so enlightening. Escalation trap
51:36
Speaker 1: on substack linked down in the description and we will
51:38
Speaker 1: see you later, sir, Thank you very much.
51:40
Speaker 3: Absolutely, thanks again, great, great, great session, great discussion.
51:44
Speaker 1: Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it.
51:46
Speaker 1: Thank you Emily. It's been great.
51:47
Speaker 4: Have fun.
51:48
Speaker 1: Got to keep the arm down in the show tomorrow
51:51
Speaker 1: with Crystal Crystal backs tomorrow. We'll see you guys, then
51:53
Speaker 1: see everyone