Latest / Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar / 4/14/26: China Challenges Trump Blockade, Lindsey Graham Peace Sabotage, Israel Freaks Over IDF Soldier Viral Pic

Transcript

4/14/26: China Challenges Trump Blockade, Lindsey Graham Peace Sabotage, Israel Freaks Over IDF Soldier Viral Pic · Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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Speaker 3: dot com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Tuesday. Have an amazing
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Speaker 3: show for everybody today.
0:37
Speaker 1: What do we know?
0:38
Speaker 3: Oh, I have to do it whenever somebody else is here.
0:41
Speaker 3: So I think we have something good? Should we do
0:42
Speaker 3: a high five? So we had the bro show. This
0:45
Speaker 3: is Fascist Points. Welcomes Sager and Emily total takeover of
0:50
Speaker 3: the feed for the next two days. So we're going
0:52
Speaker 3: to do our best to convey why we need a
0:56
Speaker 3: benevolent dictator here in the US.
0:58
Speaker 1: Just joking, just joke. That is the name of the
1:00
Speaker 1: group chat that fast.
1:03
Speaker 3: Foot is the name of the group chat and I
1:05
Speaker 3: named it. So yes, all all my critics were correct
1:08
Speaker 3: the whole time. Okay, I have to do crystals. This
1:10
Speaker 3: is the hardest part.
1:11
Speaker 1: It actually, this is absolutely because people.
1:13
Speaker 4: Don't realize we do not have teleprompters.
1:15
Speaker 3: Right exactly, So I have to like go off the
1:17
Speaker 3: top of my head and usually I just sip a coffee.
1:19
Speaker 1: But all right, I'm gonna do my best. Blockade.
1:22
Speaker 3: We're gonna start with the blockade. That's what we're gonna
1:24
Speaker 3: do at the very beginning. JD.
1:25
Speaker 1: Van's got a very interesting interview. I said, what did
1:27
Speaker 1: he say?
1:27
Speaker 3: Iran started economic terrorism? Well, too, can play at that game.
1:31
Speaker 3: Yike's not usually supposed to say the quiet part out loud.
1:34
Speaker 3: We're gonna talk about Beebe saying again more quiet parts
1:38
Speaker 3: out loud, saying that the vice president and the administration
1:41
Speaker 3: reports to him on a daily basis, not talks to
1:44
Speaker 3: him daily, reports to him on a daily basis. We're
1:48
Speaker 3: also Emily, I'm gonna need you to break this one
1:50
Speaker 3: down for me. Trump posted a photo of himself as
1:53
Speaker 3: Jesus and is now saying he thought he was a doctor. Yeah,
1:58
Speaker 3: so yeah, So evangelicals are very upset. He did delete
2:01
Speaker 3: the image, very very rare. He also is in a
2:04
Speaker 3: beef with the Pope. That's another thing I need you
2:06
Speaker 3: to explain to me. Popo Leo is week on crime,
2:09
Speaker 3: a lot of crime apparently just like incredible Atticans. By
2:11
Speaker 3: the way, that's right, that one will live on for
2:14
Speaker 3: quite some time. Soraba MARII is going to join us
2:16
Speaker 3: to discuss this Hungary election where Orbon officially lost election
2:22
Speaker 3: for the first and what is sixteen years a center
2:24
Speaker 3: right figure has will now supersede him. But what's more interesting, honestly,
2:29
Speaker 3: is Orbon's alliance with the United States. Remember the Vice
2:32
Speaker 3: President jad literally flew all the way over there campaign
2:35
Speaker 3: for him. Orbon completely blown out despite being endorsed by
2:38
Speaker 3: Donald Trump, I think by bb Net and Yahoo, So
2:41
Speaker 3: big big shift there. It's not exactly like a bunch
2:43
Speaker 3: of lefties are taken over. But it's interesting, noneth the
2:45
Speaker 3: last sorob it's been following that very closely. And then
2:48
Speaker 3: Emily and I are going to discuss Sam Altman and
2:52
Speaker 3: a recent attack that happened on his home, perhaps what
2:55
Speaker 3: it says about our current society. The FBI made an
2:58
Speaker 3: arrest and rated a person's home who perpetuated the attack.
3:03
Speaker 3: Yesterday's we'll have some updates, and then finally we're going
3:05
Speaker 3: to do an interview with Kristen Breitweiser. She is a
3:08
Speaker 3: nine to eleven widow. She lost her husband on nine
3:11
Speaker 3: to eleven, and she has some serious accusations against Secretary
3:16
Speaker 3: Howard Lutnick. She alleges that he has not been nearly
3:19
Speaker 3: as helpful to helping nine to eleven widows gain access
3:22
Speaker 3: to the funds that they are of course you know
3:25
Speaker 3: they rightfully have, and as well has not aligned a
3:28
Speaker 3: meeting with Donald Trump, which she claims that not on
3:32
Speaker 3: behalf of them, the nine to eleven widows, was promised
3:34
Speaker 3: to them. We did get a response from Secretary a Lotnick,
3:36
Speaker 3: and we will tell you all about what he said
3:38
Speaker 3: during that interview. But before we get to that, please
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Speaker 3: hit subscribe to our YouTube channel, and if you are
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Speaker 3: listening to this on a podcast, please share an episode
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Speaker 3: with the friend and of course please hit Breakingpoints dot
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Speaker 3: com and become a premium subscriber. Emily and I are
3:50
Speaker 3: going to do the ame.
3:52
Speaker 4: But with all of that, you did so well.
3:56
Speaker 3: No, this is way harder, This is so hard. I
3:59
Speaker 3: haven't even had a s of that coffee, Jesse yet.
4:01
Speaker 3: Let's go ahead and start with Donald Trump and the
4:04
Speaker 3: latest on the blockade. Here he was speaking in front
4:07
Speaker 3: of the Oval office with a door dash driver from McDonald's.
4:11
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll get to this. Well, it's just one point
4:12
Speaker 1: go ahead.
4:13
Speaker 4: So this was his attempt. It's tax week, so to
4:16
Speaker 4: set the stage a little bit before we roll this side,
4:19
Speaker 4: he's trying to highlight the one big, beautiful bill's tax
4:23
Speaker 4: benefits to average Americans. Hence the door dash driver you're
4:26
Speaker 4: going to see in this video.
4:27
Speaker 1: Is no Tax on Tips initiative.
4:29
Speaker 4: Yes, which is a perfect illustration of politically where he
4:32
Speaker 4: is right now. He's trying to talk about no tax
4:34
Speaker 4: on tips and instead this is what happens.
4:36
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen.
4:37
Speaker 5: Round of talks.
4:38
Speaker 2: Plan that you brand and if so, you send Vice
4:41
Speaker 2: President Gene advanced Guen.
4:43
Speaker 5: Well, he's done a good job.
4:45
Speaker 6: At Steve and Jared, they've all done a very good job.
4:48
Speaker 6: And I can tell you that we've been called by
4:51
Speaker 6: the other side.
4:52
Speaker 5: They'd like to make it deal very badly, very badly.
4:56
Speaker 5: Point over. You said it was over nuclear it was
4:59
Speaker 5: a new clear very similar. Yeah, very good.
5:01
Speaker 6: I guess you're listening. It's over the fact that they
5:04
Speaker 6: will never have a nuclear.
5:05
Speaker 5: Weaponade is concerned. What's the endgame? Is it the force
5:10
Speaker 5: herean back to the negotiating people.
5:12
Speaker 6: Is it to open up the straight so the gas
5:14
Speaker 6: price has ultimately come down?
5:15
Speaker 5: Maybe everything? I mean both of those things, certainly and more.
5:20
Speaker 6: We can't let a country blackmail or extort the world,
5:26
Speaker 6: because that's what they're doing.
5:27
Speaker 5: They're really black bailing the world. We're not going to
5:29
Speaker 5: let that happen.
5:30
Speaker 6: And you know the amazing thing is, we don't can
5:34
Speaker 6: you believe this? We don't use this right, We don't
5:36
Speaker 6: need this share. We have our own oil and gas
5:38
Speaker 6: much more.
5:38
Speaker 5: Than we need. We have more oil and gas than
5:41
Speaker 5: Saudi Arabia. Think of this. We produce more Saudi Arabia
5:45
Speaker 5: and add Russia to it.
5:47
Speaker 3: We don't need the straight Why are we blockading it?
5:49
Speaker 3: That's a that's a very good Why are we blockading
5:51
Speaker 3: b blockade? Look, I mean the whole thing is crazy, Emily.
5:55
Speaker 3: He is totally in a vice of his own making.
5:58
Speaker 3: And we can even report everyone this morning that the
6:00
Speaker 3: blockade's not even working.
6:02
Speaker 4: So no way, Yeah, that's that can't be right. No,
6:06
Speaker 4: that's exactly right. It's exactly right. I thought they were
6:09
Speaker 4: eager to make a deal. They've been calling President Trump,
6:11
Speaker 4: which is what he just said in that clip, of course.
6:13
Speaker 4: But no, no surprise there at all. As Trump would say,
6:17
Speaker 4: you don't have the cards.
6:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's go ahead and put a two up there
6:21
Speaker 3: on the screen as well. We'll take a listen to
6:23
Speaker 3: this where Trump claims that other countries want to help
6:25
Speaker 3: in the blockade.
6:26
Speaker 1: Let's take a.
6:27
Speaker 4: Listen your anticipations for President and other countries.
6:30
Speaker 5: Well, this is in this effort blocking.
6:32
Speaker 6: You're on in those Yeah, other countries are going to
6:36
Speaker 6: as we don't need other countries franctly, but they've offered
6:40
Speaker 6: the services.
6:41
Speaker 5: We'll let it. We'll let it be known probably tomorrow
6:44
Speaker 5: as started. Yeah, started at ten o'clock.
6:47
Speaker 3: So we've been trying to track that down and so
6:49
Speaker 3: far we haven't been able to find a single one. Well,
6:51
Speaker 3: let's put a three up there on the screen. Here
6:53
Speaker 3: we have the UK Keres Starmer, probably the most important
6:56
Speaker 3: naval ally of the United States. Starmer says the UK
6:59
Speaker 3: will not join Trump's blockade of Iran's ports. We also
7:02
Speaker 3: know from the French that they will not join the blockade.
7:05
Speaker 3: Germany has not yet said. Nobody in NATO has said
7:08
Speaker 3: that they're going to be joining the blockade. The Japanese,
7:11
Speaker 3: as far as I can tell so far, having said,
7:13
Speaker 3: and South Koreans, which we covered yesterday, how furious they
7:17
Speaker 3: are with the Nation of Israel. In fact, they have
7:20
Speaker 3: an opposite tactic. Emily, they have an special envoy in
7:24
Speaker 3: Tehran right now on the ground who's trying to negotiate
7:27
Speaker 3: safe passage for Korean vessels. So there's none of that
7:31
Speaker 3: that is happening right now. And of course the Chinese
7:33
Speaker 3: also issuing threats against Trump on the blockade.
7:36
Speaker 4: And this, by the way, is an important part of
7:37
Speaker 4: the case for the war that we continue to hear
7:40
Speaker 4: for supporters of the war, which is that it has
7:43
Speaker 4: once again isolated Iran, further isolated Iran, and all of
7:47
Speaker 4: America's allies are rallying around the United States. And that
7:51
Speaker 4: is an actual case that I continue to hear. I
7:53
Speaker 4: don't know about you, but I continue to hear that
7:54
Speaker 4: case too well. I mean, particularly with the Gulf allies.
7:57
Speaker 4: But yeah, like the free world more broadly, people talk
8:00
Speaker 4: about now China, we should bring China into this age four.
8:03
Speaker 1: Let's put it up on the screen, A four please.
8:05
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is a Bloomberg tear street here. The headline
8:09
Speaker 4: is China urges restraint as Trump threatens to blockade or
8:14
Speaker 4: moves Sagar. The Chinese reaction to all of this not surprising,
8:20
Speaker 4: but also again undermining the case that this was some
8:24
Speaker 4: type of forty chess move that was going to isolate China.
8:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, what's interesting about the China thing here is they
8:32
Speaker 3: urged restraint. They also came out and they warned Trump.
8:35
Speaker 3: They said, you're not going to threaten our energy alliance
8:38
Speaker 3: with Iran. It has nothing to do with you. Remember,
8:40
Speaker 3: they've been buying a lot of Ranian oil over the years.
8:42
Speaker 3: It's not a huge percent to them. But now at
8:44
Speaker 3: this point they kind of want to prop up Iran
8:46
Speaker 3: and they want to make sure that they're getting money,
8:47
Speaker 3: especially as an adversary here. We do know that they
8:50
Speaker 3: were some of the people who tried to get Iran
8:52
Speaker 3: to the table in the peace deal, which very interesting.
8:54
Speaker 3: They're one of the people who actually push them over
8:56
Speaker 3: the edge now though by antagonizing China and directly threatening
9:00
Speaker 3: to inspect and to board their vessels, which would be
9:03
Speaker 3: heading to Iranian ports. You're in a whole other universe, right,
9:06
Speaker 3: Like I mean, imagine, you know, in the United States,
9:08
Speaker 3: but Chinese vessel. Well, if an American vessel was transitting
9:12
Speaker 3: through the Taiwan Strait and it was subject to boarding,
9:14
Speaker 3: and I mean, we're going to war like that, and
9:17
Speaker 3: a significant amount of our trade moves through either Taiwan
9:20
Speaker 3: or the Straits of Malacca, either of those could be
9:23
Speaker 3: very very easily boarded and or inspected by the Chinese
9:26
Speaker 3: according to their whole nine dash line claims, which you know,
9:28
Speaker 3: I mean, who exactly are we to say whenever we're
9:30
Speaker 3: going to blockade Iran? And by the way, blockade is,
9:33
Speaker 3: of course an act of war which needs to be
9:35
Speaker 3: authorized by Congress. Congress is actually back in session. Are
9:38
Speaker 3: they going to lift the finger? Probably not. The other thing,
9:42
Speaker 3: you know, just to allude to the blockade not even
9:44
Speaker 3: working is let's put a nine up there on the screen.
9:47
Speaker 3: This was from tanker trackers yesterday. They said we spotted
9:52
Speaker 3: a tanker on satellite imagery which actually departed carg Island
9:56
Speaker 3: and was spoofing like it's signal to show that it
9:59
Speaker 3: had departed Saudi Arabia. We also got multiple reports this morning.
10:03
Speaker 3: Let's put a nine B please up there on the screen.
10:07
Speaker 3: A US sanctioned tanker which was linked to China is
10:10
Speaker 3: actually making its way through the streets of Hormuz testing
10:13
Speaker 3: Trump's naval blockade. And we also know that there were
10:17
Speaker 3: three separate ships as of yesterday which were able to
10:20
Speaker 3: get through the streets of Hormans. Now it is unclear
10:23
Speaker 3: exactly what type of ships those are. We do know
10:26
Speaker 3: that some of them are sanctions linked. We don't know
10:29
Speaker 3: whether they're going from Iran or not. It's all very
10:31
Speaker 3: complicated because of this whole spoofing thing where they can
10:34
Speaker 3: claim that they're coming, let's say, from the UAE. Apparently
10:37
Speaker 3: this is a long tested thing now for Iranian sanctioned
10:41
Speaker 3: oil tankers, but it kind of exploded after the Russian
10:44
Speaker 3: oil sanctions where all of these like they're called like
10:47
Speaker 3: gray tankers, where they're technically like kind of uninsured or
10:51
Speaker 3: you know, outside of the normal legal system that as
10:54
Speaker 3: or sanctioned system from the United States.
10:56
Speaker 1: But clearly there's a dark network of tankers.
10:59
Speaker 3: And of oil which is moving across the ocean testing
11:03
Speaker 3: the blockade. So far, at least a few of those
11:05
Speaker 3: ships have gone through. All of this almost doesn't really
11:08
Speaker 3: matter because a few ships here or there basically means
11:11
Speaker 3: nothing to the global markets because you need hundreds of
11:15
Speaker 3: ships which are currently trapped. Not to mention all of
11:17
Speaker 3: the back the oil stored in the Persian Gulf and
11:21
Speaker 3: all of the production capacity. OPEK announced yesterday twenty seven
11:26
Speaker 3: percent cut in production in a single month of March.
11:30
Speaker 1: That is extra I mean millions of barrels.
11:33
Speaker 3: And as Rory, who are a frequent guest here on
11:36
Speaker 3: Oil has said, is that dialing that up just takes
11:39
Speaker 3: a long So you have a shortage in the amount
11:41
Speaker 3: that's being produced, you have a backlog and the stuff
11:44
Speaker 3: that's getting out of the strait, and now you have
11:47
Speaker 3: China and others testing the blockade.
11:49
Speaker 1: So I mean this is a very dangerous situation.
11:51
Speaker 3: Ships can fire upon each other, maybe the Iranians will
11:53
Speaker 3: threaten to close you know the Bab al Mandab Straight
11:57
Speaker 3: and or the Red Sea like this this all just
11:59
Speaker 3: demons straight serious danger I think for the US, Like
12:02
Speaker 3: if you're gonna throw a threaten a blockade and then
12:04
Speaker 3: there's no actual blockade, yeah, what are people going to think?
12:06
Speaker 1: Right?
12:07
Speaker 3: I mean, then it's actually humiliating, and it's very very
12:10
Speaker 3: much I think, fitting with the way that this whole
12:12
Speaker 3: war has gone.
12:13
Speaker 4: No, that's exactly right. When Donald Trump is out talking
12:15
Speaker 4: about the blockade, how successful it is, how wonderful it is,
12:18
Speaker 4: and then it's juxtaposed on the split screen with this
12:20
Speaker 4: news about Chinese vessels going right through.
12:24
Speaker 3: And I technic, so this was careful because they're not
12:26
Speaker 3: Chinese vessel their own. It's complicated, right, I just want
12:29
Speaker 3: to I don't want to know. You're a false impression.
