Latest / Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar / 3/4/26: Trump Panics After Israel Blamed For Iran War, US Pushes Iran Civil War, Spain Rebukes Trump, Gas Prices Soar

Transcript

3/4/26: Trump Panics After Israel Blamed For Iran War, US Pushes Iran Civil War, Spain Rebukes Trump, Gas Prices Soar · Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

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  Speaker 3: that is just going to be honest and tell you
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  Speaker 3: what's going on.
• 2:00
  Speaker 5: This morning, I woke up and opened up.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: The New York Times app, and the first thing was
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: like it's sad sick man said US and Israel attack
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: Iranian military installations, Like okay, well that is true, it's
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: not the whole truth. And we're going to talk about
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: later in the program. What is being done to one
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: of the oldest and most populated cities on the planet,
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: an indiscriminate carpet bombing.
• 2:23
  Speaker 6: We have a lot of video that you're going to
• 2:25
  Speaker 6: want to stick around for a video from Dubai that
• 2:27
  Speaker 6: we're going to get to in just a moment as well.
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: All around the Middle East.
• 2:30
  Speaker 6: And Donald Trump was speaking again in the Oval Office
• 2:33
  Speaker 6: yesterday answering questions from the press that are a little
• 2:37
  Speaker 6: bit all over the place. That's probably not a surprise
• 2:39
  Speaker 6: to anybody, but we will be synthesizing those with what
• 2:42
  Speaker 6: other people in the administration have said. What people said
• 2:44
  Speaker 6: walking out of a briefing on Capitol Hill yesterday, Members said,
• 2:47
  Speaker 6: walking out of a briefing on Capitol Hill yesterday, Ryan
• 2:49
  Speaker 6: and your colleague Jeremy ska Hill and Martassa Hussein are
• 2:52
  Speaker 6: going to be with us.
• 2:53
  Speaker 5: Jeremy flaked on us. It's going to be mas though.
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: Jeremy, we got it. We had to go. But now
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: we get to call him out.
• 2:59
  Speaker 5: Yes, that's right.
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: He's actually interviewing a top running official at the moment,
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: and the journalism always takes precedence over the punditry, so
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: we were not actually angry with him.
• 3:10
  Speaker 5: So that's fine, but Mos will be great.
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: My colleague Martaza over at drop site a couple of
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: years ago, he said, you know, he spent his whole
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: life learning about geopolitics, international international law, human rights, thinking
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: that that was the thing that he needed to understand
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: to be a foreign policy reporter.
• 3:30
  Speaker 5: Several years ago, he was like, that's not it.
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: Actually, it's weapons systems, and it's kind of military doctrine
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: because because it is force that is going to be
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: reshaping the world in the decades ahead, and the last
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: several years have absolutely borne out his own professional assessment,
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: and so he can talk to us about how things
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: are actually going as far as we can tell in
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: this regional conflict.
• 3:54
  Speaker 6: And then we're also going to break down the conflict
• 3:56
  Speaker 6: from the two separate I don't want to say vantage points,
• 4:00
  Speaker 6: but two separate categories or subconflicts that are roiling right
• 4:03
  Speaker 6: now Europe and gas prices. So we have two different
• 4:07
  Speaker 6: blocks where we're going to dig deep into both of
• 4:09
  Speaker 6: those aspects of this. We also, of course, are excited
• 4:12
  Speaker 6: to have election coverage because it is a Wednesday after
• 4:15
  Speaker 6: major primaries around the country, particularly in Texas where I'm
• 4:21
  Speaker 6: spoiling this. But Dan Crenshaw lost his I was crying. Yeah,
• 4:27
  Speaker 6: we hardly knew you. But anyway, there's a lot to
• 4:29
  Speaker 6: break down on that. And Dave Weigel and David Serota
• 4:32
  Speaker 6: are both going to be joining us a little double
• 4:34
  Speaker 6: Dave actions.
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: Last week we had two days Dave Dahan and Dave
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: Hog aren't our new policies.
• 4:39
  Speaker 5: We are only interviewing Dave's apparently, it's just it. It's
• 4:42
  Speaker 5: only Daves.
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: I don't know when that happened or whose idea was.
• 4:45
  Speaker 5: We're okay, mod slept through somehow.
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: This is why Jeremy dropped out. Actually, nothing to do
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: with else, all right, everyone, well stick around for that.
• 4:54
  Speaker 6: And BP three twenty six is the promo code for
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  Speaker 6: free access to Premium Breaking Point and to a Premium
• 5:00
  Speaker 6: Breaking Points subscription. Let's turn now to video coming out
• 5:04
  Speaker 6: of Dubai Ryan, because this is we can put a
• 5:07
  Speaker 6: two up on the screen. This is the US Consulate
• 5:11
  Speaker 6: in Dubai getting hit if you need an example of
• 5:15
  Speaker 6: how serious I mean, you don't need an example, but
• 5:18
  Speaker 6: if you want to have a visual of how serious
• 5:21
  Speaker 6: this conflict continues to be, that is the US consulate in.
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: Dubai going up in smoke, surreal image.
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  Speaker 3: Ryan, Yes, and this comes after it appears that the
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: CIA station was hit in Saudi Arabia. The Defense Department
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: officials War Department, I guess they.
• 5:40
  Speaker 5: Call them now much more accurately.
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: In a hotel in Bahrain, and Jeremy had actually reported
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: that the Iranians were telling him that they had tracked
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: American officials and troops you to these particular hotels and
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: instruct these particular floors hotels, and a lot of people
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: dismissed that reporting, like, come on, you're joking that they
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: didn't actually do that. And then it emerges, oh, yes,
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: actually it does appear that they did that, which, just
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: just to make one side point, we spent two years
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: being told that Hamas uses human shields and is deplorable
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: for that. As soon as conflict breaks out in this region,
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: the US sends enormous numbers of its people indus literally
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: into civilian hotels.
• 6:32
  Speaker 7: And this was in Saudi Arabia, but they station in
• 6:36
  Speaker 7: sa Area, and they hit the CIA station in Saudi Arabia,
• 6:39
  Speaker 7: the American consulate in Dubai.
• 6:43
  Speaker 5: This and we'll talk more about this with months.
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: The Gulf region is not set up to withstand economically.
• 6:50
  Speaker 5: Uh, this, this type of violence is it.
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: Is based on an expat it's based on oil gas
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: and an expat community. And this this is not what
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: they signed up for, any of them.
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: Even the Saudis were pushing the air.
• 7:06
  Speaker 8: On strikes.
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: And we can talk about that too with MAZ. That
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: was a Washington Post report that everybody is dismissing as
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: as not credible. That so the Post reported that MBS
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: multiple times pressed pressed Trump to attack Iran, even though
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: publicly he was saying, don't do it. Some reporting that
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: I've done on this, it seems like what happened is
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: that Lindsay Graham went to Saudi Arabia at the end
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: of last month, met with MBS and publicly said like
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: he made made the cell to MBS.
• 7:48
  Speaker 5: I think that what happened then.
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: Is Graham came back and told Trump told the Crown
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: Prince wants you to do it. But the Crown Prince
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: never told Graham that Graham just told Trump that, and
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: then Trump told other people that, who then told the
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: Washington Post.
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: That, and that wouldn't be surprising.
• 8:04
  Speaker 5: Zatti Arabia is saying, we absolutely did not say this.
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: That wouldn't be surprising at all.
• 8:08
  Speaker 5: If that's what happened, This is a good wind up
• 8:09
  Speaker 5: with their oil field's on fire.
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: Lindsay Graham playing telephone with everyone, He's been.
• 8:13
  Speaker 5: All of it, a very malevolent, deliberate game of telephone.
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: Incredible.
• 8:18
  Speaker 6: Let's actually listen to Trump himself, who was pushed yesterday
• 8:22
  Speaker 6: in the Oval office about comments that Secretary of State
• 8:25
  Speaker 6: Mark Rubio, not just Mark Rubio, though Mike Johnson also
• 8:28
  Speaker 6: had made on Capitol Hill the day before, talking about
• 8:33
  Speaker 6: how the immediate and Soccer and Crystal covered this yesterday,
• 8:36
  Speaker 6: the immediate precipitating factors that we knew, we got intelligence
• 8:40
  Speaker 6: that Israel was going to strike, so we had to
• 8:44
  Speaker 6: join preemptive action. Otherwise we would have been behind the
• 8:49
  Speaker 6: eight ball, and he would have Rubio said that, you
• 8:51
  Speaker 6: guys would have been doing hearings about why we didn't
• 8:53
  Speaker 6: join with Israel in this attack. Now Rubio said, we
• 8:57
  Speaker 6: had to do it anyway, And Johnson has says up
• 9:00
  Speaker 6: to that effect as well, but they did say the
• 9:03
  Speaker 6: immediate precipitating factor and almost like cope and almost suddenly
• 9:06
  Speaker 6: like they were trying to scapegoat Israel for forcing their
• 9:10
  Speaker 6: hand while also trying to own the attacks.
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: So here's how Donald Trump responded to comments A three.
• 9:15
  Speaker 9: It's reach.
• 9:21
  Speaker 10: I might have forced their hands.
• 9:24
  Speaker 11: You see, we were having negotiations with these lunatics, and
• 9:29
  Speaker 11: it was my opinion that they were going to attack first.
• 9:31
  Speaker 11: They were going to attack if we didn't do it.
• 9:33
  Speaker 11: Based on the way the negotiation was going, I think
• 9:36
  Speaker 11: they were going to attack first, and I didn't want
• 9:39
  Speaker 11: that to happen. So, if anything, I might have forced
• 9:43
  Speaker 11: Israel's hand. But Israel was ready and we were ready,
• 9:46
  Speaker 11: and we've we've had a very very powerful impact.
• 9:50
  Speaker 10: What's the worst case scenario that we have to plan for. Well,
• 9:55
  Speaker 10: I don't know if there's the worst case. We have
• 9:57
  Speaker 10: them very much.
• 10:00
  Speaker 11: Beaten militarily from the military standpoint, they're still lobbing some missiles.
• 10:05
  Speaker 10: At some point they won't even be able to do that.
• 10:07
  Speaker 11: I guess the worst case would be we do this
• 10:09
  Speaker 11: and then somebody takes over who's as bad as the
• 10:12
  Speaker 11: previous person, right.
• 10:14
  Speaker 10: That could happen. We don't want that to happen. It
• 10:17
  Speaker 10: would probably be the worst.
• 10:18
  Speaker 11: You go through this and then in five years you
• 10:21
  Speaker 11: realize you put somebody in who was no better.
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: Just very casually, it could get worse.
• 10:26
  Speaker 8: Worse.
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: Government could be worse.
• 10:27
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: So a lot of Democrats emerged from a classified briefing
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: yesterday on the Hill and all of them said, I
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: went in, you know, concerned about this.
• 10:37
  Speaker 5: I came out frightened. They have no plan.
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: They can't, even in a classified setting, keep their own
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: stories consistent from the beginning to the end.
• 10:45
  Speaker 5: And if you see Trump talking there.
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: He clearly does not have He has not spent much
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: time thinking this through the messaging through right, the idea,
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: not forget the messaging like why, like what happened, like
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: why he attacked, and what the goal of the attack
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: is going to be? Said, we're negotiating with these lunatics.
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: No Iran was negotiating with lunatics. Trump was negotiating with Iran,
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: the Omani Foreign Mission.
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: I think he was also negotiating with lunatics.
• 11:15
  Speaker 5: Well, maybe they're all lunatics. The Omani Foreign minister.
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: The lunatics who turned out to be correct, sometimes you
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: can be paranoiding correct.
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: Cases.
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: The Omani foreign minister went on air and said, and
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: he said, here's what they're offering, no enrichment, no stockpiling,
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: open to talking about ballistic missiles, but you want to
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: promise first that you're not going to attack. He because
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: he sensed that Gushner and but just either didn't understand
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: or weren't being serious about receiving the offer. He went
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: on TV and like told the entire world public, what
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: was what was on offer? For Trump to say, oh,
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: they were actually about to attack. It just doesn't past
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: the smith, the smell test, sniff test.
