# Iran’s Trump Card: Hormuz | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

An episode of [The Team House](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1492797340), 22 Jun 2026, 1 h 16 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/clrtpod.com/m/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72621507/iran_shit_show.mp3

We break down the Iran MOU, the fight over the Strait of Hormuz, Lebanon’s role in the deal, and why the panel sees the agreement as a major strategic win for Tehran and a serious problem for Washington. We also dig into Iran’s nuclear program, Hezbollah, U.S. military messaging, bad battle-damage assessments, and whether the United States still has any real leverage left in the next 60 days of negotiations. GhostBed ⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/team FOR 10% off! Support the show on Patreon:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Marc's new article: https://engelsbergideas.com/author/sam-worby-marc-polymeropoulos/ Subscribe to our newsletter!!!! https://teamhousepodcast.kit.com/join Jack's news outlet:⬇️ https://thehighside.substack.com/ Find Jon Hackett here:⬇️ Jon's Twitter: https://x.com/jonathanhackett Jon's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejonathanhackett Jon's books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0C5L659N5?ccs_id=e11a2062-f8d3-498e-bfd7-7d2f3869caf6 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejonathanhackett Twitter: https://x.com/jonathanhackett Check out Mick's new podcast here:⬇️ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/at/podcast/pub-and-porch-applied-stoicism/id1836955475 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1k3QPmkAMwnGJxMLDwUSSd?si=n6piIu8XRcag1Z0K43A3bQ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@UCd0Hq6QFk8CoTu5j-VU0Ong Find Mick Mulroy here: Fogbow ⬇️ https://fogbow.com/ Lobo Institute ⬇️ https://www.loboinstitute.org/ Twitter ⬇️ https://x.com/mickmulroy?s=21&t=-Ze3F_Ix2vlJ18KFvORTCA LinkedIn ⬇️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-patrick-mulroy-31198b52/ Bluesky ⬇️ https://bsky.app/profile/mickmulroy.bsky.social Mick’s publications ⬇️ https://www.loboinstitute.org/publications/publications-of-michael-mick-patrick-mulroy/ Whitefish security summit ⬇️ https://whitefishsecuritysummit.com Find Marc P here: https://x.com/Mpolymer Find Andy Milburn here: Twitter ⬇️ https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8 LinkedIn ⬇️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023 Substack ⬇️ https://amilburn.substack.com/ Andy’s book ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operations Bluesky ⬇️ https://bsky.app/profile/andy-milburn.bsky.social Find Jason Lyons here: LinkedIn ⬇️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-lyons-666873316?u Bluesky ⬇️ https://bsky.app/profile/bgsilverback73.bsky.social "Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio 00:00 — Start 03:26 — Iran’s Strategy After the MOU 09:16 — Iran’s Resistance Economy and Regime Survival 14:42 — The Art of a Bad Deal 19:56 — The Missing NSC Process 24:49 — Proxies, Ballistic Missiles, and the JCPOA Problem 31:42 — Verification, HEU, and the Lebanon Fuse 36:42 — Pentagon “Happy Math” and Bad BDA 48:12 — A Possible Clandestine Nuclear Program 54:50 — Iranian Leadership Splits and the Search for Moderates 01:01:11 — Can the Strait of Hormuz Be Reopened by Force? 01:07:23 — CENTCOM, Military Advice, and Strategic Failure Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: All right, hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Eyes
[0:03] Speaker 1: on Geopolis. We've got a full crew today, Andy Milburn,
[0:06] Speaker 1: Mark poly Moropolis, Jonathan Hackett, Mick mulroy.
[0:09] Speaker 2: The boys are all here.
[0:10] Speaker 1: Too many marines, but we'll figure that out at some point,
[0:13] Speaker 1: I hope. All Right, we've had our dizzying week with
[0:19] Speaker 1: the the Memorandum of Understanding. I'm gonna do a little
[0:24] Speaker 1: bit of context for people, just because, like if you're
[0:27] Speaker 1: following me on Twitter and stuff and like reading like
[0:29] Speaker 1: an article here and there, it's like it changes every
[0:32] Speaker 1: twelve hours essentially at what's going on. We signed a
[0:37] Speaker 1: deal basically over like you know, remotely with Iran for
[0:43] Speaker 1: the sixty day seasfire where they were gonna talk about
[0:47] Speaker 1: the larger issue of the nuclear issue and the enriched
[0:50] Speaker 1: uranium in that fourteen point plan. These are just someone
[0:55] Speaker 1: like the basic points. You guys can correct me and
[0:58] Speaker 1: add a little bit more context. On top of that,
[1:01] Speaker 1: there would have been the straight of Hormuz opening to normal,
[1:05] Speaker 1: the US blockade lifted, some talk about opening up and
[1:11] Speaker 1: giving some money to you a round like their frozen assets,
[1:16] Speaker 1: and then there was also talk of a three hundred
[1:17] Speaker 1: billion dollar I guess sovereign wealth front of reconstruction fund
[1:21] Speaker 1: that was supposedly going to be paid out by the
[1:23] Speaker 1: majority of the GCC countries or the Gulf countries. At
[1:27] Speaker 1: least one hundred and fifty billion of that was supposedly
[1:30] Speaker 1: secured for that. The other one hundred and fifty billion,
[1:33] Speaker 1: I don't know where it's coming from. Some say US,
[1:36] Speaker 1: you know, the US is denying that obviously over and
[1:40] Speaker 1: the big Cavy, the big boy. The big issue that
[1:44] Speaker 1: looks like what will could kill the ceasefire is Lebanon
[1:49] Speaker 1: and what's going on with Israel and Hesbola, who have
[1:52] Speaker 1: been trading back and forth clearly out of Israel. I
[1:56] Speaker 1: would say that Yahoo's been playing at Kanda down the line,
[1:58] Speaker 1: trying to like weasel his way like he's good at
[2:00] Speaker 1: because he's a politician at the end of the day.
[2:02] Speaker 1: But the ultra right homies like Kevier have been freaking
[2:06] Speaker 1: out about this, you know, saying that we're not going
[2:09] Speaker 1: to stop the war no matter what they're not. No
[2:11] Speaker 1: no deal is going to stop us unless we're involved.
[2:15] Speaker 1: That's just like basically like the top little layer of it.
[2:21] Speaker 1: It's been dizzy because I've been trying to keep track
[2:24] Speaker 1: of this ship for the last week, and it's been
[2:27] Speaker 1: I was just I was just fed up. I was like,
[2:29] Speaker 1: you know, who knows what will happen. Vance was supposed
[2:32] Speaker 1: to go to Switzerland. He delayed. He eventually showed up today.
[2:36] Speaker 1: They're meeting now and Steve Wickoff and Jared Kushner are there,
[2:40] Speaker 1: of course, so everything will be great. I'm sure of it.
[2:44] Speaker 1: Vance did bite back at a specifically Gavier. He kind
[2:48] Speaker 1: of he kind of kept net and Yahoo out of
[2:51] Speaker 1: it and gave Net and Yahoo a little bit of
[2:52] Speaker 1: credit while going at Gavier and the the far right
[2:57] Speaker 1: of the war cabinet pretty harsh words too.
[3:01] Speaker 2: You know. You know there was a I think a
[3:02] Speaker 2: quote saying there's a country of.
[3:04] Speaker 1: Nine million people and you can't just kill your way
[3:06] Speaker 1: out of your problems. And I'm gonna be honest, for
[3:09] Speaker 1: the first time probably ever, I'm agreeing with JD.
[3:12] Speaker 2: Vance.
[3:14] Speaker 1: So you guys give us some context, let us know
[3:18] Speaker 1: you know what you guys are thinking, what you guys
[3:19] Speaker 1: are tracking. I'm gonna start with let's start with Milburn today.
[3:26] Speaker 2: Uh huh.
[3:27] Speaker 3: Well, you know I'm gonna be fairly short because I
[3:29] Speaker 3: know Mark wrote an excellent essay on what a tremendous
[3:33] Speaker 3: success this for the United States, the the MoU is.
[3:36] Speaker 4: So I think we.
[3:37] Speaker 2: Should to sum that up.
[3:40] Speaker 4: Well, what do make me?
[3:41] Speaker 3: You know, just ooking with what just happened. So just
[3:44] Speaker 3: three days after signing, Iron shut US straight again over
[3:48] Speaker 3: over Lebanon, right, because that was part of Iran's stipulation
[3:52] Speaker 3: that Lebanon become part of the deal. So even the
[3:56] Speaker 3: US and Iran's own government kind of agree if if
[4:00] Speaker 3: it was actually closed, Syncom apparently saying traffic's flowing. But
[4:08] Speaker 3: but you know, this brings up an interesting point. And
[4:11] Speaker 3: and you know, I mentioned Mark's Marx article h and
[4:17] Speaker 3: and of course I think it really there's the fact
[4:23] Speaker 3: that the US failed and in our strategy, we really
[4:27] Speaker 3: didn't have a strategy. We have a list of targets,
[4:30] Speaker 3: it was kind of vague, there was no defined end state. Yes,
[4:34] Speaker 3: that is a story in itself, but I think, and
[4:37] Speaker 3: this is where John's expertise, I think will come in.
[4:40] Speaker 3: I think it's fair to say Iran did have a strategy,
[4:43] Speaker 3: and it's one they've been preparing for years. You know,
[4:45] Speaker 3: a lot of people talk about the mosaic doctrine, which
[4:48] Speaker 3: is kind of decentralized command. It's kind of mission command,
[4:52] Speaker 3: which is our own doctrine. But it really worked. I mean,
[4:56] Speaker 3: they anticipated that they would lose a lot of guys
[4:58] Speaker 3: at the top of the pyramid, and they designed a
[5:01] Speaker 3: system that could still continue to function.
[5:04] Speaker 4: So that worked.
[5:05] Speaker 3: Number one, and again i'll keep this brief. Number two,
[5:08] Speaker 3: they've built an economy that was some extent resistant to sanctions.
[5:13] Speaker 3: I mean, John's already talked about the fact that the
[5:16] Speaker 3: IRGC didn't suffer too terribly from the pounding that the
[5:21] Speaker 3: Iranian economy took for all the reasons that we've given
[5:24] Speaker 3: on their show, but also the fact that you know,
[5:30] Speaker 3: through deals with China and elsewhere, Iran has again designed
[5:34] Speaker 3: its economy so that so that sanctions are are no
[5:39] Speaker 3: longer such a such a weapon as as they used
[5:41] Speaker 3: to be. And the last thing I'll say on that
[5:47] Speaker 3: on their strategy, which I think is really important, it's
[5:51] Speaker 3: what they went after. You know, all these firing of
[5:53] Speaker 3: missiles and drones and they had, yeah, they had an
[5:57] Speaker 3: extensive inventory, but it wasn't random. You know, they went
[6:01] Speaker 3: after key targets. They went after uh they'd identified what
[6:06] Speaker 3: makes what what? When US employees airpower. What really makes
[6:12] Speaker 3: that work, and it is the what high density or
[6:16] Speaker 3: high demand load density items it depends on, and that
[6:20] Speaker 3: is our command and control notes, right, especially a wax aircraft,
[6:25] Speaker 3: our tanker fleet, which actually is quite limited and it's aging.
[6:30] Speaker 3: And it went after both of those on the ground,
[6:35] Speaker 3: for instance in Saudi Arabia and peace app and caused
[6:39] Speaker 3: extensive damage. And and also ground based command and control
[6:45] Speaker 3: as well as air defense our radars, so ability to
[6:49] Speaker 3: sense all of these things were on the Iran's target list.
[6:52] Speaker 3: It wasn't simply hey, we're going to just fire ship
[6:56] Speaker 3: and show they were not beaten. They were very careful
[6:59] Speaker 3: about what they had. They understood clearly the imbalance between
[7:07] Speaker 3: you know, the cost in effectiveness between interceptors and drones
[7:13] Speaker 3: and missiles, especially drones. And that isn't just about you
[7:18] Speaker 3: know that cliche we always hear about that, you know,
[7:21] Speaker 3: and a Patriot interceptor costs x million dollars and a
[7:24] Speaker 3: Shahad missile costs twenty to thirty thousand dollars. It's not
[7:28] Speaker 3: just about that. It's about death on the bench. How
[7:31] Speaker 3: many interceptors we actually have, all right, how many we
[7:35] Speaker 3: need globally in order to sustain our commitments, and they
[7:40] Speaker 3: understood all that they and they kind of led us dry.
[7:44] Speaker 3: And the last thing was that targeting of golf countries
[7:49] Speaker 3: was very carefully deliberately done and instead of yes, it
[7:56] Speaker 3: did piss off the golf countries, but it also had
[8:00] Speaker 3: the effect of driving a wedge between the US and
[8:03] Speaker 3: our partners here because Iran could show that we could
[8:07] Speaker 3: not protect them, we had not gone to the effort
[8:09] Speaker 3: to build a coalition. And then when it really mattered,
[8:12] Speaker 3: you saw UAE and Saudi Arabia saying at key parts
[8:17] Speaker 3: of this conflict, no, we're not going to support and
[8:20] Speaker 3: I believe I think it was Kuwait right, they said, no,
[8:23] Speaker 3: we're not going to allow our bases to be used
[8:26] Speaker 3: for further strikes on Iran. So again, you know, this,
[8:33] Speaker 3: MoU is kind of I think a natural follow on.