12:31
Speaker 4: You're totally right. Yeah, The point that I was going
12:33
Speaker 4: to make is that you have all of these other
12:35
Speaker 4: countries involved because of ships coming in and it's not
12:39
Speaker 4: just a conflict between the United States and Iran. When
12:41
Speaker 4: you have vessels flying under other countries flags or what
12:44
Speaker 4: have you, trafficking in and out of the Strait. Again,
12:47
Speaker 4: even though it's there's a blockade that's very very successful.
12:50
Speaker 4: Of course, lest we forget, But all that is to
12:52
Speaker 4: say that is early World War One days. It has
12:59
Speaker 4: those it has that feel all over it because China
13:03
Speaker 4: obviously also now this is our deep state leaking to
13:06
Speaker 4: like Natasha bertrand again allegedly already starting to help and
13:10
Speaker 4: I said, allegedly intentionally help aaran rebuild its military supplies.
13:16
Speaker 4: So that can go in a really, really, really scary direction,
13:20
Speaker 4: especially when you have the American president staking some political
13:25
Speaker 4: claim on a successful blockade and then the potential for
13:27
Speaker 4: him being humiliated absolutely as soon as an American soldier
13:30
Speaker 4: gets hurt, if it happens, the escalation trap explodes yet again.
13:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we have I think we have fifteen different
13:38
Speaker 3: warships in the streets of Hormuz. Let's go and put
13:43
Speaker 3: a seven up there on the screen, just again to
13:45
Speaker 3: show you all how the blockade is going. Trump said,
13:48
Speaker 3: thirty four ships went through the streets of Hormuz yesterday,
13:51
Speaker 3: by far, the highest number since this foolish closure began.
13:55
Speaker 3: Maybe he's right, he has access to information that we
13:58
Speaker 3: don't have. But fortunately for us, there's actually a lot
14:01
Speaker 3: of open source data whenever it comes to these ships.
14:03
Speaker 3: Let's put a eight up there on the screen. This
14:06
Speaker 3: was from macro Edge, an economic intelligence firm. They say
14:11
Speaker 3: actual number of straits yesterday ships in the strait yesterday
14:14
Speaker 3: was four, contradicting Trump's claim of thirty four. One oil
14:17
Speaker 3: tanker apparently was allowed to pass through, and as we've
14:20
Speaker 3: just showed you all the three at least that we
14:23
Speaker 3: know of so far that we're able to come through.
14:26
Speaker 1: All have been able to do so.
14:28
Speaker 3: Another very very troubling bit of news actually is a eleven.
14:33
Speaker 3: Let's put that up there on the screen. This shows
14:36
Speaker 3: the danger to the US military and this is from
14:39
Speaker 3: US Naval Institute. So they say the carrier USS George HW.
14:46
Speaker 3: Bush is currently operating off southern Africa as the Iranian
14:51
Speaker 3: blockade begins. Now, you know, they kind of buried the
14:54
Speaker 3: headline because what they're saying is that the USS George W.
14:58
Speaker 3: Bush is off the co of Namibia because it's going
15:02
Speaker 3: to have to sail around the entire African content A
15:06
Speaker 3: continent and set to join the growing naval force in
15:10
Speaker 3: the Arabian Sea amid the blockade of the Straits of Hormuz. Now,
15:15
Speaker 3: it deployed at the end of March, and it did
15:17
Speaker 3: not sail via a typical transit for East Coast based
15:22
Speaker 3: carriers to the Middle East. And the reason why is
15:25
Speaker 3: that this allows the carrier to avoid transiting the Red
15:29
Speaker 3: Sea and the Bab al Mandeb Strait, which were both
15:32
Speaker 3: hubs of activity for the Hoothies in their drone and
15:35
Speaker 3: missile attacks on commercial shipping in twenty twenty four and
15:38
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five. So I think what this confirms more
15:41
Speaker 3: than anything is us fear of the Hoothies and of
15:44
Speaker 3: the Red Sea that has not previously yet been closed
15:47
Speaker 3: in the entire Iran war. But it remains like the
15:50
Speaker 3: ultimate trump card if they can close both the Straits
15:52
Speaker 3: of Hormuz and the Red Sea.
15:53
Speaker 1: But look, a.
15:55
Speaker 3: Carrier costs I don't know, one hundred million a month
15:58
Speaker 3: to deploy, so this is an extra transit time I
16:01
Speaker 3: forget exactly, but it's a decent amount, and of course
16:04
Speaker 3: a ton of fuel, which is all very expensive right now,
16:07
Speaker 3: not to mention all the guys there, everybody's getting paid.
16:09
Speaker 3: So you can just think about the multi million dollar
16:12
Speaker 3: decision that they've just made here to sail around all
16:15
Speaker 3: of Africa just to avoid the Red Sea transit because
16:18
Speaker 3: they're afraid of getting shot at and they don't want
16:21
Speaker 3: to instigate some sort of conflict. If we had complete,
16:24
Speaker 3: total and free confidence that would be able to do,
16:26
Speaker 3: then that's what would have happened. But this I think
16:29
Speaker 3: really shows the danger also of this current blockade. And
16:33
Speaker 3: there's also a story out this morning from Saudi Arabia.
16:38
Speaker 3: From the Wall Street Journal about Saudi Arabia, they are
16:41
Speaker 3: very afraid of the blockade.
16:42
Speaker 1: They're urging Trump to reverse it.
16:44
Speaker 3: Specifically because they said, Hey, if you close the straits
16:48
Speaker 3: of Horn Moves, then they're going to close the Red Sea,
16:51
Speaker 3: and that's where seventy five percent of our oil is
16:54
Speaker 3: currently going through.
16:55
Speaker 1: And if that's closed, we're dead. It's over.
16:57
Speaker 3: Then there's not a single drop of oil even coming
17:00
Speaker 3: out of the region and of Opek's largest producer. So again,
17:03
Speaker 3: it's very embarrassing, like a US carrier having to divert
17:07
Speaker 3: itself because of a stateless group with a couple of
17:11
Speaker 3: like cobb together ballistic missiles. I mean, that's humiliating. We're
17:15
Speaker 3: talking about what multi I don't even know how much
17:18
Speaker 3: is aircraft. Carrier costs over one hundred million dollars. It's
17:21
Speaker 3: supposed to be the crown jewel of the US Navy.
17:23
Speaker 3: It should be able to sail wherever it wants. So
17:25
Speaker 3: that shows you again the asymmetry I think of the conflict.
17:28
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I was just because, I mean, the President
17:29
Speaker 4: also says we've won this war, and part of the
17:32
Speaker 4: objectives of the war were to end support for the proxies,
17:36
Speaker 4: the terrorist proxies, and then you have the aircraft carrier
17:38
Speaker 4: going around the entire African continent at whatever one hundreds
17:41
Speaker 4: of millions of dollars cost it takes, and that just
17:45
Speaker 4: again undermines his entire claim that the war has been
17:48
Speaker 4: one and is a major, wonderful success. You literally having
17:53
Speaker 4: the aircraft carrier go around Africa to avoid the Huthies.
17:56
Speaker 4: And so the asymmetry is obvious. But at what point
18:00
Speaker 4: does it become necessary for the president to try and
18:04
Speaker 4: completely quash the asymmetry and just say this is asymmetrical,
18:08
Speaker 4: so therefore we're going to like escalate. But that's the
18:11
Speaker 4: day on what the public is comfortable with.
18:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the danger because you know, with the hoo Thies,
18:15
Speaker 3: we tried in twenty twenty four and in twenty twenty five,
18:18
Speaker 3: and as I understand it, it was genuinely no.
18:21
Speaker 1: Holds barred on the hoo Thies.
18:22
Speaker 3: We did everything that we possibly could to try to
18:25
Speaker 3: take them out, from missiles to bombing, and remember the
18:28
Speaker 3: hoo Thies, at the end of the day, they retained
18:30
Speaker 3: their capability. We basically just packed up our toys and left,
18:32
Speaker 3: and that was humiliating to the United States military, and
18:35
Speaker 3: it was a serious test of the US Navy as well,
18:38
Speaker 3: and it demonstrated the same problem that we found in
18:40
Speaker 3: Iran ground. Our air alone is not going to accomplish it.
18:43
Speaker 3: At the end of the day, A determined adversary will
18:46
Speaker 3: take a lot of damage. But we'll figure things out.
18:49
Speaker 3: Remember the Hoothies even clipped in F thirty five during
18:52
Speaker 3: that campaign in twenty twenty five, which happened again in
18:55
Speaker 3: the Iran War.
18:55
Speaker 1: You can go and check it if you don't believe me.
18:57
Speaker 3: The interesting thing about all of this, I think together again,
19:01
Speaker 3: just shows you the problem of trying to do this
19:04
Speaker 3: ad hoc blockade with the immense consequence of the global
19:08
Speaker 3: oil market. So every day that the Strait remains closed,
19:11
Speaker 3: that means higher oil or sustained oil shortages, shortages, and
19:16
Speaker 3: helium fertilizer. Already, the farmers are freaking out about the fertilizer.
19:21
Speaker 3: Trump said something I forget exactly. It's something like, you know,
19:23
Speaker 3: I'm watching fertilizer prices very closely. They better not raise
19:28
Speaker 3: their price.
19:28
Speaker 1: And it's like at a.
