WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.300
Iran has figured out that we can't beat them.

2
00:00:03.300 --> 00:00:05.000
We're not weakening Iran.

3
00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:07.000
We have strengthened Iran.

4
00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:11.000
And we can't stop their drone attacks.

5
00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:14.000
And what you're seeing is far more chaotic decision-making

6
00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:16.000
is happening in the White House than it's happening

7
00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:17.500
in the government of Iran.

8
00:00:17.500 --> 00:00:20.500
And its evidence, Trump, is losing power.

9
00:00:20.500 --> 00:00:23.000
So when I look through the response to the last conversation,

10
00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:25.000
the audience had lots of different types of questions.

11
00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:27.500
Like there's 90 or a million people stuck right in the heart of this

12
00:00:27.500 --> 00:00:29.000
that often don't really have a voice.

13
00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:31.000
What do you think happens next for them?

14
00:00:31.000 --> 00:00:32.500
And what is Israel's role in this?

15
00:00:32.500 --> 00:00:35.000
Well, Israel is playing two roles here

16
00:00:35.000 --> 00:00:38.000
that have not helped us correctly assess the situation.

17
00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:39.000
And we'll talk about that.

18
00:00:39.000 --> 00:00:41.000
And then what do you think happens with Europe?

19
00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:45.000
NATO is for all practical purposes dead.

20
00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:46.000
It will happen next.

21
00:00:46.000 --> 00:00:51.000
So for 21 years, I laid out what a hypothetical bombing campaign

22
00:00:51.000 --> 00:00:52.500
of Iran would look like.

23
00:00:52.500 --> 00:00:54.000
And what I was here last time,

24
00:00:54.000 --> 00:00:57.000
every single thing we talked about unfolded

25
00:00:57.000 --> 00:00:59.000
for several weeks of the war.

26
00:00:59.000 --> 00:01:01.500
So when you did this 21 years of modeling these attacks,

27
00:01:01.500 --> 00:01:04.500
how did America come out of this situation?

28
00:01:04.500 --> 00:01:07.500
So there was a consistent set of findings

29
00:01:07.500 --> 00:01:10.000
and America can bomb them, attack them.

30
00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:13.500
We could even threaten to murder all 92 million of them.

31
00:01:13.500 --> 00:01:15.500
But the bottom line is,

32
00:01:16.500 --> 00:01:19.500
that is the real danger for us.

33
00:01:23.500 --> 00:01:26.000
Guys, I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins.

34
00:01:26.000 --> 00:01:29.500
The algorithm, if you follow a show, will deliver you

35
00:01:29.500 --> 00:01:32.500
the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed.

36
00:01:32.500 --> 00:01:34.500
So when we have our best episodes on this show,

37
00:01:34.500 --> 00:01:36.500
the most shared episodes, the most rated episodes,

38
00:01:36.500 --> 00:01:38.000
I would love you to know.

39
00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:39.500
And the simple way for you to know that

40
00:01:39.500 --> 00:01:41.000
is to hit that follow button.

41
00:01:41.000 --> 00:01:43.500
But also, it's the simple, easy, free thing

42
00:01:43.500 --> 00:01:45.500
that you can do to help us make this show better.

43
00:01:45.500 --> 00:01:48.000
I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute

44
00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:49.500
on the app you're listening to this one right now

45
00:01:49.500 --> 00:01:51.000
and hit that follow button.

46
00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:54.000
Thank you so, so, so much.

47
00:01:56.000 --> 00:01:59.000
I would love to see you again.

48
00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:04.000
Professor Robert Pape, good to see you again.

49
00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:06.000
Great to see you again, Stephen.

50
00:02:06.000 --> 00:02:08.000
It's been four weeks since we sat down and talked

51
00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:10.000
about everything that was happening in the war

52
00:02:10.000 --> 00:02:12.000
and it's all moved at light speed.

53
00:02:12.000 --> 00:02:14.000
You made some predictions then.

54
00:02:14.000 --> 00:02:16.000
Many of them have come true already

55
00:02:16.000 --> 00:02:18.000
and many of them still unfolding.

56
00:02:18.000 --> 00:02:20.000
But I wanted to get you back to talk about

57
00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:22.000
what the hell is going on.

58
00:02:22.000 --> 00:02:25.000
And I think that's kind of how I started last conversation.

59
00:02:25.000 --> 00:02:28.000
There's so much that's being said.

60
00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:31.000
And I get the sense that there's a truth that sits

61
00:02:31.000 --> 00:02:32.000
underneath there somewhere.

62
00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:34.000
Because when you look at what the Iranians are saying,

63
00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:35.000
when you look at what the Israelis are saying,

64
00:02:35.000 --> 00:02:37.000
when you look at what Trump and America are saying,

65
00:02:37.000 --> 00:02:39.000
and then you look at reality, at some level,

66
00:02:39.000 --> 00:02:42.000
I feel like we're not being told the truth.

67
00:02:42.000 --> 00:02:44.000
My first question to you, Professor,

68
00:02:44.000 --> 00:02:47.000
is who are you and who are you to speak on this subject matter?

69
00:02:47.000 --> 00:02:50.000
I am a professor at the University of Chicago.

70
00:02:50.000 --> 00:02:54.000
I have been there for 26 years, almost 27 years.

71
00:02:54.000 --> 00:02:57.000
And before that, I was a professor who taught

72
00:02:57.000 --> 00:02:59.000
for the U.S. Air Force.

73
00:02:59.000 --> 00:03:00.000
I taught conventional targeting.

74
00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:03.000
And I thought I was going to go into the Foreign Service.

75
00:03:03.000 --> 00:03:07.000
I wanted to understand how we lost the Vietnam War.

76
00:03:07.000 --> 00:03:10.000
And this became the origins of bombing to win.

77
00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:12.000
Which is your book I have here in front of me?

78
00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:13.000
That's bombing to win.

79
00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:15.000
And 1985, if I've just finished all my classes,

80
00:03:15.000 --> 00:03:18.000
and I have to pick a topic for my PhD,

81
00:03:18.000 --> 00:03:21.000
I wanted to find the book that laid out all the air campaigns

82
00:03:21.000 --> 00:03:25.000
and that explained why Vietnam was a loser.

83
00:03:25.000 --> 00:03:27.000
Where did that L come from?

84
00:03:27.000 --> 00:03:29.000
When you say air campaigns, for someone that knows nothing

85
00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:32.000
about military conflict, what do you mean by air campaigns?

86
00:03:32.000 --> 00:03:36.000
What I mean with an air campaign is when you have military aircraft

87
00:03:36.000 --> 00:03:42.000
who were not just doing a single raid bombing one target one day,

88
00:03:42.000 --> 00:03:46.000
but doing a campaign over days, weeks, months,

89
00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:49.000
in the case of Vietnam over years.

90
00:03:49.000 --> 00:03:52.000
And you wanted to figure out why countries

91
00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:54.000
that do these military campaigns, which is pretty much

92
00:03:54.000 --> 00:03:57.000
what's going on now in the Middle East,

93
00:03:57.000 --> 00:03:59.000
why they don't tend to win.

94
00:03:59.000 --> 00:04:01.000
Why they don't win when they're so strong.

95
00:04:01.000 --> 00:04:08.000
Why is it that when a strong power really gets its ass together?

96
00:04:08.000 --> 00:04:09.000
It's not careless.

97
00:04:09.000 --> 00:04:11.000
It's really thinking hard.

98
00:04:11.000 --> 00:04:15.000
It then applies this force a campaign over time

99
00:04:15.000 --> 00:04:18.000
and comes out a loser.

100
00:04:18.000 --> 00:04:21.000
And you modeled for 20 years a war with Iran

101
00:04:21.000 --> 00:04:22.000
versus the United States.

102
00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:24.000
That's exactly right.

103
00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:27.000
I imagined in class for 90 minutes,

104
00:04:27.000 --> 00:04:31.000
I laid out what a hypothetical bombing campaign

105
00:04:31.000 --> 00:04:34.000
of Iran would look like, starting with the bombing

106
00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:37.000
of its nuclear enrichment sites.

107
00:04:37.000 --> 00:04:39.000
There's multiple sites.

108
00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:42.000
There's Fordo, which is an industrial enrichment

109
00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:44.000
where there are centrifuges.

110
00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:46.000
There's Natons, also centrifuges.

111
00:04:46.000 --> 00:04:50.000
There's Esiphon where you have gasification of the ore

112
00:04:50.000 --> 00:04:53.000
so you can make the centrifuges more efficient.

113
00:04:53.000 --> 00:04:55.000
So it's not just one target.

114
00:04:55.000 --> 00:04:58.000
There's a whole target set, a complex of targets.

115
00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:00.000
And so what I would do is I would lay out,

116
00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:03.000
here are the aircraft that could be used.

117
00:05:03.000 --> 00:05:09.000
Here are the likely results at a tactical level.

118
00:05:09.000 --> 00:05:10.000
Yes, just for context.

119
00:05:10.000 --> 00:05:12.000
So we're looking at a map of Iran.

120
00:05:12.000 --> 00:05:14.000
And we're looking at the Persian Gulf.

121
00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:19.000
And Iran, of course, is to the east of the Persian Gulf.

122
00:05:19.000 --> 00:05:21.000
And Tehran is up to the North Middle.

123
00:05:21.000 --> 00:05:26.000
Right in the middle are a whole series of these nuclear sites.

124
00:05:26.000 --> 00:05:30.000
You have Saagand, which is where the uranium ore actually comes from.

125
00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:32.000
They don't have to bring in ore.

126
00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:33.000
They have plenty of ore.

127
00:05:33.000 --> 00:05:37.000
But the ore has to be distilled so that you can get the tiny bits

128
00:05:37.000 --> 00:05:41.000
of uranium 235 you need for enriching the uranium

129
00:05:41.000 --> 00:05:45.000
for either nuclear reactors or bomb-grade uranium.

130
00:05:45.000 --> 00:05:50.000
That's first done at Esiphon to gasify the ore

131
00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:56.000
so that when it spins in the centrifuge facilities at Natons and Fordo

132
00:05:56.000 --> 00:06:01.000
you can get the purity of the uranium 235.

133
00:06:01.000 --> 00:06:04.000
That's what we're talking about here when we say it's enriched.

134
00:06:04.000 --> 00:06:06.000
So when you did this 21 years of modeling these attacks,

135
00:06:06.000 --> 00:06:13.000
how did the model show America came out of this situation?

136
00:06:13.000 --> 00:06:16.000
There was a consistent set of findings.

137
00:06:16.000 --> 00:06:21.000
You just couldn't ignore, Stephen, which is our bombers

138
00:06:21.000 --> 00:06:26.000
would always be able to destroy the target, the industrial facility

139
00:06:26.000 --> 00:06:28.000
that was enriching the uranium.

140
00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:33.000
The problem always was, no matter which year we did this,

141
00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:38.000
you wouldn't be able to destroy the enriched material,

142
00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:40.000
the actual gold.

143
00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:43.000
So if you're panning for gold, you see what I mean.

144
00:06:43.000 --> 00:06:46.000
And you've got the gold, you can destroy the pan,

145
00:06:46.000 --> 00:06:50.000
you can even destroy the river, you can't get the gold.

146
00:06:50.000 --> 00:06:52.000
So let me repeat that back to you in layman's times

147
00:06:52.000 --> 00:06:54.000
and you tell me if I'm correct.

148
00:06:54.000 --> 00:06:58.000
So they could bomb these sites where they're making the enriched uranium

149
00:06:58.000 --> 00:07:00.000
but it wouldn't destroy the enriched uranium.

150
00:07:00.000 --> 00:07:02.000
It would just put it underneath a bunch of rubble.

151
00:07:02.000 --> 00:07:03.000
That's right.

152
00:07:03.000 --> 00:07:05.000
So you can bomb it but you're basically just kicking the can down the road

153
00:07:05.000 --> 00:07:07.000
because at some point they can go back and get it,

154
00:07:07.000 --> 00:07:10.000
it's undamaged and then they can carry on their process.

155
00:07:10.000 --> 00:07:11.000
That's right.