[8:37] Speaker 3: They sustained a beating, but all they had to do
[8:41] Speaker 3: was survive.
[8:42] Speaker 4: They did that.
[8:43] Speaker 3: They sent a message of resilience. We've all seen these
[8:46] Speaker 3: lego videos that were masterfully made, and now they've they've
[8:51] Speaker 3: controlled the negotiations. Do I like that? No, of course
[8:55] Speaker 3: I don't like that, And I'm just commenting on how
[8:58] Speaker 3: they've they've and they've really understood. That's how switching thing
[9:03] Speaker 3: about war being politics by another.
[9:06] Speaker 2: Means well, wants it back at you go, I'm gonna
[9:10] Speaker 2: take it. I'm taking charge here.
[9:12] Speaker 5: Yeah, I'll branch off of what Andy mentioned about the
[9:14] Speaker 5: economy and sanctions and all this. You know, the regime
[9:17] Speaker 5: has been framing their economy as a resistance economy since
[9:20] Speaker 5: the nineteen nineties, and in Farsi they actually call it
[9:23] Speaker 5: this a resistance economy, and what that means is a
[9:25] Speaker 5: resilient economy that can survive external impacts, whether those are
[9:29] Speaker 5: sanctions or reductions in capacity, or just actual logistical challenges
[9:34] Speaker 5: of getting things done out of the country due to geopolitics.
[9:36] Speaker 5: They've designed their economy to survive this way, and it's
[9:40] Speaker 5: very clear that their structuring of that was successful. And
[9:43] Speaker 5: that doesn't mean it was successful for the running people.
[9:45] Speaker 5: It means it was successful for the regime elites, the
[9:47] Speaker 5: small minority of people in and outside of Iran who
[9:51] Speaker 5: are able to maintain their safety, security, and their grip
[9:54] Speaker 5: on power throughout this really high intensity conflict against their country.
[10:00] Speaker 5: The US is very good at overwhelming fire superiority. This
[10:02] Speaker 5: is something that we're very good at we're very precise
[10:04] Speaker 5: at that we can put a lot of ordinance on
[10:06] Speaker 5: targets very rapidly in a very large geographic dispersion, which
[10:10] Speaker 5: we saw was true especially in Western Iran during the war.
[10:13] Speaker 5: Despite that, Iran was able to use, as Andy mentioned,
[10:17] Speaker 5: very precise, careful, deliberate strikes on allies and partners in
[10:20] Speaker 5: the region for non military purposes. And that's contrast to
[10:25] Speaker 5: what it seemed the US strategy was was a purely
[10:28] Speaker 5: operational or campaign level strategy of striking a certain series
[10:33] Speaker 5: of targets or a target deck to affect a military outcome,
[10:36] Speaker 5: whereas the Iranian regime the IERGC was thinking beyond the
[10:39] Speaker 5: military objective. They were thinking about political outcomes and impacts
[10:43] Speaker 5: of their military actions, which again is just like Andy
[10:46] Speaker 5: mentioned a klouds Whitzy in concept, where military is a
[10:49] Speaker 5: policy instrument, it is not an end.
[10:52] Speaker 2: And it seemed that.
[10:53] Speaker 5: Iran was using that and understood that that if they
[10:55] Speaker 5: hit Katar or they hit Kuwait, there will be political ramifications.
[10:59] Speaker 5: That true, there is some sacrifice on their side that
[11:01] Speaker 5: are negative impacts for Iran, but they will also negatively
[11:04] Speaker 5: impact the United States. So they're kind of using that
[11:06] Speaker 5: concept of the Samson option that Israel actually uses for
[11:09] Speaker 5: its own nuclear policy, where they understand that once they
[11:11] Speaker 5: unleash this weapon, it will harm them, but it will
[11:13] Speaker 5: also harm their enemy in a way that's beneficial to
[11:16] Speaker 5: them unleashing this strike. And Ghalibaf, the Speaker of Parliament
[11:20] Speaker 5: who's now in Switzerland sitting across the table from Jdevance,
[11:23] Speaker 5: negotiating a very uneven settlement right now in favor of
[11:27] Speaker 5: Iran and against the favor of the United States. Yesterday, Glibaff,
[11:31] Speaker 5: before he got on an airplane, said that he is
[11:32] Speaker 5: a post war economic commander, which again underscores this understanding
[11:37] Speaker 5: of economics for Iran, for the elites in Iran, that
[11:40] Speaker 5: it's about the money. It's not about protecting their people,
[11:44] Speaker 5: it's not about political institutions, it's not about these esoteric
[11:47] Speaker 5: philosophical concepts that we appreciate in the West. It's about
[11:51] Speaker 5: surviving and enriching themselves and surviving to enjoy that enrichment
[11:56] Speaker 5: and a lot of their money. Almost all of it
[11:57] Speaker 5: is not in Iran. It's in Europe, it's in Hong Kong,
[12:00] Speaker 5: it's around the world. It's in Canada. Billions of dollars,
[12:03] Speaker 5: and they've designed these systems to protect those dollars and
[12:06] Speaker 5: protect themselves. And if you see, for example, Golibov's son
[12:10] Speaker 5: has hundreds of millions of dollars in Iran and outside
[12:13] Speaker 5: of Iran he posts on Instagram. Other IERGC commanders their
[12:17] Speaker 5: children have yachts in the Mediterranean that on Instagram. These
[12:20] Speaker 5: are not secrets. And there's even a website called I
[12:22] Speaker 5: think like the Children of the Regime or something like
[12:24] Speaker 5: this where you can go see their daily lives, documented
[12:28] Speaker 5: them spending just untold amounts of money. None of this
[12:31] Speaker 5: money from work they ever did. This is from either
[12:34] Speaker 5: oil sales or other illicit activity. Right now, Iran has
[12:37] Speaker 5: a special program where if you own a vehicle in Europe,
[12:40] Speaker 5: you can import it into Iran and just pay a
[12:43] Speaker 5: small tax on it, and now you can bring it
[12:44] Speaker 5: into Iran, so you can buy it in Germany, for example,
[12:47] Speaker 5: and then bring it to Iran. There's sanctions that are
[12:49] Speaker 5: supposed to stop this from happening, but it's happening just
[12:52] Speaker 5: totally allowed, right and even I think we've talked about
[12:55] Speaker 5: it before. Companies like Audi for example, or BMW, they
[12:59] Speaker 5: know about these action, so what they do is they
[13:01] Speaker 5: take the vehicle slightly apart and they'll put little pieces
[13:04] Speaker 5: in between the doors and windows and things, and it
[13:06] Speaker 5: arrives in a box so it's not technically assembled in Europe,
[13:09] Speaker 5: and they'll bring it to Iran, take the little pieces out,
[13:12] Speaker 5: reattach everything, and now it's a vehicle that should not
[13:15] Speaker 5: have been there in the first place. And it's not
[13:17] Speaker 5: the average person doing this, it's the elites. And the
[13:19] Speaker 5: reason I'm kind of pushing this elite's button is because
[13:22] Speaker 5: these are the people in Switzerland right now negotiating with
[13:24] Speaker 5: the United States on a three hundred billion dollar cash infusion. Again,
[13:29] Speaker 5: money is there objective. We are about to give them
[13:32] Speaker 5: more of it. They use this money for very specific reasons,
[13:35] Speaker 5: like we mentioned corruption and things like this, but also
[13:37] Speaker 5: to fund has Bullat. After we exited the Joint Comprehensive
[13:40] Speaker 5: Plan of Action in twenty eighteen, the Hesbola funding levels
[13:44] Speaker 5: went up from about two hundred and fifty million dollars
[13:46] Speaker 5: a year to a billion dollars a year until last December.
[13:49] Speaker 5: We don't have twenty twenty six numbers yet, but there's
[13:52] Speaker 5: going to be more of it. And we can see
[13:54] Speaker 5: that this connection to has bullet remains relevant because that's
[13:58] Speaker 5: why the negotiations were threatened this past seven days in
[14:00] Speaker 5: the first place, is because Israel and Hezbola were fighting
[14:02] Speaker 5: war in Lebanon, and Iran said, that's point number one
[14:05] Speaker 5: on our fourteen point plan. You've got to stop fighting
[14:08] Speaker 5: in Lebanon, Israel or else we're not going to negotiate.
[14:11] Speaker 5: So they're telling us that this is important to them financially,
[14:14] Speaker 5: for security reasons, and many other things in between, and
[14:17] Speaker 5: they're not going to give up on this point. So
[14:19] Speaker 5: I think focusing on Lebanon and economics of this conflict
[14:22] Speaker 5: are probably the two most important things if the US
[14:24] Speaker 5: wants to do anything to salvage this disaster happening in
[14:27] Speaker 5: Switzerland right now.
[14:30] Speaker 1: Your mattress is one of those things you don't think
[14:32] Speaker 1: about until it's too late, until you're waking up with
[14:34] Speaker 1: aches and pains and realizing you've been sleeping on a
[14:36] Speaker 1: problem for years. Today's sponsor, ghost Bed is here to
[14:39] Speaker 1: change that, and with the summer coming, there's one more
[14:42] Speaker 1: thing worth thinking about sleeping hot. If you ever woken
[14:45] Speaker 1: up in the middle of the night overheated and uncomfortable,
[14:48] Speaker 1: you know how much of rexisus sleep. Most mattresses trap heat.
[14:51] Speaker 1: Ghost Bed is built specifically to prevent that. It's built different.
[14:55] Speaker 1: Baby go. I've had a ghost Bed mattress now for
[14:58] Speaker 1: probably like ten months. I love it. It's freaking awesome. Uh.
[15:03] Speaker 1: I have the cooling thing definitely keeps it cool compared
[15:06] Speaker 1: to my old mattress.
[15:07] Speaker 2: I love it.
[15:07] Speaker 1: I'm so happy I have it, and I'm so happy
[15:09] Speaker 1: that they sponsor this show. Every mattress in the ghostped
[15:12] Speaker 1: lineup comes with cooling technology built right in, not an
[15:15] Speaker 1: upgrade you pay extra for. It's part of how every
[15:18] Speaker 1: mattress is designed, from their entry level comfort all the
[15:21] Speaker 1: way up to the LUs. I have the Lux by
[15:23] Speaker 1: the way, because I'm fancy, which features their most and
[15:26] Speaker 1: the Lux features their most advanced cooling system. And if
[15:29] Speaker 1: you're not sure which one is right for you, had
[15:31] Speaker 1: to go sped dot com slash team and take their
[15:34] Speaker 1: mattress quiz. A few questions and you get a personalized
[15:36] Speaker 1: mattress recommendation, fast free shipping, and one hundred and one
[15:41] Speaker 1: nights to try it out. If it's not the right fit,
[15:43] Speaker 1: you get your money back, simple easy, psy baby. Right now,
[15:46] Speaker 1: you can take advantage of a Marley Pricing and Code
[15:48] Speaker 1: Team gets you an extra ten percent off when you
[15:51] Speaker 1: upgrade your sleep and go spread the makers of the
[15:53] Speaker 1: coolest beds in the world. Go get some I love
[15:57] Speaker 1: go spread. That's gosped dot com slash team and use
[16:00] Speaker 1: the Code Team t E A M for an extra
[16:03] Speaker 1: ten percent off side wide. Thank you guys for supporting
[16:06] Speaker 1: the show, and thanks ghost Better for supporting the show.
[16:08] Speaker 2: Love you bye.
[16:10] Speaker 6: So Jonathan you gave I think you raised a really
[16:13] Speaker 6: good point. I don't want to reiterate all the great
[16:15] Speaker 6: things you guys said, but I think that and it's
[16:18] Speaker 6: an article I did write in Engelsburg Ideas, which you
[16:22] Speaker 6: guys were referring to. I think the title was the
[16:24] Speaker 6: art of a Bad Deal. I co wrote it with
[16:26] Speaker 6: Sam Worby. But it's the idea of putting a carrot
[16:29] Speaker 6: forward deal. And it's exactly what you're talking about, Jonathan. Like, so,
[16:32] Speaker 6: I guess, first of all, the wisdom of that is
[16:35] Speaker 6: kind of beyond me. We're actually putting carrots for it.
[16:39] Speaker 6: Jd Vance, in a press interview, basically came out and
[16:41] Speaker 6: said we're not doing that, and I think he's lying.
[16:43] Speaker 6: I mean, you know, of course, the press never challenges
[16:45] Speaker 6: him and anything. Because everything I talked to, all the
[16:48] Speaker 6: oil analysts, everything, they said that Iran is going to
[16:51] Speaker 6: get between the ability to sell oil and which is
[16:55] Speaker 6: the waivers as well as some relief of some type
[16:59] Speaker 6: of assets. You could be six to twenty billion right
[17:01] Speaker 6: off the bat. Jd Vance is saying it's not gonna happen.
[17:04] Speaker 6: But so you know, first of all, where's the truth
[17:07] Speaker 6: on that? It looks like it actually is gonna happen.
[17:09] Speaker 6: But again, the idea of putting carrots forward first just
[17:12] Speaker 6: doesn't make any sense. And it shows how desperate the
[17:14] Speaker 6: United States is and I think that that is that
[17:16] Speaker 6: is certainly problematic. The other piece I would add, and
[17:19] Speaker 6: you know, I'm there. You know, maybe Mick is too,
[17:21] Speaker 6: and who knows the kind of the resident Israel whisperer,
[17:25] Speaker 6: But it's the notion of Look, I don't care with
[17:27] Speaker 6: you if you like bb net Nyahu or not. But
[17:29] Speaker 6: the idea of linking this to Lebanon, the US allowing
[17:33] Speaker 6: this is insane. You know, I live in northern Virginia
[17:37] Speaker 6: right across the way is d C. If you know,
[17:40] Speaker 6: if I you know I live in Vienna. If I
[17:43] Speaker 6: don't know, if McLain was getting pounded and was evacuated
[17:46] Speaker 6: because someone's firing from d C, that would be a problem.