• 12:02
  Speaker 6: No, it's not what anybody and it's also not what
• 12:04
  Speaker 6: anybody's saying. It's not what the intelligence is saying. Like
• 12:06
  Speaker 6: it isn't Marco Rubio was alone making that case. No,
• 12:09
  Speaker 6: Mark Ruby was saying, they would have gotten past the
• 12:11
  Speaker 6: point of immunity very soon, meaning if it would have
• 12:15
  Speaker 6: been much harder to take out this is a Rubio's argument,
• 12:17
  Speaker 6: would have been much harder to take out the military
• 12:18
  Speaker 6: capacity to degrade.
• 12:19
  Speaker 5: It drones exactly.
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: And so that's not even even do anything about that.
• 12:24
  Speaker 6: Well, yeah, and on what timetable, right, So is this
• 12:27
  Speaker 6: going to are you able to degrade their military to
• 12:30
  Speaker 6: the point where I mean when we were talking about
• 12:31
  Speaker 6: their nuclear capacity being obliterated in June, that was a
• 12:34
  Speaker 6: ten year timetable. Allegedly they'd been set back a decade.
• 12:38
  Speaker 6: They can rebuild missiles quickly. You can't get rid of
• 12:42
  Speaker 6: their ability to make missiles. They know how to do it,
• 12:44
  Speaker 6: they have the.
• 12:45
  Speaker 5: Knowledge, and get the drones from China. They're pretty cheap.
• 12:47
  Speaker 6: So are we going to be right back here in
• 12:49
  Speaker 6: a year, in five years? Because fundamentally it is an ideology.
• 12:54
  Speaker 6: There is a since was the IRGC in the last
• 12:59
  Speaker 6: ten plus years has particularly been emphasizing this idea that
• 13:03
  Speaker 6: there's an eschatological element to Israel's existence, that if you
• 13:07
  Speaker 6: get rid of Israel you can bring in the like right.
• 13:11
  Speaker 6: There are of course some far right Israelis who think that.
• 13:14
  Speaker 6: There are some dispensational Christian evangelicals who think that too,
• 13:18
  Speaker 6: But that is also something you can't eradicate.
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: With bombs in Iran.
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: Rubio's claim that the reason that the US attacked now
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: is because Israel was going to attack and we were
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: going to be attacked as a result of that. So
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: we had to attack like that was the claim that
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: he made. It's one of the most consequential public omissions
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: made in decades. I would imagine that the Israelis are
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: absolutely livid that he said that publicly, and so Rubio
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: is now doing a tiny bit of clean up around that.
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: So let's see how he's kind of finessing this with
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: a four.
• 13:56
  Speaker 12: Yesterday Israel Iran and that's why we needed to get
• 14:02
  Speaker 12: involved today.
• 14:03
  Speaker 11: The President said it.
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: No, Iran was.
• 14:05
  Speaker 13: Going to get Yeah, your statement is false. So that's
• 14:07
  Speaker 13: not what I was asked, very specifical.
• 14:08
  Speaker 10: Were you there yesterday?
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: Yes?
• 14:09
  Speaker 13: Okay, No, Were you the one that because somebody asked
• 14:12
  Speaker 13: me a question answered did we go in because of Israel?
• 14:14
  Speaker 13: And I said, you asked me from that follow up
• 14:16
  Speaker 13: and I said no, I told you this had to
• 14:18
  Speaker 13: happen anyway. The President made a decision, and the decision
• 14:21
  Speaker 13: he made was that Iran was not going to be
• 14:23
  Speaker 13: allowed to hide behind its ballistic missile program, that Iran
• 14:26
  Speaker 13: was not going to be allowed to hide behind its
• 14:28
  Speaker 13: ability to conduct these attacks. That decision had been made.
• 14:31
  Speaker 13: The President systematically made a decision to systematically destroy this
• 14:35
  Speaker 13: terroristic capability that they had and we carried that out.
• 14:38
  Speaker 13: I was very clear on that answer. This was a
• 14:39
  Speaker 13: question of timing of why this had to happen as
• 14:41
  Speaker 13: a joint operation, not the question of the intent. Once
• 14:44
  Speaker 13: the President made a decision that negotiations were not going
• 14:46
  Speaker 13: to work, that they were playing us on the negotiations,
• 14:49
  Speaker 13: and that this was a threat that was untenable, the
• 14:52
  Speaker 13: decision was made to strike them. That's what I said yesterday.
• 14:55
  Speaker 13: And you guys need to play it. And you're going
• 14:56
  Speaker 13: to play these statements. You need to play the whole statement,
• 14:58
  Speaker 13: not flip it to reach a narrative you want to do,
• 15:00
  Speaker 13: all right, Is this.
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: A plan in place to evacuate Americans.
• 15:03
  Speaker 13: Before the attacked, Well, that's the plan we're trying to
• 15:06
  Speaker 13: carry out. The problem is, or the challenge we are
• 15:08
  Speaker 13: facing as airspace closures. If a country closes their airport,
• 15:11
  Speaker 13: for example, in some cases the airports have been hit,
• 15:13
  Speaker 13: so the airport and ate was hit. So if an
• 15:16
  Speaker 13: airport's been attacked or the airspace is closed, then we
• 15:19
  Speaker 13: can have the planes lined up to go, but we
• 15:21
  Speaker 13: can't get them to land because we don't have the
• 15:23
  Speaker 13: permissions to land there.
• 15:25
  Speaker 5: So that's the challenge.
• 15:26
  Speaker 13: It's going to take a little time because we don't
• 15:27
  Speaker 13: control the airspace closures. That said, there may be more
• 15:30
  Speaker 13: people out there than need help. We need to know
• 15:32
  Speaker 13: who you are, so please, I'm asking the media publicize
• 15:35
  Speaker 13: the phone numbers in the website because we need people
• 15:37
  Speaker 13: to call in, so we have their name, we have
• 15:39
  Speaker 13: their contact information, we have their location and their request.
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: The context there is that there are thousands of Americans
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: who want to be evacuated from this war zone. If
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: you put the two pieces together, Rubio is effectively saying
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: that because of the timing of when this happened, which
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: was driven by Israel and get the he can't get
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: these Americans evacuated at this point. So Senator Tom Cotton
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: was also trying to clean this up a little bit,
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: but just ended up reiterating the point, let's do a five.
• 16:14
  Speaker 9: Israel faced an existential risk, and they were prepared to
• 16:18
  Speaker 9: strike Iran alone. If that happened, Iran was very likely
• 16:23
  Speaker 9: to target our troops. That may address the question of
• 16:25
  Speaker 9: why now, Why not two weeks ago? Why not two
• 16:28
  Speaker 9: months from now? The President, though, did not want to
• 16:31
  Speaker 9: put our troops in harm's way. The more fundamental question, though,
• 16:35
  Speaker 9: is why why did we have to carry out this
• 16:38
  Speaker 9: operation against Iran. And as I said, that's because they
• 16:42
  Speaker 9: have a vast missile arsenal that far exceeds our combined
• 16:45
  Speaker 9: missile defenses and it gets worse every single month. That
• 16:48
  Speaker 9: is an unacceptable threat to the United States.
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: So emily, So we were going to do it anyway
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: at some point in the next maybe few months, even
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: though we were pretending to do these negotiations.
• 16:59
  Speaker 5: But Israel decided to do it, so we went with them.
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: And Trump also maybe forced their hand.
• 17:04
  Speaker 5: Trump his Trump forced their hands.
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: Yes, Israel, the you know, the peacemaker in the Middle East,
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: absolutely did not want to attack Iran for sure, even
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: though Nyaho put out this like gloating video saying like
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: I have been yearning for this attack on Iran for
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: forty years now, forty years ago. By the ways, as
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: you know, Israel and the United States were arming Iran.
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so the yearn to attack Iran was happening
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: at the same time. Yeah, that we were literally sending
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: weapons to Iran. So, setting setting all that aside, would
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: you would we move to the classified briefing or any
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: thoughts on how this like incredibly historic admission on the
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: part of Rubio, uh and Johnson and others is going
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: to factor in politically, especially if and as this becomes
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: a complete economic catastrophe and also American lives and thousands
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: of other people's lives get lost as a result of it.
• 18:06
  Speaker 6: No, I mean, I think that's a great place to
• 18:07
  Speaker 6: go next, because this is what Democratic senators were saying
• 18:10
  Speaker 6: after emerging from the briefings that Mark Rubio was on
• 18:13
  Speaker 6: Capitol Hill to do. And I think you're totally right
• 18:16
  Speaker 6: also to pick up that the emergent narrative seems to
• 18:19
  Speaker 6: be we were going to do it anyway, we had
• 18:22
  Speaker 6: to do it now, like that's what they don't clearly,
• 18:24
  Speaker 6: they clearly don't want to say that because it's been
• 18:28
  Speaker 6: they've saw, they've seen how it's played. That's why you
• 18:30
  Speaker 6: saw Rubio really out there frustrated yesterday saying play the
• 18:32
  Speaker 6: whole clip, Play the whole clip. Well, you said that,
• 18:36
  Speaker 6: you literally said that the precipitating factor was because our
• 18:40
  Speaker 6: intelligence said Israel was going to do something we knew
• 18:42
  Speaker 6: Israel was going to do the strike. So yes, play
• 18:45
  Speaker 6: the whole clip. Great, happy to have this broader picture
• 18:48
  Speaker 6: understanding the clip. But you're also even when you're doing
• 18:51
  Speaker 6: the broader picture understanding, reiterating exactly what everybody actually took
• 18:54
  Speaker 6: issue with, which was that Israel forced our hand, and
• 18:58
  Speaker 6: the President of the United States is saying something different.
• 19:00
  Speaker 6: We have kids from Minnesota coming back in boxes. That's
• 19:04
  Speaker 6: a disaster. That's a disaster. It is a moral disaster.
• 19:07
  Speaker 6: It's a disaster for the administration. The messaging has been atrocious,
• 19:12
  Speaker 6: and I think it's because it reflects the strategy is
• 19:15
  Speaker 6: muddled to begin with. You could hear that in Trump's
• 19:18
  Speaker 6: comments the point that you made, Ryan, where He's like, well,
• 19:20
  Speaker 6: I don't know what comes next.
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: Maybe it'll be worse. So it's not worse. Maybe it'll
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: be worse.
• 19:24
  Speaker 8: It could be worse.
• 19:24
  Speaker 10: So what.
• 19:26
  Speaker 6: Here's Dick Glumenthal, the Senator from Connecticut, walking out of
• 19:29
  Speaker 6: the briefing yesterday.
• 19:29
  Speaker 10: Ryan.
• 19:30
  Speaker 6: Would it be fair to characterize him as somebody who's
• 19:33
  Speaker 6: let's say, hawkish on Israel?
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: Supportable?
• 19:36
  Speaker 5: Yes, I just want to say.
• 19:41
  Speaker 12: I am more fearful than ever after this briefing that
• 19:46
  Speaker 12: we may be putting boots on the ground and that
• 19:50
  Speaker 12: the troops from the United States may be necessary to
• 19:52
  Speaker 12: accomplish objectives that the administration seems to have. But I
• 19:59
  Speaker 12: also and am no more clear on what the priorities
• 20:04
  Speaker 12: are going to be of the administration going forward, whether
• 20:08
  Speaker 12: it is destroying the nuclear capacity of Iran or simply
• 20:12
  Speaker 12: the missiles, or regime change or stopping terrorist activities. And
• 20:19
  Speaker 12: I think the administration owes it to the American people
• 20:23
  Speaker 12: to have briefings, not just for members of Congress, but
• 20:26
  Speaker 12: for the American public. Nothing here should have been classified.