19:29
Speaker 3: Certain point, like you have no control over stuff like this,
19:32
Speaker 3: like once you've unleashed completely on Pandora's box. So things
19:36
Speaker 3: not going so well right now. And you know, for
19:39
Speaker 3: the escalation that you keep warning about, it's not like
19:42
Speaker 3: there isn't a sustained drumbeat here in Washington pushing this along.
19:46
Speaker 3: Here's Mark Levin immediately over the weekend saying that we
19:50
Speaker 3: should use nuclear weapons to end this conflict once and
19:54
Speaker 3: for all.
19:55
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen.
19:56
Speaker 7: I have in front of me, though you know, the
19:58
Speaker 7: Potsdam Declaration in nineteen forty five. I wasn't even going
20:02
Speaker 7: to mention this, but I have it. And then we
20:04
Speaker 7: have the instrumental surrender by the Japanese September two, nineteen
20:08
Speaker 7: forty five. And in order to implement the Potsdam Declaration
20:12
Speaker 7: and get them to surrender to the terms that the
20:14
Speaker 7: Allies wanted, we drop to atomic bonds. No, I'm not
20:19
Speaker 7: encouraging it. I'm asking you about the law. Is that
20:22
Speaker 7: legal today under the war law of the war of
20:25
Speaker 7: war or not.
20:27
Speaker 8: Yeah, So the calculation is a bit different when it
20:31
Speaker 8: comes to weapons of mass destruction, because that's really a
20:35
Speaker 8: Those are munitions that have a strategic level effect, and
20:41
Speaker 8: so for us, it would be the President of the
20:43
Speaker 8: United States who decides whether to launch a nuclear weapons
20:48
Speaker 8: and which was also the case back in World War Two.
20:51
Speaker 8: The considerations are probably a bit different now, but it's
20:54
Speaker 8: still this law farm conflict still applies. It's just the
20:59
Speaker 8: decision making process for weapons of mass destruction is elevated
21:03
Speaker 8: because of the strategic nature of the impact of those weapons.
21:09
Speaker 7: So I take that as it possible. Yes, I'm not
21:11
Speaker 7: encouraging it. You know, the left goes crazy and they
21:13
Speaker 7: try to put words in our mouths. I'm just trying
21:16
Speaker 7: to get the law now now down here. I think
21:19
Speaker 7: it would be very helpful to go back and read
21:22
Speaker 7: the terms of surrender for the Japanese, for our envoys
21:25
Speaker 7: to read it, because the Japanese were dug in even
21:28
Speaker 7: after the dropping into atomic bombs, and it took a
21:32
Speaker 7: lot of pressure even after that they get them to surrender.
21:36
Speaker 3: So, as you can see there, Mark Levin continues to
21:39
Speaker 3: pound the drum a lot of ahistorical stuff whatever it
21:43
Speaker 3: comes to his entire reading of Potsdam and all that.
21:46
Speaker 1: But I'll save that for another life, save it now.
21:49
Speaker 3: So we have too much stuff to do to get through.
21:53
Speaker 3: People don't want to hear it.
21:54
Speaker 4: Oh, I thought we were going to get.
21:55
Speaker 3: It maybe one day, maybe attempting Friday. Yeah, I know
21:59
Speaker 3: you're pulling on, but we would have to go much
22:01
Speaker 3: much deeper. You also flagged this emily from Niki Haley
22:05
Speaker 3: if you want to set it up.
22:06
Speaker 1: Yeah.
22:06
Speaker 4: So Nicki Haley was on Sunday shows, This is CNN
22:09
Speaker 4: talking about She gets asked directly about boots on the
22:13
Speaker 4: ground and you can probably predict her answer, but still
22:16
Speaker 4: worth noting. This is a six. So do you believe
22:19
Speaker 4: that the US military special forces and those who support
22:22
Speaker 4: special forces just need to go in and extract the
22:26
Speaker 4: enriched uranium?
22:28
Speaker 9: I think that's probably what it's going to come down to.
22:30
Speaker 9: I mean, this is a special force mission. It would
22:33
Speaker 9: take about a week to ten days to get done.
22:36
Speaker 9: They know how to do it. It's dangerous. It's not
22:38
Speaker 9: something that we can, you know, just sit and think
22:42
Speaker 9: it's casual.
22:43
Speaker 4: I think they have to do it.
22:44
Speaker 9: But once they do that, they're taking away literally one
22:48
Speaker 9: arm of the uranium regime to where they no longer
22:50
Speaker 9: can threaten any of our allies for boots on the
22:54
Speaker 9: ground anymore. They I think they've already known. It's a
22:57
Speaker 9: small special operations force that they would have to do
23:00
Speaker 9: to be able to expect that uranium. Not just any
23:03
Speaker 9: military man or woman could do this. This is a
23:06
Speaker 9: special forces for sure.
23:08
Speaker 1: Break this down. What do we listen to?
23:10
Speaker 4: So Dana Bash says boots on the ground, and Nikki
23:12
Speaker 4: Haley doesn't want to say yes, She doesn't want to
23:14
Speaker 4: give the yes answer to that. You'll notice she also said, well,
23:16
Speaker 4: it's not something that's just casual, you know, but it
23:19
Speaker 4: is special Forces. They're trained to do this. So I
23:21
Speaker 4: think that's probably soccer and I have both heard this
23:23
Speaker 4: from different people. Is Delta Force going and digging up
23:27
Speaker 4: the enriched uranium? Nikki Haley is saying, that's quote probably
23:31
Speaker 4: what it's going to come down to. It would take
23:32
Speaker 4: a week to ten days, no big deal. It's not casual,
23:36
Speaker 4: but it's no big deal. But she is in a
23:39
Speaker 4: position where obviously the Israelis have their zero enrichment line
23:44
Speaker 4: that they're pushing over and over again. That is likely
23:47
Speaker 4: not making JD. Vance's job any easier or the peace
23:50
Speaker 4: negotiations any easier at all. But this has really become
23:53
Speaker 4: the conventional wisdom in neo conservative or maybe even just
23:59
Speaker 4: word intervention circles is that you're at some point going
24:03
Speaker 4: to see actual boots on the ground, not just CIA
24:06
Speaker 4: or whatever else, but in actual boots on the ground
24:08
Speaker 4: operation to retrieve the units uranium. And when Nikki Haley
24:11
Speaker 4: says she thinks that's quote probably what it's going to
24:14
Speaker 4: come down to, I think it's that's correct. I think
24:17
Speaker 4: that's that's probably true. Sarry that Trump can only resist
24:20
Speaker 4: the temptation to do that for so long as the
24:23
Speaker 4: war continues to go this way.
24:25
Speaker 1: And you know, I think it is important. Also.
24:27
Speaker 3: Last thing that we'll put in here, honestly kind of
24:30
Speaker 3: a stunning admission from the US Vice President and in
24:33
Speaker 3: an interview on Fox News, try vice President saying Iran
24:37
Speaker 3: tried economic terrorism.
24:38
Speaker 1: So that's what we're going to do. Let's take a listen.
24:40
Speaker 10: The only thing the Iranians have been able to do
24:42
Speaker 10: they have it, of course, beaten US militarily, They've had
24:45
Speaker 10: their military been decimated. They haven't been able to prosecute
24:49
Speaker 10: the case when it comes to weapons of war. What
24:52
Speaker 10: they have done is engage in this act of economic
24:55
Speaker 10: terrorism against the entire world. They've basically threatened any ship
24:58
Speaker 10: that's moving through the straits of horror. Mood Well as
25:00
Speaker 10: a president of the United States showed, two can play
25:02
Speaker 10: at that game. And if the Iranians are going to
25:04
Speaker 10: try to engage in economic terrorism, we're going to abide
25:07
Speaker 10: by a simple principle that no Iranian ships are getting
25:10
Speaker 10: out either. We know that's a big deal to them.
25:13
Speaker 10: We know that applies additional economic leverage. And again, Brett,
25:16
Speaker 10: the President wants the Iranian people to thrive.
25:19
Speaker 1: So two can play at that game.
25:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, look, you know you're not usually supposed
25:25
Speaker 3: to describe these things in the truth, but I guess
25:28
Speaker 3: that's what we're talking about here. Two can play at
25:31
Speaker 3: that game. That probably strikes very clear to Donald Trump's heart.
25:34
Speaker 3: But it definitely I think undermines the entire purpose of it.
25:38
Speaker 3: And it just shows the preposterous nature of it. Is
25:40
Speaker 3: they close the Straits of Horror Moves and are interrupting
25:43
Speaker 3: international waterway. That's why we're going to blockade the Straits
25:46
Speaker 3: of Horror Moves and disrupt an international waterway. Also, we
25:49
Speaker 3: can do restore the February twenty seven status quo, a
25:53
Speaker 3: free passage through the international Waterway.
25:55
Speaker 1: What are we doing here? The whole thing is crazy.