[17:50] Speaker 6: And yet we have not managed to link this. So
[17:52] Speaker 6: the Israelis do need to have kind of freedom of action.
[17:55] Speaker 6: You know, you can you can debate whether or not
[17:57] Speaker 6: they should have gone into southern lebanon the ground force.
[18:00] Speaker 6: I think that's just unwise. But the idea of you know,
[18:03] Speaker 6: removing that ability there to strike back his bullet, the
[18:07] Speaker 6: US did Israel a terrible favor, and in fact, let's
[18:10] Speaker 6: not forget his ball as a terrorist entity that killed
[18:12] Speaker 6: more Americans up until nine to eleven than than Al Kaida.
[18:16] Speaker 6: And so I think that was a that was an
[18:19] Speaker 6: awful mistake overall. It's the notion of I think, Jonathan,
[18:22] Speaker 6: you're right, Israel survived. Andy. I think you said this.
[18:24] Speaker 6: I mean it's not Israel Ron survived. I think both
[18:27] Speaker 6: Jonathan Andy said that they controlled. They demonstrate they have
[18:31] Speaker 6: the control of the straight ufore moves. That's what we're
[18:33] Speaker 6: the MoU is just to to reopen the straight because
[18:37] Speaker 6: Trump panicked about the economy period. That's it. It's a
[18:41] Speaker 6: it's a cash tran it's a transaction of funds for
[18:44] Speaker 6: reopening the strait. So they demonstrated that again linking the
[18:48] Speaker 6: linkage to Lebanon was a terrible diplomatic error by the
[18:51] Speaker 6: United States.
[18:53] Speaker 4: Uh.
[18:53] Speaker 6: And then this inclusion of of some type of financial relief,
[18:57] Speaker 6: which is Jonathan says, is so paramount to the to
[18:59] Speaker 6: the regime, the Iranian regime. I'll finally, you know, it's
[19:02] Speaker 6: something I stupidly have done every day on Twitter. I'm
[19:04] Speaker 6: having fun doing it. I post how many days it's
[19:06] Speaker 6: been each day since January thirteenth, and it's one hundred
[19:10] Speaker 6: and fifty nine days right now since President Trump said
[19:13] Speaker 6: help was on its way, and you know, and a
[19:15] Speaker 6: lot of us were exercised about things like the botched
[19:18] Speaker 6: Afghan withdrawal for good reason. We criticized the Biden administration.
[19:21] Speaker 6: I certainly did, though. I work for a network ms now,
[19:25] Speaker 6: which is super pro kind of Democrat and supports Biden.
[19:28] Speaker 6: I was on there every day howling about it. I
[19:30] Speaker 6: just was period this this is going to be seen
[19:35] Speaker 6: as a betrayal of the Iranian people. Again, help is
[19:38] Speaker 6: on its way. As protesters run the street. They stayed
[19:40] Speaker 6: out there, they got slaughtered, and we are doing nothing
[19:43] Speaker 6: to help them. And in fact, if you talk to anybody,
[19:46] Speaker 6: the infusion of whatever it is, six billion, twelve billion,
[19:49] Speaker 6: God forbid the three hundred billion that allows the regime
[19:52] Speaker 6: to further survive.
[19:54] Speaker 4: You know.
[19:54] Speaker 6: Bottom line is, I think we have done a great
[19:58] Speaker 6: harm to the ability for people like all of us
[20:01] Speaker 6: we are don't. We don't do this anymore. Maybe some
[20:04] Speaker 6: of you guys do clandestinely. I certainly don't. I sit
[20:06] Speaker 6: on my ass in northern Virginia. But the idea of
[20:08] Speaker 6: going out into the field and working with indigenous groups
[20:11] Speaker 6: and making promises, we don't look so good right now.
[20:15] Speaker 6: And I think that's a you know, and if you
[20:16] Speaker 6: I was just at a conference in Sweden. Uh. There
[20:20] Speaker 6: was a whole bunch of really really famous Iranian academics
[20:23] Speaker 6: there anti regime.
[20:25] Speaker 3: Uh.
[20:25] Speaker 6: But to a t they said that in the beginning
[20:29] Speaker 6: Iranian people welcomed the US and Israeli strikes. They do
[20:32] Speaker 6: not do so anymore now. And there is the incredible
[20:34] Speaker 6: feeling of betrayal right now. Again, you're gonna have the
[20:38] Speaker 6: scene at some point, I hope not. Maybe it's politically
[20:40] Speaker 6: suicidal for jd vance of him shaking the hands of
[20:43] Speaker 6: Valeyboff The from the Iranian side, and and and Mick,
[20:48] Speaker 6: I thought of you today, this that you know, and
[20:50] Speaker 6: of course I freaked out. This is this is my
[20:52] Speaker 6: not promise practicing stoicism. But when jd Vance at the
[20:56] Speaker 6: beginning of the talks said to the cameras, I love Pakistan,
[21:01] Speaker 6: there's nobody on the planet who served in Afghanistan who
[21:04] Speaker 6: says those words I love Pakistan. And so I just
[21:06] Speaker 6: saw that, and I thought of all of us, Andy
[21:08] Speaker 6: and and Jonathan, you two little friends, one more thing,
[21:10] Speaker 6: d I got something for you. Look at this little
[21:14] Speaker 6: I love Friese thing. Oh yeah, I love that too.
[21:17] Speaker 6: That's my that's my two sides.
[21:21] Speaker 4: Well, I'm gonna start with something. I agree with all
[21:25] Speaker 4: you guys on this stuff. I can remember you said
[21:28] Speaker 4: the I'm gonna start with a positive, right, and the
[21:31] Speaker 4: positive had nothing to do with the MU. Major James
[21:35] Speaker 4: Capers finally received the Medal of Honor, way overdue most
[21:42] Speaker 4: most Marines certainly, but people from the Special Operations military
[21:46] Speaker 4: community have been waiting for this for a long time.
[21:50] Speaker 4: He he actually came and spoke to us at and
[21:54] Speaker 4: I mean it was such a memorable speech that, like
[21:59] Speaker 4: I it all came back when I was seeing him
[22:01] Speaker 4: get the metal honor. So let's start on a positive.
[22:06] Speaker 2: Now.
[22:08] Speaker 4: One thing I would start advocating for I haven't stopped
[22:10] Speaker 4: advocating for, is to get the NSC back up and
[22:13] Speaker 4: running in full splendor, like get the careers back in there,
[22:18] Speaker 4: get people that can talk about like, well, are you
[22:21] Speaker 4: really going to change the regime if we do airstrikes?
[22:24] Speaker 4: Are we really going to are they not going to
[22:27] Speaker 4: close the trade? These are all things that would have
[22:28] Speaker 4: been discussed all the potential like Okay, if we do this,
[22:32] Speaker 4: they'll do that. What are we going to do? Are
[22:34] Speaker 4: we willing to adhere to and take the economic pain right?
[22:39] Speaker 4: And what is the economic pain? There's experts in every
[22:42] Speaker 4: one of these areas that could have informed up the
[22:45] Speaker 4: chain of command all the way to the you know,
[22:47] Speaker 4: the actual principles. I think Secretary Ubio is a very
[22:55] Speaker 4: capable person, but he can't be both. He can't be
[22:57] Speaker 4: the Secretary of State and get somebody on where is
[23:02] Speaker 4: he he's because the Apartment doesn't agree with any of this.
[23:05] Speaker 4: Let's face it, we all know that. Everybody knows that.
[23:08] Speaker 4: Everybody knows that, right, But I'm just talking about the
[23:11] Speaker 4: process and process matters because I don't think we'd be
[23:14] Speaker 4: in this position if that was something that was actually
[23:19] Speaker 4: done before the decision. Get somebody like Jack Keane, you know,
[23:22] Speaker 4: Jene Keane or somebody that has the gravatas and has
[23:24] Speaker 4: the uh anyway, so uh if we done if we
[23:29] Speaker 4: had done that, I don't think we'd be in the
[23:30] Speaker 4: situation we're in. So to go down the list of
[23:35] Speaker 4: strategic objectives we had before watching this regime change, I
[23:39] Speaker 4: know now they're saying they didn't plan on that. They did.
[23:42] Speaker 4: They said it over and over again. Helps on the
[23:44] Speaker 4: way mark you just said it. They said we actually
[23:47] Speaker 4: did have regime change before it was clearly we didn't.
[23:52] Speaker 4: And then the so that was an objective, we're not
[23:55] Speaker 4: going to meet it. The intelligence community said that wasn't
[23:57] Speaker 4: going to happen. You're not going to do you know,
[24:00] Speaker 4: air war people just quit, it's never gonna happen. Yes,
[24:04] Speaker 4: we did strike and do the decapitation strikes. And you know,
[24:07] Speaker 4: I'm somebody that if you kill servicemen and women in
[24:11] Speaker 4: the United States or CI officers, you should always be
[24:13] Speaker 4: on the list. So there's zero love loss of the
[24:15] Speaker 4: de capitation strikes. But Strategically, all it did is give
[24:20] Speaker 4: us a younger, more pissed off version of the regime. Right,
[24:23] Speaker 4: So we went from an eighty six year old Iyatola
[24:26] Speaker 4: Kahmane to a fifty six year old Ayatola Homani, right,
[24:31] Speaker 4: and we now have Lahiti as the IRGC commander. These
[24:34] Speaker 4: are and he is I'm sure and correct me if
[24:37] Speaker 4: I'm wrong. Jonathan one that has always been advocating for
[24:40] Speaker 4: Ron to have a nuclear weapon, like has been the
[24:43] Speaker 4: guy that's always been like, hey, you're wrong. No, fought
[24:46] Speaker 4: was on not having nuclear weapons. Let's get a nuclear weapon.
[24:49] Speaker 2: Right.
[24:49] Speaker 4: So strategically we did not change the regime. We now
[24:53] Speaker 4: embolden them and with these financial benefits, it's going to
[24:57] Speaker 4: put them in place, probably in perpetuity, right if they
[25:01] Speaker 4: actually realize the unfreezing of assets. I think there's around
[25:06] Speaker 4: one hundred billion total if you look at restricted and
[25:08] Speaker 4: frozen assets, but immediately like twenty billion if you could
[25:13] Speaker 4: sell your oil sanctions are gone. I think that's around
[25:15] Speaker 4: eighty billion a year. This three hundred billion dollar reconstruction
[25:20] Speaker 4: fund with really baffles me, because what are you reconstructing?
[25:24] Speaker 4: We struck military targets? Are we going to ask the
[25:29] Speaker 4: Gulf countries to pay to reconstruct the military targets that
[25:33] Speaker 4: we use to tack them and cause them damage. I
[25:37] Speaker 4: don't see them doing it, and it's the logic behind
[25:40] Speaker 4: it is just it escapes me. So we didn't change
[25:43] Speaker 4: the regime. So what did we do? That's positive? We
[25:46] Speaker 4: did destroy their navy, we did destroy their Convention Lavy,
[25:50] Speaker 4: the Air Force. But we then are giving them all
[25:53] Speaker 4: this financial incentive. What do you think they're going to
[25:55] Speaker 4: do with it? They're going to replace the ballistic missiles
[25:58] Speaker 4: that we did degrade that we talked about so much
[26:00] Speaker 4: as as a plus, which I talked about as a plus.
[26:04] Speaker 4: The concern with the ballistic missiles, that is, if we're
[26:06] Speaker 4: going to protect their nuclear program, so we had to
[26:08] Speaker 4: degrade it. Now we're get them the money. What do
[26:10] Speaker 4: you think they're going to do. They're going to rebuild
[26:12] Speaker 4: their ballistic missiles and now the White House is defending
[26:14] Speaker 4: their ability to have missiles. Why why? I mean that
[26:19] Speaker 4: was the biggest criticism or one of the bigger criticisms
[26:22] Speaker 4: of the JCPOA. Didn't address ballistic missiles, didn't address proxies.
[26:26] Speaker 4: So that's not even our list of objectives and it's
[26:29] Speaker 4: still not being discussed in the MoU or in Switzerland
[26:33] Speaker 4: right now. Proxies and ballistic missiles. We're now defending their
[26:35] Speaker 4: ability to have ballistic missiles and their proxy forces. Obviously
[26:41] Speaker 4: we're not even talking about them doing that. So that's
[26:44] Speaker 4: not healthful at all now. So we haven't met necessary objectives.
[26:50] Speaker 4: The other one, of course, the biggest one, the priority one,
[26:53] Speaker 4: is no nuclear weapons. And although the White House was
[26:56] Speaker 4: saying that they agreed to give up their highly enriched uranium,
[26:59] Speaker 4: they did not. It's right in the agreement. You can
[27:02] Speaker 4: look at the MoU. It's not a secret they did not.
[27:05] Speaker 4: They did not. They haven't agreed to do anything on
[27:08] Speaker 4: their nuclear front. In fact, Posesskian President Pozeski just came
[27:11] Speaker 4: out and said they're never going to agree to not
[27:14] Speaker 4: enrich uranium. He just came out and said that. So
[27:17] Speaker 4: if that's the case, almost the best we could do.