156
00:07:11.000 --> 00:07:15.000
And Stephen, they might even anticipate the bombs coming

157
00:07:15.000 --> 00:07:17.000
because they might get some indications

158
00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:20.000
we're building up and then dispersing advance.

159
00:07:20.000 --> 00:07:23.000
And at the end of last year, they did Operation Midnight Hammer

160
00:07:23.000 --> 00:07:26.000
where they bombed the sites with these incredible...

161
00:07:26.000 --> 00:07:28.000
Exactly as we did in class.

162
00:07:28.000 --> 00:07:32.000
Literally, I had just modeled it for the students three weeks before

163
00:07:32.000 --> 00:07:34.000
and almost exactly the platforms.

164
00:07:34.000 --> 00:07:37.000
I mean, you know, the B2s, the MOAB.

165
00:07:37.000 --> 00:07:42.000
I mean, every single thing we talked about unfolded just as we had modeled in class.

166
00:07:42.000 --> 00:07:45.000
So what is going on now?

167
00:07:45.000 --> 00:07:48.000
I want you to help me cut through all of this noise and all of this propaganda.

168
00:07:48.000 --> 00:07:53.000
What's going on now is we're not weakening Iran in a sense

169
00:07:53.000 --> 00:07:57.000
where Iran will be weaker a year from now, two years from now.

170
00:07:57.000 --> 00:08:00.000
We have strengthened Iran.

171
00:08:00.000 --> 00:08:04.000
And we're strengthening Iran in multiple ways.

172
00:08:04.000 --> 00:08:07.000
So far, we've just been talking about bombs on target.

173
00:08:07.000 --> 00:08:14.000
My real specialty, Stephen, is the interaction of military action and politics.

174
00:08:14.000 --> 00:08:17.000
You are not just hitting an industrial target.

175
00:08:17.000 --> 00:08:23.000
People in the country, the population, the regime, they're reacting to that politically.

176
00:08:23.000 --> 00:08:27.000
And that reaction is tremendously important.

177
00:08:27.000 --> 00:08:32.000
And that's what I discovered in my work studying Vietnam in the 1980s.

178
00:08:32.000 --> 00:08:37.000
That why the bombing campaign was failing, the political reactions by the population,

179
00:08:37.000 --> 00:08:43.000
often are overwhelming the tactical military effects.

180
00:08:43.000 --> 00:08:49.000
So you can hit the target, you can destroy the industrial facilities.

181
00:08:50.000 --> 00:08:56.000
And in fact, you can energize the population to work even harder,

182
00:08:56.000 --> 00:08:59.000
to overcome all that damage.

183
00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:04.000
And sometimes they have tremendous geographic advantages.

184
00:09:04.000 --> 00:09:08.000
In Vietnam, there was an area called the Ho Chi Minh Trail,

185
00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:15.000
which was a, where the logistics, where the ammo for the biocongrilla fighters in the South

186
00:09:15.000 --> 00:09:17.000
were getting their ammo.

187
00:09:17.000 --> 00:09:24.000
And in the 1960s, we knocked out 80 plus percent of the throughput of that pipeline,

188
00:09:24.000 --> 00:09:25.000
of that trail.

189
00:09:25.000 --> 00:09:26.000
You know what?

190
00:09:26.000 --> 00:09:27.000
It wasn't enough.

191
00:09:27.000 --> 00:09:32.000
And we ended up not being able to stop that little, any bitty bit of throughput

192
00:09:32.000 --> 00:09:34.000
that still could get through.

193
00:09:34.000 --> 00:09:39.000
And incentivize even more to get it through because they knew we couldn't stop it.

194
00:09:39.000 --> 00:09:42.000
And that is what fueled the VC.

195
00:09:42.000 --> 00:09:48.000
And ultimately, the Viet Cong, the gorillas that were really up against in Vietnam,

196
00:09:48.000 --> 00:09:52.000
that is what ultimately bolstered their morale.

197
00:09:52.000 --> 00:09:58.000
They knew we couldn't beat them, even though we whittled them down by 80%.

198
00:09:58.000 --> 00:10:01.000
We couldn't get that last 15 or 20%.

199
00:10:01.000 --> 00:10:05.000
And that was what was energizing their morale.

200
00:10:05.000 --> 00:10:07.000
So how does that apply to what's going on now?

201
00:10:07.000 --> 00:10:09.000
In simple times, what's going on?

202
00:10:09.000 --> 00:10:13.000
Iran has figured out that we can't beat them.

203
00:10:13.000 --> 00:10:15.000
That's what's going on, Stephen.

204
00:10:15.000 --> 00:10:18.000
They are figuring out that we can't beat them.

205
00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:19.000
We can bomb them.

206
00:10:19.000 --> 00:10:21.000
We can attack them.

207
00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:26.000
We could even threaten to murder all 92 million of them, which is the civilization threat

208
00:10:26.000 --> 00:10:28.000
by President Trump.

209
00:10:28.000 --> 00:10:38.000
And the bottom line is that we can't get to that final 10, 20% of drones and missiles.

210
00:10:38.000 --> 00:10:40.000
OK, that Iran has.

211
00:10:40.000 --> 00:10:44.000
And it's probably bigger than that that we can't knock out.

212
00:10:44.000 --> 00:10:47.000
See, we're able to knock out anything that's above ground.

213
00:10:47.000 --> 00:10:51.000
If there's a launcher and it's above ground, we can see it.

214
00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:52.000
We can see it with satellites.

215
00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:55.000
We can see it with other sensors as well.

216
00:10:55.000 --> 00:10:57.000
That thing is going to be gone in a few days.

217
00:10:57.000 --> 00:11:01.000
And that's what the air campaign that you've watched for 40 days is doing.

218
00:11:01.000 --> 00:11:06.000
When Secretary Hague Seth or General Kane talk about hitting 11,000,000 targets,

219
00:11:06.000 --> 00:11:13.000
these are targets, most of almost all of them, that are very clearly visible and above ground.

220
00:11:13.000 --> 00:11:15.000
This is true of the Navy ships as well.

221
00:11:15.000 --> 00:11:16.000
Well, guess what?

222
00:11:16.000 --> 00:11:19.000
The Iranians knew that was always going to be vulnerable.

223
00:11:19.000 --> 00:11:26.000
So what they've been doing is they have been not just deeply burying their industrial enrichment facilities.

224
00:11:26.000 --> 00:11:33.000
They've been deeply burying their arsenals of drones, deeply burying their arsenals of missiles.

225
00:11:33.000 --> 00:11:41.000
And so they are in a position where even though we are unleashing enormous amounts of air power against them,

226
00:11:41.000 --> 00:11:51.000
and we are technically superior, we can't stop their drone attacks against the ships in the straight of Hormuz.

227
00:11:51.000 --> 00:11:52.000
They know it.

228
00:11:52.000 --> 00:11:54.000
They can use that to their advantage.

229
00:11:54.000 --> 00:11:59.000
And boy, are they using it to their advantage enormously?

230
00:11:59.000 --> 00:12:04.000
Yesterday, the Secretary of War Pete Hague Seth did a press conference.

231
00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:08.000
And one of the reporters said to him, there's been a ceasefire announced,

232
00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:12.000
but it appears that Iran is still attacking neighboring countries.

233
00:12:12.000 --> 00:12:20.000
Hague Seth's response to the reporter was Iran would be wise to find a way to get their carrier pigeon

234
00:12:20.000 --> 00:12:26.000
to the troops out in remote locations to let them know not to shoot any longer.

235
00:12:26.000 --> 00:12:30.000
It's sometimes take time for ceasefires to take hold, which was really alarming to me,

236
00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:35.000
because it suggests that there is actually not a centralized leadership structure in Iran.

237
00:12:35.000 --> 00:12:39.000
And actually, if there's not a centralized leadership structure, how does one negotiate a ceasefire?

238
00:12:39.000 --> 00:12:42.000
If there's lots of different factions doing lots of different things now, is that true?

239
00:12:42.000 --> 00:12:44.000
I would say it's probably decentralized.

240
00:12:44.000 --> 00:12:46.000
I think you probably write about that.

241
00:12:46.000 --> 00:12:49.000
I'm trying to figure out who in Iran is negotiating with America,

242
00:12:49.000 --> 00:12:54.000
and why it doesn't seem to be the case that whoever is negotiating control the fact that people are still firing Joe.

243
00:12:54.000 --> 00:12:59.000
I say, yeah, decentralization means chaotic, and they can't actually make decisions.

244
00:12:59.000 --> 00:13:01.000
That's just not the case.

245
00:13:01.000 --> 00:13:08.000
The more you move up the chain of command, the more the leader can give pre-delegated orders

246
00:13:08.000 --> 00:13:13.000
if X happens to do Y, those can hold for hours and days.

247
00:13:13.000 --> 00:13:15.000
And that's true in every organization.

248
00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:20.000
That's why leaders can go on vacation for a week and come back.

249
00:13:20.000 --> 00:13:23.000
And they're worried, of course, when they come back.

250
00:13:23.000 --> 00:13:28.000
But the bottom line is that the leaders are setting the strategic direction.

251
00:13:28.000 --> 00:13:29.000
Who is the leader?

252
00:13:29.000 --> 00:13:32.000
Oh, it's definitely the Supreme Leader, the son of the one we just killed.

253
00:13:32.000 --> 00:13:33.000
Oh, without a doubt.

254
00:13:33.000 --> 00:13:38.000
I think this idea that he's not there, there's absolutely no evidence of that.

255
00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:40.000
Yes, it's decentralized in a sense.

256
00:13:40.000 --> 00:13:42.000
It's hard to find them to target them.

257
00:13:42.000 --> 00:13:47.000
But by the way, Stephen, I think the reason that we're trying to talk smack about the Supreme Leader

258
00:13:47.000 --> 00:13:50.000
is he, is he alive, is he dead?

259
00:13:50.000 --> 00:13:55.000
Is we're trying to go to him into revealing his location so we can kill him.

260
00:13:55.000 --> 00:13:57.000
But that's not working.

261
00:13:57.000 --> 00:14:03.000
So, and it's also not stopping Iran from putting out 10 points to Pakistan in the negotiations.

262
00:14:03.000 --> 00:14:10.000
It's not stopping Iran from having messages that go through Pakistan to the White House.

263
00:14:10.000 --> 00:14:15.000
President Trump is then agreeing to the 10 points that are coming from Iran, you see.

264
00:14:15.000 --> 00:14:19.000
And then later on, of course, President Trump is taking it back.

265
00:14:19.000 --> 00:14:24.000
But the bottom line is what you're seeing in terms of chaotic decision making.

266
00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:30.000
Far more chaotic decision making is happening in the White House and the United States than's happening in the government of Iran.

267
00:14:30.000 --> 00:14:37.000
They're rising power in the region as our power is declining precipitously.

268
00:14:38.000 --> 00:14:40.000
What do you think happens next?

269
00:14:40.000 --> 00:14:42.000
We are at a fork in the road.

270
00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:49.000
When I was here last time, I was walking you through the three stages of the escalation trap.

271
00:14:49.000 --> 00:14:52.000
And you kept pushing me, tell me more, tell me more.

272
00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:55.000
This, I was a little bit reluctant to do that.

273
00:14:55.000 --> 00:14:57.000
Well, there is a stage four.

274
00:14:57.000 --> 00:15:00.000
For anyone that didn't hear that episode, could you give us one sentence on stage one?

275
00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:01.000
Yes.

276
00:15:01.000 --> 00:15:06.000
Stage one is America bombs, does leadership change bombing?

277
00:15:06.000 --> 00:15:12.000
We hit targets, kill leaders, but the regime actually evolves in a stronger than before.

278
00:15:12.000 --> 00:15:21.000
Stage two is that then stronger regime lashes back with horizontal escalation and takes the straight of hormones.

279
00:15:21.000 --> 00:15:24.000
At least initially takes the straight of hormones.

280
00:15:24.000 --> 00:15:30.000
And then stage three is that's the ground option to start to take the straight of hormones back.

281
00:15:30.000 --> 00:15:35.000
And that's exactly what you saw play out in the first several weeks of the war.

282
00:15:35.000 --> 00:15:37.000
Stage three was about the Marines.