• 20:32
  Speaker 12: It should be available to the American people.
• 20:34
  Speaker 6: Let's roll another hawk, Chuck Schumer walking out of the meeting.
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: This is a seven.
• 20:39
  Speaker 8: Do you think Israel?
• 20:41
  Speaker 5: You know, of course the US's hand here box the
• 20:43
  Speaker 5: US in on this.
• 20:44
  Speaker 14: Look, no one wants a nuclear war. No one wants
• 20:47
  Speaker 14: a nuclear Israel, but we certainly don't want an endless war,
• 20:51
  Speaker 14: plain and simple.
• 20:55
  Speaker 10: What did I say? Oh no, Scott, let me say
• 20:59
  Speaker 10: that again.
• 21:01
  Speaker 14: No one wants an endless war, but we certainly don't
• 21:04
  Speaker 14: want a nuclear Iran.
• 21:05
  Speaker 5: That's for sure.
• 21:06
  Speaker 6: Okay, listening, audience, what you missed was Chuck Streamer starved
• 21:10
  Speaker 6: to walk away after he said nobody wants a nuclear Israel.
• 21:12
  Speaker 6: Reporters were like, wait, wait, wait, So it goes back
• 21:15
  Speaker 6: to the camera, says let me do another take, let
• 21:16
  Speaker 6: me say that again, and corrects himself to say nuclear
• 21:20
  Speaker 6: arn but.
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: An Israel, for context, has nuclear weapons but pretends that
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: they don't. And it's this bizarre, decades long situation where
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: journalists and policymakers are supposed to sort of pretend like
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: they don't know that they do, even though they absolutely
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: do and have tested them and worked with the apartheid
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: South Africa and helping them develop one. It's like, I
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: wouldn't say nobody wants a nuclear Israel.
• 21:46
  Speaker 5: Israel does. But other than that, yeah, well.
• 21:48
  Speaker 6: So these these are two I think if people are listening,
• 21:51
  Speaker 6: they've identified two different layers of muddled messaging. That's a
• 21:54
  Speaker 6: way too charitable term of mixed messaging, of contradictory messaging, which.
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: Is is it nukes or missiles?
• 22:01
  Speaker 6: And was it Israel or was it our decision and
• 22:05
  Speaker 6: that moment did we do it at that moment on
• 22:07
  Speaker 6: our own or because we knew Israel was going to strike?
• 22:10
  Speaker 6: And there's been contradictory mixed message on both of those layers,
• 22:13
  Speaker 6: and those are cute. Those are predicate level questions, foundational
• 22:18
  Speaker 6: questions about this new war.
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: Is it even a war?
• 22:21
  Speaker 6: The President said, war in his speech, so of course
• 22:24
  Speaker 6: yes it's a war. But then you have Mark Wayne
• 22:27
  Speaker 6: Mullen for example. Also he was standing right where Chuck
• 22:30
  Speaker 6: Schumer was standing in the video we just played, say
• 22:32
  Speaker 6: this is a war. Reporter said, uh, you know what
• 22:37
  Speaker 6: you know? You just said that it's a war, and
• 22:38
  Speaker 6: he did a Schumer and said, I need to correct myself.
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: This is I misspoke.
• 22:42
  Speaker 5: That was a miss What is it? It's a combat operation.
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: They're saying major combat.
• 22:46
  Speaker 5: Operations of combat operation.
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: Preemptive, yes, and so proactive.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: And Schumer can't get out of his own way and
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: become a real opposition figure because of his hostility to
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: Iran rooted in his like decades long support for Israel.
• 23:02
  Speaker 5: If you noticed in that clip he leads with nobody wants.
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: A nuclear on rather than what is kind of more
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: pressing at the moment, the massive war that might spiral
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: into World War three. And also I thought this was
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: obliterated last June. And also they were at the table
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: offering to have no stockpiling. So today there will be
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: a war powers resolution vote in the Senate. It looks
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: like John Fetterman will join Republicans. Graham Platner has been
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: pushing Susan Collins very hard on this, pushing her to
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: condemn this, to turn her concerns into actions and join
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: Democrats and opposing this. You might know better than me.
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: I don't think she's going to do that. We'll see
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: how she ends up voting. If I fire her, I
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: would just throw her vote is not going to be decisive.
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: I think it's going to lose. You've got fifty three
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: Republicans plus Fetterman, right, so they can lose a couple
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: of Republicans and still defeat the War Powers resolution. So
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: if I'm Susan Collins, I would just take a cynical
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: vote and vote for the War Powers resolution.
• 24:15
  Speaker 5: I don't think she really will, though, what do you think?
• 24:17
  Speaker 6: Well, it'll yeah, I mean it depends on whatever agreement
• 24:20
  Speaker 6: is happening behind closed doors with Trump world, National Republican
• 24:25
  Speaker 6: Senatorial Committee world.
• 24:26
  Speaker 5: And whatever they think is smarter for her well.
• 24:28
  Speaker 6: And also if Donald Trump is going to be sensitive
• 24:31
  Speaker 6: about people voting against him or.
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: If they oh, then if he starts attacking her and
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: you lose money, lose money, and lose hardcore MAGA votes,
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: who then yeah.
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: Otherwise, if you telegraph you're taking a.
• 24:43
  Speaker 5: Cynical vote, so she'll go with the war.
• 24:45
  Speaker 6: Or if you telegraph taking a cynical process vote, maybe
• 24:50
  Speaker 6: you can alleviate that and you can work on that
• 24:52
  Speaker 6: again behind closed doors. But one of the big takeaways
• 24:55
  Speaker 6: from what you just said actually is that Platner has
• 24:56
  Speaker 6: already moved on to Susan Collins. I think as hilarious
• 24:59
  Speaker 6: is like what else yesterday's news primary is over moving
• 25:02
  Speaker 6: on as Susan Collins.
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: But if he really is, if people don't live on Twitter,
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: there was a two or three day hissy fit where
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: a whole bunch of like establishment Democrats all in Unison's
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: telling Graham Platter to drop out. It was like the
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: funniest thing. It's like, I'm sorry, what, yeah, are you
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: looking for the manager? Like it's a primary they're gonna vote.
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: It was so undignified and so embarrassing, and then it
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: just like faded.
• 25:31
  Speaker 6: Well, let's finish here with this clip of Lindsay Graham
• 25:34
  Speaker 6: get a little bit from the right. We're gonna splice
• 25:36
  Speaker 6: up here. Lindsay Graham and Tim Burchett, so Republican member
• 25:39
  Speaker 6: of the House Freedom Caucus guy. You've probably seen Burchitt around,
• 25:43
  Speaker 6: But here's Graham and then Burchett.
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: It's worth watching these these both back to back.
• 25:48
  Speaker 15: So I'm calling on President Trump today, join Israel to
• 25:52
  Speaker 15: attack Hezblah, a binge the Marines. America never forgets those
• 25:58
  Speaker 15: two hundred and twenty Marines in eighteen sailors. Family, we
• 26:01
  Speaker 15: want to go after the infrastructure that killed your loved ones,
• 26:05
  Speaker 15: their IRGC assets in Beirut. As I speak, President Trump,
• 26:11
  Speaker 15: come up with a new operation called Simplify Fly with
• 26:14
  Speaker 15: Israel and go after Hezblah, who has American blood on
• 26:18
  Speaker 15: its hands. Not only take the mothership of Iran down,
• 26:22
  Speaker 15: also take the prox if hezbe Lah settle the score.
• 26:26
  Speaker 5: Even the account.
• 26:27
  Speaker 8: Wendsay Adam saying a.
• 26:29
  Speaker 11: Fistfight, he hasn't wanted to turn into a bombing, right,
• 26:32
  Speaker 11: So I just tell you what a grain of salt.
• 26:36
  Speaker 5: As a Republican if you did age from the accent.
• 26:39
  Speaker 6: Yeah, well, he also said, he said to a reporter
• 26:43
  Speaker 6: in that same press conference, we do expect the public
• 26:47
  Speaker 6: to hold us accountable as the war goes on, and
• 26:50
  Speaker 6: you should hold this accountable. He's a freedom cracass guy,
• 26:52
  Speaker 6: so he's not like your average establishment person and obviously
• 26:54
  Speaker 6: feels heat from corners of the base that are uncomfortable
• 26:57
  Speaker 6: with this. Now, what I can tell so far, vibes
• 27:00
  Speaker 6: on the right very supportive. There are a couple of skeptical,
• 27:04
  Speaker 6: high profile voices, but I think Republican voters are very
• 27:07
  Speaker 6: supportive of what's happened. So I think maybe there's there's
• 27:11
  Speaker 6: probably more skepticism and criticism on the online right than
• 27:13
  Speaker 6: there is the offline or the partially online right. So
• 27:18
  Speaker 6: I don't know how much he people are going to
• 27:19
  Speaker 6: be feeling. But if it goes on longer, you know,
• 27:22
  Speaker 6: Burchett's going to hear from the people who feel like
• 27:24
  Speaker 6: Marjorie Taylor Green in his own district probably already is
• 27:26
  Speaker 6: hearing from a decent chunk of people. I mean, even's
• 27:29
  Speaker 6: twenty thirty percent of the Republican base. That's a lot,
• 27:32
  Speaker 6: and it'll it'll grow as this continues.
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: And just to be clear that Lindsay Graham was saying
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: that the US should bomb Lebanon to avenge a nineteen
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: eighty three bombing which took place before I would assume
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: most people in Hesbula were born, including my esteemed.
• 27:49
  Speaker 6: Co host, right, that's right, yes, a decade me and
• 27:54
  Speaker 6: those hesbla guys nineties kids nine.
• 27:57
  Speaker 5: These kids up next drop sites.
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: Pertazi was saying as the walkers through some more of this,
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: including US signaling that they're going to try to start
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: a civil war in Iran by arming Kurdish proxies. The
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: Trump administration is signaling that it plans to arm Kurdish
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: proxies to start an uprising in Iran, which is actually
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: kind of an unusual thing to telegraph publicly if you're
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: going to try to keep it clandestine. So we're going
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: to talk about where that comes from and what that
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: means in a moment with my dropsite colleague Martaza Hussein.
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: But first, we have a one month free premium offer
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: that we're doling out to everybody so that you can
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: get coverage of this war without having to pay for it.
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: It's go to Breakingpoints dot com. It's BP three twenty
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: six and movie in posts. We can add a little
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: map here because I think it's important here. When psychs
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: Pico drew the lines of the of the Middle East,
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: they took the Kurdish region, the Kurdish population and split
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: it basically like right down the middle. They put they
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: put a quarter quarter of it over in Turkey. So
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: there's a large Kurdish population in eastern Turkey. There's then
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: a large Kurtish population in northeast Syria. Then there's a
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: large Kurdish population over in northern Iraq. Uh and and
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: then with and then you have a smaller but non
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: trivial Kurdish population in Iran. And so it is the
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: Iranian cards that are now the focus of the US
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: US AT tension and affection and weapons supplies, hoping to
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: you know, further destabilize Iran. So Amaz, thank you so
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: much for joining us this morning, very much appreciate it.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: And you know we can we can put up what
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: do we have B two here? Uh, this is this
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: is from CNN.
• 29:50
  Speaker 5: This is the US.
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: This is the US intelligence officials signaling that they plan
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: to sparkle uprising in Iran, which obviously has some level
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: of psio psychological operation to it, because the CIA is
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: also capable of sparking uprisings without telling CNN that they're
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: about to spark an uprising. And if we had the
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: map still up there, we could point out that down
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: in the southern part of Iran is there's a large
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: Bloque population. There's a blow population in neighboring Pakistan, which
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: has all sorts of kind of intelligence connections and also
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: their own kind of drive for independence or autonomy. So
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of concern that the southern area as
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: well could become a place for some sort of uprising.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: So what do we know so far about the kind
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: of Trump outreach to the Iraqi Curds and whether or
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: not the Curds see this as in their interests.