[27:20] Speaker 4: And I don't like this. I'm just pointing out, and
[27:22] Speaker 4: I think is fact is to get back and something
[27:24] Speaker 4: that looks exactly like the JCPO way right, we're giving
[27:29] Speaker 4: them billions of dollars, they're going to enricheranium. What are
[27:33] Speaker 4: we going to try to keep him to three point
[27:34] Speaker 4: sixty seven. Maybe that's what it was, and I know
[27:37] Speaker 4: that it was going to expire, but we could have
[27:39] Speaker 4: simply made it better rather than tear it up. So
[27:46] Speaker 4: I think I've hit every major point. We should probably
[27:48] Speaker 4: go on some of the nuances, but I would like
[27:51] Speaker 4: to see the next sixty days turn this around, right.
[27:54] Speaker 4: I want to see the United States come out strategically ahead.
[27:57] Speaker 4: We are not headed there right now. We're not. Everybody knows.
[28:00] Speaker 4: It doesn't matter what party you're in, you know, right,
[28:04] Speaker 4: left center, people can see that this is not happening.
[28:07] Speaker 4: The straight up hormose, I'll stop on this straight of
[28:10] Speaker 4: humose is not actually open. The Iranians have not agreed
[28:14] Speaker 4: to give up their control of the Strait only to
[28:17] Speaker 4: bring it to pre war levels and then in the
[28:20] Speaker 4: future they're going to charge fees. We all know it's coming.
[28:24] Speaker 4: In fact, they already close it again. But so it's
[28:27] Speaker 4: even that wasn't a war objective because it was open before,
[28:30] Speaker 4: and we haven't gotten that back to where we wanted.
[28:33] Speaker 4: So what's the alternative. I had a friend tell me,
[28:36] Speaker 4: you know, he picked the best of all the terrible alternatives.
[28:41] Speaker 4: I don't agree with that I think we actually had
[28:43] Speaker 4: him on the road. Economically, I think we and we
[28:46] Speaker 4: if we didn't want to take the economic pressure, we
[28:48] Speaker 4: shouldn't have done this in the first place. We shouldn't
[28:51] Speaker 4: have done it in the first place, because the worst
[28:53] Speaker 4: case is you do it, you then cave. And this
[28:57] Speaker 4: is going to change the power dynamics in the Middle
[28:59] Speaker 4: East and around the world. They now know that they
[29:02] Speaker 4: have an economic nuclear weapon and we have confirmed it.
[29:07] Speaker 4: So I think we have to take the heat a
[29:10] Speaker 4: bit on the economic side of this, but continue on
[29:14] Speaker 4: and if if they rupture the agreement, we should view
[29:17] Speaker 4: that as thank goodness, and then we can go back
[29:20] Speaker 4: and start negotiation this again. I know it's there's no
[29:22] Speaker 4: easy answer to this. I'm not saying that, but I
[29:25] Speaker 4: want America to come out on ahead. I want her
[29:28] Speaker 4: on the regime, not the running people, to come out
[29:31] Speaker 4: way in the rear, you know, in other words, negatively.
[29:36] Speaker 4: So we're not headed there right now. It's super concerning,
[29:39] Speaker 4: and I'd like to see, you know, the smart folks
[29:42] Speaker 4: come together and come up with a plan for the
[29:44] Speaker 4: US to turn this around, starting from a difficult position.
[29:47] Speaker 6: But Nick, one quick thing on that there are no
[29:50] Speaker 6: smart folks, the NSC doesn't work. Trump doesn't listen to anybody.
[29:54] Speaker 6: So I agree with you, you know, this is a hope.
[29:57] Speaker 6: But there's there's nothing I see on the horizon that
[29:59] Speaker 6: shows any indication of anything positive happening. Jared Kushner and
[30:03] Speaker 6: Steve Witkoff and JD. Vans are the ones who are
[30:06] Speaker 6: in Switzerland. That's a recipe for disaster, you know. So
[30:10] Speaker 6: so the idea there is no one, there's no one
[30:13] Speaker 6: coming to the rescue, there's no smart people involved, and
[30:17] Speaker 6: you know, so I just I don't see how that
[30:19] Speaker 6: is ever going to occur. I don't know what, you know.
[30:22] Speaker 6: Marco Rubio is fleeing from this because of twenty twenty eight.
[30:26] Speaker 6: He wants to be president and this is a disaster.
[30:28] Speaker 6: He knows it, you know. And I'd go back to,
[30:32] Speaker 6: you know, the quart of the State Department's gone. At
[30:35] Speaker 6: least most of my friends in the agency are long past,
[30:38] Speaker 6: are long gone, you know. I mean I was asking
[30:41] Speaker 6: even one of my former you know, counterparts in Mosad,
[30:45] Speaker 6: you know, and he basically said, how can everyone have
[30:47] Speaker 6: made so many mistakes on Iran? Like we all collectively
[30:50] Speaker 6: used to actually be pretty good on this, but there's
[30:53] Speaker 6: nothing I see on the horizon that is optimistic that
[30:56] Speaker 6: we're going to do anything positive here. In fact, Trump
[30:58] Speaker 6: is bored, Rubio wants to go off to Cuba, and
[31:01] Speaker 6: everyone's focusing in the mid terms. I mean, I think
[31:03] Speaker 6: you might have said this that this is the worst
[31:06] Speaker 6: case scenario that we start something and don't finish it,
[31:08] Speaker 6: and we've kind of poked the bear. Uh, but if
[31:12] Speaker 6: you're gonna you know, if you want to poke the bear,
[31:13] Speaker 6: you better kill it. And we didn't. And there's no
[31:15] Speaker 6: I mean, if if anybody thinks we're going to resume
[31:18] Speaker 6: military confrontation in any serious manner, they're on They're on crack.
[31:22] Speaker 6: Trump wants nothing to do with it. I don't think
[31:24] Speaker 6: Sentcom or the Pentagon do as well because of because
[31:26] Speaker 6: of you know, the you know, the depletion in stocks.
[31:29] Speaker 6: And plus there's a question of can it actually work? Uh,
[31:33] Speaker 6: what more can we do without putting in ground forces?
[31:36] Speaker 4: So you know, those are all those are all good points.
[31:39] Speaker 6: I mean, really pessimistic on this, I don't know. And
[31:41] Speaker 6: so but here's here's here's my question to you. This
[31:43] Speaker 6: is actually important because we all consider and criticize, and
[31:46] Speaker 6: I'm great at that okay, So what do we do
[31:48] Speaker 6: and what you know or what could we do or
[31:50] Speaker 6: what what do you I mean knowing that there is
[31:53] Speaker 6: we have incompetent people in charge. That's the thing that
[31:55] Speaker 6: drives me nuts. I don't see anyone's you know, I
[31:57] Speaker 6: I like I don't like watching Fox News. I like
[32:00] Speaker 6: watching General Keane because he's up there, and he laid
[32:02] Speaker 6: into Sean Hannity the other day, as he should. I
[32:06] Speaker 6: thank god someone in that crazy network is saying something normal.
[32:09] Speaker 6: And so you know, I don't see I'm not I
[32:12] Speaker 6: don't have room for optimism.
[32:14] Speaker 2: I don't know.
[32:15] Speaker 4: Well, I get your idea. What you're saying is it's
[32:18] Speaker 4: unlikely that they're going to pull these people and make
[32:20] Speaker 4: prebaty fair. But I think there are people out there
[32:22] Speaker 4: that could could be very valuable in an NSC. I mean,
[32:26] Speaker 4: their career is right. There's the military didn't empty of experts,
[32:30] Speaker 4: the Department of Energy didn't empty of experts, the CIA didn't,
[32:34] Speaker 4: the State Department. Yes, I know a lot of there's
[32:36] Speaker 4: still people there. There's still people there, people left.
[32:38] Speaker 6: I think there are a lot of people who are
[32:39] Speaker 6: gone and you could.
[32:40] Speaker 4: Bring them back. I mean, they could be retired, you
[32:43] Speaker 4: can still bring them back to the NSC. I know,
[32:46] Speaker 4: maybe I'm you know, Tiltner willneck win bills here, b
[32:49] Speaker 4: I think like it's not going to be an easy task.
[32:52] Speaker 4: But if it, if it doesn't happen, then we already
[32:55] Speaker 4: know what the outcome is.
[32:56] Speaker 2: Here.
[32:56] Speaker 4: We're seeing it. We're seeing it, and I don't want
[32:59] Speaker 4: that for the US. I don't care about whose president,
[33:02] Speaker 4: who's party benefits and stuff. I just want to see this, uh,
[33:06] Speaker 4: not end up the way it's headed for the and
[33:11] Speaker 4: the region, all our allies.
[33:15] Speaker 3: I actually make the last point is a really key point.
[33:19] Speaker 3: We've certainly lost credibility in the region. And and to
[33:24] Speaker 3: your point, Mark, I mean and yours too, make actually
[33:29] Speaker 3: the you know, I know it sounds like we're hand ringing,
[33:32] Speaker 3: but it's difficult not to wring your hands at this
[33:35] Speaker 3: point because look the you know, we we' when you
[33:40] Speaker 3: look at the details. Let's let's take the whole framework deal.
[33:44] Speaker 3: What it says about in the enriched uranium, right, I
[33:49] Speaker 3: mean that potentially, potentially that gives the greatest cause for
[33:54] Speaker 3: optimism and this whole sorry mess. Okay, but when you
[33:57] Speaker 3: look closely at that, because the Framework Deal has Iran
[34:01] Speaker 3: agreeing to down blend its enriched uranium, basically dilute it,
[34:05] Speaker 3: so it's no longer weapons grade under IAEA supervision. So
[34:10] Speaker 3: you know, on the surface, that looks like real progress,
[34:15] Speaker 3: but then you look at the actual language in your agreement,
[34:17] Speaker 3: and that's kind of the minimum methodology, and the material
[34:23] Speaker 3: itself never leaves Iran. It stays on iranium soil, so
[34:27] Speaker 3: while the real terms get negotiated over over the next
[34:30] Speaker 3: sixty days, So.
[34:33] Speaker 4: They're going to stop enrichment.
[34:35] Speaker 6: That's right, Yeah, exactly.
[34:37] Speaker 3: You've got a commitment to a process, not a commitment
[34:40] Speaker 3: to an outcome, and nobody's actually verified anything yet, you know,
[34:45] Speaker 3: to your point about I mean, it's like just a
[34:48] Speaker 3: dreadful divorce settlement, right, it's we made all these all
[34:54] Speaker 3: these things are flowing in Iran's favor before they even
[34:57] Speaker 3: have to do anything. And the IAEA's what's his name, Grossy,
[35:05] Speaker 3: I mean he he was in Switzerland this past weekend
[35:08] Speaker 3: still working out what this semen looks like. In practice,
[35:11] Speaker 3: it's not it. There's no inspection happening, the inspections being negotiated,
[35:17] Speaker 3: so it's really it's hard to be optimistic, but I
[35:23] Speaker 3: think and you know the same thing about hebola. You know,
[35:28] Speaker 3: and I think, I think this is an interesting point,
[35:32] Speaker 3: not because I'm about to bring it up, but I
[35:33] Speaker 3: think we have to be you know, you have to
[35:35] Speaker 3: approach this from a point of view had real politic.
[35:38] Speaker 3: Is his bolla okay, bear with me. Is his bolla
[35:42] Speaker 3: a real threat to the United States? I get it,
[35:45] Speaker 3: they've killed Americans in the past, But I'm not swayed
[35:48] Speaker 3: by that, nor should anyone. I don't think not, because.
[35:51] Speaker 6: I mean, otherwise we would have never we would never
[35:54] Speaker 6: have made.
[35:54] Speaker 3: Peace with Germany.
[35:55] Speaker 4: For Christ's sake.
[35:58] Speaker 3: Sixty seventy thousand israelis moved out of the neighborhood. I
[36:01] Speaker 3: get it, but that doesn't affect us. However, his bolla
[36:04] Speaker 3: is absolutely disruptive to the regions, so it is in
[36:07] Speaker 3: our interests.
[36:08] Speaker 6: It is in our.
[36:09] Speaker 3: Interest to pursue them. But you can't. You're not going
[36:13] Speaker 3: to bomb them into oblivion. I mean, that's so firmly
[36:17] Speaker 3: entrenched right in Lebanese society. I mean, you can you
[36:20] Speaker 3: can read anything about this by people who understand his bolla.
[36:26] Speaker 3: That you have to approach it from by you know,
[36:31] Speaker 3: bringing bringing influence on Lebanon, supporting Lebanon to do what
[36:35] Speaker 3: it needs to do in order to enforce the you know,
[36:39] Speaker 3: UN resolution, what was it, seventeen oh one, all those
[36:42] Speaker 3: things bombing, the bombing has done very little.
[36:47] Speaker 2: You know.
[36:47] Speaker 3: We are here, though, and this is the really pessimistic point.
[36:51] Speaker 3: We are here because we just didn't anticipate and I
[36:54] Speaker 3: don't know how we didn't anticipate that whole moves would
[36:58] Speaker 3: turn out to be as Trump card no pun intended, right,
[37:04] Speaker 3: and that was an improvise. You know, Iran built its
[37:07] Speaker 3: entire war strategy around Hall Moves back in five oh six,
[37:14] Speaker 3: and I just don't understand why he didn't understand that.