283
00:15:37.000 --> 00:15:39.000
The Marines hadn't even moved yet.

284
00:15:39.000 --> 00:15:42.000
And I'm telling you, the Marines are likely going to move.

285
00:15:42.000 --> 00:15:48.000
There's going to be movement to round options in stage three here very rapidly in this war.

286
00:15:48.000 --> 00:15:52.000
At that point in time when we had our first discussion, you wanted to push for the future.

287
00:15:52.000 --> 00:15:59.000
I said, no, we need to wait in the reasons, Steven, it's because what you're not seeing with me is throwing random darts at the future.

288
00:15:59.000 --> 00:16:06.000
I'm doing risk assessment out about as far as you can have stable predictions.

289
00:16:06.000 --> 00:16:10.000
And in war, that usually means two, three, four weeks.

290
00:16:10.000 --> 00:16:13.000
It doesn't mean we can say where will be a year from now.

291
00:16:13.000 --> 00:16:18.000
Here, though, now that we're in 40 days, we're at a different point.

292
00:16:18.000 --> 00:16:20.000
We've clearly passed stage one.

293
00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:24.000
We're past stage two where they control the straight of hormones.

294
00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:27.000
We've bellied up to stage three of the ground operations.

295
00:16:27.000 --> 00:16:31.000
Now we're at a branch, a fork in the road.

296
00:16:31.000 --> 00:16:39.000
There's no way to go back to February 27, which is the pre-war period that many people would love to go back to.

297
00:16:39.000 --> 00:16:42.000
I too would like to go back to February 27.

298
00:16:42.000 --> 00:16:44.000
That's not the future.

299
00:16:44.000 --> 00:16:49.000
What happens at this point on in the modeling and is a branch?

300
00:16:49.000 --> 00:17:01.000
Either we go through with the ground war or Iran becomes an emerging, not right away, fourth center of world power.

301
00:17:01.000 --> 00:17:05.000
That is the branch that we face now.

302
00:17:05.000 --> 00:17:10.000
This branch is becoming more evident hour by hour.

303
00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:12.000
Explain that to me.

304
00:17:12.000 --> 00:17:20.000
Everybody now knows that Iran is controlling the straight of hormones and controlling shipping.

305
00:17:20.000 --> 00:17:21.000
That's selective blockade.

306
00:17:21.000 --> 00:17:23.000
I'm taking it a step further.

307
00:17:23.000 --> 00:17:27.000
That's not just about insurance rates of shipping.

308
00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:38.000
That's generating political power for Iran to get other states to cow-tow to it, to accept its objectives.

309
00:17:38.000 --> 00:17:40.000
What are those objectives?

310
00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:43.000
Let's talk about how this affects, say, Asia.

311
00:17:43.000 --> 00:17:48.000
I'm going to get it to global and then we'll come back to the Gulf itself.

312
00:17:48.000 --> 00:17:54.000
The shipping that goes through the straight of hormones, 80% to 90% of it is going right to Asia.

313
00:17:54.000 --> 00:17:58.000
The power that comes with that is with, say, India.

314
00:17:58.000 --> 00:18:01.000
India is not siding with the United States.

315
00:18:01.000 --> 00:18:07.000
India is at best neutral and maybe even a little bit more edging toward Iran.

316
00:18:07.000 --> 00:18:14.000
Well, before this, you could imagine that the United States and India would be much more cooperative here.

317
00:18:14.000 --> 00:18:16.000
That's not what's occurring and why is that?

318
00:18:16.000 --> 00:18:21.000
It's because that oil that's going into Asia for India.

319
00:18:21.000 --> 00:18:24.000
This isn't just about the price of oil.

320
00:18:24.000 --> 00:18:27.000
This is about the supply of oil.

321
00:18:27.000 --> 00:18:36.000
When you lose literally all the supply, that is a greater cost than simply having to pay more for it.

322
00:18:36.000 --> 00:18:42.000
So, India is in a much more difficult situation than Europe and the United States right now.

323
00:18:42.000 --> 00:18:44.000
Now look at Japan.

324
00:18:44.000 --> 00:18:49.000
Notice in the Oval Office, President Trump brought in the leader of the head of state of Japan.

325
00:18:49.000 --> 00:18:51.000
And basically, Brow beat her.

326
00:18:51.000 --> 00:18:53.000
And she still wouldn't budge.

327
00:18:53.000 --> 00:18:59.000
She still would not cow-tow to Trump here and actually provide military support.

328
00:18:59.000 --> 00:19:00.000
What did she do?

329
00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:03.000
She's distancing herself from the United States.

330
00:19:03.000 --> 00:19:09.000
That's exactly what Iran wants out of America's Asian allies.

331
00:19:09.000 --> 00:19:15.000
This is geopolitical power and it's rooted in the control of hormones.

332
00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:18.000
It's rooted in the selective military blockade.

333
00:19:18.000 --> 00:19:27.000
That selective military blockade produces vulnerability to India, vulnerability to Japan.

334
00:19:28.000 --> 00:19:31.000
And that is what we call it the leverage.

335
00:19:31.000 --> 00:19:35.000
But the leverage is not enough of a, I think, a full description.

336
00:19:35.000 --> 00:19:39.000
This is reorienting America's allies in Asia.

337
00:19:39.000 --> 00:19:43.000
Now, let's talk about what's happening in the Persian Gulf itself.

338
00:19:43.000 --> 00:19:52.000
Before the war, February 27, there was essentially a balance in the Persian Gulf, where you had Iran on one side,

339
00:19:52.000 --> 00:19:59.000
and you had this growing collection of Gulf states that were part of an emerging web.

340
00:19:59.000 --> 00:20:04.000
They're cooperating with Israel more and more on different issues.

341
00:20:04.000 --> 00:20:13.000
President Trump is bringing in his AI billionaires to sort of grease this cooperation so that there's some material benefits.

342
00:20:13.000 --> 00:20:18.000
Well, that was effectively a counter-balancing coalition to Iran.

343
00:20:18.000 --> 00:20:25.000
Now, what's happened after 40 days is this is breaking down fast.

344
00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:31.000
America has military bases and Qatar has military bases and Bahrain has military bases and Kuwait.

345
00:20:31.000 --> 00:20:36.000
I'm just picking a few in military base, of course, in Saudi Arabia.

346
00:20:36.000 --> 00:20:43.000
These military bases, they are producing little leverage here against Iran.

347
00:20:43.000 --> 00:20:48.000
In fact, our aircraft carriers are not anywhere near the Persian Gulf.

348
00:20:48.000 --> 00:20:51.000
They're a thousand miles away.

349
00:20:51.000 --> 00:20:54.000
These bases are big fat targets.

350
00:20:54.000 --> 00:20:56.000
They are above ground.

351
00:20:56.000 --> 00:21:01.000
Iran's precision drones can hit things above ground and they're doing it on those bases.

352
00:21:01.000 --> 00:21:04.000
That was their immediate retaliation.

353
00:21:04.000 --> 00:21:05.000
What's happening?

354
00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:09.000
Number one is the anchor, the military anchor of this coalition,

355
00:21:09.000 --> 00:21:13.000
started to disappear within hours of the bombing on February 28th.

356
00:21:13.000 --> 00:21:15.000
What do you mean by the military anchor?

357
00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:18.000
In order to have this coalition work.

358
00:21:18.000 --> 00:21:20.000
Which is like Saudi Arabia, Qatar.

359
00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:24.000
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait.

360
00:21:24.000 --> 00:21:28.000
Somebody has to be the guarantor of protection.

361
00:21:28.000 --> 00:21:32.000
It's like the mob boss who protects everybody else.

362
00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:35.000
That is the United States.

363
00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:40.000
That is what our military bases were supposed to do.

364
00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:49.000
They become the military anchor that allows them for there to become political counterbalancing against Iran.

365
00:21:49.000 --> 00:21:53.000
That was the Kushner idea in the first Trump administration.

366
00:21:53.000 --> 00:21:59.000
It seemed to work and it seemed to bring some of these states together

367
00:21:59.000 --> 00:22:03.000
who wouldn't necessarily think you would cooperate with Israel.

368
00:22:03.000 --> 00:22:08.000
Well, this is now this war, his torpedoes, this whole idea.

369
00:22:08.000 --> 00:22:13.000
President Trump is not even willing to do much to actually defend our own bases,

370
00:22:13.000 --> 00:22:16.000
much less Saudi Arabia, much less UAE.

371
00:22:16.000 --> 00:22:19.000
What he's telling them is you go out there and start defending yourself.

372
00:22:19.000 --> 00:22:21.000
Well, that's not a guarantor of security.

373
00:22:21.000 --> 00:22:26.000
The next thing that's happening is the three states which were operating more in concert

374
00:22:26.000 --> 00:22:31.000
are starting to break down and operate in three pools.

375
00:22:31.000 --> 00:22:38.000
You have Iraq, which is now complaining more and more about US military presence there.

376
00:22:38.000 --> 00:22:41.000
They're distancing themselves from American military presence.

377
00:22:41.000 --> 00:22:45.000
And remember, we installed that government in 2003.

378
00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:47.000
So they're not siding with us.

379
00:22:47.000 --> 00:22:50.000
They're distancing themselves from us.

380
00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.000
Then you have Qatar and you have Oman.

381
00:22:54.000 --> 00:23:01.000
What Iran's doing is saying, we should share some of these tolls with Oman.

382
00:23:01.000 --> 00:23:05.000
They're moving Oman into their camp.

383
00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:09.000
So you have Iraq moving closer to Iran, Oman moving closer.

384
00:23:09.000 --> 00:23:12.000
Qatar is trying to keep its head down as much as possible.

385
00:23:12.000 --> 00:23:16.000
They're not trying to get their nose in this anymore.

386
00:23:16.000 --> 00:23:18.000
And what's the third pool?

387
00:23:18.000 --> 00:23:21.000
The third pool is Saudi Arabia, the UAE.

388
00:23:21.000 --> 00:23:25.000
These are the states that are most under threat.

389
00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:28.000
And what has Saudi Arabia done just in the last week?

390
00:23:28.000 --> 00:23:31.000
They've gone to cooperate more with Pakistan.

391
00:23:31.000 --> 00:23:34.000
They have a security deal with Pakistan.

392
00:23:34.000 --> 00:23:35.000
What does that mean?

393
00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:43.000
They're looking to Pakistan as much or maybe even more than the United States as their guarantor of security.

394
00:23:43.000 --> 00:23:48.000
So all of this coalition, it's not all siding with Iran right now.

395
00:23:48.000 --> 00:23:53.000
It's fragmented and that's weakening America.

396
00:23:53.000 --> 00:23:55.000
So what happens next?

397
00:23:55.000 --> 00:24:00.000
You know, as President Trump wants to call the war off, that's not going to put us back to February 27.

398
00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:03.000
Iran has 20% of the world's oil.

399
00:24:03.000 --> 00:24:10.000
It's going to be able to have $75 billion, $100 billion of revenues here over the next year.

400
00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:15.000
And also those deeply buried caves and tunnels where they have their drones.

401
00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:18.000
That can be used to fashion nuclear weapons.

402
00:24:18.000 --> 00:24:22.000
Within a year, Iran could have nuclear weapons and we can't stop it.

403
00:24:22.000 --> 00:24:29.000
So if we pull back, you can start to see that Iran's power is going to grow internally.

404
00:24:29.000 --> 00:24:36.000
But then even more than that, its relationships with Russia, its relationships with China,

405
00:24:36.000 --> 00:24:41.000
will start to move closer together against America.

406
00:24:41.000 --> 00:24:46.000
And you see this happening from the moment, almost the first several days of the war.

407
00:24:46.000 --> 00:24:53.000
Russia almost immediately offered Iran military targeting information to target US ships.

408
00:24:53.000 --> 00:24:56.000
That's why our carriers are so far away.

409
00:24:56.000 --> 00:25:01.000
It's because Russia has the ability to see those carriers, tell Iran where they are.

410
00:25:01.000 --> 00:25:05.000
And if those carriers get too close, man, they're going to be smashed.

411
00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:08.000
But it can get worse than that, Stephen.