• 30:55
  Speaker 16: Yes, so United to pointed out, the Curves have been
• 30:57
  Speaker 16: a stateless population or it Probabish, without their own states
• 31:01
  Speaker 16: for their ethnicity, at least since sychespeakle they're spread out
• 31:05
  Speaker 16: among the different few different countries, countries that wish they
• 31:07
  Speaker 16: are citizens, but they don't have a Curtisan of their
• 31:10
  Speaker 16: own per se. And so you know, there's always been
• 31:13
  Speaker 16: this tension with these states and so forth about how
• 31:16
  Speaker 16: the Courage will fit in. And now I think this report.
• 31:19
  Speaker 16: You know that there's been militant c and the political
• 31:22
  Speaker 16: movements in Irani and Curtisan for a long time, but
• 31:26
  Speaker 16: I think that this report is very fascinating because, as
• 31:28
  Speaker 16: you said, it's very strange to telegraph so loudly that
• 31:31
  Speaker 16: you're about to do this imminently. I think one of
• 31:32
  Speaker 16: the some of the reports said an offensive good start
• 31:35
  Speaker 16: in a few days. That's a very strange thing to
• 31:38
  Speaker 16: identify that way. But that said, there have been reports
• 31:41
  Speaker 16: that the US has made intelligence contacts with the PJAK,
• 31:44
  Speaker 16: which is like the Iranian branch of the PKK effectively
• 31:48
  Speaker 16: in Iran. Also reports of weapons transfers and so forth.
• 31:52
  Speaker 16: So I don't find it completely beyond the pale or
• 31:55
  Speaker 16: identified completely outlanders. And they could be doing this, but
• 31:58
  Speaker 16: I think it's very clear that if they were to
• 32:00
  Speaker 16: do this, it would not be to really help the
• 32:02
  Speaker 16: currents per se. It would be kind of inversion of
• 32:05
  Speaker 16: the Iraq war situation, where the US basically accidentally started
• 32:09
  Speaker 16: a civil war by creating a security dilemma.
• 32:11
  Speaker 8: In this case, seems like they're deliberately.
• 32:12
  Speaker 16: Trying to start a civil war and maybe try to
• 32:15
  Speaker 16: drain the attention and resources already stretch of the Iranian military.
• 32:19
  Speaker 16: They may impose a no fly zone over this part
• 32:22
  Speaker 16: of Iran to try to break the territorial integrity if
• 32:24
  Speaker 16: Iran in that sense, and I think those are all
• 32:26
  Speaker 16: things that are very plausible. The one thing is if
• 32:28
  Speaker 16: you talk to Iranians They're very divided and polarized about
• 32:32
  Speaker 16: many different things in a con way, one thing that
• 32:34
  Speaker 16: really reunites them is the territorial integrity if Iran.
• 32:37
  Speaker 8: They're very patriotic across the political divisions.
• 32:40
  Speaker 16: So I think that one byproduct of this, it may
• 32:42
  Speaker 16: actually make people rally around the country and the flag
• 32:46
  Speaker 16: or even the government because it's the nightmare scenario of
• 32:49
  Speaker 16: pretty much every Iranian and even the most shop Paba
• 32:53
  Speaker 16: via supporting Irani has milted about the subject that they
• 32:56
  Speaker 16: don't accept it. So you know, it's not say it
• 32:58
  Speaker 16: won't happen and they're not going to try it. But
• 33:01
  Speaker 16: you know, also one more thing, it would also require
• 33:03
  Speaker 16: much more US involvement.
• 33:04
  Speaker 8: It's not just like passing it off to the Kurds
• 33:06
  Speaker 8: and walking away.
• 33:07
  Speaker 16: You probably tremendous US Special Forces presence in Iran ongoing,
• 33:11
  Speaker 16: as I said, air cover for these troops, these Kurdish
• 33:14
  Speaker 16: forces to protect them and so forth. And I do
• 33:17
  Speaker 16: think we're heading down the road if we're doing this
• 33:20
  Speaker 16: much greater US involvement, including ground involvement in Iran.
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, on that point.
• 33:24
  Speaker 6: Actually Ryan highlighted this clip of a Kurdisher mom that
• 33:30
  Speaker 6: we can put it up on the screen that said
• 33:32
  Speaker 6: to paul A VI quote, let me make this clear.
• 33:34
  Speaker 6: When your dictator father executed Kazi Muhammad, there was only
• 33:38
  Speaker 6: one Kazi Mohammed, but now millions of Kazi exist in Kurdistan.
• 33:42
  Speaker 6: We promise we will not allow you to enter any
• 33:44
  Speaker 6: part of Kurdistan in Iran, Mas.
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: What do you make of that? What does that tell us?
• 33:50
  Speaker 6: What more does that tell us about the dynamics we
• 33:52
  Speaker 6: were just laying out.
• 33:53
  Speaker 16: Well, one thing to keep in mind is that Iran
• 33:55
  Speaker 16: is an ethnically heterogeneous country. I think maybe like half
• 33:58
  Speaker 16: or sixty percent of people or a Persian background, but
• 34:01
  Speaker 16: there's a huge population of people who are Turkish background, Kurds,
• 34:05
  Speaker 16: Bolos and so forth, even smaller ethnicities throughout the country
• 34:10
  Speaker 16: as well. And rest of Pavlavi really speaks to the
• 34:13
  Speaker 16: Persian segment of the population, the more urban, you know.
• 34:17
  Speaker 8: Plurality or slim majority of the country.
• 34:20
  Speaker 16: But there's a very big country to country, ninety million people,
• 34:23
  Speaker 16: and these people, many of them did not have a
• 34:25
  Speaker 16: very happy experience with the previous shot and they view
• 34:30
  Speaker 16: the imposition of another Polab as a return to like
• 34:32
  Speaker 16: a straightforward Persian ethnic chauvinism in their view, so that
• 34:37
  Speaker 16: they would not view that as a liberation at all.
• 34:40
  Speaker 8: For the vast majority of them. The current government is
• 34:43
  Speaker 8: very polarizing.
• 34:43
  Speaker 16: It probably has a support of a segment of the
• 34:46
  Speaker 16: population and not the majority, but the theory it's sort
• 34:50
  Speaker 16: of intended to represent the entire country. It's not an
• 34:54
  Speaker 16: ethnic party per se. It's a national party, national government.
• 34:59
  Speaker 16: So I think that I don't think that even really
• 35:01
  Speaker 16: people are thinking about these dynamics and thinking about sending
• 35:03
  Speaker 16: the shot back.
• 35:04
  Speaker 8: It's a very romantic idea. It's being able to came
• 35:06
  Speaker 8: back to the country.
• 35:07
  Speaker 16: Monarchic resistorations have a history in Europe in the past
• 35:10
  Speaker 16: as well too. But it's a very very complex situation,
• 35:13
  Speaker 16: and as many US officials have done, many foreign officials
• 35:16
  Speaker 16: have said, spoken with the US counterparts, it doesn't seem
• 35:19
  Speaker 16: as a plan per se. And I do get the
• 35:21
  Speaker 16: impression that is more of the Israelis guy than the Americans,
• 35:24
  Speaker 16: because he's much more impulsely embraced by nets Yahoo than
• 35:27
  Speaker 16: he has been by the US, which has kept him
• 35:29
  Speaker 16: at least in public and arms lands.
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and Trump yesterday was asked about rezip and pretty
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: much dismissed him, and in a similar way to the
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: way that Maria Marchott Machado seemed to be kind of
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: dismissed by Trumps, like, yeah, he seems like a nice guy,
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: but I don't know if like he's I don't know
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: if he's the one. There's some other people you know
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: that he that he thinks could run a round. And
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: to your point, the the Shah restoration plan runs kind
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: of in direct conflict and country addiction to this, like
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: we're going to spark armed uprisings all over the place
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: because you know, the Shah, the crown Prince whatever we
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: call himself, has been has been very clear that you know,
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: there it's one, it's one Iran, and he's he will
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: be the king of all of Irun and then it
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: will be a democratic transition at some point in the future.
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: But he's not tolerating you know, separatist movements. You know
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: his you know his father, you know, executed people who
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: kind of pursued that that.
• 36:27
  Speaker 5: That similar line.
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: So those are you know, those are two strategies, as
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: you said, that are they cannot work together.
• 36:34
  Speaker 8: Uh.
• 36:35
  Speaker 5: We were originally told.
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: By Trump that this was going to be a a
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: regime change war. It seems like they're starting to realize
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: that it's not quite as simple as they thought. And
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: as people many people have pointed out, just changing the regime,
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: you know, through an aerial bombardment campaign isn't quite possible.
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: So it seems now this is what I wanted to
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: ask you about, and we can we can roll be
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: one here while while asking this question, it seems like
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: a kind of split the baby, split the country strategy is.
• 37:06
  Speaker 5: Okay, we can't do regime change. This is Tehran.
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: These are images coming out of just apocalyptic scenes coming
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: out of Tehran. Okay, we can't do regime change, but
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: maybe we can do complete regime destruction, complete regime collapse,
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: and make it so this country has just simply rendered
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: a failed state, you know, dropped from the ranks of
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: a struggling country under sanctions to one that more resembles Gaza,
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: and and that can be and that can adopt the
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: the approach that the Israelis took to have to have
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: taken to Gaza, of which they call you know, mowing
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: the lawn, which would mean, you know, every six months
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: or so, they come in with a with a bombing
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: campaign as soon as a little bit of reconstruction gets
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: going and life starts to get back to normally, bomb
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: them back to misery again. And so if you can
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: have the Bloke people rising up, you can have the
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: Kurds rising up in a constant bombardment of this one
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: of the oldest and most populated cities in the world, then.
• 38:13
  Speaker 5: Maybe you can just destroy the regime. So, like, what
• 38:15
  Speaker 5: are you.
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: Seeing just as a matter of strategy, Like what is
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: being done to Tehran as we.
• 38:22
  Speaker 16: Speak, Well, I think Ran you hit the nail on
• 38:25
  Speaker 16: the head. I think that they're not doing regime change
• 38:28
  Speaker 16: per se. And if they were trying to hypothetically impose
• 38:31
  Speaker 16: a neoliberal, pro Western government, maybe resid apology to control
• 38:36
  Speaker 16: all of Iran, that would be one of the more
• 38:38
  Speaker 16: relatively benign outcomes actually, or benign intensions, because you're trying
• 38:42
  Speaker 16: to preserve something called Iran, even in a very bloody
• 38:44
  Speaker 16: and brutal way. I don't think that's what they're trying
• 38:46
  Speaker 16: to do here. I think they're trying to do regime
• 38:48
  Speaker 16: regime destruction, regime dissolution. They would like to turn Iran
• 38:52
  Speaker 16: into something like Iraq in the nineteen nineties, where it'd
• 38:55
  Speaker 16: been heavily damaged. It was a very foreign sanctioned you
• 38:58
  Speaker 16: could sovereignty was based irrelevant. You can bomb in anytime
• 39:01
  Speaker 16: you want it, keep it on the back foot, and
• 39:04
  Speaker 16: then you know, one day, ten years later, if the
• 39:06
  Speaker 16: circumstances arose, you can go in there and knock it out,
• 39:08
  Speaker 16: and then people wouldn't really object to it at the time.
• 39:11
  Speaker 16: The impression I get listening to the Trump administration officials
• 39:13
  Speaker 16: is that they considered the entire the major mistake of
• 39:16
  Speaker 16: the Warran terror was not the killing and destruction, but
• 39:18
  Speaker 16: it was the attempt to try to engineer something out
• 39:22
  Speaker 16: of that. You know, I think it seems to like
• 39:24
  Speaker 16: the Warran Terror was very progressive and woke or something.
• 39:27
  Speaker 16: It was to involve in human rights and state buildings
• 39:29
  Speaker 16: and stuff like that. What they would like to do,
• 39:31
  Speaker 16: and they're pretty much open about this, they like to
• 39:33
  Speaker 16: destroy Iran in very extreme, vulgar terms.