[37:17] Speaker 3: Because the US military flagged almost we all know this, right,
[37:22] Speaker 3: it's not it's open, open source. The US military flagged
[37:26] Speaker 3: Hormos is the single biggest risk of a war with
[37:29] Speaker 3: Iran for decades, and it was in all the briefings.
[37:33] Speaker 3: The Joint chiefs warned about it before the strikes even started,
[37:36] Speaker 3: and the assumption was going in was that Iran would
[37:39] Speaker 3: either back down or the Navy could just reopen the
[37:41] Speaker 3: straight by force. But you know who who who even
[37:46] Speaker 3: gave that advice? I mean, and now you can't undo
[37:50] Speaker 3: that through negotiations. So Ran knows the power that it has.
[37:54] Speaker 3: It's been proven and that is what no amount of
[37:58] Speaker 3: negotiation and this next sixty days can undo. And Iron knows.
[38:02] Speaker 2: That you offriend of Mickey ran Away.
[38:04] Speaker 4: No, I'm joking.
[38:05] Speaker 2: I'm joking.
[38:07] Speaker 6: I was going to pick on him too, because I
[38:08] Speaker 6: want to talk about happy math from the Pentagon because
[38:12] Speaker 6: you know, we had talked about on the show so
[38:14] Speaker 6: many times before got the briefings from Heg Seth and
[38:16] Speaker 6: Dan Kane and I and I challenged everybody here that
[38:20] Speaker 6: you know that. My thought was, you know, the military
[38:23] Speaker 6: has lied to us before, and I think they're they're
[38:25] Speaker 6: lying to us again. And I know that's hard for folks.
[38:28] Speaker 6: I did not serve you all, did I think we
[38:31] Speaker 6: have to question all those briefings, including from Dan Kane.
[38:35] Speaker 6: I really do, uh. And so you know, I think
[38:38] Speaker 6: history and Hegseeth is a fool. But but history might
[38:41] Speaker 6: not be as kind because you know, you know, the
[38:44] Speaker 6: all the all the programs that seem to have been
[38:46] Speaker 6: obliterated other than the ir the Iranian navy, which is
[38:49] Speaker 6: the bottom of the sea, but not really because of
[38:51] Speaker 6: all the fast attack ships and everything, all all this,
[38:53] Speaker 6: all their drone whatever they have. I don't know. I'm
[38:55] Speaker 6: not so sure that we didn't go through a whole
[38:57] Speaker 6: other exercise of the military not being truthful or maybe
[38:59] Speaker 6: the be was bad at the time, but they said it.
[39:02] Speaker 6: And if you had believed that, then the war was
[39:05] Speaker 6: essentially over. And it's not so to provoke Andy and Jonathan, Jonathan,
[39:10] Speaker 6: what do you what do you think on that?
[39:12] Speaker 5: I think back to Vietnam when we had the whole
[39:14] Speaker 5: body count problem, where we had these whiz kids who
[39:17] Speaker 5: were extremely intelligent engineers that second f McNamara surrounded himself
[39:21] Speaker 5: with to try to get ahead of the Vietnam problem
[39:24] Speaker 5: that that they inherited in the fifties, and so from
[39:27] Speaker 5: France in particular, because France basically gave us their problem
[39:30] Speaker 5: and told us to handle it. And that's what we
[39:31] Speaker 5: did in Vietnam in the early years, and in order
[39:34] Speaker 5: to get ahead of it, we thought of how how
[39:36] Speaker 5: can we rationalize what we're doing there? And they decided
[39:38] Speaker 5: to start doing this body count thing. Well, what that
[39:40] Speaker 5: did was it incentivized people on the ground to first
[39:44] Speaker 5: of all claim kias that did not happen, and second
[39:47] Speaker 5: of all, to kill civilians to increase the number, and
[39:50] Speaker 5: this especially on the on the Vietnamese partner force side,
[39:53] Speaker 5: because that would increase the amount of resources they could
[39:55] Speaker 5: get the hirer the body counts were, whether they're real, fabricated,
[39:58] Speaker 5: or other people that were killed that were not the enemy.
[40:01] Speaker 5: That was all designed so that these numbers could come in,
[40:04] Speaker 5: because that's what the whole thing was focused on, was
[40:06] Speaker 5: how many died, how much damage was done? Numbers, numbers,
[40:10] Speaker 5: And that's exactly what you're talking about, Mark, Where in
[40:12] Speaker 5: the modern world we don't actually have that exact incentivized problem,
[40:16] Speaker 5: but we do have a very similar issue where the
[40:18] Speaker 5: Department of Defense, because that's what it's called by law
[40:20] Speaker 5: and not Department of War. The Department of Defense is
[40:23] Speaker 5: trying to advertise successes that don't exist, and they're doing
[40:27] Speaker 5: that with numbers because it's hard. It feels like it's
[40:29] Speaker 5: harder to argue numbers because you see these things. Oh,
[40:32] Speaker 5: I see the imagery. I see the bomb striking the target.
[40:34] Speaker 5: That must have been a destructive, a destruction of an
[40:36] Speaker 5: enemy target. Well, let's go on the ground and actually
[40:39] Speaker 5: evaluate was that an enemy target. Was that a transporter
[40:42] Speaker 5: or director launcher was that a point of origin site.
[40:44] Speaker 2: Was there a mortar there?
[40:46] Speaker 5: We will never know because we on the US side
[40:49] Speaker 5: are not actually going on the ground to do battle
[40:51] Speaker 5: damage assessment. We had this problem in Iraq, even if
[40:53] Speaker 5: we were in the same area, if we couldn't actually
[40:57] Speaker 5: get to the target to evaluate if it was struck
[40:58] Speaker 5: or not, we couldn't beat totally certain that that was
[41:01] Speaker 5: the right target, the right time, with the right impact
[41:03] Speaker 5: that we're saying that it was. And you know, the
[41:05] Speaker 5: same thing with drone warfare. If you don't have someone
[41:06] Speaker 5: on the ground, a human source to validate or signals
[41:09] Speaker 5: intelligence to validate that that was actually destroyed, you can't
[41:11] Speaker 5: be totally certain that was destroyed. And if we're on
[41:14] Speaker 5: the order of thirty thousand, fifty thousand strikes in a
[41:17] Speaker 5: week or in a month, every one of those strikes
[41:20] Speaker 5: needs to be validated. And the law of large numbers
[41:23] Speaker 5: kind of indicates that if you're not validating small numbers
[41:25] Speaker 5: of targets, you're also not validating large numbers of targets.
[41:28] Speaker 5: So there's this kind of runaway problem where you don't
[41:30] Speaker 5: really know. It's almost like shooting in the dark. You
[41:33] Speaker 5: know you're shooting you're definitely expending rounds, but you're not
[41:35] Speaker 5: really sure, like where are those rounds hitting and are
[41:38] Speaker 5: they actually causing more problems than there were before you
[41:41] Speaker 5: fired that round. So there's a lot of challenge here
[41:43] Speaker 5: without us actually being on the ground to evaluate. And
[41:46] Speaker 5: you could be on the ground a lot of capacities,
[41:48] Speaker 5: like I said, it could be recruited sources, human sources,
[41:50] Speaker 5: it could be really exquisite signals intelligence as to use
[41:52] Speaker 5: in a particular way. It could be other things besides
[41:55] Speaker 5: ground troops. But ground troops really help because that's us,
[42:00] Speaker 5: so you could trust us.
[42:01] Speaker 6: It's the end of gotten no better. I mean, I
[42:03] Speaker 6: hear you. But again, so they're doing these briefings and
[42:06] Speaker 6: they're going to Trump and showing them all this stuff,
[42:07] Speaker 6: and he's getting mesmerized. So Trump was a dufust Thanks
[42:10] Speaker 6: for winning, But so.
[42:12] Speaker 5: Isn't the same problem Maybe Trump won the same problem
[42:15] Speaker 5: against ISIS because and I remember this because I was
[42:18] Speaker 5: in Syrian and a rock during this time in Jordan
[42:19] Speaker 5: as well, where we would you know, deliver up our strike,
[42:22] Speaker 5: battle damage assessments and things like that. They would get
[42:25] Speaker 5: restructured and repackaged before like they would leave us our teams,
[42:28] Speaker 5: and on their way up to the president they would change.
[42:31] Speaker 5: And this was that time when Trump's name had to
[42:33] Speaker 5: be inserted dozens of times into his President's daily Brief
[42:36] Speaker 5: in order for him to even pay attention, not even
[42:37] Speaker 5: to absorb, but to just pay attention. And I remember
[42:40] Speaker 5: we got our National Intelligence Priorities Framework designed and setting
[42:43] Speaker 5: down to us for collection. It was not approved until
[42:46] Speaker 5: Trump got to put his digital you know that that
[42:49] Speaker 5: really weird signature he has in like size forty eight
[42:52] Speaker 5: font on the actual matrix for our collection matrix. That
[42:56] Speaker 5: was that was that had to happen, or else it
[42:57] Speaker 5: couldn't get approved. So this is the person that's listening
[43:00] Speaker 5: to this stuff. He will only consume what he likes
[43:03] Speaker 5: to consume. So what's happening is these hangers on, these
[43:05] Speaker 5: palace hangers on around him are changing the material and
[43:08] Speaker 5: changing the information in a way that he'll actually digest,
[43:12] Speaker 5: which means they have to alter it's actual subject matter
[43:15] Speaker 5: and fundamental truth. That's my belief, and I saw it
[43:17] Speaker 5: during Trump one, where they would actually modify things that
[43:20] Speaker 5: we said on their way to the presence daily brief
[43:23] Speaker 5: so that he would actually keep his eyes open on
[43:25] Speaker 5: the page that's being dictated to him, because he's not
[43:27] Speaker 5: reading it, it's being dictated to him, and he has
[43:30] Speaker 5: to hear his own name. So this is that same
[43:32] Speaker 5: person now ten years later, eight years later, eighty years old,
[43:36] Speaker 5: just turned eighty, barely can stay awake, and so now
[43:39] Speaker 5: think about how much of a challenge is to even
[43:41] Speaker 5: hold his attention long enough. He doesn't care about what's
[43:44] Speaker 5: happening in Iran. He cares about his image, his legacy,
[43:47] Speaker 5: these things, and so the people around him are trying
[43:49] Speaker 5: to feed him information that makes him believe that his
[43:51] Speaker 5: legacy is positive. And you can see in what he's
[43:53] Speaker 5: saying on social media he believes that the things he's saying.
[43:57] Speaker 5: I don't think he disbelieves what he's saying. I think
[44:00] Speaker 5: the information. If he saw what was actually true, he
[44:03] Speaker 5: might not have such a positive attitude toward what's going
[44:05] Speaker 5: on with Iran and related issues.
[44:09] Speaker 3: Yeah, and John, you know, also there's there's the fact
[44:14] Speaker 3: and I'm not defending the military here, Mark.
[44:16] Speaker 6: Look, there's.
[44:20] Speaker 3: There is an explanation that should have taken place, whether
[44:23] Speaker 3: or not Trump wanted to listen to it or not.
[44:25] Speaker 3: And I don't know if that explanation occurred. But you
[44:31] Speaker 3: know b d A, as as John pointed out, is
[44:33] Speaker 3: really tough unless your boots on the ground. And it's
[44:36] Speaker 3: it's complex. I mean you there's three parts of it, right,
[44:39] Speaker 3: I mean you you've got the physical damage assessment and
[44:42] Speaker 3: and that's alone is quite difficult. You know if you're
[44:45] Speaker 3: doing it just from the air, all right, what is
[44:47] Speaker 3: your and you because you're comparing three m post strike pictures, right,
[44:53] Speaker 3: which is difficult. Have assets that are dispersed and moving
[44:57] Speaker 3: you're doing You've got a functional damage assessment, which asks
[45:01] Speaker 3: the harder question. You know, if something was hit, can
[45:03] Speaker 3: it still do its job? So give an example, I
[45:06] Speaker 3: mean we're going after missile launchers. A missile launcher or
[45:09] Speaker 3: with a created support building can can still do its job.
[45:13] Speaker 3: It's completely operational, right, but it looks as though it's
[45:17] Speaker 3: destroyed and it's easy to explain as such. And then
[45:20] Speaker 3: you've got the really harder part, which is a system
[45:24] Speaker 3: assessment which zooms out further and if individual nodes are destroyed,
[45:29] Speaker 3: can the broader system still function? Reconstitute? And so you know,
[45:35] Speaker 3: understanding all that, the analysts understand that, getting operational commanders
[45:40] Speaker 3: to understand all that in itself is quite difficult to
[45:43] Speaker 3: be honest with you. I think John will agree. And
[45:45] Speaker 3: then and then when you're packaging it for a president
[45:48] Speaker 3: who has quite a short attention span, let's you know,
[45:52] Speaker 3: I'm I'm understating that. Then it becomes near impossible. So
[45:57] Speaker 3: even without intentional duplicity, the whole bda thing was bound
[46:02] Speaker 3: to go wrong. And when you're talking about a system assessment,
[46:09] Speaker 3: you know, let's take the navy as an example, someone
[46:12] Speaker 3: somewhere along the line should have told them the conventional
[46:15] Speaker 3: Iranian navy was never a threat. The threat was always
[46:18] Speaker 3: always small boats, mines and drones and missiles. Of course,
[46:25] Speaker 3: in that order, missiles can be fired from anywhere and
[46:29] Speaker 3: hit the straight anywhere.