412
00:25:08.000 --> 00:25:19.000
As this power grows over time, as these incentives for China, Russia, and Iran to cooperate against America grow over time,

413
00:25:19.000 --> 00:25:23.000
Iran has control now of 20% of the world's oil.

414
00:25:23.000 --> 00:25:26.000
Russia has 11% of the world's oil.

415
00:25:26.000 --> 00:25:36.000
That means there can be either formal or tacit cooperation to take 30% of the world's oil off the global market,

416
00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:40.000
let China soak up a whole lot of that.

417
00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:50.000
And that can truly produce mega economic consequences for America, for Europe.

418
00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:52.000
And why are they not going to do that?

419
00:25:52.000 --> 00:25:54.000
Because they're nice guys.

420
00:25:54.000 --> 00:25:56.000
Is that really what we're counting on now?

421
00:25:56.000 --> 00:26:04.000
Russia Putin is not going to want to wreck America's economy because he has a bond with Donald Trump.

422
00:26:04.000 --> 00:26:10.000
What do you think the fundamental flawed assumption was at the start of all of this from the United States?

423
00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:17.000
That Iran was weak on its last legs, and all we had to do was push it over the edge of a cliff,

424
00:26:17.000 --> 00:26:19.000
and it was just a matter of just one more push.

425
00:26:19.000 --> 00:26:21.000
And then the people would rise up.

426
00:26:21.000 --> 00:26:27.000
Yeah, we have painted a picture of Iran as beaten down.

427
00:26:27.000 --> 00:26:33.000
As the reason it's not retaliating very much is they have no capability to retaliate.

428
00:26:33.000 --> 00:26:40.000
And I tell you this Steven, so I've been in big debates here at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York,

429
00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:48.000
where I've literally been the only person on the stage to stand up and warn that this picture of Iran is way too negative.

430
00:26:48.000 --> 00:26:55.000
There was a widespread, I think, false assumption across the foreign policy community.

431
00:26:55.000 --> 00:27:04.000
No one willing to really stand up and challenge it very strongly that Iran was basically collapsing on its own.

432
00:27:04.000 --> 00:27:10.000
This was always, in my view, underestimating the power of Iran.

433
00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:13.000
And you say, well, where does my view come from?

434
00:27:13.000 --> 00:27:15.000
It came from the modeling of the bombing.

435
00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:18.000
What would happen as this went forward?

436
00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:23.000
And none of these elements of Iran's power were ever knocked out.

437
00:27:23.000 --> 00:27:28.000
When I look through the response to the last conversation, the audience had lots of different types of questions.

438
00:27:28.000 --> 00:27:33.000
So I'm going to try and represent some of the audience's questions to try and bring them into the conversation.

439
00:27:33.000 --> 00:27:35.000
One of them was about Israel's role in this.

440
00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:40.000
And I thought it might actually link to what you just said about where we get our intelligence from,

441
00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:45.000
then informs the decisions we make, because there are some people that are skeptical that the intelligence is coming from Israel

442
00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:49.000
and that therefore that it might not be as accurate as if it was coming from our resources.

443
00:27:49.000 --> 00:27:53.000
I would say Israel has been playing the role of diplomatic spoiler.

444
00:27:53.000 --> 00:27:59.000
So in the 12-day war, when the last June, when the US bomb for Do, we've been focusing on that.

445
00:27:59.000 --> 00:28:01.000
That happened in the middle of the 12-day war.

446
00:28:01.000 --> 00:28:09.000
Donald Trump said he was going to negotiate with a certain set of Iranians and literally the next day,

447
00:28:09.000 --> 00:28:20.000
36 hours later, Israeli air power killed them, killed the negotiators we were set to negotiate with.

448
00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:26.000
This was totally spoiling the idea of a diplomatic outcome, because they were dead.

449
00:28:26.000 --> 00:28:30.000
So you couldn't have a negotiated outcome.

450
00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:37.000
Now, if we come to February 28, who dropped the first bombs that killed the Supreme Leader,

451
00:28:37.000 --> 00:28:41.000
that killed those other several dozen doves that he was meeting with?

452
00:28:41.000 --> 00:28:53.000
Donald Trump, as many of our governments have, describes that you had a balance of hawks and doves inside of the Iranian government.

453
00:28:53.000 --> 00:29:02.000
And the idea here is with leadership decapitation is, well, if you kill the hawks, then the doves will just be the ones left.

454
00:29:02.000 --> 00:29:08.000
We did the opposite, or more correctly, the bombing was started by Israel on February 28.

455
00:29:08.000 --> 00:29:19.000
We came in behind, and in fact, Secretary Rubio or Secretary of State explained a few days later that Israel basically backed us in a corner.

456
00:29:19.000 --> 00:29:24.000
Because Israel said, we're going to kill that Supreme Leader, whether you like it or not.

457
00:29:24.000 --> 00:29:32.000
And that is going to maybe lead to attacks on your military bases, so you better prepare an air campaign to come behind.

458
00:29:32.000 --> 00:29:34.000
And Rubio said, that's what happened.

459
00:29:34.000 --> 00:29:44.000
Because again, just before the February 28 bombing, we're negotiating with Iran, and we're killing the very people that Trump was saying,

460
00:29:44.000 --> 00:29:52.000
are the ones we wanted to negotiate with, the ones who were going to help move Iran closer to the American position.

461
00:29:52.000 --> 00:29:54.000
That was Israel as spoiler.

462
00:29:54.000 --> 00:30:01.000
So there's this individual called Ali Laryjani, the former Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council.

463
00:30:01.000 --> 00:30:06.000
And he was killed in an Israeli-led air strike on March 17, 2026.

464
00:30:06.000 --> 00:30:10.000
Trump claimed on true social that, I can't say his name, but I'm going to try.

465
00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:18.000
Laryjani was the primary contact for a 10-point peace proposal that Trump had called workable and a basis for a real agreement.

466
00:30:18.000 --> 00:30:29.000
Trump suggested that the strike was poorly timed when Israel killed him and complained that Israel's lone wolf actions were complicating his ability to wrap up the war on his own terms.

467
00:30:29.000 --> 00:30:36.000
He famously posted that he was inches away from the biggest deal in history before the assassination reset the clock.

468
00:30:37.000 --> 00:30:41.000
So this would be the third instance, then, of Israel as diplomatic spoiler.

469
00:30:41.000 --> 00:30:52.000
What you're hearing from Trump's own mouth is he thought he was close to a working relationship, maybe not a full deal with a certain set of individuals.

470
00:30:52.000 --> 00:30:58.000
In this case, Ali Laryjani, and what did Israel do when they found out about it? They killed that person.

471
00:30:58.000 --> 00:31:05.000
And yes, I understand there's issues of intelligence, but most of us don't have a clearance, so we can't talk about that.

472
00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:12.000
So let's talk about the actual public description that we've heard from Prime Minister Netanyahu over the last several years.

473
00:31:12.000 --> 00:31:26.000
The public description is that Iran is simply a paper tiger that Israel has been dominating Iran, knocking out its air defenses, launching other attacks here in 2024.

474
00:31:26.000 --> 00:31:38.000
Or the rhetoric that's coming publicly has been painting the picture of Iran as a week and not just weekend, but basically cripple.

475
00:31:38.000 --> 00:31:46.000
It's down on its last legs, and all you need is a final coup to grow. That has been Prime Minister Netanyahu's language.

476
00:31:46.000 --> 00:31:51.000
The other thing that the audience wanted to know is they wanted more specifics on stage three.

477
00:31:51.000 --> 00:31:52.000
Yes. Yes.

478
00:31:52.000 --> 00:31:55.000
And is stage three happening? We talked last time about round trips.

479
00:31:55.000 --> 00:32:06.000
It's very important that I've been saying this on the substack and my ex to follow the key indicators here of deployment, not follow just what's occurring with the rhetoric of our leaders.

480
00:32:06.000 --> 00:32:21.000
And the key thing to know is that if you're going to weaken Iran with ground power, there's only a few ways you can get that ground power into Iran.

481
00:32:21.000 --> 00:32:33.000
You could try to come through Pakistan, but Pakistan actually is Iran's ally who gave Iran the 600 center fuges in 2002 to start developing its enrichment firm.

482
00:32:33.000 --> 00:32:36.000
And Pakistan has 100 nuclear weapons or so.

483
00:32:36.000 --> 00:32:43.000
So I don't think we're doing this here. You could try to do it with Afghanistan, but notice you'd have to get all the troops in Afghanistan. That's not working.

484
00:32:43.000 --> 00:32:52.000
You could also go to Azerbaijan. That's up there. Notice on the first day of the war, there was a missile that hit Azerbaijan and people on CNN.

485
00:32:52.000 --> 00:33:02.000
What's going on here? It's just a random, in fact, I think our public statement on that day was this shows how how incoherence the Iran leadership is.

486
00:33:02.000 --> 00:33:11.000
That's not what I saw. What I saw is they understood that Azerbaijan was always thought to be a staging area to go to terror.

487
00:33:11.000 --> 00:33:21.000
And so if you're going to take terror on with a division or two, you would really want to have your forces start here from Azerbaijan.

488
00:33:21.000 --> 00:33:27.000
Now so far, though, that's not happening. Azerbaijan said, nope, don't count on us. We're not getting in the middle of this.

489
00:33:27.000 --> 00:33:38.000
Now we're back to why would you start to think about Marines to take territory here on the coast of Iran?

490
00:33:38.000 --> 00:33:49.000
So inside Iran, where the strait of Hamuz is, that's the, that's the beginning of it. You would start there around inside Iran around the strait of Hamuz as a beachhead.

491
00:33:49.000 --> 00:33:55.000
There's some photos which I'll throw up on the screen showing what the terrain around the strait of Hamuz looks like. And it's, it is quite shocking.

492
00:33:55.000 --> 00:34:04.000
It's, it's a moonscape. And what you can see is that this is the most difficult terrain for amphibious operations to operate in.

493
00:34:04.000 --> 00:34:14.000
Where you have troops that are on ships on landing vessels, just like saving private Ryan, they go from the water onto the beach.

494
00:34:14.000 --> 00:34:21.000
You would also then have some air power with some ospreys, but they're doing essentially the same thing. They're coming on to the same beach.

495
00:34:21.000 --> 00:34:22.000
What's an osprey?

496
00:34:22.000 --> 00:34:32.000
An osprey is a special made plane that we've made for the Marines. And it's a plane that is a hybrid between a helicopter and a jet.

497
00:34:32.000 --> 00:34:45.000
And so the propellers on the plane are able to rotate so they can fly as a propeller plane here or a cheap man's jet, or they can actually, like a helicopter.

498
00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:49.000
And that's really great if you want to fly fast to a beach and then go straight down.

499
00:34:49.000 --> 00:34:55.000
So are you saying that you think they will put boots on the ground in the strait of Hamuz?

500
00:34:55.000 --> 00:34:58.000
Let me just fill out this a little bit more. Okay.

501
00:34:58.000 --> 00:35:04.000
So the other big thing that the folks need to know is where is the oil?

502
00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:18.000
Iran's oil, and here I'm drawing a circle here, Iran's oil is all in this southwestern part, almost all of it is in the southwestern part of Iran.

503
00:35:18.000 --> 00:35:27.000
Kuwait's oil is all right here. Iraq has a couple puddles of oil. It has a big puddle of oil right here.

504
00:35:27.000 --> 00:35:38.000
Saudi's oil is all right here. You might try to land forces of division here in Iraq and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and come around this way.

505
00:35:38.000 --> 00:35:46.000
This is why knocking out these bases as truly platforms here. This is why they, I think they start on day one.

506
00:35:46.000 --> 00:35:54.000
This wasn't just to hit the bases in retaliation. They are weakening our ability. They're taking away different axes of attack.

507
00:35:55.000 --> 00:36:08.000
And this is why in the sub-stack I published three days before the war. I'm specifically talking about Marines moving in limited areas to take coastal regions as beach heads.

508
00:36:08.000 --> 00:36:16.000
What's a beach head? A beachhead is where you have a foothold, a toehold where you're going to funnel in more forces after that.