25:57
Speaker 4: It reminds me a lot of last week when Trump
26:00
Speaker 4: posted his Easter close the fucking straight or open the
26:03
Speaker 4: fucking shirt, you crazy bastards, and then threatened to wipe
26:06
Speaker 4: out an entire civilization, never to return again. Whatever he said,
26:09
Speaker 4: just trying to paraphrase the insanity there. You heard so
26:12
Speaker 4: many of his defenders say, oh, you mean just like
26:16
Speaker 4: Iran chance, death to America. It's like, are you saying
26:19
Speaker 4: that justifies the President of the United States, who the
26:22
Speaker 4: entire point of your argument is should be held to
26:25
Speaker 4: a higher standard because we are Again, their argument is
26:27
Speaker 4: predicated on the idea that we are the good guys.
26:30
Speaker 4: Therefore we aren't the ones that are threatening people with
26:33
Speaker 4: an entire civilizational genocide. And then here you have them
26:37
Speaker 4: being like, no, he's just it's just death to America.
26:40
Speaker 4: It's just JD. Vance saying, well, if they're going to
26:42
Speaker 4: do economic terrorism, and we're going to do economic terrorism too.
26:44
Speaker 4: And it's an example of threatening to stoop to the
26:47
Speaker 4: level that their argument is predicated on them being better
26:50
Speaker 4: than like that is the argument that we are the
26:53
Speaker 4: good guys here because we don't do that, we don't
26:55
Speaker 4: do the economic terrors, and we don't say, oh, you
26:57
Speaker 4: do it too. Can play at that game. That was
26:59
Speaker 4: the entire purpose of the Western agreements after World War Two.
27:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, so there you go.
27:03
Speaker 3: It is definitely a little bit of a shocking development,
27:07
Speaker 3: but demonstrates kind of the tenuous and dangerous nature that
27:11
Speaker 3: this entire thing has evolved into. Where will things go?
27:15
Speaker 3: We have no earthly idea. They say that they want
27:18
Speaker 3: to talk, they're not talking. Maybe they are talking. We
27:22
Speaker 3: have the blockade, but it's not really a blockade. We
27:25
Speaker 3: have countries that are being involved, but we have other
27:27
Speaker 3: countries that have said that they're not going to be involved.
27:30
Speaker 3: Ships are not allowed to translate, but ships are transiting.
27:33
Speaker 1: Economic terrorism will be.
27:35
Speaker 3: Tolerated, but we are tolerating and perpetuating economic terrorism.
27:38
Speaker 1: The only people who are losing is us. What's the
27:40
Speaker 1: price of gas right now?
27:41
Speaker 3: Let's take a look national price of the gallon four
27:44
Speaker 3: dollars and eleven cents, California at five eighty eight a gallon,
27:49
Speaker 3: God bless you all out there. And the price of
27:51
Speaker 3: diesel let's see five sixty five a gallon.
27:53
Speaker 1: Yep, a little bit of a nightmare.
27:55
Speaker 3: Let's get to bb. Turning now to this status of negotiations,
28:01
Speaker 3: a little bit of a troubling message here from the
28:04
Speaker 3: Israeli Prime minister. Prime Minister Netanyahu speaking before the cabinet,
28:09
Speaker 3: talking about the negotiations and how the Vice president quote
28:13
Speaker 3: reported to me in detail.
28:14
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen.
28:15
Speaker 11: I spoke yesterday with Vice President jd.
28:18
Speaker 5: Vance.
28:20
Speaker 11: He called me from his plane on the way back
28:22
Speaker 11: from Washington. He reported to me in detail, as the
28:27
Speaker 11: people of this administration do every day, on the development
28:31
Speaker 11: of the negotiations, in this case, the explosion in the negotiations.
28:36
Speaker 11: The explosion came from the American side, which was not
28:39
Speaker 11: willing to tolerate the bladant violation of the agreement to
28:43
Speaker 11: enter negotiations by Iran. Essentially, the agreement was that there
28:46
Speaker 11: would be a ceasefire and Iran would immediately open the crossings.
28:50
Speaker 11: They didn't do that. The Americans were not willing to
28:53
Speaker 11: accept it. He also conveyed to me that the central
28:57
Speaker 11: issue on the table from the perspective of President Trump
29:00
Speaker 11: in the United States is the removal of all enriched
29:02
Speaker 11: material and ensuring that there is no more enrichment in
29:06
Speaker 11: the coming years, and this could be for decades.
29:09
Speaker 1: So there you have it.
29:10
Speaker 3: Also, before we continue, this has become a matter of
29:12
Speaker 3: some controversy. So I will tell you that that video
29:16
Speaker 3: that we just played you is from the Government Press
29:18
Speaker 3: Office with the translation Snap translation, which was provided by
29:22
Speaker 3: the Israeli government. I did not dub it, nobody else
29:25
Speaker 3: subbed it. That was an Israeli government translation. They did
29:28
Speaker 3: change the translation later on, and I'm going to go
29:31
Speaker 3: ahead and.
29:31
Speaker 1: Read it to you.
29:32
Speaker 3: They say he briefed me on the negotiations I tweeted
29:37
Speaker 3: about this yesterday has become a matter apparently of some controversy.
29:40
Speaker 1: So I will give you that.
29:42
Speaker 3: The fact that their Snap translations that reported to which
29:45
Speaker 3: of course to me, immediately makes me go reported to
29:48
Speaker 3: me in detail, as for this administration does every day
29:51
Speaker 3: they change a translation from that translation to brief me.
29:54
Speaker 1: If you speak Hebrew and you want to decide otherwise,
29:57
Speaker 1: that's up to you.
29:58
Speaker 4: Me.
29:58
Speaker 1: I'm going to go with the Snap translation. But that's
30:01
Speaker 1: I'm just saying.
30:01
Speaker 3: And I want to make clear that is apparently of dispute,
30:05
Speaker 3: and apparently this tweet has become my own personal one,
30:07
Speaker 3: has become a bit of a bit of a controversy
30:11
Speaker 3: inside of the country.
30:12
Speaker 1: So was it. I want to present that to everybody.
30:15
Speaker 4: It's on their website like that it is okay.
30:17
Speaker 3: So the government, the Government Press Office of Israel, aired
30:20
Speaker 3: that live with that snap translation.
30:22
Speaker 1: It was posted to YouTube.
30:24
Speaker 3: That was taken that clip from the Israeli government's YouTube channel. Again,
30:28
Speaker 3: I want to be extremely clear about where that came from.
30:30
Speaker 3: And it's not BBC, not Sky News, not some third
30:33
Speaker 3: party trands of This is really governments translator. They then
30:36
Speaker 3: change their translation to brief me, and other people are
30:38
Speaker 3: now claiming that it is differently. So I just want
30:41
Speaker 3: to be very clear about that. This has become apparently
30:43
Speaker 3: a matter of some dispute. I don't speak Hebrew, so
30:45
Speaker 3: I cannot be the arbiter of this decision. I will
30:48
Speaker 3: choose to go with what the government's initial translation was. Emily,
30:52
Speaker 3: what do you think I means? Well, which one do
30:54
Speaker 3: you want to go with.
30:54
Speaker 4: The distinction between report and briefed is meaningful in the
30:58
Speaker 4: sense that if nets and Yahu were speaking in a
31:01
Speaker 4: way where he wants to convey that jd Vance is
31:05
Speaker 4: reporting to him, it's a different than briefing. Reporting to
31:08
Speaker 4: has obviously a very particular connotation that you are in
31:11
Speaker 4: some way the inferior and you are reporting to the superior.
31:17
Speaker 4: It's you know, the.
31:18
Speaker 3: Which is why I think that it became a matter
31:21
Speaker 3: of some controversy. Of course, so anyway, they are very
31:24
Speaker 3: desperate to try and to tell me that I am
31:26
Speaker 3: wrong or that their initial translation was wrong.
31:29
Speaker 1: Maybe that's true.
31:30
Speaker 3: If the government of the State of Israel wants to
31:31
Speaker 3: come out and say that that was that their official
31:34
Speaker 3: translation again official initial translation was incorrect, and that they
31:38
Speaker 3: change their official translation, I will err here on the show,
31:41
Speaker 3: but as of right now, that is where things stand.
31:43
Speaker 4: Well. The reason that it jumps out to you as
31:44
Speaker 4: well is that it's this pattern of NANTSI Nyahoo, especially
31:47
Speaker 4: speaking Hebrew, boasting about his not authority but his sway
31:54
Speaker 4: over the American government, right, which is the reason that
31:56
Speaker 4: ended up.
31:56
Speaker 1: That's when you saw it.
31:58
Speaker 4: It jumped out it.
31:58
Speaker 3: Of course I read that and I said, wow, as
32:01
Speaker 3: an American, I'm outraged that this person is saying reports
32:04
Speaker 3: to me in detail as this administration does every day.
32:07
Speaker 3: Now it's theoretically possible, I guess that he said or
32:09
Speaker 3: meant talked to me every day or brief me, so
32:13
Speaker 3: I will assess it. In the totality of the evidence
32:17
Speaker 3: of why we went to Iran of the initial snap
32:20
Speaker 3: translation from the government. I will assess it in terms
32:24
Speaker 3: of our relationship with this country, the fact that there
32:27
Speaker 3: was no ceasefire with Lebanon, that it was immediately broken,
32:30
Speaker 3: and I will allow this audience to do so with
32:32
Speaker 3: all the information that I just gave you to make
32:34
Speaker 3: up your own mind.