• 39:37
  Speaker 8: They just describe that, including secretary access today.
• 39:40
  Speaker 16: So they and they don't want plan to rebuild it,
• 39:43
  Speaker 16: or they don't plan to put someone new in charge
• 39:44
  Speaker 16: of someone who comes.
• 39:45
  Speaker 8: In who maybe supports the US right if.
• 39:47
  Speaker 16: Not, no problem, and causing the dissolution of the country
• 39:52
  Speaker 16: is something which you know, so it's very harmful to
• 39:55
  Speaker 16: countries around Iran's bad for a Turkey or Pakistan or
• 39:59
  Speaker 16: the Gulf States and so forth. It could be very
• 40:02
  Speaker 16: bad for Europe if there's a major refugee crisis, which
• 40:04
  Speaker 16: I think the Iran has a count of niney million people.
• 40:06
  Speaker 8: I think it would absolutely be a refugee crisis at
• 40:08
  Speaker 8: that point.
• 40:08
  Speaker 16: But the US is far away, even Israel is pretty
• 40:11
  Speaker 16: far away, so they could probably whether the weather the
• 40:13
  Speaker 16: blows from that, and you know, that's kind of I
• 40:17
  Speaker 16: think the plan such as it is, whether that will
• 40:19
  Speaker 16: be successful or not, I don't know, because you know,
• 40:21
  Speaker 16: Iran is a.
• 40:22
  Speaker 8: Very large coherence cocid country.
• 40:24
  Speaker 16: It wasn't really like Iraq or even Syria that was
• 40:27
  Speaker 16: created by you know, Sypes people colonial borders. That has
• 40:30
  Speaker 16: like actual country with actual, like historic civilizational sort of
• 40:36
  Speaker 16: containment that it had. So I don't think it's that
• 40:39
  Speaker 16: easy to destroy it. But that said, you know, you
• 40:41
  Speaker 16: can do tremendous harm. You could kill tens of thousands,
• 40:44
  Speaker 16: hundred thousands of people, millions of people could be killed.
• 40:47
  Speaker 16: That's not by many means off the you know, out
• 40:50
  Speaker 16: of the renal of possibility and I do think we're
• 40:52
  Speaker 16: heading something like that. So I think that that's unfortunately
• 40:56
  Speaker 16: the trajectory. And you know, the Iranian government could have
• 40:58
  Speaker 16: options and how it respond that manages to maintain power
• 41:01
  Speaker 16: and so forth, but they're doing for a very, very challenge,
• 41:03
  Speaker 16: you could, and I think we're only a sally at
• 41:05
  Speaker 16: the beginning of this.
• 41:06
  Speaker 6: Well, let's roll this footage from Lebanon, and this is
• 41:09
  Speaker 6: B four because actually, you know, we as we played
• 41:13
  Speaker 6: a clip of Lindsey Graham at the Senate yesterday calling
• 41:16
  Speaker 6: for Trump to join Israel strike Hasbulla, you know, avenge
• 41:20
  Speaker 6: the Marines. But everything you're just saying probably rings in
• 41:25
  Speaker 6: many people's minds as what happened after a rock, particularly
• 41:31
  Speaker 6: what happened after a rock with the rise of Isis.
• 41:34
  Speaker 6: And I guess that's my next question, is where you
• 41:38
  Speaker 6: know you were saying, if you have this dispersed or
• 41:42
  Speaker 6: you have this power vacuum, what could come next is
• 41:47
  Speaker 6: not what anybody predicted when we went into a rock.
• 41:49
  Speaker 6: I mean, it's remarkable to look back on that and
• 41:51
  Speaker 6: think of how little understanding there was of what could
• 41:56
  Speaker 6: come next. But this seems utterly insane for the United
• 42:01
  Speaker 6: States to be completely confident that what comes next is
• 42:04
  Speaker 6: going to be potentially inevitably better than what was before,
• 42:08
  Speaker 6: which is again something there saying over and over again
• 42:11
  Speaker 6: it couldn't possibly get worse, It couldn't possibly get worse.
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: What could get worse? If anything?
• 42:17
  Speaker 16: Mass well, you know, you could have, as I mentioned earlier,
• 42:21
  Speaker 16: the refugee crisis. The refugee crisis was hugely disabilizing into Europe,
• 42:25
  Speaker 16: had a tremendous impact on politics all over the world.
• 42:28
  Speaker 16: That's very possible. You have the Iraq and Syria. Syria
• 42:31
  Speaker 16: they're only you know, in the twenty million in the
• 42:32
  Speaker 16: population so forth, Iran is ninety million people. That's a
• 42:36
  Speaker 16: tremendous summer of people eating, a fraction of whom may
• 42:39
  Speaker 16: become refugees who would wind up in Europe. That simply
• 42:42
  Speaker 16: changed the politics at the continent again and led less
• 42:45
  Speaker 16: than a decade. So I think that's a very important
• 42:48
  Speaker 16: possible consequence. But also, you know Iran, there's a tremendous
• 42:52
  Speaker 16: amount of knowledge and material militarily nuclear stuff in there
• 42:58
  Speaker 16: as well too. You could have an of state authority,
• 43:01
  Speaker 16: you could have different factions fighting over a nuclear material,
• 43:04
  Speaker 16: people trying to develop nuclear weapons outside of the cohesive
• 43:08
  Speaker 16: state structure such as they one can see that they
• 43:10
  Speaker 16: can be cooperating with people outside the country. They can
• 43:13
  Speaker 16: cooperate people in Russia or you know, elsewhere in the
• 43:16
  Speaker 16: world to do this.
• 43:17
  Speaker 8: Con seal these activities.
• 43:18
  Speaker 16: You know, the way it ran is right now, especially
• 43:20
  Speaker 16: with the government trying to engage with the international community
• 43:24
  Speaker 16: in various ways. There's a great duty of transparency that
• 43:27
  Speaker 16: affords because you know they you know where You'rerani nuclear
• 43:30
  Speaker 16: sites that you know, for the most part, where the
• 43:32
  Speaker 16: nuclear materials are. What if that whole structure breaks down,
• 43:35
  Speaker 16: or if people, a small group of people, armed people
• 43:38
  Speaker 16: in summer organization go to the mountains in the very
• 43:41
  Speaker 16: mountains country and develop a nuclear weapon up there, dirty
• 43:44
  Speaker 16: bomb or.
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: Something like that.
• 43:45
  Speaker 16: You know, aion, a million nightmer of stereos could happen
• 43:47
  Speaker 16: if you open turn a gigantic country like that apocalypse.
• 43:51
  Speaker 6: So you're not bombing the what I was just gonna say,
• 43:53
  Speaker 6: because you know this very well, you're not bombing the
• 43:57
  Speaker 6: what's the right word, the logical persuasions or the ideological
• 44:02
  Speaker 6: persuasions of some chunk of the Iranian population away. In fact,
• 44:05
  Speaker 6: you could actually be radicalizing more and more people into
• 44:09
  Speaker 6: IRGC style ideologies. I mean, that's again, it's part of
• 44:13
  Speaker 6: what happened with ISIS. You hear how ISIS was recruiting
• 44:16
  Speaker 6: people some of these videos that are coming. I mean,
• 44:19
  Speaker 6: what happened to the school in the first what twenty
• 44:21
  Speaker 6: four hours at the bombing, that's a recipe for another
• 44:25
  Speaker 6: potential ISIS like recruitment boom. It seems to me at least,
• 44:29
  Speaker 6: but you would know this better, Mons well.
• 44:31
  Speaker 16: I think it might be likely to revivify like a
• 44:35
  Speaker 16: very hardline Iranian nationalism, maybe channel through the current government.
• 44:40
  Speaker 16: That's a very significant possibility because the whole message to
• 44:44
  Speaker 16: the government was that America is bad and America's pushed
• 44:46
  Speaker 16: us around the past. Did it coop in the nineteen fifties,
• 44:49
  Speaker 16: they bomb sit out of staying in the eighties and
• 44:51
  Speaker 16: a lot of people actually didn't really believe that anymore,
• 44:53
  Speaker 16: younger people and so forth. And you know, if you
• 44:56
  Speaker 16: however long this goes on, it not violence naturally has
• 44:59
  Speaker 16: a polarizing that people start to you know, get radicalized
• 45:03
  Speaker 16: by as you said, they start to get noticing and
• 45:05
  Speaker 16: they say it hurt or their family members are in dangered,
• 45:07
  Speaker 16: changing their perception then the government was not very popular
• 45:10
  Speaker 16: before this, it was maybe five percent something like that.
• 45:14
  Speaker 16: People's back of their envelope calculations that the level of
• 45:18
  Speaker 16: supports society, if you continue boving them, you'll generate patriotic
• 45:21
  Speaker 16: sentiments that they can challenge. So maybe the US is
• 45:24
  Speaker 16: indifferent to that. Maybe you know, they're not trying to
• 45:26
  Speaker 16: engineer a neuron so they don't care.
• 45:28
  Speaker 8: But you know, that would.
• 45:29
  Speaker 16: Strengthen the Iranian government absolutely, because the one thing that
• 45:32
  Speaker 16: would make it very easy to resist or easier to
• 45:35
  Speaker 16: resist this onslaught or attempts to break up the country
• 45:39
  Speaker 16: on an ethnic basis is to rithmify support in the government,
• 45:42
  Speaker 16: and the government would have to do things too, have
• 45:44
  Speaker 16: to change the way engaging with people, maybe change some
• 45:47
  Speaker 16: of its public messaging and the way it makes decisions,
• 45:50
  Speaker 16: be more inclusive in that sense to a degree.
• 45:52
  Speaker 8: But you know, it's giving them an opportunity for that.
• 45:55
  Speaker 16: I don't see necessarily like a full the extreme isis like.
• 45:58
  Speaker 8: Movement emerging from it.
• 46:00
  Speaker 16: I think that it was kind of like a unique
• 46:02
  Speaker 16: constellation of factors in Iraq and.
• 46:05
  Speaker 8: Syria that resulted in that.
• 46:06
  Speaker 16: But I do think that it would transform people's opinions
• 46:09
  Speaker 16: in ways which could be politically adverse in the long term.
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: And last question for me, what is Iran doing differently
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: this time that they're clearly getting absolutely pummeled by Israel
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: in the United States. The bombing campaign seems to be exceeding,
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: you know, what was done during the Twelve Day War,
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: But what is Iran doing differently when it comes to
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: their response and what is working for them and what's
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: not working well?
• 46:37
  Speaker 16: It seems like this time they're relying more on these
• 46:39
  Speaker 16: short range or shorter range of one way to attack drones,
• 46:42
  Speaker 16: the shy head drones that they're firing at US positioned
• 46:46
  Speaker 16: in the Gulf States and sometimes the targets in the
• 46:48
  Speaker 16: Gulf States as well too. That's been the predominant focus
• 46:51
  Speaker 16: of their retaliation. So you know, what interesting thing is
• 46:54
  Speaker 16: that most of the Morn's ballistic missile force is actoually
• 46:56
  Speaker 16: not developed to hit Israel. It's developed to hit these
• 46:58
  Speaker 16: targets in the Gulf. So you know, they're using more
• 47:01
  Speaker 16: of those, and obviously they're under much more fire this
• 47:04
  Speaker 16: time to suppress these launchers, to destroy them before they
• 47:08
  Speaker 16: can be fired and so forth. But still, as I said,
• 47:10
  Speaker 16: it's a very big country and around the Persian Golf
• 47:13
  Speaker 16: the Tooral area, they have caves, they have small launch
• 47:17
  Speaker 16: sites and so forth. They're very difficult to get all
• 47:19
  Speaker 16: of them. And they're doing regular stream of attacks on
• 47:22
  Speaker 16: these targets. And there was actually a New York Times
• 47:24
  Speaker 16: story about this, and those on social media as well too,
• 47:27
  Speaker 16: But they're mapping out all the radars that the Iranians
• 47:30
  Speaker 16: hit and the Gulf states. They're actually destroying billions of
• 47:32
  Speaker 16: dollars that use equipment on these bases and very sophisticated
• 47:35
  Speaker 16: to anti BLUISTI missal radars and not the radars and
• 47:38
  Speaker 16: so forth, So they are actually hitting things which matter.