509
00:36:16.000 --> 00:36:29.000
And you are going to very likely want to control an area that's at least about 100 miles by 20 miles in order to get behind all this mountainous terrain.

510
00:36:29.000 --> 00:36:39.000
And what does that look like? The oil fields. Steven, this is what President Trump is almost surely talking about when he says he's going to take Iran's oil fields.

511
00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:54.000
What he is probably being given options for is how you could start in a limited way with an amphibious, a marine, a limited assault to take a small set of stretch of beaches.

512
00:36:54.000 --> 00:37:05.000
And then you would want to follow and take. If you're going to start this at all, you're almost surely going to want to just start to take the oil fields and President Trump's been talking that way for years really.

513
00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:14.000
He also said in a recent interview that if it was up to him, he would go and take the oil, but he said the American people weren't like that.

514
00:37:14.000 --> 00:37:20.000
And he said it once. And then he said it again. And then he said it again. This was during a press conference on Monday, April 6.

515
00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:28.000
He said, if it were up to me, I would take the oil. I would keep it all for ourselves and make a lot of money because to the victor belong the spoils.

516
00:37:28.000 --> 00:37:38.000
But people in the country sort of say just when income home, and I'm okay with that too. And he said that from the interview that I was watching twice, which made me think that he really wants to go take the oil.

517
00:37:38.000 --> 00:37:46.000
But if he does put troops on the ground in Iran, it just creates a clear target for those drain strikes.

518
00:37:46.000 --> 00:37:57.000
It creates a clear target for those drown strikes, but what people maybe are not fully understanding is the political consequences of the deaths of those Marines.

519
00:37:57.000 --> 00:38:04.000
Most people are assuming if those Marines go in and die, this will make America run away.

520
00:38:04.000 --> 00:38:09.000
It'll be like a punch in the face and we'll run away. That's not likely to be what happens.

521
00:38:09.000 --> 00:38:17.000
Again, this is my area of what happens when you have military force in politics come together.

522
00:38:17.000 --> 00:38:29.000
You need to understand that when those Marines go in and say hundreds die or so over time, there will be 36% of the public that will have supported that.

523
00:38:29.000 --> 00:38:43.000
That 36% is going to see those Marines died for them. That 36% is likely to double down in their commitment because otherwise they died for nothing.

524
00:38:43.000 --> 00:38:50.000
Now, the 59%, excuse me, who's opposed to the war? They'll still be pretty hotly opposed to the war.

525
00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:53.000
I'm not saying they're going to move toward the war, Stephen.

526
00:38:53.000 --> 00:39:02.000
What I'm saying is you have a Republican president supported by 36% of the Republicans here, almost no Democrats.

527
00:39:02.000 --> 00:39:11.000
If you start to actually have deaths here, this is going to lead to a bigger version of we can't withdraw now.

528
00:39:12.000 --> 00:39:18.000
We must, quote, finish the job. Otherwise, they will have died for nothing.

529
00:39:18.000 --> 00:39:26.000
This is what happened in Vietnam. In Vietnam, in the early stages, you will see that it's sticky up the support for the war.

530
00:39:26.000 --> 00:39:34.000
It takes a while to go down. And why does it take so long to go down? It's because of exactly what I'm saying.

531
00:39:34.000 --> 00:39:42.000
The politics of this, of the death of our troops in battle, does not lead to we cutting run.

532
00:39:42.000 --> 00:39:50.000
It leads to we double down for the honor of the troops. That's why I'm saying we start this even in a small way.

533
00:39:50.000 --> 00:40:02.000
It doesn't really matter where you started, but once you have those ground forces going in and they start to take casualties, you're probably in for the six month ground war.

534
00:40:03.000 --> 00:40:11.000
It looks like they're going to try and avoid that outcome. It looks like they're doing everything in their power, America, to avoid a scenario where they have to send troops in.

535
00:40:11.000 --> 00:40:18.000
The threats that have come out of Donald Trump's troop social posts really talk about, I mean, I'll read this one here.

536
00:40:18.000 --> 00:40:23.000
There's a whole civilization will die tonight. Never to be brought back again. I don't know what will happen, but it probably will.

537
00:40:24.000 --> 00:40:32.000
A lot of the tweets are, can we just focus on that one, the civilization, because it's much, that was a few days ago.

538
00:40:32.000 --> 00:40:42.000
A lot of people are already trying to move past it. This has much more importance and endurance than I think we're understanding now.

539
00:40:43.000 --> 00:40:51.000
First of all, that statement that President Trump said that he will end an entire civilization in one night.

540
00:40:51.000 --> 00:41:03.000
We need to understand this is not a drunk at a bar. This is the president of the United States who has at his disposal thousands of nuclear weapons that could in fact achieve that.

541
00:41:04.000 --> 00:41:20.000
Let me just explain how hair trigger these are. We have 500 minute men, three missiles. They have warheads between 100 kilotons and 300 kilotons, which is multiple times more powerful than Hiroshima and Nagasaki, each one of them.

542
00:41:20.000 --> 00:41:31.000
And they can be retargeted within 45 minutes. That's what it takes to retarget the gyroscopes. And then it takes about 25 minutes for them to hit Iran.

543
00:41:31.000 --> 00:41:40.000
So when the president of the United States is saying this, he's only one of a handful of people in the world who could pull, who could actually make this credible.

544
00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:49.000
Second point is that is the most declared statement of genocidal intent we've ever seen from an American president.

545
00:41:49.000 --> 00:42:00.000
No American president has threatened to end a civilization before, which is at the heart of the genocide treaties in 1948, the intent to commit genocide.

546
00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:09.000
Harry Truman, people say, what do you mean we had Harry Truman, we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, go and look at his statement on Hiroshima, Harry Truman.

547
00:42:09.000 --> 00:42:18.000
He did not say he was ending Japan as a civilization. He pulled back and said it was about to destroy Japan's military power.

548
00:42:18.000 --> 00:42:29.000
What President Trump has done by making those statements is he's persuading all 92 million Iranians that he is willing to kill them.

549
00:42:29.000 --> 00:42:39.000
And he has the power to kill them. And yes, he pulled back from killing them on Tuesday. And yes, he may not have used nuclear weapons on Tuesday.

550
00:42:39.000 --> 00:42:53.000
But if any other leader had said that, if imagine Vladimir Putin stands up and says he's going to end American civilization two nights, he's got the weapons to be able to do that.

551
00:42:53.000 --> 00:43:05.000
Are we just going to sit back and say, oh, yeah, he didn't do it. He must not have met it. No, that would mobilize enormous anger against Vladimir Putin in the United States, even among Democrats.

552
00:43:06.000 --> 00:43:19.000
And my point here, Stephen, is before this war started, we had a real pro-democracy movement in Iran. And on your show, I told you, this was going to fade. This was one of the predictions I made to you.

553
00:43:19.000 --> 00:43:26.000
So this is going to fade over time. You're going to see nationalism bonding the society and the regime closer together.

554
00:43:26.000 --> 00:43:38.000
President Trump is bonding them together like never before. If you're one of the pro-democracy individuals here, movement in Iran, where are you going to go for protection?

555
00:43:38.000 --> 00:43:47.000
Are you going to go to Donald Trump who's threatening to kill you with essentially nuclear weapons? Or are you going to go to your own government?

556
00:43:47.000 --> 00:43:59.000
This is going to hasten the support, increase the support for Iran developing nuclear weapons. The pro-democracy movement is now likely to support this.

557
00:43:59.000 --> 00:44:09.000
On that point, one of the questions and one of the points raised by the audience last time had the conversation was really we didn't spend enough time talking about the 90 plus million people that live in Iran.

558
00:44:09.000 --> 00:44:19.000
That are often many of them caught amongst all of this absolute chaos. And I was looking at a bunch of messages from people that are living in Iran.

559
00:44:19.000 --> 00:44:30.000
I'll read some of them from ordinary citizens. I'm not great at math, but where will the money, the resources and the experts come from to build a country that ordinary people spent decades trying to build?

560
00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:40.000
From the, this is a different person. From the beginning of the war until today, we have been bombarded. Not only are we not one step closer to freedom. From what I can see, we are miles away from it.

561
00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:49.000
From another person in Iran. A whole civilization will die tonight. Never to be brought back again. This has deeply terrified me.

562
00:44:49.000 --> 00:45:00.000
It raises really the question. A lot of this discourse doesn't speak much to 90 plus million people that are living there and that are having to exist under this terror.

563
00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:14.000
And like the best way that I could conceptualize it is I imagined if I had woken up one day and Vladimir Putin or some other leader around the world had said that they were potentially going to end the civilization that I live in, the country that I live in tonight.

564
00:45:14.000 --> 00:45:28.000
How would I be feeling and if I was hearing bombs go off all the time, how would I be feeling and if things were escalating when me and my family lived, how would I be feeling and it is

565
00:45:28.000 --> 00:45:47.000
killing to think about it is truly killing because this is now moving the needle inside of Iran to make the ordinary person on the street, even the pro democracy movement, willing to tolerate Iran killing Americans.

566
00:45:47.000 --> 00:46:03.000
Because we're killing them and we're saying we're going to do it even worse and we're even beyond that. We're saying at the whim of a president who wakes up thinking maybe this will help his save his presidency.

567
00:46:03.000 --> 00:46:17.000
He is willing to kill the entire civilization of a country because he thinks maybe this is going to be his off his golden off ramp to get out of this problem for himself personally.

568
00:46:17.000 --> 00:46:35.000
And by the way, in our country, when Al Qaeda attacked us on 9-11, there was tremendous fear. There would be more attacks by Al Qaeda in the weeks afterwards who were just much fear and I've done the studies of the American public opinion on this.

569
00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:55.000
It's the fear of Muslims killing Americans that's driving the support for the Iraq war. If this is happening to Americans, you can only imagine what's going to happen to the ordinary Iranians and they've been subjected not to just one attack, 40 days of attack.

570
00:46:55.000 --> 00:47:09.000
For the average Iranian person that opposes the regime in Iran and has been living under terror and oppression for many, many decades, what do you think happens next for them?

571
00:47:09.000 --> 00:47:21.000
They're the group of people that I think about and care about the most in this equation. We spend a lot of time talking about US power and we talk about lots of these other regional partners, but there's like 90 or million people stuck right in the heart of this that often don't really have a voice.

572
00:47:21.000 --> 00:47:37.000
Their life expectancy will go down in measurable years. So if we had taken out the electric power, so this is something I know quite a bit about in the 1990s was working for the Air Force literally under my boss was John Warden, the leader of the leadership decapitation school.

573
00:47:37.000 --> 00:47:53.000
And he brought in not classified at all he brought in engineers of electric power plants to teach us how to take down electric power, the electric power grid in Iran, it looks like a network and that network has big notes.

574
00:47:53.000 --> 00:48:20.000
That's what President Trump said he was he's going to take off the big power plants that produce in the tens, 20, 30 megawatts range and they're probably about 130 nodes altogether, but if you just take out the top 10, you're probably going to take down the entire network because the top 10 nodes are distributed in the right places to support different electric power different regions of the country.

575
00:48:20.000 --> 00:48:35.000
You have two choices in a target in targeting sense, you can take out the transformers in which case you knock it out for a week or two and it is inconvenient and yes, there will be some people who will die, there were human chains around those targets, by the way, those people would die.

576
00:48:35.000 --> 00:48:48.000
But if you took out the halls, the generating halls, that's the giant turbines that are huge, there is no backup to those, each of those is specially made.

577
00:48:48.000 --> 00:48:56.000
You will be knocking out that generation for six months, 12 months, maybe 18 months at a minimum.

578
00:48:56.000 --> 00:49:08.000
What that's going to do is stop all dialysis in the country, that's going to stop all the heart surgeries and other life saving surgeries that are going to happen in the country.

579
00:49:08.000 --> 00:49:13.000
It's going to take out all the food refrigeration in the country.

580
00:49:13.000 --> 00:49:34.000
When power goes out in your house and goes out for 10 minutes or an hour, it's not so bad, you don't really notice it, but when it goes out for two days or three days or a week, all the food in your refrigerator spoils, and you can't eat it fast enough, you can't give it away fast enough because it's happening to everybody on your block.