[46:30] Speaker 2: In Iran.
[46:31] Speaker 3: Around's a big country. It's easy to disperse missiles. The
[46:34] Speaker 3: Iranians use decoys, very easy to hide missile launchers there.
[46:39] Speaker 3: I mean, all these, all these factors play in what
[46:44] Speaker 3: is absolutely unjustifiable is the extreme confidence shown by guys
[46:52] Speaker 3: in uniform when they breathed I agree with you, because
[46:55] Speaker 3: they should understand what I have just explained. Because I'm
[46:58] Speaker 3: not I'm not an intel in a list. I'm an
[47:01] Speaker 3: operational guy, but I at least understand that, and so
[47:06] Speaker 3: there was a sense of of misleading the American public.
[47:10] Speaker 3: I do agree on on that from people who should
[47:13] Speaker 3: have known BETA, or maybe they didn't. Maybe truly they
[47:16] Speaker 3: have reached four star rank been quite ignorant about what
[47:19] Speaker 3: BDA involves, or or you.
[47:22] Speaker 6: Get the senior levels and you realize that you're there
[47:25] Speaker 6: and if you say anything against the grain, you will
[47:27] Speaker 6: not be there any longer.
[47:28] Speaker 2: But I too.
[47:30] Speaker 6: Conventional wisdom, and I'm just throwing this out there, and
[47:33] Speaker 6: just for whatever I you know, you guys know this,
[47:36] Speaker 6: but like, this has nothing to do with the you know,
[47:38] Speaker 6: an F thirty five pilot or someone on a US
[47:41] Speaker 6: ship somewhere, a US marine, like you know, the people
[47:43] Speaker 6: on the ground. This is not them. I'm talking about
[47:46] Speaker 6: the leadership who have to brief the President of the
[47:48] Speaker 6: United States on how the conduct of the war is going.
[47:51] Speaker 6: And and and Dan Kane, the chairman, has been given
[47:54] Speaker 6: a pass because Pete Hagsath is such a complete and
[47:56] Speaker 6: utter fool. Kine has been given a pass. But Kane
[47:59] Speaker 6: also was involved in these briefings. And I don't think
[48:02] Speaker 6: President Trump gets his rosy a picture without Dan Kane
[48:05] Speaker 6: providing that rosy picture. And I think, you know, it's
[48:07] Speaker 6: fair to go back and say because right now, I
[48:10] Speaker 6: mean some people, I think some people, especially on the
[48:12] Speaker 6: right in the United States, are like, hold on a second.
[48:14] Speaker 6: I thought we were winning. We're kicking their ass every day.
[48:16] Speaker 6: All we saw in Fox News was death and destruction
[48:18] Speaker 6: from above. And wait a second. Now the narrative, of
[48:21] Speaker 6: course on the right is shifted that we kind of
[48:24] Speaker 6: screwed the pooch on this. But you know, there is
[48:26] Speaker 6: something to be said out Mick came back, Mick, I
[48:29] Speaker 6: this is I was. I was talking about something that
[48:31] Speaker 6: you would you would we had talked about before, perhaps
[48:34] Speaker 6: disagreed a little bit previously. Just has to do with
[48:37] Speaker 6: kind of the military briefings that were provided over the
[48:39] Speaker 6: last several months. And I you know, we had all
[48:41] Speaker 6: given kind of uh, dan can a pass. But but
[48:45] Speaker 6: I think we do have to go back and because
[48:46] Speaker 6: with the happy math uh and all the things, and
[48:49] Speaker 6: then Andy and Jonathan talked about the difficulties in BDA.
[48:52] Speaker 6: But I do think we can go back and say, well,
[48:54] Speaker 6: hold on a second. You know, the President has been
[48:56] Speaker 6: brief NonStop that we're winning the military and these Pentagon briefings,
[49:01] Speaker 6: even though Haigseth is kind of a fool. Dan Kane
[49:03] Speaker 6: has been sitting there and saying kind of a lot
[49:04] Speaker 6: soberly but saying the same things, and it turns around,
[49:07] Speaker 6: turns out now that will hold on a second. So
[49:10] Speaker 6: I do think that's fair to at least kind of
[49:13] Speaker 6: question that, going back to things such as Andy said,
[49:15] Speaker 6: you know, military briefings at Vietnam with body counts, and
[49:19] Speaker 6: you know there's you know, I look back to times
[49:21] Speaker 6: in Irock in Afghanistan, military briefings turned out really not
[49:23] Speaker 6: to be correct. I think it's fair to just raise
[49:26] Speaker 6: that now as we're sitting in a place where it
[49:28] Speaker 6: looks like we're not coming out. I don't think we're
[49:31] Speaker 6: losing this war at all, but we certainly are. You know,
[49:33] Speaker 6: we didn't win, not yet.
[49:36] Speaker 4: I mean, this should be something that's reviewed by basically
[49:40] Speaker 4: the arm the services committees. They need to review, like
[49:46] Speaker 4: because the tellis assessment, it's going to come out right,
[49:50] Speaker 4: and then they can look at what was briefed and
[49:53] Speaker 4: what was the case, and they can you know, sometimes
[49:56] Speaker 4: they're just mistakes because they adjust their assessment. But it
[50:01] Speaker 4: needs to happen because the history needs to be correct
[50:05] Speaker 4: and we need to make sure that the presidents get
[50:08] Speaker 4: in the right information and obviously the American people because
[50:12] Speaker 4: at the end of the day, we pay for right
[50:16] Speaker 4: I did right before I had to jump on it. Yeah,
[50:19] Speaker 4: to another media outlet. I did have a question for
[50:23] Speaker 4: you guys, because I heard somebody talking. She was on
[50:25] Speaker 4: the House Intelligence Committee. Now she was trumpeting the idea
[50:32] Speaker 4: that Ron signed this thing and said they won't to
[50:34] Speaker 4: have a nuclear we as a big positive. I would say, well, like,
[50:39] Speaker 4: they've agreed to not have a nuclear weapon, I don't
[50:42] Speaker 4: know how many different times, and yeah, right, And then
[50:46] Speaker 4: she said, and you can look it up. They she
[50:51] Speaker 4: had seen intel, which is kind of an odd thing
[50:52] Speaker 4: to say that they have a clandestine nuclear program, which
[50:57] Speaker 4: kind of counted her position. You know, It's like, so,
[51:00] Speaker 4: what does it matter if they're signing a document to
[51:02] Speaker 4: the Great Satan that they're not going to have a
[51:04] Speaker 4: nuclear and then she's and then it was like, wait
[51:07] Speaker 4: a minute, what, because I mean I don't have access
[51:09] Speaker 4: to information anymore. But she said that yesterday as if
[51:14] Speaker 4: she had read it recently. So if they have a
[51:17] Speaker 4: clandestine nuclear.
[51:18] Speaker 2: Program, make you sorry repeat that a little bit. You
[51:20] Speaker 2: broke up a little.
[51:23] Speaker 4: So she was saying as somebody, as a member of
[51:25] Speaker 4: the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, that she had seen
[51:28] Speaker 4: intelligence that they have a current clandestine nuclear weapons program.
[51:35] Speaker 4: I don't know if that's true. I haven't been open.
[51:37] Speaker 4: I don't have access, and nor would I want it
[51:39] Speaker 4: because I talk about this stuff too much. So if
[51:41] Speaker 4: that's the case and we know it, what is it
[51:45] Speaker 4: we're trying to negotiate, And what do we care if
[51:48] Speaker 4: they're writing things that they clearly aren't intending to do?
[51:53] Speaker 4: You know what I mean? Like, do you think that's accurate?
[51:55] Speaker 4: I guess is a question for the group. And then
[51:57] Speaker 4: the other part is how far advanced are we because
[52:02] Speaker 4: we're only talking about the parts of the nuclear program
[52:05] Speaker 4: that we think we know. You see what I mean?
[52:08] Speaker 4: Is there one that's utilizing these fortresses that are impenetrable
[52:12] Speaker 4: right now? I don't know, because that throws a big
[52:16] Speaker 4: monkey ranch into the whole I think scenario going on.
[52:21] Speaker 5: Well, when Chramani sent the delegation, he said that there
[52:24] Speaker 5: had to be a certain number of these Supreme National
[52:26] Speaker 5: Security Council members that would approve of the negotiations. There's
[52:29] Speaker 5: twelve of them. It required nine yes votes, all twelve
[52:32] Speaker 5: of course voted yes because it's an authoritarian regime. But
[52:34] Speaker 5: in that statement saying that all of them agreed, they
[52:37] Speaker 5: said they're going to approach these talks with total distrust.
[52:40] Speaker 5: That's a quote total distrust. So as you mentioned, Mick,
[52:43] Speaker 5: they're going to go sign this piece of paper with
[52:45] Speaker 5: the Great Satan with total distrust. I would lean more
[52:48] Speaker 5: toward the clandestin nuclear program being true than them agreeing
[52:52] Speaker 5: to give up nuclear weapons verbally or on a piece
[52:56] Speaker 5: of paper in Switzerland. And I think that's very important
[52:58] Speaker 5: to understand. You act versus words. You know, there's a
[53:01] Speaker 5: lot of words being thrown around right now because there's
[53:03] Speaker 5: a financial incentive for them to look like they're doing
[53:06] Speaker 5: what they say they're doing until they get their hands
[53:08] Speaker 5: in that cash and they're going to put something that's
[53:11] Speaker 5: going to get diverted. And that was a big, you know,
[53:13] Speaker 5: dispute with the JCPOA was that if we give them
[53:16] Speaker 5: a credit facility or some kind of special purpose vehicle
[53:18] Speaker 5: with money for humanitarian supplies and things, that that would
[53:21] Speaker 5: divert cash for them to use somewhere else in a
[53:24] Speaker 5: negative way, you know, for purchasing dual use weapons. Systems
[53:28] Speaker 5: or actuators and other in rocket systems. Right, And again,
[53:31] Speaker 5: three hundred billion is a lot more than what was
[53:33] Speaker 5: with the JCPOA. So even if that was used in
[53:35] Speaker 5: a very strict humanitarian vehicle, and they claim there will
[53:38] Speaker 5: be no weapons and no nuclear you know, equipment being produced,
[53:41] Speaker 5: that's what they say. They approached this with total distrust.
[53:44] Speaker 5: They said that I would take them at their worth.
[53:47] Speaker 5: They don't trust the West, they have never trusted America.
[53:49] Speaker 5: That has been death to America, death to Israel since
[53:51] Speaker 5: nineteen seventy nine and remain so. And that's actually what
[53:55] Speaker 5: anser Allah or the Huthis and Yemen, that's their slogan
[53:58] Speaker 5: is death to America, death to Israel, even it's on
[54:00] Speaker 5: their flag, and that's an Iranian proxy force. So I
[54:03] Speaker 5: think we would be kind of deluding ourselves with idealism
[54:06] Speaker 5: and hope, just wishing and hoping that the regime is
[54:09] Speaker 5: being honest. They're telling us that they don't trust us.
[54:12] Speaker 5: I feel like, how can you how can you look
[54:13] Speaker 5: at that and just ignore that and say no, they're
[54:15] Speaker 5: going to sign the document and they're going to follow it.
[54:19] Speaker 1: I have a philosophical ish question, and I know the
[54:23] Speaker 1: Iranian regime is shit and terrible, But can you blame
[54:27] Speaker 1: them for giving no, not being able to trust us
[54:31] Speaker 1: going into these negotiations, have you know, looking at the
[54:36] Speaker 1: looking at it? Yeah, absolutely, by looking at the history,
[54:39] Speaker 1: can you blame them, especially if their one goal is
[54:42] Speaker 1: regime security, which Jack John's incredible book Our Ant Shadow
[54:47] Speaker 1: Weapons points out.
[54:50] Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I guess it's from their perspective. They
[54:53] Speaker 4: don't trust us, we don't trust them. And the question
[54:57] Speaker 4: is like, wouldn't you be trying to get a nuclear weapon?
[55:00] Speaker 4: I mean, I know it's not popular to say, but
[55:01] Speaker 4: for pragmatic reasons, like if it like, what would you
[55:05] Speaker 4: be doing if you were in their shoes right now?
[55:07] Speaker 4: What would you be advocating for with the Supreme later? Seriously?
[55:11] Speaker 4: I mean, look at you guys, aren't Yeah, on.
[55:15] Speaker 6: This issue, I think it was a couple of things.
[55:16] Speaker 6: One is you have to see which member of hipsie
[55:18] Speaker 6: said this. You know, you know at which which member
[55:20] Speaker 6: of the committee. Some of them are complete idiots, and
[55:22] Speaker 6: so who knows if she said this, she probably shouldn't
[55:25] Speaker 6: have the number. Two, there has been some reporting that
[55:28] Speaker 6: suggested when the Israelis came to President Trump and uh,
[55:33] Speaker 6: and kind of convinced convinced him for the nuclears, for
[55:37] Speaker 6: the strike on the nuclear facilities, it had to do
[55:39] Speaker 6: with something new that they had uncovered. So there is
[55:42] Speaker 6: there might be something murky out there, and it's probably
[55:44] Speaker 6: less you know, uh, conclusive that there is a clandestine
[55:50] Speaker 6: nuclear weapon program. Could by the way, just that ended
[55:52] Speaker 6: up itself if it was real. That leaks, Sorry it does.