32:35
Speaker 4: The New York Times story that ntsan Yahu was this
32:38
Speaker 4: was the Maggie Harman and John Swan story from last week.
32:40
Speaker 4: That Trump was not sitting at the head of the
32:42
Speaker 4: table in our own situation room, that they were across
32:44
Speaker 4: from each other, almost as equals, in the situation room
32:47
Speaker 4: when he was briefing Trump.
32:49
Speaker 3: On why we should go to war, right exactly, all right,
32:51
Speaker 3: So there you have it. That's where things stand as
32:55
Speaker 3: of right now.
32:55
Speaker 1: All right.
32:55
Speaker 3: Let's continue then in this about where the talks actually
32:59
Speaker 3: are and what the status of them. Let's put the
33:01
Speaker 3: next one up there on the screen from the Financial Times.
33:04
Speaker 3: Mediators are pursuing an Iran US deal in back channel diplomacy.
33:10
Speaker 3: So this one basically alleges that behind the scenes, the
33:15
Speaker 3: US and Iran continue to exchange messages about a deal
33:18
Speaker 3: to end the war through back channels, despite the failure
33:21
Speaker 3: of the weekend talks. The marathon negotiations in Islamabad ended
33:24
Speaker 3: with the US Vice President blaming Iran for its unwillingness
33:28
Speaker 3: to commit to not developing a nuclear weapon, but two
33:31
Speaker 3: diplomats said that there were active talks ongoing through mediators
33:35
Speaker 3: to extend the ceasefire and secure a more permanent deal.
33:38
Speaker 3: Donald Trump said on Monday that Iran's negotiators had called
33:43
Speaker 3: and want very badly to reach a deal with the US.
33:45
Speaker 1: Something that we played earlier.
33:47
Speaker 3: People briefed on the discussion, so that intermediaries were seeking
33:50
Speaker 3: to convince the parties to hold lower level technical talks
33:53
Speaker 3: to hammer out disagreements over issues such as reopening the
33:56
Speaker 3: streets of removed and Iran's nuclear program. So that takes
34:00
Speaker 3: us to B three. And this is what really we
34:01
Speaker 3: should talk about, is that the alleged disagreement all stems
34:06
Speaker 3: from this uranium enrichment freeze. The United States apparently demanded
34:11
Speaker 3: twenty years. The Iranians offered five years. Now that five year,
34:16
Speaker 3: i'm told was the same freeze that was offered in February.
34:19
Speaker 3: So they haven't moon moved at all as a result
34:22
Speaker 3: of the war. They've offered this in February in those
34:25
Speaker 3: initial talks with Steve Wicoff and with Jared Kushner. Now
34:29
Speaker 3: what we're basically told here is that this is just
34:31
Speaker 3: like one of many disagreements over the nuclear program. What
34:35
Speaker 3: the US wants is a twenty year commitment of a freeze,
34:38
Speaker 3: and they want to go in take all the uranium
34:41
Speaker 3: out and take it out of the country the Iranians. Again,
34:44
Speaker 3: I'm not a nuclear expert or any of this stuff.
34:46
Speaker 3: They want to I forget exactly how it works, but
34:49
Speaker 3: they want to dilute it effectively. Is the way that
34:52
Speaker 3: has been rather than have the US come in and
34:56
Speaker 3: take it out and or destroy it. Now, remember we
34:59
Speaker 3: were told that this is all obliterated, so it's a
35:00
Speaker 3: little complicated, but this remains like the single biggest sticking point.
35:05
Speaker 3: But what everybody is missing is this still doesn't address
35:10
Speaker 3: all of the original demands of the US. Ballistic missiles
35:13
Speaker 3: is completely unmentioned. Right, Ballistic missiles is completely unmentioned. You
35:17
Speaker 3: also have the so called proxy group is totally unmentioned.
35:22
Speaker 3: Regime change is like a fantasy at this point. Now,
35:24
Speaker 3: we did change the regime, right, because we replace the
35:27
Speaker 3: doddering old Ayatola with the Fatwa, and nuclear weapons with
35:30
Speaker 3: his son, whose entire family, who's basically killed and himself
35:33
Speaker 3: has apparently been injured, and who doesn't have a fatwah
35:37
Speaker 3: I get off clear weapons use. So not great whenever
35:40
Speaker 3: I look at all of this, and this is why
35:42
Speaker 3: when we think about all the poison pills that the
35:44
Speaker 3: US or the Israelis or even the Iranians might put in,
35:47
Speaker 3: it's just very it's very difficult to see where things
35:50
Speaker 3: are gonna go. Remember, Lebanon was a big talking point
35:53
Speaker 3: today here in Washington. The Lebanese government and the Israeli
35:56
Speaker 3: government will hold by I think trilateral talks with the
35:59
Speaker 3: US as a broker on those talks specifically, and that
36:04
Speaker 3: those will be I mean, look, we don't know where
36:07
Speaker 3: that's going to go. It's also the Lebanese government situation
36:10
Speaker 3: is complicated because they want to see stive but it's
36:12
Speaker 3: not like Hasbola's silar party to those talks.
36:14
Speaker 1: So that's what they stand right now.
36:16
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's a complete mess for the administration.
36:19
Speaker 4: That's not surprising to your point about that particularly being
36:23
Speaker 4: or about the five year window being what was already
36:26
Speaker 4: offered and was already on the table in February. That
36:29
Speaker 4: is such a good example of exactly what's been accomplished
36:33
Speaker 4: over the last six weeks, which is things seem to
36:36
Speaker 4: have been even worse or things seem to be getting
36:39
Speaker 4: actually even worse for the United States throughout the negotiations
36:42
Speaker 4: and the enrichment question. We should talk about that. We
36:45
Speaker 4: can put B three up on the screen, this Axios
36:48
Speaker 4: tear sheet. This is yeah, so this is the barakra
36:52
Speaker 4: Vied story that we were just talking about on the
36:55
Speaker 4: enrichment US proposed aron except twenty year moratorium. Okay, so Sager,
37:01
Speaker 4: they want a single digit period. If Trump can get
37:04
Speaker 4: them to fifteen, If Trump can get them to fifteen,
37:09
Speaker 4: which I don't know that he can, but if he
37:10
Speaker 4: can get them to ten or fifteen, that's I would say.
37:16
Speaker 4: It's still a loss because of everything that's happened over
37:20
Speaker 4: the last six weeks, the blood and treasure of the
37:22
Speaker 4: last six weeks. Then possibility that there was something on
37:26
Speaker 4: the table in February that could potentially end the war.
37:30
Speaker 4: Potentially it could end the war, but not in with
37:34
Speaker 4: the US in a much stronger position.
37:35
Speaker 3: Well, Mortaza Hussein made a great point where he was like,
37:38
Speaker 3: you know, they should just agree to twenty because it's
37:40
Speaker 3: not exactly like the current government or the international institutions
37:44
Speaker 3: will be around in twenty years to be able to
37:46
Speaker 3: guarantee some sort of a deal. But I mean, look,
37:48
Speaker 3: this stuff does matter because if they technically violate in
37:51
Speaker 3: the future, then that could be an excuse for these
37:53
Speaker 3: rallies or for Trump to bomb them. So I understand
37:56
Speaker 3: why they wouldn't want to do it. But this also,
37:58
Speaker 3: and this is kind of my bigger point about the
38:00
Speaker 3: technical experts, this was, in my opinion, the real reason
38:04
Speaker 3: why the February talks were designed to fail. And now
38:07
Speaker 3: that we have all that New York Times reporting about
38:09
Speaker 3: Trump was determined to strike beforehand.
38:10
Speaker 1: It's true.
38:11
Speaker 3: So I talked to some people who were in the
38:14
Speaker 3: government at the time of the JCPOA, and you don't
38:16
Speaker 3: have to be a fan of that to also know
38:19
Speaker 3: that the way it was negotiated, it was a serious endeavor.
38:21
Speaker 3: You don't have to agree with it, but I'm saying
38:23
Speaker 3: it was a two and a half year deal that
38:25
Speaker 3: was negotiated over literally years, not only at the highest
38:29
Speaker 3: levels between the Iranian foreign minister and the US Secretary
38:32
Speaker 3: of State John Kerry, but also.
38:35
Speaker 1: Or was yeah, he was Sertors.
38:37
Speaker 3: Yeah. Anyway, so the Secretary of State John Kerry, and
38:40
Speaker 3: you also had the Iranian foreign minister in a two
38:44
Speaker 3: and a half year relationship.
38:46
Speaker 1: The more important.
38:47
Speaker 3: Talks had nothing to do with those two. It was
38:49
Speaker 3: all about the technical experts. So the US had nuclear
38:53
Speaker 3: experts along with all the other P five plus one
38:55
Speaker 3: powers I believe, and Russia and China. Right, they were
38:58
Speaker 3: all at the table, and but they were all taught.
39:00
Speaker 3: They had nuclear experts who were hashing out exact quantities
39:04
Speaker 3: of uranium, what they were allowed to enrich, what they weren't.