581
00:49:34.000 --> 00:49:37.000
Well, that's what would happen across the country.

582
00:49:37.000 --> 00:49:47.000
So there's going to be an enormous amount of spoilage of food and that refrigeration then is not going to be available to come back.

583
00:49:47.000 --> 00:49:51.000
And so you're going to have enormous hunger problems here.

584
00:49:51.000 --> 00:49:57.000
So people that were already malnourished, they are going to be susceptible to more disease.

585
00:49:57.000 --> 00:50:05.000
So you will end up lowering the life expectancy in a measurable way of that population.

586
00:50:05.000 --> 00:50:08.000
This company that I've just invested in is growing like crazy.

587
00:50:08.000 --> 00:50:12.000
I want to be the one to tell you about it because I think it's going to create such a huge productivity advantage for you.

588
00:50:12.000 --> 00:50:16.000
This flow is an app that you can get on your computer and on your phone on all your devices.

589
00:50:16.000 --> 00:50:18.000
And it allows you to speak to your technology.

590
00:50:18.000 --> 00:50:24.000
So instead of me writing at an email, I click one button on my phone and I can just speak the email into existence.

591
00:50:24.000 --> 00:50:26.000
And it uses AI to clean up what I was saying.

592
00:50:26.000 --> 00:50:30.000
And then when I'm done, I just hit this one button here and the whole email is written for me.

593
00:50:30.000 --> 00:50:35.000
And it's saving me so much time in a day because Whisper learns how I write.

594
00:50:35.000 --> 00:50:39.000
So on WhatsApp it knows how I am, a little bit more casual, on email a little bit more professional.

595
00:50:39.000 --> 00:50:42.000
And also there's this really interesting thing they've just done.

596
00:50:42.000 --> 00:50:45.000
I can create little phrases to automatically do the work for me.

597
00:50:45.000 --> 00:50:50.000
I can just say Jack's LinkedIn and it copies Jack's LinkedIn profile for me because it knows who Jack is in my life.

598
00:50:50.000 --> 00:50:52.000
This is saving me a huge amount of time.

599
00:50:52.000 --> 00:50:54.000
This company is growing like absolute crazy.

600
00:50:54.000 --> 00:50:57.000
And this is why I invested in the business and why they're now a sponsor of this show.

601
00:50:57.000 --> 00:51:02.000
And Whisper Flow is frankly becoming the worst kept secret in business productivity and entrepreneurship.

602
00:51:02.000 --> 00:51:10.000
Check it out now at Whisper Flow, spot W, I, S, P, R, F, L, O, W, dot, A, I slash Stephen.

603
00:51:10.000 --> 00:51:12.000
It will be a game change of view.

604
00:51:12.000 --> 00:51:17.000
Do any of you remember a conversation I had on this podcast with anthropologist Dr. Daniel Lieberman?

605
00:51:17.000 --> 00:51:22.000
It was one of the most viewed conversations of all time on the diversity and interestingly,

606
00:51:22.000 --> 00:51:28.000
the most replayed moment of that entire conversation was when I talked about a specific pair of shoes that I wear.

607
00:51:29.000 --> 00:51:35.000
They're called Barefoot Shoes and they're made by a brand called Vivo Barefoot who have become one of the sponsors of this show now.

608
00:51:35.000 --> 00:51:42.000
All of their shoes have significantly reduced support, which gives my feet the opportunity to strengthen just by wearing them.

609
00:51:42.000 --> 00:51:51.000
And research from Liverpool University backs this up, they've shown that wearing Vivo Barefoot Shoes for six months can increase foot strength by up to 60%.

610
00:51:51.000 --> 00:51:57.000
So if you want to start strengthening your feet, which are the foundation for the rest of your body, had to Vivo Barefoot.com slash DOAC.

611
00:51:57.000 --> 00:52:04.000
And if you do that, I'll give you 15% off when you use my code, Stephen B15.

612
00:52:04.000 --> 00:52:12.000
Use that code at checkout and I'll also give you a 100 day money back guarantee, Stephen B15. Enjoy.

613
00:52:12.000 --> 00:52:16.000
So there's been a lot of talk in the recent days about a ceasefire.

614
00:52:16.000 --> 00:52:23.000
And Trump said he was going to, he said between these horrific things about ending a whole civilization tonight.

615
00:52:23.000 --> 00:52:30.000
And then at the final hour said that they had proposed a 10 point plan and that there was going to be a two week ceasefire.

616
00:52:30.000 --> 00:52:33.000
What do you think was actually going on there?

617
00:52:33.000 --> 00:52:43.000
The collision of stages three and four. So what you are now seeing is we can, we are now understand we're in it for the long haul.

618
00:52:43.000 --> 00:52:50.000
Which means we can't go back to February 27. We can't undo the last 40 days. It's just not going to be possible.

619
00:52:50.000 --> 00:52:53.000
So there's only two futures going forward.

620
00:52:53.000 --> 00:53:00.000
Future number one is that groundwork option. And we've talked about how terrible that is. And of course that's obviously bad, bad cost.

621
00:53:00.000 --> 00:53:12.000
But future number two is Iran as an emerging fourth center of world power. And that is incredibly damaging to America's power.

622
00:53:12.000 --> 00:53:16.000
And that is going to be damaging to President Trump's legacy.

623
00:53:16.000 --> 00:53:19.000
Is there not another option where Iran.

624
00:53:19.000 --> 00:53:28.000
Their leadership says, okay, we won't make nuclear weapons. Okay, we'll be friends. Okay, it's all over. Please stop bombing us.

625
00:53:28.000 --> 00:53:36.000
Let's go for peace. So my response to that is I've been studying the history of international politics for over 35 years.

626
00:53:36.000 --> 00:53:42.000
I know quite a bit about great power politics and regional power politics going back 300 years.

627
00:53:42.000 --> 00:53:49.000
I have never seen a country at the regional level or at the great power level surrender power.

628
00:53:49.000 --> 00:53:56.000
Did America after World War II decide, well, yes, we have the capability to build nuclear weapons.

629
00:53:56.000 --> 00:54:01.000
But you know, we want to get along with the Russians who helped us defeat Germany.

630
00:54:01.000 --> 00:54:05.000
So what we're going to do is we're going to actually have a deal.

631
00:54:05.000 --> 00:54:12.000
An arms control. In fact, this was proposed, by the way, and we rejected it, which is we're just going to not go down that road.

632
00:54:12.000 --> 00:54:23.000
We're going to surrender the power advantage that we have here so that we can be cooperative with the Soviets who had just worked with us to defeat Nazi Germany.

633
00:54:23.000 --> 00:54:24.000
So that's not going to happen.

634
00:54:24.000 --> 00:54:31.000
There's no evidence in history. In our history, we've never surrendered power.

635
00:54:31.000 --> 00:54:36.000
Even when it might have been a good idea, but I mean, I haven't done that. They're not going to do this.

636
00:54:36.000 --> 00:54:37.000
And what can you do now?

637
00:54:37.000 --> 00:54:43.000
No, they're not going to do this. You already see this in the and why the ceasefire is breaking down so fast.

638
00:54:43.000 --> 00:54:50.000
It's breaking down so fast because essentially, President Trump, he didn't just declare victory.

639
00:54:50.000 --> 00:54:56.000
He said that Iran's not going to have all this power that I'm explaining to you.

640
00:54:56.000 --> 00:55:01.000
And what Iran did is almost immediately assert, oh, yes, we are.

641
00:55:01.000 --> 00:55:04.000
They've come right back right away.

642
00:55:04.000 --> 00:55:15.000
If President Trump is expecting that out of the goodness of their heart, they're going to surrender a merging world power, this is just a fantasy.

643
00:55:15.000 --> 00:55:17.000
It's not going to happen.

644
00:55:17.000 --> 00:55:19.000
He wouldn't surrender power.

645
00:55:19.000 --> 00:55:22.000
Why is he going to expect Iran's going to surrender power?

646
00:55:23.000 --> 00:55:30.000
So I'm looking at this apparent 10 point proposal submitted by Iran.

647
00:55:30.000 --> 00:55:35.000
And you've got to take this with a pinch of salt because there's different reports about what this 10 point proposal looks like.

648
00:55:35.000 --> 00:55:42.000
But it says that based on official releases from the Iranian state news agency, the IRNA and international reporting.

649
00:55:42.000 --> 00:55:49.000
The 10 point proposal from Iran to the United States was for a permanent ceasefire number one and attacks on allies.

650
00:55:49.000 --> 00:55:54.000
A complete halt to Israel and US strikes across the region, specifically Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.

651
00:55:54.000 --> 00:55:59.000
Number three, reopen the Strait of Humus. Iran will allow safe passage through the Strait of Humus.

652
00:55:59.000 --> 00:56:04.000
Iraq tolls Iran will charge a fee, reportedly $2 million for each ship passing through the Strait.

653
00:56:04.000 --> 00:56:11.000
Revenue sharing with a man, which is toll revenues will be split with a man as custodians of the Strait.

654
00:56:11.000 --> 00:56:17.000
Number six, lift the sanctions, the complete removal of all US primary and secondary sanctions, release assets.

655
00:56:17.000 --> 00:56:21.000
Number seven, the immediate return of all frozen Iranian funds held abroad.

656
00:56:21.000 --> 00:56:33.000
Number eight, the right to enrich uranium US acceptance of Iran's right to domestic uranium enrichment while Iran commits to not seeking nuclear weapons.

657
00:56:33.000 --> 00:56:38.000
Number nine, war operations, full compensation paid to Iran for reconstruction costs from the bombing.

658
00:56:38.000 --> 00:56:47.000
And lastly, number 10, the termination of all UN resolutions against the regime and a new binding UN Security Council resolution to enforce this deal.

659
00:56:47.000 --> 00:56:50.000
Now listen, I don't know a lot about what I'm talking about.

660
00:56:50.000 --> 00:56:56.000
So that's in this way. However, it sounds like a good deal for Iran in many respects on every single point.

661
00:56:56.000 --> 00:56:59.000
And it also validates Iran as an emerging world power.

662
00:56:59.000 --> 00:57:14.000
So all of those points in the details, if you think of them as a flow diagram, all 10 of them are adding up to validation of Iran as a top in the hierarchy in the Persian Gulf.

663
00:57:14.000 --> 00:57:19.000
So why is it so important to be the number one strongest state in the world?

664
00:57:19.000 --> 00:57:31.000
It's because in the last 300 years, whether it was Britain, the United States or whether it's China in the future, the number one state typically dictates the rules of how the world systems operate.

665
00:57:31.000 --> 00:57:36.000
Well, what you're seeing with Iran is they want to dictate the rules in the Persian Gulf, and that's what that is.

666
00:57:36.000 --> 00:57:42.000
Now, if we pull this over, which I love your props here, that is good.

667
00:57:42.000 --> 00:57:52.000
So right now, you see that even though it's the United States is just that loan flag, it has this higher weight.

668
00:57:52.000 --> 00:57:59.000
And what this is reflecting is the United States as the number one country in the world, the most powerful.

669
00:58:00.000 --> 00:58:14.000
Now, if you also then add this over here, so this would be Israel, you can see this is the world that Netanyahu is depicting before on February 27.

670
00:58:15.000 --> 00:58:19.000
But the actual world, I just want to point out is a little bit different.

671
00:58:19.000 --> 00:58:22.000
The actual balance of power is closer to this.

672
00:58:22.000 --> 00:58:28.000
It's closer to the United States, and then we have China and we have Russia.

673
00:58:28.000 --> 00:58:38.000
There are three centers of world power and a 1990, it used to be, by the way, just the United States and the Soviet Union.

674
00:58:39.000 --> 00:58:41.000
Then Russia, the Soviet Union collapses.

675
00:58:41.000 --> 00:58:46.000
This is when the United States is the sole superpower, the unipolar moment.

676
00:58:46.000 --> 00:58:52.000
It immediately shifts like this from 1989 to 1992, dramatic shift.

677
00:58:52.000 --> 00:58:59.000
However, along the way, in the last 30 years, you see this changing.