[55:55] Speaker 6: It ain't our collection, so that would leak.
[55:57] Speaker 4: In a sentad way.
[55:57] Speaker 3: It did.
[55:59] Speaker 6: But but I think there's probably some nuance there.
[56:03] Speaker 4: On that.
[56:05] Speaker 6: One thing I wanted to raise with you guys, which
[56:07] Speaker 6: you know, so it was interesting. So CNN reported essentially
[56:11] Speaker 6: there's some side agreements on the MU and and then
[56:16] Speaker 6: insinuated that there are leadership splits within or on I mean,
[56:20] Speaker 6: I was going back and forth with some of the
[56:22] Speaker 6: CNN commentators and they said, Okay, that might be true,
[56:24] Speaker 6: because you really have the political types who are in
[56:27] Speaker 6: Switzerland now. But the idea that somehow there's there's leadership
[56:31] Speaker 6: splits and that you know, first of all, the political
[56:34] Speaker 6: folks can come out on top, but that not that
[56:36] Speaker 6: the IRGC is still controlling everything. I wonder if it
[56:38] Speaker 6: even matters. But and you see this theme with especially
[56:42] Speaker 6: with Vance and Trump, who you know, they say things
[56:44] Speaker 6: I don't even because they've been briefed. But you know,
[56:46] Speaker 6: there's reasonable people we're dealing with, or there are, you know.
[56:49] Speaker 6: But so I guess the question is do you see
[56:51] Speaker 6: any leadership splits? And if there are, doesn't even matter
[56:54] Speaker 6: considering the IRGC are the ones with the guns.
[56:58] Speaker 4: So the only thing I've heard on them leadership splits
[57:01] Speaker 4: isse these folks that we obviously consider hard liners, the
[57:05] Speaker 4: hard liners don't and they basically told them, don't come
[57:08] Speaker 4: back if you concede anything that we told you not
[57:11] Speaker 4: to concede. Like they're not acting like Gallibov and Arachi,
[57:15] Speaker 4: you know, like they're they're I mean, correct me if
[57:19] Speaker 4: I'm wrong, But most of what I've heard is they
[57:23] Speaker 4: have been told like, even if you want to concede something,
[57:26] Speaker 4: if we told you not to, don't do it. That's
[57:29] Speaker 4: what it doesn't Matt Price, Yeah, right, yeah, but you.
[57:35] Speaker 6: Know there's always this search for moderates. I mean, Jonathan,
[57:37] Speaker 6: you have a pretty good sense of history of US
[57:39] Speaker 6: Iranian relations, I mean from you know, Bud McFarland's key
[57:42] Speaker 6: in a birthday cake or whatever, the fuck we did then.
[57:45] Speaker 6: I mean, we always have this incredible desire to finding
[57:47] Speaker 6: moderate to speak to in Iran and it never works
[57:50] Speaker 6: and we end up looking like naive idiots.
[57:53] Speaker 5: Yeah, and actually, for the listeners, what Mark's referring to
[57:55] Speaker 5: is the Iran Contra affair where when we secretly went
[57:59] Speaker 5: to go agree in Iran to delivering weapons for drugs
[58:02] Speaker 5: and so on and all that scandal. There was a
[58:05] Speaker 5: cake also delivered off the aircraft with a key in
[58:08] Speaker 5: the cake, which is kind of a fascinating part of
[58:09] Speaker 5: our history. I recommend people go read about it if
[58:11] Speaker 5: they haven't read about that. But it's interesting.
[58:16] Speaker 4: Why would we put again, it was like a trust exchange, and.
[58:21] Speaker 5: It was actually organized by an Israeli businessman and that's
[58:23] Speaker 5: the one who recommended putting the cake or putting the
[58:25] Speaker 5: key in the cake. It's a whole interesting.
[58:28] Speaker 6: It's I mean, it's really it's a humiliating story. But
[58:31] Speaker 6: again it was a key bugged.
[58:33] Speaker 3: No.
[58:36] Speaker 5: But if you're looking at today right now in Iran,
[58:38] Speaker 5: the question about is there a split, the answer is yes.
[58:40] Speaker 5: And the way I can I can confirm that. So
[58:43] Speaker 5: you know, the regime pays a lot of people to
[58:45] Speaker 5: go out in the streets and do these pro regime
[58:46] Speaker 5: protests to make it look like there are people in
[58:48] Speaker 5: Iran that like widely supporting what's going on. Now these
[58:51] Speaker 5: have actually gotten a little bit out of a hand
[58:53] Speaker 5: because the people that are supporting the negotiations in Switzerland
[58:57] Speaker 5: on the pro regime side are actually telling these protesters
[59:00] Speaker 5: to please stop protesting, and they're not because they're being
[59:04] Speaker 5: controlled by IERGC elements who are telling them to continue protesting.
[59:07] Speaker 5: And you can actually see this played out on different
[59:09] Speaker 5: Iran controlled media outlets. You know, there's the Islamic Republic
[59:12] Speaker 5: of Iran Broadcasting which is the IERGC controlled media. Then
[59:15] Speaker 5: there's a Ministry of Intelligence controlled broadcasting station also, and
[59:19] Speaker 5: there are different narratives on both of these, even though
[59:21] Speaker 5: they're both pro regime on the Ministry of Intelligence side
[59:24] Speaker 5: and the Foreign Ministry supported media. They're saying that these
[59:27] Speaker 5: protests are going down and people are leaving the streets,
[59:29] Speaker 5: and on the IERGC side, they're actually amplifying and saying
[59:32] Speaker 5: more people are coming out to the streets to protest
[59:34] Speaker 5: the US negotiations with Iran. There is certainly.
[59:38] Speaker 6: I love this, it's interesting, and we geek out on
[59:40] Speaker 6: this stuff. The big question for you then doesn't matter?
[59:43] Speaker 6: Does it?
[59:44] Speaker 4: Is there?
[59:44] Speaker 6: I mean, so you know we're seized on this, you
[59:46] Speaker 6: see an intelligence report, they're split. So, okay, does it
[59:49] Speaker 6: actually matter with the final Iranian position? How can the
[59:52] Speaker 6: US take advantage of this argument? And maybe I'm totally wrong,
[59:55] Speaker 6: is it doesn't matter because the herdline think anyway?
[59:58] Speaker 5: It does matter because the way that we are defining
[1:00:01] Speaker 5: moderate and hardliner is shifting. They are all hardliners in
[1:00:05] Speaker 5: my opinion. If we say moderate, we're joking to ourselves.
[1:00:08] Speaker 5: We're just talking in relative terms. But there's one person
[1:00:11] Speaker 5: that's on the delegation in Switzerland that tells me that
[1:00:13] Speaker 5: this matters, and that's Golibof. I actually saw yesterday, I
[1:00:17] Speaker 5: think it was on CNN. He was described as a moderate,
[1:00:19] Speaker 5: and I had to reread that sentence because I was like,
[1:00:21] Speaker 5: how are you calling this guy a moderate? He is
[1:00:23] Speaker 5: a deep seated hardlining member of the old IRGC crew
[1:00:27] Speaker 5: that should have been whacked on day one, And in fact,
[1:00:30] Speaker 5: the US asked Israel not to kill him, him and
[1:00:32] Speaker 5: Vahiti both because we wanted to negotiate with him, because
[1:00:35] Speaker 5: we didn't really understand who these people were, and now
[1:00:38] Speaker 5: we see who they are and he's there in Switzerland.
[1:00:39] Speaker 5: So if he is there in Switzerland, then whatever he
[1:00:41] Speaker 5: decides is going to be the law of the land,
[1:00:44] Speaker 5: which is a very important point. It's not that they
[1:00:46] Speaker 5: sent a Ragchi this time or Pozeshkian. There's a reason
[1:00:48] Speaker 5: Pozeshkiin is not on the delegation because Posesshkiin has zero
[1:00:52] Speaker 5: control over what happens. He can say a lot, and
[1:00:54] Speaker 5: he does say a lot on social media, but it's
[1:00:56] Speaker 5: the IURGC who's in charge. In Golibof has held almost
[1:00:59] Speaker 5: every important position in the IRGC that exists, and now
[1:01:03] Speaker 5: he is the parliament speaker, so he controls the modules also,
[1:01:06] Speaker 5: which is their like their Senate. He controls that now
[1:01:10] Speaker 5: and he's the one that's leading the delegation. It's him
[1:01:12] Speaker 5: a Ragchi, the Foreign Minister, it's represented from the Supreme
[1:01:14] Speaker 5: National Security Council. It's the Central Bank Director of Iran
[1:01:18] Speaker 5: who's a sanctioned individual but has a black diplomatic passport
[1:01:20] Speaker 5: and travels to the United States to DC and oil representatives.
[1:01:24] Speaker 5: So it's the mystery of oil. This is the delegation.
[1:01:28] Speaker 5: So to your point, Mick, this Yeah, exactly. This is
[1:01:30] Speaker 5: about the straits of horror moves and the movement of oil.
[1:01:32] Speaker 5: This is not about resolution of conflict. It's about a
[1:01:35] Speaker 5: specific economic outcome. As you mentioned, Mark, that Trump got
[1:01:39] Speaker 5: flustered with what's going on economically and is trying to
[1:01:41] Speaker 5: find a way out. That's why those people are at
[1:01:43] Speaker 5: that meeting, so that there can be a way out
[1:01:45] Speaker 5: for the US government to somehow get out of this
[1:01:49] Speaker 5: with something.
[1:01:50] Speaker 6: It seems like we're getting our asses handed by that.
[1:01:52] Speaker 6: I mean, the Iranians are really good negotiators. I mean,
[1:01:54] Speaker 6: but just you know, I mean, this is I mean,
[1:01:57] Speaker 6: I hate to say this, Mick. I'm like, I'm with
[1:01:59] Speaker 6: you on this, but I want us to win. But
[1:02:01] Speaker 6: you have this select team versus wit Cooff and Jared
[1:02:05] Speaker 6: and jd Vance. I just how do we win this?
[1:02:09] Speaker 5: Well, plus, these negotiators on the Iran side have been
[1:02:12] Speaker 5: negotiating the same people, The same named people have been
[1:02:14] Speaker 5: negotiating for forty years. They're super experienced. Yeah, they've they've
[1:02:18] Speaker 5: met every American delegation and they've seen them come and go.
[1:02:21] Speaker 5: It's kind of like us going to Afghanistan every year
[1:02:24] Speaker 5: and we meet the guys for the first time. They've
[1:02:26] Speaker 5: been there the whole time, you know, and it's very
[1:02:29] Speaker 5: similar to that.
[1:02:32] Speaker 4: So I mean, like we're trying to come up with
[1:02:34] Speaker 4: ideas and maybe I'll throw this to any In fact,
[1:02:37] Speaker 4: they will throw it to any. One of the biggest
[1:02:41] Speaker 4: issues of getting ships at the Strada Hormos is getting
[1:02:44] Speaker 4: ships to accept that it's safe enough even with US
[1:02:47] Speaker 4: military escort. You think there's a way that we could
[1:02:52] Speaker 4: basically ensure all these ships and even put our people
[1:02:55] Speaker 4: on it to try to get the free flow, because
[1:02:58] Speaker 4: if we if we took that away from this becomes
[1:03:01] Speaker 4: a different discussion. Like I'm throwing out there, I don't
[1:03:03] Speaker 4: have any basis to know whether that's a potential, but
[1:03:06] Speaker 4: I think we need to start thinking out of the
[1:03:07] Speaker 4: box right now because if we're headed down to an
[1:03:11] Speaker 4: I Runian successful outcome of this, Like, is that a
[1:03:16] Speaker 4: potential with the military escort and the military umbrella that
[1:03:20] Speaker 4: would be over that we could start getting the free force?
[1:03:25] Speaker 3: I think and answer to your question, I mean, and
[1:03:27] Speaker 3: I hate to say this, but there's the military side.
[1:03:30] Speaker 3: There's no clean military fix. The military side could be
[1:03:34] Speaker 3: used to enable a negotiated agreement about traits of all news.
[1:03:39] Speaker 3: That's a tough part about this. I mean, keeping it
[1:03:41] Speaker 3: open by force is what the blockade already tried. It
[1:03:44] Speaker 3: just turned the Strait into contested space. You know, it
[1:03:47] Speaker 3: didn't really solve anything. So a long term military commitment
[1:03:52] Speaker 3: to hold a twenty one mile wide waterway against mines,
[1:03:56] Speaker 3: fast boats, and drones is.
[1:03:59] Speaker 6: Not a strategy, you know.
[1:04:00] Speaker 3: I mean it's a it's a liability, right, So the
[1:04:05] Speaker 3: real fix and it's a it's not a good answer.
[1:04:08] Speaker 3: I mean it's the only answer. It's just not a
[1:04:10] Speaker 3: satisfactory one.
[1:04:11] Speaker 4: Is it's a.
[1:04:12] Speaker 3: Slow structural approach, right, reduce dependence on the Strait itself.
[1:04:19] Speaker 3: Saudi and Ua pipelines already bypass you know, they're already
[1:04:25] Speaker 3: working on a bypar bypassing the Straits with exporting their oil.
[1:04:33] Speaker 3: But that's you know, that's a long term approach. Find
[1:04:37] Speaker 3: ways to make the cost of closing it land on
[1:04:40] Speaker 3: Iran's own economy, specifically, not just spike prices for the
[1:04:44] Speaker 3: whole world. Right now, the threat works precisely because the
[1:04:48] Speaker 3: pain is global and diffuse. It's not concentrated on Turan.