• 47:41
  Speaker 16: And they also hit a CIA stations, Arabia hit embassies
• 47:44
  Speaker 16: and so forth.
• 47:45
  Speaker 8: So this is not completely trivial response.
• 47:49
  Speaker 16: But that said, you know, given the depletion of stockpiles
• 47:53
  Speaker 16: in the last war, and also this time the fact
• 47:56
  Speaker 16: that the US not just involve hitting around but also
• 47:58
  Speaker 16: giving fuel support to the Israelis so they can hit
• 48:01
  Speaker 16: around more regularly, it's difficult to maintain the large level
• 48:04
  Speaker 16: ballistic missile sell vels that took place in the last war.
• 48:07
  Speaker 16: This means that the US is rarely interceptors are probably
• 48:11
  Speaker 16: depleting at a slow rate than before. But also you know,
• 48:14
  Speaker 16: they can't really hit these targets as hard as they
• 48:17
  Speaker 16: did before, so I think from the Iranian perspective, they
• 48:20
  Speaker 16: also maybe trying to preserve their capacities, not to fire
• 48:23
  Speaker 16: them all in the short term, but to fight a
• 48:25
  Speaker 16: long war attrition, because the US issue can only fight
• 48:28
  Speaker 16: for a few weeks of this capacity, but they can
• 48:30
  Speaker 16: go for months and months and you know, six months
• 48:32
  Speaker 16: or something like that and keep firing. Then the perception
• 48:35
  Speaker 16: of who really on top here may start to chip,
• 48:37
  Speaker 16: and I think that's usually the strategy. It's a weaker
• 48:40
  Speaker 16: party and war. Many Iranian officials have said this, and
• 48:43
  Speaker 16: I will say one last thing. It was seen as
• 48:45
  Speaker 16: the biggest mistake that the Iranians made last year when
• 48:48
  Speaker 16: they stopped firing after twelve base, because in the Iranian
• 48:50
  Speaker 16: system is that we finally figured out how to get
• 48:52
  Speaker 16: past the air the missile defenses.
• 48:54
  Speaker 8: We shouldn't stop firing.
• 48:55
  Speaker 16: But also, if the war's going to come next year anyways,
• 48:57
  Speaker 16: now the israelis in the back foot in the US
• 48:59
  Speaker 16: and get involved, we should just have it now. Press
• 49:02
  Speaker 16: our advantage now rather than wait another year and was
• 49:05
  Speaker 16: what they did in the end.
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: All right, well, mos stick around from mom because we're
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: going to talk about what the European response has been
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: and what the US response to the European response has been.
• 49:15
  Speaker 5: So we'll stick around after the break for this.
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: So a diplomatic and trade war is breaking out between
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: the United States and Spain over Spain's refusal to allow
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: the United States to use its bases to attack Iron.
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: Trump was asked about this and said that, you know what,
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: maybe he'll just cut off Spain completely.
• 49:35
  Speaker 5: Let's roll this.
• 49:37
  Speaker 11: The right was given to us by the Supreme Court,
• 49:40
  Speaker 11: and we have the right. As an example, we talked
• 49:42
  Speaker 11: about Spain. I could tomorrow stop or today even better
• 49:46
  Speaker 11: stop everything having to do with Spain, all business having
• 49:50
  Speaker 11: to do is Man. Have the right to stop it, embargoes,
• 49:54
  Speaker 11: do anything I want with it, and we may do
• 49:56
  Speaker 11: that with Spain.
• 49:57
  Speaker 10: But some of the European like Spain, is been terrible.
• 50:01
  Speaker 10: In fact, I.
• 50:01
  Speaker 11: Told Scott to cut off all dealings with Spain.
• 50:07
  Speaker 10: Spain.
• 50:07
  Speaker 11: First of all, it started when every European nation, at
• 50:11
  Speaker 11: my request, paid five percent, which they should be doing,
• 50:14
  Speaker 11: and everybody was enthusiastic about in Germany, everybody, and Spain
• 50:18
  Speaker 11: didn't do it. And now Spain actually said that we
• 50:23
  Speaker 11: can't use their basis, and that's all right, we don't.
• 50:25
  Speaker 11: We could use the basic we want. We could just
• 50:27
  Speaker 11: fly in and use it. Nobody's going to tell us
• 50:30
  Speaker 11: not to use it, but we don't have to. But
• 50:32
  Speaker 11: they were unfriendly, and so I told him we don't
• 50:36
  Speaker 11: want to. Spain has absolutely nothing that we need other
• 50:39
  Speaker 11: than great people.
• 50:40
  Speaker 10: They have great people, but they don't have great leadership.
• 50:43
  Speaker 11: And as you know, they were the only country that
• 50:46
  Speaker 11: in NATO would not agree to go up to five percent.
• 50:49
  Speaker 11: I don't think they want to agreed to go up
• 50:51
  Speaker 11: to anything. They wanted to keep it at two percent,
• 50:54
  Speaker 11: and they don't pay the two percent. So we're going
• 50:57
  Speaker 11: to cut off all trade with Spain. We don't want
• 50:59
  Speaker 11: anything to do with Spain, all right.
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: So Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez pushed back against Trump,
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: saying that he's not going to be bullied. Now Trump
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: is probably correct. They probably could just fly in. I
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: don't think Spain's going to shoot the US planes down.
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: But Sanchez is saying that he's standing by it. We
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: can put up his post here. He said he said
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: the world, Europe and Spain have faced this critical moment before.
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: In two thousand and three, a few irresponsible leaders dragged
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: us into an illegal war in the Middle East that
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: brought nothing but insecurity and pain. Our response, then must
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: be our response now. No to violations of international law.
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: No to the illusion that we can solve the world's
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: problems with bombs, No to repeating the mistakes of the past,
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: No to war.
• 51:44
  Speaker 8: Emily.
• 51:45
  Speaker 5: How is how are people feeling about this on the right?
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: This just Trump kind of decided that we're going to
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: go to war and decided the entire world has to
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: go to war with us, and now we're gonna cut
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: off Spain.
• 52:01
  Speaker 5: Like what does that mean?
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: It's Trump.
• 52:04
  Speaker 6: It's just it's Trump's tactics that people have become accustomed to.
• 52:09
  Speaker 6: And I think some people on the right actually frankly
• 52:11
  Speaker 6: enjoy Trump coming in. It's like people see it almost
• 52:15
  Speaker 6: as Reagan coming in after Carter malaise, as it's kind
• 52:18
  Speaker 6: of remembered in the American imagination and saying it's mourning
• 52:22
  Speaker 6: in America again, and Trump is a much darker version
• 52:25
  Speaker 6: of that, saying it's America's morning again, Like we're the
• 52:29
  Speaker 6: ones who are in charger, in control and you have
• 52:33
  Speaker 6: to deal with it. We're actually like wrangling the world
• 52:36
  Speaker 6: as is our right. We have the power and you're
• 52:40
  Speaker 6: not going to tell us no. So let's put C
• 52:42
  Speaker 6: two up on the screen. This is Poland saying they
• 52:47
  Speaker 6: will now work on getting their own nuclear weapons.
• 52:50
  Speaker 4: We have France that we can put up on the
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: screen as well.
• 52:53
  Speaker 6: This one in New York Times headline Macron expands French
• 52:56
  Speaker 6: nuclear arsenal and vows protection for neighbors. This is all
• 53:00
  Speaker 6: what's transpired in less than a week, and I want
• 53:04
  Speaker 6: to rule also Mark Karney sort of the what's the
• 53:08
  Speaker 6: right word arch nemesis of Trump. Ostensibly here's what he said.
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: We can rule this up.
• 53:16
  Speaker 17: We support efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear
• 53:19
  Speaker 17: weapon and to prevent its regime from further threatening international
• 53:23
  Speaker 17: peace and security, because Canada is taking the world as
• 53:29
  Speaker 17: it is passively waiting for a world we wish to be.
• 53:35
  Speaker 17: We do, however, take this position with regret because the
• 53:39
  Speaker 17: current conflict is another example of the failure of the
• 53:42
  Speaker 17: international order. Despite decades of UN Security Council resolutions, the
• 53:48
  Speaker 17: tireless work of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the
• 53:53
  Speaker 17: succession of sanctions and diplomatic frameworks, Iran's nuclear threat remains,
• 53:59
  Speaker 17: and now the United States and Israel have acted without
• 54:02
  Speaker 17: engaging the United Nations or consulting allies, including Canada.
• 54:08
  Speaker 8: So where to you from here?
• 54:10
  Speaker 17: With a rapidly spreading conflict and growing threats to civilian life,
• 54:15
  Speaker 17: Canada reaffirms that international law binds all belligerents. We condemned
• 54:20
  Speaker 17: the strikes carried out by Iran on civilians and civilian
• 54:24
  Speaker 17: infrastructure across the Middle East, and we implore all parties,
• 54:28
  Speaker 17: including the United States and Israel, to respect the rules
• 54:31
  Speaker 17: of international engagement. Canada calls for a rapid de escalation
• 54:36
  Speaker 17: of hostilities and is prepared to assist in achieving this goal.
• 54:40
  Speaker 6: Well to your question, Ryan, this is how Trump world
• 54:42
  Speaker 6: sees the like okay, nerd international relations.
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: This is real politic. Donald Trump has brought this transparent.
• 54:49
  Speaker 6: Naked real politic back to the White House where it
• 54:51
  Speaker 6: always was. This was always a pretext used to weaken
• 54:56
  Speaker 6: the nation state and particularly the United States, to undermine
• 54:59
  Speaker 6: US geminy by people who want to control the world
• 55:02
  Speaker 6: out of Davos and Brussels, as opposed to letting countries
• 55:06
  Speaker 6: drive or fail.
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: On their own might and power.
• 55:10
  Speaker 6: And I think that's how like the if we were
• 55:13
  Speaker 6: trying to flesh out the meat on the bones, that's
• 55:16
  Speaker 6: how people would say they're interpreting it. They're not particularly
• 55:19
  Speaker 6: concerned about losing support of allies, to be honest.
• 55:24
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: And Markarney is a particularly good example because he gave
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: this like famous speech at Davos where he said, you know,
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: it's time for us to denounce this, you know, American
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: belligerents and gemony, and they're like the fraud.
• 55:35
  Speaker 5: That is the international rules based order.
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: And then within hours of the US attacking Iran, he
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: put out a statement basically in complete lockstep support for it.
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: Now he's out with this this new thing which you
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: heard him say, where he's like, well, I support it,
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: but it's also it's kind of hypocritical.
• 55:54
  Speaker 5: And bad and I shouldn't but I do.
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 55:56
  Speaker 6: It's like, Okay, it's unclear whether he's saying he's saying
• 55:59
  Speaker 6: the pretext is good, the pretext of international law is good.
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: And the war is good, but the war's not being
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: done legally, right, Yes, And so I want to talk
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: about the role of the Europeans a little bit more
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: with Manzia say, let's bring drop sites correspondent back here.
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: I want to talk about Europe's role here because they
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: kind of get I mean good for Spain, and Spain
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: is not the one that I'll be talking about here
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: when I bring up last year's last year's events which
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: walk through you know, how we wound up here in
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: this war relate connecting to the snap back sanctions that
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: the Europeans applied to Iran.
• 56:46
  Speaker 5: So when the US, you know.