678
00:58:59.000 --> 00:59:05.000
And what's changing? Russia actually still is weak. It's still about 2% of the world's GDP. That's not really what's changing.

679
00:59:05.000 --> 00:59:10.000
What's really changing is China is now much, much, much more powerful.

680
00:59:10.000 --> 00:59:12.000
It's still not as powerful as the United States.

681
00:59:12.000 --> 00:59:19.000
But notice that we were here in 1990, and now the balance is starting to come like this.

682
00:59:19.000 --> 00:59:27.000
Well, if we start to add Iran as a center of world power, now we're starting to change this in a much different way.

683
00:59:28.000 --> 00:59:38.000
Now these three powers are starting together in concert to become more powerful than the United States, especially with respect to energy.

684
00:59:38.000 --> 00:59:47.000
And energy matters so much, because it's an underlying component for our economic growth at GDP.

685
00:59:47.000 --> 01:00:09.000
The way we measure great power, Stephen, for decades and decades, we've used static indicators, GDP, how big is your military, how many nuclear weapons you have, that all rests on the productive capacity of your country, which is why the productive capacity is so important.

686
01:00:09.000 --> 01:00:15.000
What does that turn on? It turns a lot, very heavily on oil.

687
01:00:15.000 --> 01:00:24.000
Oil today is the commodity if you lose access to oil within weeks or a month and a half.

688
01:00:24.000 --> 01:00:33.000
This has dramatic cliff effects on your economy. Now if you lose access to semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, that's bad.

689
01:00:33.000 --> 01:00:38.000
In its bad over time, in particular, you lose access to oil.

690
01:00:38.000 --> 01:00:54.000
This is a cliff that you wiggle off over six weeks, eight weeks, because there's not enough storage capacity of anybody in the world to make up for 20%, 30% loss of world oil.

691
01:00:54.000 --> 01:00:59.000
So on this point of oil, the U.S. don't get that oil from the Strait of Hummus.

692
01:00:59.000 --> 01:01:14.000
We don't, but it's a global market and a lot of the price of oil that we're going to pay is going to be determined by the global price of oil, because oil is a fungible commodity.

693
01:01:14.000 --> 01:01:21.000
It's like a water that runs through the whole system. When there's a shortage, it drives the price of all of us up.

694
01:01:21.000 --> 01:01:25.000
Okay, so I've got a graph here showing the price of oil and you can see I'll throw up on the screen.

695
01:01:25.000 --> 01:01:31.000
You can see it's been climbing ever since the 27th of February. So this will impact Americans at the pump as well.

696
01:01:31.000 --> 01:01:39.000
Oh my gosh, and you see it in the pump already where I am in Chicago. I'm paying something, I was paying something like 310 a gallon.

697
01:01:39.000 --> 01:01:54.000
Now, the last time I filled up, it was 460. It's a bit of a misnomer to think that we can, as America, get away scot free with everybody else losing oil and we're not going to, we're not going to pay a price.

698
01:01:54.000 --> 01:02:05.000
Now to be clear, we will have supply of oil. The price will go up. This will increase inflation. This will probably increase bond prices over time.

699
01:02:05.000 --> 01:02:16.000
So the bond is the loans that essentially any corporation companies or the University of Chicago takes out to borrow money to operate.

700
01:02:16.000 --> 01:02:27.000
So the University of Chicago has 10 year bonds. This is essentially where borrowing money and then we have to pay back that money plus an interest rate. That's what the bond rate is.

701
01:02:27.000 --> 01:02:44.000
It's an interest rate on borrowed money. Well, if that interest rate goes from 4% on a 10 year bond to 5% or 6% or 7%, the cost of the interest just goes up massively.

702
01:02:44.000 --> 01:02:57.000
And everybody will feel that in various ways. The US government right now, the biggest budget item in the US government budget is the cost of interest for the debt of the $40 trillion in debt.

703
01:02:57.000 --> 01:03:12.000
We're going to have to shrink social security. You're going to have to shrink Medicaid. This is not notional, Stephen. Iran and Russia together could have a tremendous impact on America's economy. This is the real thing.

704
01:03:12.000 --> 01:03:32.000
So with your balance of power and energy, this is where we could get to. This is where we could get to with the next several years. I would say probably two years out. I would say that America has an edge and I'm trying to depict it as it's like about a 25 or 30% edge from the combination of China and Russia today.

705
01:03:32.000 --> 01:03:48.000
China is gaining, but still it's actually slow year by year. So you'll see a little bit of an uptick. So maybe going I'm trying to depict from say a third advantage for the United States to maybe 30% 28% in the next four or five years.

706
01:03:48.000 --> 01:04:08.000
You add Iran to this and then especially these combinations I'm describing where they can do things together. Now in the next several years, you're actually talking about the scales where these three are much are stronger than America where I'm not talking about just America's losing it incrementally.

707
01:04:08.000 --> 01:04:18.000
You're getting abrupt changes in the world balance of power. So what happens now if Trump just pulls out? This is the world. Iran is an oil hegemon in the Persian Gulf.

708
01:04:18.000 --> 01:04:31.000
Within a year or so, they're very likely to have nuclear weapons. I'm saying the pro democracy movement is going to be pounding the table to get nuclear weapons. They're going to want to deter any idea from Trump of hitting them again.

709
01:04:31.000 --> 01:04:48.000
And then I'm saying beyond that, you have the possibility of Iran and Russia deciding to cooperate here to strangle and coerce the United States. And if the United States doesn't count out to them, then they can pull that oil off the market.

710
01:04:48.000 --> 01:05:02.000
So what should Trump do? Do you think if you are president of the United States, what would you do right now? So when I was here 40 days ago, we had the same question. And what I said was we needed to accept that there would be a deal.

711
01:05:02.000 --> 01:05:18.000
And we were going to have to accept that the deal that Iran was offering us on February 27, where they would get to keep their 3.5% enriched uranium wasn't going to be good enough. We were going to have to lift oil sanctions. We're going to have to do various things to sweeten the deal. So to speak.

712
01:05:18.000 --> 01:05:33.000
Well, notice actually Scott Besson did some of that. He did lift it. But the power of Iran is grown so much, Steven, that's not good enough. And that's what you're seeing with why this deal is the ceasefire is starting to break down from Iran side.

713
01:05:33.000 --> 01:05:51.000
So what would you offer Iran? I think a enforced military containment of Israel would be a serious card that America could play that I think Iran would get Iran at least in a serious discussion.

714
01:05:51.000 --> 01:06:15.000
I don't know if it would be enough. I want to be careful here that I don't say, well, this will certainly be the deal Iran will take. But we have to imagine if Iran has world power, what is it going to take to get Iran to surrender some of that? Well, one thing would be to have confidence that Israel is not going to keep attacking it or its allies.

715
01:06:15.000 --> 01:06:39.000
And then they're not going to believe that after what's happened. Well, it would have to go through. You'd have to make it enforceable. It's not going to be good enough to try to promise that. What thing President Trump could do since the Republicans control both houses of Congress is President Trump could push through a bill through Congress that says if Israel attacks Iran or could even extend to Lebanon, but it would at least start with Iran.

716
01:06:39.000 --> 01:07:00.000
All funds for Israel, both military and economic will be cut off through the end of Trump's presidency. Now that passes through both chambers of Congress, President Trump signs it. Now you're talking. Now we actually have as much teeth as you could ever have of a military containment of Israel.

717
01:07:00.000 --> 01:07:08.000
So presumably in such scenario, Iran would continue to enrich uranium because they've now had a taste of what can happen to them if they're powerless.

718
01:07:08.000 --> 01:07:27.000
Well, let me extend this a little bit more. So let's talk about article two of the deal that's going to go through the Congress. Israel joins the NPT. And that is the quid pro quo for getting Iran to accept the on-site inspections of its 3.5% enriched uranium.

719
01:07:27.000 --> 01:07:41.000
So Israel gets to have its Dimona nuclear power plant where it has plutonium for its nuclear weapons that's measured by the non-proliferation treaty, the AEA, those are the inspectors.

720
01:07:41.000 --> 01:07:52.000
And Iran will have on-site inspections at the various locations we're talking about. But the second part of this, Stephen, would be quid pro quo.

721
01:07:52.000 --> 01:08:09.000
If Iran is going to be subject to on-site verification, on-site monitoring, Israel, which is now not part of the non-proliferation treaty, already has nuclear weapons, it's going to have to accept that this can't be a one-sided deal going forward.

722
01:08:09.000 --> 01:08:17.000
It's going to have to be a more balanced situation when it comes to monitoring nuclear weapons capabilities.

723
01:08:17.000 --> 01:08:21.000
So what does that mean specifically that Iran would be able to monitor Israel's nuclear weapons?

724
01:08:21.000 --> 01:08:26.000
Through the AEA, that's right. That would be the material for the weapons, not the weapons themselves.

725
01:08:26.000 --> 01:08:28.000
So they already have weapons. So what's that to monitor?

726
01:08:28.000 --> 01:08:35.000
Oh, no, no, no. Right now, the number of Israel's nuclear weapons is not known. We have vague counts.

727
01:08:36.000 --> 01:08:51.000
The reason Israel's not part of the NPT is not because it doesn't matter. It provides the kind of detailed information through the AEA that would be useful for estimating the size of Israel.

728
01:08:51.000 --> 01:08:54.000
You think Israel, and you know, he's going to want to give that information to Iran.

729
01:08:54.000 --> 01:09:00.000
This isn't about want to anymore, Stephen. What we're talking about is what are the offer? You've asked me the hard question.

730
01:09:00.000 --> 01:09:08.000
What is an off ramp to this trade off between the ground war and Iran as the fourth center of world power?

731
01:09:08.000 --> 01:09:15.000
And I said, okay, there is an actual off ramp here, but notice that the hesitation now is politics.

732
01:09:15.000 --> 01:09:22.000
And that's what I'm trying to explain that I study the interaction of military action and politics.

733
01:09:22.000 --> 01:09:28.000
And I'm with you. I don't think Israel will like they've been trying to spoil these other deals.

734
01:09:28.000 --> 01:09:37.000
I don't think Israel is going to allow this to occur, but now then we're right back to the trade off that nobody wants to confront.

735
01:09:37.000 --> 01:09:39.000
So what do you think is going to happen?

736
01:09:39.000 --> 01:09:45.000
What I think is that we are going to go back and forth between stage three and stage four for months.

737
01:09:45.000 --> 01:09:47.000
What stage three and stage four?

738
01:09:47.000 --> 01:09:54.000
So stage three are preparations for the ground war and Iran emerging as a fourth center of world power.

739
01:09:54.000 --> 01:09:57.000
I think both of these are likely to go on for months.

740
01:09:57.000 --> 01:10:07.000
I think that for stage three, the ground war option to truly be taken off the table, you would need to see America with drawing its military forces.

741
01:10:07.000 --> 01:10:14.000
You would need to see all the carriers weave the region and go back to other parts of the world.

742
01:10:14.000 --> 01:10:24.000
You would need to see the Marines that have been moved to the Gulf, go back to Camp Pendleton and California, go back to Japan.

743
01:10:24.000 --> 01:10:30.000
You would need to see the hundreds of aircraft, like the F-35s, for example, that have been moved to the region.

744
01:10:31.000 --> 01:10:35.000
They all need to go back to their pre-war locations.

745
01:10:35.000 --> 01:10:37.000
So we get a bounce between stage three and stage four.

746
01:10:37.000 --> 01:10:39.000
Yep, that's the diagram.

747
01:10:39.000 --> 01:10:53.000
So the new diagram I'm trying to, we just, I think there's still, if you push me on this last time, I still say there's a 70% chance that we're going to start a ground operation.

748
01:10:53.000 --> 01:11:00.000
And it's not because President Trump wants it, it's not because he's not trying to avoid it, it's because there's a trap.

749
01:11:00.000 --> 01:11:12.000
And the trap that he's going to face is, is he really willing to be the president, where under his presidency, Iran detonates a nuclear weapon to demonstrate it has nuclear power.

750
01:11:12.000 --> 01:11:15.000
From his rhetoric, and listen, these are just the tweets.