39:06
Speaker 3: The Iranians were there on the other side. It was
39:08
Speaker 3: all nuclear scientists bilaterally, right or whatever, you know, in
39:12
Speaker 3: some sort of roundtable. None of that occurred with the
39:16
Speaker 3: initial talks of Jared Kushner and Steve Wicoff. They don't
39:18
Speaker 3: know what they're talking about, right, So if it Ron
39:21
Speaker 3: starts saying stuff like, well, what about three point six
39:24
Speaker 3: seven percent highly enriched uranium which is useful for you know,
39:27
Speaker 3: they're like, no, zero enrichment. They're like, yeah, but what
39:29
Speaker 3: about medical grade? So they don't even know. I mean,
39:32
Speaker 3: I don't know the difference either. I'm not a g
39:33
Speaker 3: you know, like a nuclear scientist, I have to go
39:35
Speaker 3: and ask one and.
39:37
Speaker 4: Saying I'm notogeous, and then you step You're like, no,
39:39
Speaker 4: I am actually genius.
39:41
Speaker 1: I'm through the way.
39:42
Speaker 3: I'm absolutely not a genius, which all viewers of the
39:44
Speaker 3: program can attest to. However, I think that the nuclear experts,
39:49
Speaker 3: you know, not even being at the table, and remember
39:51
Speaker 3: even they disagree with each other on all this stuff.
39:54
Speaker 3: That is why that's why in some ways, like the
39:57
Speaker 3: deals not really even serious, because traditionally the way that
40:01
Speaker 3: US diplomacy and deals of this type work is you
40:04
Speaker 3: have like endless meetings between these nuclear scientists and then
40:08
Speaker 3: once they agree, they brief respectively to their principles, and
40:13
Speaker 3: then those principles meet for some ridiculous handshake ceremony which
40:18
Speaker 3: is totally fake, and nothing's actually being negotiated, and you
40:21
Speaker 3: sign on the bottom line and everybody walks away and
40:24
Speaker 3: they're all happy. That's what they you know, traditional processes.
40:27
Speaker 3: This is like the inverse and that's part of why
40:29
Speaker 3: I'm very, very skeptical about all of the even ballistic missiles.
40:32
Speaker 3: What do they know about blistic missiles and the number
40:34
Speaker 3: and the range we're gonna cap the range, Like the
40:37
Speaker 3: whole thing is ridiculous, and.
40:37
Speaker 1: They could lie, you know, and we can die.
40:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, because that's how that's why these types of like
40:43
Speaker 3: slapshot agreements.
40:44
Speaker 4: Are pad well, and we're again, I mean you and
40:47
Speaker 4: Gristle and Ryan make this point all the time, but
40:49
Speaker 4: we are also our ally in these negotiations is Israel,
40:52
Speaker 4: which is not clear about its nuclear weapons.
40:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, so all of the literal NPT non compliance state,
40:58
Speaker 3: which is crazy.
40:58
Speaker 4: So how are you supposed to come to that conversation
41:01
Speaker 4: with Iran and make this argument? And this is I mean,
41:04
Speaker 4: your point about how the experts are negotiating against each other.
41:07
Speaker 4: They are debating against each it's just about world destruction,
41:10
Speaker 4: like the capacity for world destruction. Nuclear geopolitics have been
41:14
Speaker 4: a disaster for the human race, even though we haven't
41:17
Speaker 4: had a post World War two nuclear explosion yet. Just wait,
41:21
Speaker 4: that's like the most bleak prediction I have for the future.
41:26
Speaker 1: But look, you maybe right.
41:27
Speaker 3: I think a atmospheric nuclear test is not out of
41:30
Speaker 3: the question by any of the nuclear powers, especially at
41:34
Speaker 3: this point and considering what's happened. I also think there
41:36
Speaker 3: will be mass nuclear proliferation in the next twenty five years,
41:39
Speaker 3: not only as a result of Iraq. But so if
41:42
Speaker 3: you have Iraq, Libya, and now Iran, all three together,
41:44
Speaker 3: what's the lesson You better get a nuke. There's only
41:47
Speaker 3: one country in the Axis of Evil which survives today,
41:49
Speaker 3: North Korea yep.
41:51
Speaker 4: So, and Iran now has this incentive where or the
41:55
Speaker 4: public is like, is the public supportive of the iergy s. No,
41:59
Speaker 4: a section of the public supportive of the IRGC. But
42:01
Speaker 4: the United States started the war by bombing a school
42:04
Speaker 4: of girls. And if you think that's not going to
42:07
Speaker 4: have a radicalizing effect on some not insignificant portion of
42:11
Speaker 4: the Iranian public, you're just wrong. And that's what we
42:13
Speaker 4: see happen with these interventionist conflicts, and at least over
42:16
Speaker 4: and over and over again. So if they start racing
42:19
Speaker 4: to enrichment, it won't be a surprise.
42:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, it certainly will.
42:23
Speaker 3: Now let's continue down this line about enrichment, and again
42:26
Speaker 3: this is where it all really matters, and about latent
42:29
Speaker 3: nuclear deterrence.
42:31
Speaker 1: So you know, not to.
42:33
Speaker 3: Get too complicated about it, but basically, they don't want
42:36
Speaker 3: to fully enrich to a bomb because they know that
42:38
Speaker 3: that would mean war. They don't want to give up
42:40
Speaker 3: any of their enrichment because that would mean Libya and
42:43
Speaker 3: sodomization on camera and you know, complete decapitation.
42:47
Speaker 1: By the West.
42:48
Speaker 3: So they want to keep some level of latent nuclear deterrent.
42:51
Speaker 3: That's why they want to have some enrichment. You can
42:53
Speaker 3: understand that. I think everybody can rationally understand that, and
42:55
Speaker 3: we don't like it, but of course if we could
42:57
Speaker 3: topple them, we would have. We just spent a month
42:59
Speaker 3: in a whar well and.
43:00
Speaker 4: Our president said he was going to wipe out the civil.
43:02
Speaker 1: And said he's gonna wipe out civilization.
43:03
Speaker 3: So the zero enrichment line is an Israeli line which
43:06
Speaker 3: was adopted, you know, by Mike Pompeo in twenty eighteen.
43:10
Speaker 1: But it's been very ambiguous.
43:11
Speaker 3: When you say no nuclear weapon, it's not the same
43:13
Speaker 3: thing as zero enrichment. The zero enrichment standard has remained
43:17
Speaker 3: here and being pushed by, of course, the biggest neo
43:20
Speaker 3: cons in the government. Let's put be four up there
43:22
Speaker 3: on the screen. Lindsay Graham says, I appreciate President Trump's
43:27
Speaker 3: resolve to end the Iranian conflict peacefully and through diplomacy. However,
43:32
Speaker 3: we have to remember who we're dealing with in Iran terrorists, liars,
43:36
Speaker 3: and cheaters. If this reporting is accurate, the idea we
43:40
Speaker 3: would agree to a moratorium on enrichment rather than a
43:44
Speaker 3: ban on enrichment would be a mistake. Would we agree
43:47
Speaker 3: to a moratorium for al Qaeda to enrich No. The
43:50
Speaker 3: only difference between al Qaeda and the Iranian regime is
43:53
Speaker 3: that one is a Sunny terrorist organization and the other
43:55
Speaker 3: is a Shia terrorist state. Both have the same goal
43:58
Speaker 3: when it comes to the US, Israel, and the civilize world.
44:00
Speaker 3: No enrichment means no enrichment. Over twenty nations have peaceful
44:05
Speaker 3: nuclear power programs without enrichment capability. You can have peaceful
44:09
Speaker 3: nuclear power without enrichment, but you cannot make a bomb
44:11
Speaker 3: without enrichment. Again, no enrichment for Iram. They want a
44:15
Speaker 3: bomb and they cheat. So this actually, ironically is a
44:18
Speaker 3: even more maximuist position than the initial conversation that was
44:23
Speaker 3: laid out by JD. Vance Allegedly for some twenty year man.
44:27
Speaker 3: He's saying no, no, twenty years, no enrichment ever forever,
44:30
Speaker 3: which of course is a declaration of war. Last thing
44:34
Speaker 3: B five let's put it up there on the screen
44:36
Speaker 3: some you know, kind of troubling reporting. This is from
44:38
Speaker 3: the South China Morning Posts. They report that Iran Islamabad,
44:44
Speaker 3: after the peace talks finished, that nine Pakistani Air Force
44:48
Speaker 3: fighter jets escorted the Iranian delegations aircraft all the way
44:52
Speaker 3: back to Iran after they fear a potential attack on
44:57
Speaker 3: the delegation. They're speculating, presum fearing an Israeli attack. I
45:01
Speaker 3: will just say, fearing potential attack. It's not like it's
45:04
Speaker 3: not just the Israelis who would want to kill them, right, You've.
45:06
Speaker 1: Got Saudi's, the UAE, There's a lot of other.