[1:04:52] Speaker 3: So we can find a way to do that. I mean,
[1:04:56] Speaker 3: house isn't home Moose isn't a problem you can off
[1:05:00] Speaker 3: and it's a fact of geography, and Iran will always
[1:05:03] Speaker 3: be able to lean on it. The real progresses is
[1:05:07] Speaker 3: making that leverage work less by finding it, you know,
[1:05:10] Speaker 3: ways around it, and also directing some of that pain
[1:05:14] Speaker 3: back on to Tehran. So it's it's it can't be
[1:05:18] Speaker 3: solved by the military, which course paints me to say.
[1:05:22] Speaker 3: And you know, while while I'm here and I know
[1:05:26] Speaker 3: these about to shut us down, he's got to go
[1:05:28] Speaker 3: on to more important things. No, I'm loving this, but
[1:05:32] Speaker 3: but you know, Mark and Mick both kind of said
[1:05:35] Speaker 3: it brought up the point that we need guys who
[1:05:39] Speaker 3: really know what the goals are and how to negotiate,
[1:05:42] Speaker 3: and we talked about what we should talk about. You
[1:05:44] Speaker 3: know what do they do? So very briefly, I think
[1:05:48] Speaker 3: they need to handle Lebanon first, right, because it's a
[1:05:51] Speaker 3: live fuse. Iran has explicitly tied or moose access the
[1:05:56] Speaker 3: Lebanon cease fire holding and we just watched it use
[1:05:59] Speaker 3: that exactly justification to shut the straight down three days
[1:06:02] Speaker 3: after signing the MoU So Israel isn't a party to
[1:06:06] Speaker 3: this deal. Washington's having to manage a partner. It doesn't control,
[1:06:13] Speaker 3: you know, it doesn't control the clock. And that's going
[1:06:16] Speaker 3: to mean real pressure on They're going to have to
[1:06:19] Speaker 3: bring real pressure on Israel, not just public statements asking
[1:06:24] Speaker 3: for a restraint, because restraint hasn't worked. And until that
[1:06:28] Speaker 3: is solved, and I mean real pressure, I mean whatever
[1:06:32] Speaker 3: leverage we have with Israel, it's a time to use
[1:06:35] Speaker 3: it because our interests as nations have diverged. And again
[1:06:40] Speaker 3: I don't you know, I don't always agree with JD. Vance,
[1:06:44] Speaker 3: but he's right in addict at that point. And Lebanon
[1:06:48] Speaker 3: can make the whole thing blow up on our face
[1:06:50] Speaker 3: unless we clamp it down right now. And the way
[1:06:52] Speaker 3: to do that is bring pressure in Israel.
[1:06:54] Speaker 4: That's number one.
[1:06:55] Speaker 3: Number two is get the nuclear mechanism verified, not just promise.
[1:06:59] Speaker 4: Right, So.
[1:07:03] Speaker 3: Sixty days isn't going to solve the problem, but it's
[1:07:06] Speaker 3: enough time to convert the vague language into a binding
[1:07:11] Speaker 3: kind of verified agreement and similar to the jig poet
[1:07:17] Speaker 3: right with real inspection, access, a real timeline, something that
[1:07:22] Speaker 3: costs Iran a real price if it walks away, and
[1:07:25] Speaker 3: then the other way. The third thing is we've got
[1:07:30] Speaker 3: to stop spending leverage before Iran has moved on anything.
[1:07:37] Speaker 3: The blockade's gone, the frozen assets are already moving. That
[1:07:42] Speaker 3: was round one and it went before anything was verified.
[1:07:45] Speaker 3: So whatever's left the reconstruction fund, future sanctions relief has
[1:07:51] Speaker 3: to stay strictly conditional, this time tied to confirmed, verifiable steps,
[1:07:58] Speaker 3: not handed over on good faith alone. So you know,
[1:08:02] Speaker 3: I mean, the honest bottom line is nobody seriously expects
[1:08:06] Speaker 3: sixty days to resolve the missile program or the proxies
[1:08:10] Speaker 3: or the stockpile. The real tests is narrower, and that
[1:08:15] Speaker 3: is what we can salvage out of the language from
[1:08:18] Speaker 3: this mlu I think taking the steps we've already taken.
[1:08:21] Speaker 3: At the same time, when it comes to a whole moose,
[1:08:23] Speaker 3: looking for a longer term solution where we are not
[1:08:26] Speaker 3: so dependent on who moose because this whole talk of
[1:08:29] Speaker 3: us keeping it open militarily is absolutely impractical and it
[1:08:34] Speaker 3: plays right into Iron's hands. So we want to figure
[1:08:37] Speaker 3: out a way to remove that Trump conck from Iran.
[1:08:41] Speaker 4: It just makes you wonder, like when they talked about
[1:08:43] Speaker 4: the straight closing and we knew it was going to
[1:08:45] Speaker 4: be closed, what was the plan. What was the plan
[1:08:50] Speaker 4: to either keep it open or prevent it from closing
[1:08:53] Speaker 4: or I mean that's what you talk about in the
[1:08:57] Speaker 4: policy coordination process. I mean it's.
[1:09:01] Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, just describe a problem with sent Com, you know,
[1:09:06] Speaker 3: and I think I suspect that Mark is right on
[1:09:09] Speaker 3: this that. I mean, I don't know what advice was offered,
[1:09:15] Speaker 3: but I feel that if you offer advice, if you're
[1:09:19] Speaker 3: at that nexus right between policy and strategy, and you
[1:09:23] Speaker 3: have four stars on your collar, you should be willing
[1:09:25] Speaker 3: to throw your career away for the sake of the nation.
[1:09:29] Speaker 3: If you are offering advice and you know that not
[1:09:32] Speaker 3: following that advice is going to be disastrous to your
[1:09:34] Speaker 3: country's interests, then it's time to resign. And we didn't
[1:09:40] Speaker 3: see that. I don't know what happened. I don't know
[1:09:43] Speaker 3: why sent Com wasn't banging the table harder on that piece,
[1:09:47] Speaker 3: but it does make me suspicious. I'm very disappointed, of course,
[1:09:52] Speaker 3: not that anyone's really losing sleep over they.
[1:09:55] Speaker 4: Didn't say that. You know, if here's your options and
[1:09:57] Speaker 4: they all are not good, I don't know.
[1:10:00] Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, yeah, absolutely, I'm saying and in order
[1:10:04] Speaker 3: for but there needs to be some bite to that. Right,
[1:10:07] Speaker 3: here's your options, but if if the boss follow goes
[1:10:10] Speaker 3: down a path that you know is going to be disastrous,
[1:10:13] Speaker 3: then what do you do is just troll along and say, Okay,
[1:10:16] Speaker 3: well he didn't take my advice. No, as a four
[1:10:19] Speaker 3: star general, you owe your country a little more than that.
[1:10:21] Speaker 3: That's just my belief. You get treated like a like
[1:10:24] Speaker 3: a proconsole, like a viceroy. People, Jennif flipped in front
[1:10:28] Speaker 3: of you, I mean those of you wearing uniform. No,
[1:10:31] Speaker 3: I'm not exaggerating. It's unbelievable the way we treat four
[1:10:35] Speaker 3: stars and so they're gods. Well, when the time comes
[1:10:39] Speaker 3: with that, you know the whole Spider Man thing. Right,
[1:10:42] Speaker 3: with great power comes great responsibility, and that includes being
[1:10:45] Speaker 3: willing to say, Okay, I'm going to walk away from.
[1:10:49] Speaker 4: This because.
[1:10:51] Speaker 3: What you're going to do, what you're about to do
[1:10:54] Speaker 3: by not following my advice, it's going to seriously hurt
[1:10:57] Speaker 3: our interests. I know that all the fucking all the
[1:10:59] Speaker 3: counter arguments to this, blah blah blah, you are. I'm
[1:11:03] Speaker 3: not challenging civilian control of the military. Far from it.
[1:11:06] Speaker 3: I'm saying that the military has a very key role
[1:11:11] Speaker 3: in in uh in in in the long run, helping
[1:11:17] Speaker 3: political leadership, not do things set out disastrous.
[1:11:22] Speaker 6: I mean, look the outcome commander or chief, remember he
[1:11:26] Speaker 6: he retired. Do you want to know?
[1:11:28] Speaker 4: Partners?
[1:11:30] Speaker 6: I just you know, so there there is that option.
[1:11:32] Speaker 6: So I just I think it's yeah.
[1:11:34] Speaker 3: And it does happen occasionally, very occasionally in the US
[1:11:38] Speaker 3: military too occasionally. I mean, break Newball was probably the
[1:11:42] Speaker 3: last time a three star or full star resigned of
[1:11:47] Speaker 3: a question of principle, and that was on the outset
[1:11:49] Speaker 3: of the Iraq War.
[1:11:51] Speaker 6: And and Andy. The reason why I think it's fair
[1:11:52] Speaker 6: to ask these questions is that the possibilities and I
[1:11:55] Speaker 6: hope it doesn't get that way for a complete strategic
[1:11:58] Speaker 6: disaster right now for the United States is real. I mean,
[1:12:01] Speaker 6: that's how bad, no, I I you know, I mean,
[1:12:07] Speaker 6: this is this is a doozy.
[1:12:09] Speaker 2: You know.
[1:12:10] Speaker 3: That's why I'm saying it's not okay to now, Hey,
[1:12:13] Speaker 3: you didn't take my advice, so I'm still gonna draw
[1:12:17] Speaker 3: my pay and be jenifucted to Uh No, it doesn't.
[1:12:21] Speaker 2: Work that way.
[1:12:24] Speaker 3: In my mind, of course, damn above colonel, maybe that's why.
[1:12:30] Speaker 2: But man, oh man, Okay, what a show. We'll see
[1:12:38] Speaker 2: what happens.
[1:12:38] Speaker 1: Obviously, this week, and we're gonna once we get off here,
[1:12:41] Speaker 1: we'll probably be looking on our Twitter to see you
[1:12:42] Speaker 1: about any kind of updates and stuff like that. With
[1:12:44] Speaker 1: the talks in Switzerland right now. Yeah, I don't know
[1:12:49] Speaker 1: what else to say. We're doing plugs. John Hackett, great
[1:12:52] Speaker 1: book I ran, Shadow Weapons The Theory of a Regular War.
[1:12:54] Speaker 1: Those links are in the description. Mick mulroy, The white
[1:12:57] Speaker 1: Fish Security Summit link is in the description. Come me
[1:13:00] Speaker 1: up in February of next year. Mark, I'm gonna put
[1:13:03] Speaker 1: the link to the article you wrote recently down in
[1:13:06] Speaker 1: the description as well that we mentioned, So check that
[1:13:08] Speaker 1: out of course, Ay Milburn, Uh, when of the type
[1:13:11] Speaker 1: it's gathers great autobiography. That link is in the description
[1:13:15] Speaker 1: as well. Do us a favor If you like the show,
[1:13:19] Speaker 1: hit It Like Hit subscribe rated five stars and check
[1:13:22] Speaker 1: out our Patreon, Patreon dot com slash the teamhouse for
[1:13:27] Speaker 1: free episodes, early episodes and helping support the show. Guys
[1:13:31] Speaker 1: A pleasure as always, Unhappy.
[1:13:33] Speaker 5: Father's Day, Happy Father's Day, guys.
[1:13:37] Speaker 2: Copy Father's Day to John to be.
[1:13:39] Speaker 6: Yeah, that's right, Wow.
[1:13:45] Speaker 2: Mike's always looking for me as always.
[1:13:47] Speaker 3: Yes, The Modes of Modern Medical Science it doesn't matter
[1:13:53] Speaker 3: what age you are now you can still approach Get
[1:13:56] Speaker 3: on you ju.
[1:13:58] Speaker 2: Thanks, Thanks guys.
[1:14:03] Speaker 7: Hey guys, I want to take a moment to tell
[1:14:05] Speaker 7: you about the Teamhouse Podcast newsletter. If you go and subscribe,
[1:14:10] Speaker 7: it's totally free, and what it will do is aggregate
[1:14:13] Speaker 7: all of our data, all of our content that we
[1:14:16] Speaker 7: put out, the things that are on the Teamhouse on
[1:14:20] Speaker 7: our geopolitics podcast, Eyes On, things that I write journalistically
[1:14:25] Speaker 7: with Sean Naylor on the High Side, anything else that
[1:14:28] Speaker 7: we have going on books, we recommend upcoming guests that
[1:14:33] Speaker 7: we have coming on the show, and also you know,
[1:14:36] Speaker 7: filtering in some fun stuff in there as well. If
[1:14:39] Speaker 7: you'll go and check it out. We send it out
[1:14:41] Speaker 7: just once a week. We don't want to spam you guys.
[1:14:43] Speaker 7: It's just a kind of roll up of all of
[1:14:45] Speaker 7: our content on a weekly basis. You can find our
[1:14:49] Speaker 7: newsletter at Teamhouse Podcast dot kit dot com slash join again.
[1:14:55] Speaker 7: The website for that is Teamhouse Podcast dot kit dot
[1:14:58] Speaker 7: com slash join. So we ought to see you there.
[1:15:02] Speaker 6: The link will be down in the description
[1:16:00] Speaker 3: As

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.