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: In twenty seventeen, walked out of the Iran nuclear deal,
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: there was still a lot of sanctions relief from the
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: Europeans to the Iranians because they had Europeans had also
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: made a nuclear deal and Iran was abiding by the
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: nuclear deal. But fairly recently, the Europeans, under pressure from
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: the United States, you know, went pretty directly and harshly
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: at Iran when it came to economic sanctions. So what
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: has been the kind of European posture here, because they're
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: going to present some level of concern over violations of
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: the UN and international order. But what was Europe's role,
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: as you understand it, in pushing us to this situation.
• 57:37
  Speaker 16: Well, the original Iran nuclear deal that was signed in
• 57:40
  Speaker 16: twenty fifteen, was involving the European countries as well, suit
• 57:43
  Speaker 16: a very critical role of mediating that. And when Trump
• 57:46
  Speaker 16: left the deal, when you violated it, they were very
• 57:48
  Speaker 16: upset about that because they viewed the Iran nuclear deal
• 57:51
  Speaker 16: as a great diplomatic achievement that they wanted to avoid.
• 57:54
  Speaker 16: Another Iraq Iraq war was extremely bad for Europe, and
• 57:58
  Speaker 16: so they were upset when that happened.
• 58:00
  Speaker 8: And then they tried to keep the deal alive to a.
• 58:02
  Speaker 16: Degree the years after twenty eighteen when Trump left it,
• 58:05
  Speaker 16: tried to give the Iranians some other channels they could
• 58:08
  Speaker 16: trade with them. But despite that, for the most part,
• 58:10
  Speaker 16: they did abide by the Trump sanctions, the secondary sanction
• 58:13
  Speaker 16: in the bank and so forth. They wouldn't break those
• 58:15
  Speaker 16: and go against those and continue dealing with They ran.
• 58:17
  Speaker 16: They kind of threw we run under the bus for
• 58:19
  Speaker 16: the most part, although they tried to maintain some sort
• 58:21
  Speaker 16: of you know, life preserver to keep the deal at
• 58:24
  Speaker 16: some degree above water. And that continued for a while.
• 58:28
  Speaker 16: But you know, two things happened in your time. When
• 58:30
  Speaker 16: the Trump were nagged on the deal and you reimpoll
• 58:33
  Speaker 16: the sanctions, the Iranians stopped completely complying with the deal.
• 58:35
  Speaker 16: They started to enrich uranium beyond the limits set out
• 58:39
  Speaker 16: in the deal itself, up to sixty percent enrichment. I
• 58:43
  Speaker 16: think ninety percent is a weapons grade. So they were
• 58:45
  Speaker 16: clearly trying to signal that they had leverage and if
• 58:48
  Speaker 16: you keep doing this to them, they could maybe develop
• 58:51
  Speaker 16: a weapon one day without actually doing that. But basically
• 58:53
  Speaker 16: they were not in just a Trump was no longer
• 58:56
  Speaker 16: abuying by the deal. They weren't also completely in buying
• 58:58
  Speaker 16: by the deal. They were at least scarting up against
• 59:01
  Speaker 16: the edges of bit a lot, so that put them
• 59:03
  Speaker 16: technically out of compliance. But then the other thing that happened,
• 59:06
  Speaker 16: which is a huge I think the impact on the
• 59:08
  Speaker 16: European view of the situation, is that when the Ukraine
• 59:11
  Speaker 16: War broke out, the Iranians start arming Russia in Ukraine.
• 59:15
  Speaker 16: They start arming them with these shy head drones. They
• 59:17
  Speaker 16: have built shot head drone factories in Russia, and that
• 59:21
  Speaker 16: became a very very big part of the war. In fact,
• 59:24
  Speaker 16: the shay had drones had a huge impact on the
• 59:26
  Speaker 16: war for a time, and they were Russian to prove
• 59:28
  Speaker 16: them as well too, and they kept developing them. And
• 59:30
  Speaker 16: you know that that arm that relationship really radicalized the Europeans,
• 59:33
  Speaker 16: I think on the subject, because you know, before that
• 59:36
  Speaker 16: their relationship with Iran was they were like the middleman
• 59:38
  Speaker 16: between Trump the Iranians and between Trump and the Iranians.
• 59:42
  Speaker 16: But now they've become completely hostile. They openly talk about
• 59:45
  Speaker 16: regime changing Iran. I do think that that's a decision
• 59:47
  Speaker 16: a by the Iranians to do that contribute to that
• 59:49
  Speaker 16: a lot. And now you know, this is the sort
• 59:52
  Speaker 16: of strange boundary because now all these European countries have
• 59:55
  Speaker 16: basically said that we are done with Iran, we expect
• 59:58
  Speaker 16: a new government to emerge there. But they haven't explained
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 16: how that's going to happen. They haven't really They've kind
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 16: of put Trump in the driver's seat, and Trump doesn't
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 16: seem to have the intention of doing that. So it's
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 16: kind of like leaves it in a very strange position.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 16: And you know, the speech by Mark Karney is very
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 16: interesting because first of all, he gave this very of
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 16: course you're very revelatory at the time and very popular
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 16: speech A dabbles about the new World order. But now
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 16: he's back to saying all the same things they've gained
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 16: quite pretty quickly. And I think there's a couple of
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 16: things here. First of all, there's a big Iranian DASPA
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 16: in Canada. It's very politically vocal and very very anti government,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 16: so they're very pro the Shah for the most part.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 16: But also, you know, I think that Canada doesn't really
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 16: have many options actually because if you are going to
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 16: be a non aligned, multipolar kind of you know, that's
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 16: the message if you're trying to send, then you don't
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 16: really have the power to do that.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 8: For the most part.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 16: You kind of left to signal back the same international
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 16: laws and rules that you were saying were irrelevant. And
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 16: I think that the Canadian position really does mimic the
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 16: European position in many ways because they both are sort
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 16: of dependent on whatever the US is doing and reduced
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 16: to kind of giving a commentary on that. But I
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 16: do think that if the US is go ahead with
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 16: destroying Iran entirely, that will not end well for Europe.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 16: Europe will definitely be impacted, even if America is not
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 16: as directly because of the geographical of proximity An. The
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 16: Iraq War, who was devastating for Europe asent mentioned earlier,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 16: the Iran war will be much much worse. But the
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 16: fact that they don't really have the autonomy, they didn't
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 16: really have the vision of how to act independently. It
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 16: means that they're just going to sit back and something
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 16: being watched this train hit them if it does.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 6: Have you read A gerb wrote a whole piece in
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 6: the Free Press about how this is actually specifically just
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 6: about China. This is all Trump can't say it for
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 6: whatever reason because he doesn't want to. I guess the
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 6: reason that have you give gives is that he doesn't
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 6: want to antagonize China. But this is actually, at the
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 6: end of the day, all about China. Mark Carney has
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 6: been in hot water for what Trump World sees as
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 6: overtures to China. And I'm curious as how you see
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 6: the bricks China dynamic playing out in the minds of
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 6: like a Mark Karney or Davos World as they consider
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 6: international law in regard to what's happened over the last week,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 6: because obviously that's something rigs country is China. They use
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 6: examples exactly like this to say, what do you what
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 6: do you mean international law? So could you give us
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 6: some perspective on how that could play out in the
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 6: weeks and months ahead.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 16: Well, I mean Chinese media and social media on a
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 16: regular basis, and there's not really a tremendous interest in
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 16: the subject.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 8: For the most part.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 16: The Chinese government does not have huge trade sides, and
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 16: they were on it's quite limited and lopsided the trade
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 16: that they do have when they were on. The one
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 16: thing they do trade is oil. They buy als Iran,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 16: but it's very it's like a kind of it's a
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 16: fundable resource first of all, but it's also kind of
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 16: a warped relationship. They don't they kind of abide by
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 16: the sanctions for the most part of v Iran. They
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 16: don't have a defense partnership, they don't have a defensive operation,
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 16: they don't sell I run advanced weapons, they don't seem
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 16: to have, they don't have a historic trust with them,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 16: and so forth.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 6: They buy a lot of oil, though right it's like
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 6: ninety percent of irun and crewed exports are the Chinese market.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 16: Yes, but it's only about ten to fifty ten to
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 16: twelve percent of China's imports, so it's much more important
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 16: to the Iranians and it's the Chinese.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 8: It could be replaced for the Chinese worst case.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 16: Or they would even buy it from a different Iranian government,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 16: or the Iran government collapse, it's still sold oil. Best
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 16: line with them, they don't have a strategic bad partnership.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 8: But then the country they have a strategic relationship with are.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 16: North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, and Belarus, and Iran is not
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 16: really on that list in any way. So I think
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 16: that trying to say it's about China is it's tempting
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 16: to make this seem like it's about America in a way,
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 16: because China is very important to America, but Iran is
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 16: not important to China. And then that's manifested the lack
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 16: of support and lack of, you know, any kind of
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 16: material aid that they provide to the Iranians or even
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 16: attempts to try to stop the war from happening.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 8: So I don't think that, you know, and I think
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 8: that one thing is doing and I think it's.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 16: Already done this before, but the idea of international law
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 16: it's kind to become ridiculous in a way, like international
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 16: law and the sense of war and crime and things
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 16: like this. The Chinese are not expecting that's going to
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 16: protect them that's why they're building tons of the missiles,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 16: and that's why they're expanding their navy and air force
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 16: at a tremendous rate, because they know that they're not
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 16: expecting this to take something that's going to they can
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 16: rely on. One thing that they have noticed about the
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 16: Iran War is the way that the US dealt with
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 16: the Iranians during negotiations. They use negotiations as a stalling
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 16: tactic to mass more forces, as tool of deception and
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 16: so forth, and they will assume that in a negotiation
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 16: with the US and the future potentially over Taiwan or
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 16: an issue like that, that they may do the same
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 16: to them, and they will treat any negotiation with that
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 16: suspicion and with that cynicism about what the actual goals are.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 16: But beyond that, they're not emotionally invested in the Middle East.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 8: They're not.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 16: They don't have bases there, they don't have any real
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 16: footprint per se. As long as the oil keeps coming
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 16: from the few select spots that it comes from, that's fine.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 16: And they really have much more deep economic ties with
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 16: the Gulf States, to be honest, that's much more important
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 16: to them than Iran is. So I don't really find
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 16: that this is target wards China because China is just
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 16: not that impacted by it. It's really hurting everybody else,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 16: especially the people in the Gulf States, who are directly
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 16: wording around.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: Just to connect a few dots from this segment, we
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 3: talked about Poland saying that it's going to now race
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: for a nuclear weapon. We talked about France saying that
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: it's going to kind of expand its nuclear capacity, and
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: that's all related to Russia and to their Europeans concern
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: about Russian aggression toward them. So it's interesting that the
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: way that you talked about the Iran and Russia relationship
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: developing more tightly as a result of Trump walking away
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: from the Iran nuclear deal and then Iran supplying drones
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: and other military technology to run and tightening that link.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: So in a world where Trump doesn't walk away from
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: the Iran nuclear deal, do you imagine that the US
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: and Europe would have had more leverage at the time
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: and presently to say to Iran, look, uh, this is
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: a war between Ukraine and Russia. You know, see your
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: way out of this. We don't want we don't want
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: you supplying these drones. Look your economy is booming. We've
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: released these sanctions. This this nuclear deal is where everybody's
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: abiding by it. Don't don't don't rock this apple cart?