45:09
Speaker 3: People that they've made very very angry, and that is
45:11
Speaker 3: why those Pakistani jets had to escort them. But you know,
45:14
Speaker 3: beginning with what we did about Bibi net and Yahoo
45:16
Speaker 3: and some of his comments again which you can take
45:19
Speaker 3: that translation whichever way that you would like, you can
45:22
Speaker 3: just see how there is the problem of the pro
45:26
Speaker 3: Israel lobby here in Washington, the Israeli government and his
45:29
Speaker 3: own lines, the talks by the United States, the lack
45:33
Speaker 3: of experts in all of this. The deck is just
45:36
Speaker 3: stacked against getting anything like this done. Let's move on
45:41
Speaker 3: to a very funny story very interesting story. This one
45:46
Speaker 3: is about a Italian magazine. Didn't think I would be
45:51
Speaker 3: reading an Italian magazine, but here we are in twenty
45:54
Speaker 3: twenty six. Let's put this one up here on the screen.
45:58
Speaker 3: So this was an Italian magazine. It has a cover
46:01
Speaker 3: it says Lbuso. I'm not going to try and read this,
46:05
Speaker 3: but I am going to give you a quick translation.
46:08
Speaker 3: The headline is abuse. What is in the new issue
46:12
Speaker 3: of Espresso, which again is an Italian magazine, which had
46:16
Speaker 3: that cover which shows it does something soldier.
46:20
Speaker 1: Huh it does seem like something usual.
46:21
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I don't read Italian magazine or read the Italian press.
46:24
Speaker 3: So you have an Israeli soldier there with a phone
46:26
Speaker 3: in his hand, seemingly filming what looks like a Palestinian woman.
46:31
Speaker 3: And the sub headline there is it is about settlers
46:36
Speaker 3: in the West Bank.
46:37
Speaker 1: Okay, so that was the cover.
46:39
Speaker 3: Now what ended up happening is that, let's put B
46:42
Speaker 3: eight up here on the screen. Is that the Israeli
46:45
Speaker 3: Ambassador to Italy, Jonathan Pelled, put out a statement saying
46:49
Speaker 3: we strongly condemn the manipulative use of the recent cover
46:54
Speaker 3: of Espresso. The image distorts the complex reality with which
46:58
Speaker 3: Israel must coexist, promoting stereotypes and hatred. Responsible journalism must
47:04
Speaker 3: be balanced and fair. Hashtag media responsibility. Now, as people know,
47:09
Speaker 3: I'm not a fan of community notes, but I guess
47:10
Speaker 3: I will say media responsibility, sure, people, but of this
47:16
Speaker 3: community note, they say. The image on Lospresso's cover is
47:20
Speaker 3: a real photograph that was taken by an Italian photographer,
47:24
Speaker 3: Pietro Mastruzzo, as part of a West Bank settler's reportage.
47:28
Speaker 3: The same man appears in the other photos by the
47:30
Speaker 3: Associated or the A Gens for a Press. So again,
47:34
Speaker 3: just to show you all that photo, let's put B
47:36
Speaker 3: nine up here on the screen.
47:38
Speaker 1: Here we have from the Middle East side.
47:40
Speaker 3: It says Israeli settlers uproot hundreds of trees belonging to
47:44
Speaker 3: Palestinian and West Bank. You can clearly see the same
47:48
Speaker 3: individual which is there actually in the photograph.
47:52
Speaker 1: We also have video which has been released.
47:55
Speaker 5: Now.
47:56
Speaker 3: This video was via a I belie leave, an Italian journalist,
48:02
Speaker 3: and we're going to go ahead and play some of
48:04
Speaker 3: it here for you. Let's go ahead and take a
48:06
Speaker 3: listen if you want to. You can see actually on
48:09
Speaker 3: the screen there he is. This is presumably when the
48:12
Speaker 3: photograph was taken him as well as several other soldiers
48:16
Speaker 3: in the IDF and they are, I mean, there's some
48:20
Speaker 3: sort of confrontation happening. This Palestinian woman is there on
48:24
Speaker 3: the right, these Israeli soldiers are there on the left.
48:28
Speaker 1: He is filming the incident.
48:30
Speaker 3: He did make some sounds, it was like unclear exactly
48:34
Speaker 3: what he was saying. But if you want to go
48:36
Speaker 3: and take a listen to the full video for yourself,
48:39
Speaker 3: at one point you can hear him shouting the word goy, goy,
48:42
Speaker 3: goy at her. And so yeah, it's clearly not only
48:46
Speaker 3: a true incident, but it is illustrative obviously of what
48:50
Speaker 3: a lot of Western governments, including our own government, allegedly opposes,
48:53
Speaker 3: which is really de facto settlement and control of the
48:57
Speaker 3: West Bank.
48:57
Speaker 1: But it is. Yeah, it's been fascinating controversy, isn't it.
49:00
Speaker 4: Well, So interestingly under this the thread of the post
49:04
Speaker 4: from the ambassador that we put up, this is the
49:06
Speaker 4: Israeli ambassador to Italy, Barack reviewed responded. So, former idea
49:12
Speaker 4: F reporter at Axios he goes, the photo was not real,
49:14
Speaker 4: it's ai, The ambassador responds, hard to prove Okay, so
49:19
Speaker 4: there you have a tacit admission that he actually has
49:22
Speaker 4: no idea whether or not this was responsible media. Right,
49:27
Speaker 4: that's his hashtag media responsibility. He actually has no idea.
49:31
Speaker 4: I want to post with the hashtag ambassador responsibility, because
49:34
Speaker 4: how dare you say that this journalistic outlet was being
49:38
Speaker 4: irresponsible when you have absolutely no proof that this was
49:41
Speaker 4: somehow AI generated. In fact, the evidence is to the
49:44
Speaker 4: contrary that this was from a video. So he's out
49:48
Speaker 4: there just no obvious shooting off his mouth.
49:51
Speaker 1: It's real, right, It's it's very obvious, to the point
49:54
Speaker 1: where he can't even say it's not.
49:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, he didn't even deny that it was real. Let's continue.
50:00
Speaker 3: There was this be ten please, this was a rabbi
50:05
Speaker 3: poo Pope coo. His biography, says eleventh generation Rabbi, speaker
50:11
Speaker 3: and writer, host of the Jewish World podcast. He says
50:15
Speaker 3: Italy's magazine Espresso Online is publishing anti Semitic Sterman was
50:20
Speaker 3: a Nazi publication worth the imagery. That should clarify where
50:23
Speaker 3: they got this image from the military vest worn here
50:25
Speaker 3: is no longer in use by the idea if the
50:27
Speaker 3: wedding ring and bracelet are never worn by ultra orthodox men.
50:30
Speaker 3: The formation of the beard and kipa are outlandish, and
50:32
Speaker 3: of course the very bizarre smile and showing unteeth are unnatural.
50:36
Speaker 3: So as they again point out, that photograph was taken
50:40
Speaker 3: by this Italian journalists in the West Bank, and the
50:42
Speaker 3: soldier in question has been photographed in other news outlets,
50:46
Speaker 3: which included the New York Times. A lot of this
50:48
Speaker 3: is actually goes back to the olive tree controversy, which
50:51
Speaker 3: we covered here actually on the show with journalist Jasper Nathaniel.
50:55
Speaker 3: So you can go and check our coverage on that
50:57
Speaker 3: in the past. But did certainly want to highlight that.
51:00
Speaker 3: And I do think, you know, considering our last story
51:02
Speaker 3: on the show, which we're going to talk about, which
51:04
Speaker 3: is AI, that one of the problems in our modern
51:07
Speaker 3: media age is that you have all of these people
51:10
Speaker 3: who can claim legitimate images are AI in order to
51:13
Speaker 3: cast out and you know, not everybody's going to watch
51:16
Speaker 3: this segment or you know, actually take a look at
51:18
Speaker 3: what happened. They're all going, you know, some people may
51:21
Speaker 3: have initially seen that and have said, oh my God,
51:23
Speaker 3: of course it is AI or something like that, and yeah,
51:26
Speaker 3: that's all you have to claim nowadays in vice versa
51:28
Speaker 3: AI images which people think are real. Like after that
51:32
Speaker 3: pilot rescue miss mission, there was a completely AI generated
51:37
Speaker 3: image of the pilot being rescued that went viral to
51:41
Speaker 3: the point where like the governor of the State of
51:43
Speaker 3: Texas was like, so beautiful. I will never forget this.
51:46
Speaker 3: He didn't say this, but somebody else did. I will
51:48
Speaker 3: never forget this image the rest of my life. It's like, dude,
51:50
Speaker 3: is literally AI, Like you could forget it? Yeah, yeah,
51:52
Speaker 3: forget it.
51:53
Speaker 1: It's not even remotely real. So there we go. That's
51:56
Speaker 1: that controversy. Just want it's a.
51:57
Speaker 4: Helpful propagandaol to just be able to money the waters
52:00
Speaker 4: and be like, and this is exactly what we saw
52:02
Speaker 4: for the ambassador, Actually bookmark this because it'll come back,
52:05
Speaker 4: and it'll come back in handy in the future, because
52:08
Speaker 4: it's a great example where he shoots from the hip
52:09
Speaker 4: and says this is AI. It's irresponsible, and then one
52:13
Speaker 4: tweet down in the thread, he's like, well, it's hard
52:15
Speaker 4: to prove that it's not right. That's how it's going
52:18
Speaker 4: to work in the future.
52:19
Speaker 1: Yes, certainly is