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: Could you imagine could would? So I'm kind of trying
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: to figure out, like, was was that a decision that actually,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: you know, heightened tensions between Russia and Europe in a
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: way that wouldn't necessarily have happened if if Trump hadn't
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: just gone in and because Obama's name was on the
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 3: nuclear deal, because of the Israelis wanted to rip it up.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 5: They just ripped it up.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 8: Yeah, there's no doubt about it.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 16: And you know, this is a strategic cooperation that the
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 16: Iranians and the Russians as specifically the shy had rones
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 16: that was not even reciprocated in a strategic manner by Russia.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 16: They just paid for them. Could the Iranians the money
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 16: to their sanctions? So they give the goal transfers and
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 16: maybe cryptocurrency other ways that they paid them outside the
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 16: international financial system that was dealing with the Irani's got at.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 16: But the Iran Russians are not rushing to defend Iran
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 16: or even arming Iran with a Russian weaponry tremendous degree,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 16: you know, in a strategic way maybe they're selling them something,
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 16: but not in a way which is just out of alliance.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 16: So really it was just out of economic h first
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 16: to stick it to the Europeans. I guess that say that,
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 16: you know, we have leverage too, but also for economic reasons.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 16: That was the overriding reason really why they started selling
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 16: weapons to Russia. And I you know, this is actually
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 16: one of the most important things about this entire issue.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 16: The Iranian nuclear program has never been used as a
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 16: tool of ensuring Iranian national survival by developing a weapon, nor.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 8: Has it even been you really used as a tool for.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 16: Developing power in Iran per se like electricity if they
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 16: have few electricity s Shorges. In Iran, the number one
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 16: reason for the Irani nuclear program has been as leveraged
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 16: to negotiate their economic reintegration with the West. That's why
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 16: they didn't develop weapon, That's why the didn't actually integrate
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 16: into the national bled and so forth. They were trying
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 16: to use this as a tool that we were on
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 16: the outs, we need to get back in. How do
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 16: we generate leverage. We can do it this way, And
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 16: you know, I think it's a very poor decision. And
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 16: I think that if you're going to develop a nuclear
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 16: program and even enrich outside of normal bounds, you pretty
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 16: much are locked in.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 8: You better go all the way and build the bomb
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 8: or don't build the program at all.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 16: But they tried to go halfway in this way, which
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 16: was very typical of the governing styles. The former Supreme
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 16: Leader of the comedy you tried to be the situation
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 16: of lukewarm sort of nuclearization and lukewarm hostility with Europe
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 16: and so forth, and even in the US.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 8: So I think that that is the ultimate error that
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 8: the Rani has made if.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 16: You compare that to countries like North Korea or Pakistan
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 16: and so forth, who treated the nuclear weapon as a
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 16: tool of national survival and ran for it at any cost.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 16: There's a famous foot by former Pakistani prime miniership. He
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 16: said that we will build a nuclear weapon even we
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 16: can have to eat grass for you know, one hundred
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 16: years after this, and that's what they did. Pakistan, you know,
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 16: did suffer a lot for that. The you know fox
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 16: that exists today whereas maybe youuron won't. And I think
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 16: that this is a broader subtext. It's a sort of
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 16: weird negotiation that taking place with the Europeans and Americans
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 16: over many, many years, and which is now culminating this
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 16: disastrous outcome.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 8: For the Iranians.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 3: I kind of hate knowing stuff about the world because
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: it just makes it that much more miserable knowing that
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 3: it could be different. Blank Anyway, very bleak Moz. Thank
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: you so much for joining us. People can check out
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: your reporting over at drop site News. Appreciate you being here, essence.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 8: Well.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 6: As we're recording this, it's nine to twenty five am.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 6: The CNBC headline is SMP five hundred futures tick higher
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 6: as crude oil trades lower after Iran conflict surge. That's
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 6: again what it's showing right now. By the time you
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 6: see this, Marcus will be open. But Ryan, I want
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 6: to roll this clip of Donald Trump but responding to
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 6: questions yesterday in the Oval office about oil prices. It's
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 6: a midterm electioneeries focused on cost of living, as his
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 6: team continues to say, d one, this is Trump on
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 6: what could happen, what that might mean for him in
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 6: the near future with oil and gas prices.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 11: I'll dear what I have never had more compliments on
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 11: something I did people felt it something that had to
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 11: be done.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 10: So if we have a little high oil.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 11: Prices for a little while, but as soon as this ends,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 11: those prices are.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 10: Going to drop, I believe, lower than even before.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 6: And he rolled out his plan for the straight of
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 6: Her Moves on truth social Let's put the next element
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 6: up on the screen writing effective immediately. I've ordered the
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 6: US Development Finance Corporation to provide at a very reasonable price,
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 6: political risk insurance and guarantees for the financial security of
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 6: all maritime trade, especially energy traveling through the Golf. This
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 6: will be available to all shipping lines if necessary. The
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 6: US Navy will begin escorting tankers through the strait of
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 6: Her Moves as soon as possible. No matter what, the
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 6: US will ensure the free flow of energy to the world.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 6: The US's economic military might is the greatest on Earth.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 4: More actions to come. Thank you for your attention to
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 4: this matter.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 6: And D three, we can go ahead and put latest
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 6: oil barrel prices up on the screen. So this would
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 6: actually be as of yesterday, I think is when we
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 6: got this graphic in. So yeah, crude oil prices surge
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 6: above seventy seven dollars a barrel to their highest level
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 6: since January twenty first, twenty twenty five, one day after
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 6: President Trump's inauguration, and then Cobs letter says on X commentary,
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 6: the entire oil price decline under President Trump has now
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 6: been erased. So you can see why he's eager to
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 6: downplay any concerns or to undercut concerns by saying, well,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 6: this is this is great for other reasons. Oil prices
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 6: is something we might have to put up with. Ryan
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 6: reaction to Trump's comments yesterday.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's taking I just noticed it's taking down
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: a couple bucks, down about seventy three or seventy seventy
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: four dollars. It'll much depend on on you know, if
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 3: and when, if and when this ends. As you know
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: Trump's promise that he is going to escort oil tankers
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: through the Strait of Ormus and and also reinsure them,
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: it is quite an aggressive step. It reinsurance basically runs
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 3: the world like it's that is the actual cabal that
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 3: runs it. You know, if if we stop ensuring properties
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: in Florida, for instance, like forget it, like that's that's it.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: And so the way that this works is these massive
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: oil tankers have that have insurance and it costs a
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: particular amount to get through, you know, a particular part
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 3: of the world, and the reinsurres once Iran said the
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 3: straight up, our moves is closed, said forget it like
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 3: we're not we're not backing these up because for obvious reasons.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 3: And so Trump is saying, all right, two things will
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 3: We'll send in the navy and we and we will
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: use our own basically tax dollars through this Development Finance
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: Corporation to offer the insurance itself, and so then it's
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 3: up to the ships to risk it. Now, the Navy
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 3: has subsequently said, actually, we don't really have a whole
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: lot of capacity to do this escorting. So all of
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 3: a sudden they started getting calls, hey, i've gotten ship stuck.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: Help me out, Like, no, it's just we don't really
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: mean that. But if you here, here's the process to
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: get some insurance. So Iran has been attacking a couple
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: of tankers and hitting them and it doesn't take much
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 3: to completely to completely seize them up. Meanwhile, you put
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: up D four, they've said, and we'll see you know
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 3: how effective that this is, they said. They've said that
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: Chinese and Russian vessels can get through which would be
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 3: ironic if then the US says, well, no, no, they
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: can't worth closing them, and or do these oil tankers
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: that are stuck reach out to the Chinese and reflag
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: themselves as Chinese and China then gets half of it
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: or something and maybe like we'll you know, we'll we'll see.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 5: Meanwhile, it's.
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: I think so what it's March right, We're gonna be
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: talking about primaries next with the the David Serota and
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 3: Dave Weigel midterms are coming. I don't, you know, I
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 3: don't know if it's true that the public thinks that
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: this is the greatest thing anybody's ever done, and that
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 3: they're willing to pay.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 5: Higher gas and energy prices.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 4: Because independents definitely don't and won't.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and get like, it's not just that you're pushing
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 3: you might push to like four dollars a gallon.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 5: Or something like.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 8: That's not just it.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 3: It filters through the entire economy. Yeah, Trump actively, you know,
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 3: smashed very deliberately and proudly any attempt to move to
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 3: renewable energy, and so everything in the economy runs on
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: fossil fuels. As though if you push up that price,
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 3: everything and gets more expensive, and I can't imagine that
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 3: people are going to be like, oh, well, that's good
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 3: because at least Israel got to have its war with Iron.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 6: Well, that's why they were so freaked out about the messaging,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 6: as we covered earlier, which I think we're arguing is
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 6: reflective of a conflicted, muddled, in conclusive strategy itself sort
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 6: of sprung from that. Well, but that's why they're freaked
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 6: out about it, because now when people are looking back on, huh,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 6: why are these prices higher, Well, there are these clips
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 6: that are going to ring in their minds if they
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 6: follow the news very closely about Mark Arrubio saying what
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 6: we heard Israel is going to strike or Mike Conson
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 6: saying we heard Israel is going to strike. Democrats will
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 6: use that sympathy for Israel among voters has plummeted, and
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 6: that means independence, particularly if you need them to turn
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 6: out in a place like North Carolina. For Republicans, you
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 6: have a problem. So let's turn to developments from Cutter.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 6: This is the next element Cutter Energy to stop downstream production.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 6: Cutter Energy values its relationship with all of its stakeholders
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 6: and will continue to communicate the latest available information. Gas, Yeah, yep,
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 6: L and G. And then the next element, this is
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 6: the Reuter's headline, Cutter smelter shutdown exacerbates Iran wore aluminum fears.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 6: The impact of the US is really attacks on Iran
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 6: on the aluminum sector deepened on Tuesday after cutting smelter
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 6: Katalam began to shut down and shareholder Norsk Hydro issued
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 6: a force measurer to customers. Ryan, Everything's going according to plan.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 3: Right, So this is the way that things cascade through
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: the economy. And so the South Korean market, which has
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: been surging throughout the year, had an absolutely massive sell
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 3: out sell off hit one of those circuit breakers where
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 3: they're like, okay, just stop trading. This is an absolute catastrophe.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 3: You've had other Asian markets selling off as well.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 8: So far.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 3: The US market it's have you know, no, they're they're
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 3: they're volatile, but they're like they you know, they haven't
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 3: been completely rocked yet. We'll see what we'll see what
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 3: happens today. But you know this, this stuff then starts
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 3: to become self reinforcing. Yeah, if you if you are
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 3: if you are leveraged in you know, one in a
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 3: market that dives, and now you've got margin calls coming
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 3: in you have to meet that. Then you have to
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 3: sell off other assets in order to pay pay that,
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 3: and then that dives, and then you have to sell
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 3: off those eyes that. So that's why, and then you
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 3: have all of these ais out there trading in ways
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 3: where they're trying to like, you know, find little arbitrage
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: around the world. And so that you know that can
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 3: you know, produce some kind of runaway moves once you
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: once you break through, you know, thresholds that people expect
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: to be you know, to be stable.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 6: And bear in mind there is no regime change plan.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 6: Donald Trump just said that in the Oval Office yesterday.
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 6: He said, we don't know if it'll be better or worse.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 6: We don't actually know if it's Poulavy or someone else.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 6: And so the certainty for people who are triting and
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 6: trying to make financial decisions here is absent. Yeah, nobody
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 6: has any I mean, this is already in the broader
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 6: tariff climate, which is putting a lot of uncertain injecting
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 6: a lot of uncertainty into the markets right now. So
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 6: incredibly shaky global economy, that's I mean, it's always shaky,
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 6: but right now. The fragility is on another level.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 3: And I think, to me, this is the markets and
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 3: the economy and oil prices are everything. And I think
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 3: Iron understands that the only language that Trump really understands
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 3: is this is money, is affordability, which he's called a hoax,
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 3: and which is advisors.
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 5: I'm sure every time die inside when he.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 3: When he says that, and when he says things like, yeah,
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 3: people can handle a little bit of pay a little.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 4: More, because I've never gotten so many compliment.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 3: I've never had so many compliments, sir. Just absolutely incredible, sir.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 3: I weep with joy every time I pay more at
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 3: the pump, just so that I can sacrifice on behalf
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 3: of your genius and brilliance and bravery.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 6: Yeah, that'll that'll go well in North Carolina and Texas.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 17: M