751
01:11:15.000 --> 01:11:26.000
It seems like the alternate option he's considered, when he talks about bombing the infrastructure in bridges and roads and power plants, is just completely decapitating the country.

752
01:11:26.000 --> 01:11:29.000
And I think in his own words, sending it back to the Stone Ages.

753
01:11:29.000 --> 01:11:36.000
This will come back, but it would be, as I believe, the precursor to more ground operations.

754
01:11:37.000 --> 01:11:43.000
So I don't think that this will be a case where you do the electric power targeting, and then it's done.

755
01:11:43.000 --> 01:11:50.000
Finally, he's satisfied, he's pounded them enough and walk away because you do the electric power targeting.

756
01:11:50.000 --> 01:11:55.000
You have further incentivized 92 million, they still have the enriched uranium.

757
01:11:55.000 --> 01:12:02.000
You have 92 million people desperate now for not just getting a nuclear weapon for deterrence, but for payback.

758
01:12:02.000 --> 01:12:10.000
And so you will find the pressure for the ground war will be even more intense in the aftermath of all of that.

759
01:12:10.000 --> 01:12:16.000
This idea, they're going to be bombed back to the Stone Ages, where we won't worry about them anymore.

760
01:12:16.000 --> 01:12:20.000
They're going to be this minor country that we will just ignore.

761
01:12:20.000 --> 01:12:29.000
As long as they have a thousand pounds of 60% enriched uranium, 10,000 pounds of five and 20% enriched uranium,

762
01:12:30.000 --> 01:12:32.000
this will just not be the case.

763
01:12:32.000 --> 01:12:38.000
So you still think the most plausible probable outcome is that Trump ends up sending ground troops in,

764
01:12:38.000 --> 01:12:43.000
specifically to do two things, I think I remember you saying last time, one of them is to go and get the uranium.

765
01:12:43.000 --> 01:12:46.000
And the second, I believe, is to defend the straightforward moves.

766
01:12:46.000 --> 01:12:47.000
Yep, yep, yep.

767
01:12:47.000 --> 01:12:50.000
I think these are the two things that are on the table.

768
01:12:50.000 --> 01:12:53.000
And you think it's going to, it's probably going to take several months.

769
01:12:54.000 --> 01:13:03.000
I think it could go on, yes, for months, because I think that you were going to see that there's going to be this back and forth and the way to monitor this.

770
01:13:03.000 --> 01:13:12.000
So you can see is the timeline speeding up or slowing down is literally the movement of the deployed troops.

771
01:13:12.000 --> 01:13:15.000
Don't track this by what the negotiations are.

772
01:13:15.000 --> 01:13:20.000
Don't track this by what comes out of President Trump's mouth or even the Iranians mouth.

773
01:13:20.000 --> 01:13:24.000
Track this by the movement of forces.

774
01:13:24.000 --> 01:13:29.000
That is the best indicator of what's going to come.

775
01:13:29.000 --> 01:13:38.000
You know, every once in a while you come across a product that has such a huge impact on your life that you'd probably describe it as a game changer.

776
01:13:38.000 --> 01:13:48.000
And I would say for about 35 to 40% of my team, they would currently describe this product that I have in front of me called Keytone IQ,

777
01:13:48.000 --> 01:13:52.000
which you can get at keytone.com as a game changer.

778
01:13:52.000 --> 01:13:58.000
But the reason I became a co-owner of this company and the reason why they now are responsive to this podcast is because one day when I came to work,

779
01:13:58.000 --> 01:14:01.000
there was a box of this stuff sat on my desk, I had no idea what it was.

780
01:14:01.000 --> 01:14:04.000
Lily in my team says that this company have been in touch.

781
01:14:04.000 --> 01:14:14.000
So I went upstairs, tried it, and quite frankly the rest is history in terms of my focus, my energy levels, how I feel, how I work, how productive I am, game changer.

782
01:14:14.000 --> 01:14:18.000
So if you want to give it a try, visit keytone.com slash Stephen for 30% off.

783
01:14:18.000 --> 01:14:21.000
You'll also get a free gift with your second shipment.

784
01:14:21.000 --> 01:14:29.000
And now you can find Keytone IQ at target stores across the United States, where your first shot is completely free of charge.

785
01:14:29.000 --> 01:14:32.000
Make sure you keep what I'm about to say to yourself.

786
01:14:32.000 --> 01:14:38.000
I'm inviting 10,000 of you to come even deeper into the direviceo. Welcome to my inner circle.

787
01:14:38.000 --> 01:14:41.000
This is a brand new private community that I'm launching to the world.

788
01:14:41.000 --> 01:14:45.000
We have so many incredible things that happen that you are never shown.

789
01:14:45.000 --> 01:14:48.000
We have the briefs that are on my pad when I'm recording the conversation.

790
01:14:48.000 --> 01:14:50.000
We have clips we've never released.

791
01:14:50.000 --> 01:14:56.000
We have behind the scenes conversations with the guests and also the episodes that we've never ever released.

792
01:14:56.000 --> 01:14:58.000
And so much more.

793
01:14:58.000 --> 01:15:02.000
In the circle you'll have direct access to me, you can tell us what you want this show to be,

794
01:15:02.000 --> 01:15:06.000
who you want us to interview and the types of conversations you would love us to have.

795
01:15:06.000 --> 01:15:12.000
But remember for now, we're only inviting the first 10,000 people that joined before it closes.

796
01:15:12.000 --> 01:15:19.000
So if you want to join our private close community, head to the link in the description below or go to doccircle.com.

797
01:15:19.000 --> 01:15:21.000
I will speak to you then.

798
01:15:22.000 --> 01:15:28.000
On this point where you said you don't think Trump would want to be the president that presided over Iran releasing a nuclear weapon.

799
01:15:28.000 --> 01:15:35.000
Is that because if he pulled out now, they would enrich the uranium and then maybe demonstrate it under his...

800
01:15:35.000 --> 01:15:41.000
That's right. So the scenario that I have laid out, I've laid this out to my classes for years.

801
01:15:41.000 --> 01:15:45.000
The idea of what Iran would do with nuclear weapons. A lot of people have an image.

802
01:15:46.000 --> 01:15:51.000
And it's coming from the public. So I understand what they have it. A lot of people have said this image.

803
01:15:51.000 --> 01:16:00.000
Where Iran gets a nuclear weapon or two and what they do immediately is they blow up Tel Aviv with the first one and maybe New York with the second one.

804
01:16:00.000 --> 01:16:07.000
This is just highly unlikely because what would happen is we would retaliate with nuclear weapons under that.

805
01:16:08.000 --> 01:16:26.000
Here, much more plausible and everything I'm seeing from Iran has been completely supporting the idea that they're thinking this through strategically is you would want not to just have one working nuclear weapon or even two, you want five.

806
01:16:26.000 --> 01:16:33.000
Ideally, you want 10, maybe even 15. This is what happened with North Korea because once you have...

807
01:16:33.000 --> 01:16:39.000
What's even say five, the most rational thing to do is you detonate the first one as a detonated test.

808
01:16:39.000 --> 01:16:49.000
You test it on your own territory and then you listen for a week where everybody says, well, they only had one, they were stupid, they don't have dot and you detonate the second one.

809
01:16:49.000 --> 01:17:00.000
And once you detonate the second one, just like when we hit Nagasaki after Hiroshima, everybody will assume there's a lot more there.

810
01:17:00.000 --> 01:17:09.000
And that is how you actually deter the United States from attacking you. And by the way, that's what effectively North Korea did.

811
01:17:09.000 --> 01:17:17.000
When President Trump took office in 2016, North Korea was a major problem. We were talking about bombing North Korea and so forth.

812
01:17:17.000 --> 01:17:26.000
And there's multiple reasons, but the big issues are that North Korea has a lot of nuclear weapons. We're not going to be able to get them all.

813
01:17:26.000 --> 01:17:36.000
They have some other things they can do too, like a artillery on sole. But this isn't just North Korea and Trump decided to be sort of best buds here.

814
01:17:36.000 --> 01:17:45.000
So the other route that played out in my mind was that Trump would just keep bombing around to keep them weak. But again, that doesn't solve the straight of a moose problem.

815
01:17:45.000 --> 01:17:58.000
It doesn't solve the uranium problem and doesn't solve the straight of our moose problem because if we knew where that material was and we could just bomb it out of the existence, I'm talking about the enriched uranium material, we would have done this already.

816
01:17:58.000 --> 01:18:03.000
Which leads all roads to really the only solution being some kind of deal.

817
01:18:03.000 --> 01:18:12.000
Absolutely. That's why the best thing to do is a deal with the military containment of Israel. That's a problem deal.

818
01:18:12.000 --> 01:18:19.000
The problem you have with such a deal if when you're going into that deal is the enemy know that you don't really have a plan B.

819
01:18:19.000 --> 01:18:23.000
You don't have a plan B. And so your negotiation position is very weak.

820
01:18:23.000 --> 01:18:28.000
That's why you that's why you're they're going to keep their 3.5% enriched uranium no matter what.

821
01:18:28.000 --> 01:18:45.000
The problem we face here is if we were ever going to get the 3.5% enriched uranium to go away, we should never have ripped up the Obama nuclear deal by Trump in 2018.

822
01:18:45.000 --> 01:18:55.000
They've been developing ever since the Biden administration, he Trump one could figure out how to stop the enriched uranium by Iran Biden couldn't figure out how to stop it.

823
01:18:55.000 --> 01:19:00.000
Trump now has been trying to figure out how to stop it and you know what? It's not stopable.

824
01:19:00.000 --> 01:19:04.000
It's not stopable short of these options. I'm laying out.

825
01:19:04.000 --> 01:19:21.000
There's no way to get that material without ground forces Steven and you're not going to send those ground forces in just a thousand guys to be at some postage stamp of an area for a month or two trying to find that enriched uranium.

826
01:19:21.000 --> 01:19:25.000
This is just not realistic. I think going to be a bigger option.

827
01:19:25.000 --> 01:19:30.000
I think it's clear to me, you know, I do this podcast and ask these questions and I have people on because I'm actually really trying to find answers for myself.

828
01:19:30.000 --> 01:19:38.000
I think if I've arrived at any conclusion from everything I've learned over the last couple of weeks, it's that I think Trump made a really big mistake.

829
01:19:38.000 --> 01:19:42.000
And that mistake probably started when he ripped up Obama's deal. That's right.

830
01:19:42.000 --> 01:19:47.000
But it's clear that for dough was the really, really big.

831
01:19:47.000 --> 01:19:50.000
I think I think he's stuck. He is stuck.

832
01:19:50.000 --> 01:19:58.000
I think he's stuck. And I think he's facing to several bad options going forward. So I really have no idea what's going to happen.

833
01:19:58.000 --> 01:20:05.000
And what you're going to what you will also watch, Steven's a back to politics here is Trump right now.

834
01:20:05.000 --> 01:20:11.000
We're not it's not just paper anymore who's saying he's lost control. He's losing power.

835
01:20:11.000 --> 01:20:18.000
The world is saying that. And this is going to start to become the Republican party is going to say that.

836
01:20:18.000 --> 01:20:26.000
And what this is going to do is it's going to incentivize Trump even more probably to become more belligerence, not to become calmer.

837
01:20:27.000 --> 01:20:35.000
So as Trump is becoming the lamest of lame ducks going forward because it's evidence he's losing power.

838
01:20:35.000 --> 01:20:43.000
And as he loses power here on the international scene, this will mean he will lose power domestically as well.

839
01:20:43.000 --> 01:20:47.000
And we'll never go to zero, but it will be a slow decline.

840
01:20:47.000 --> 01:20:54.000
This is where the real sort of future is here. Why this is not simply a steady state now.

841
01:20:54.000 --> 01:20:58.000
This is why I won't make a prediction of what's going to happen in September.

842
01:20:58.000 --> 01:21:05.000
We are not at a steady state. It is an unstable balance here between three and four three and four.

843
01:21:05.000 --> 01:21:09.000
What do you think happens with Europe? I feel like Europe, you know, Europe on either side of your scale here.

844
01:21:09.000 --> 01:21:13.000
You've got Iran, Russia, and China went under the scale.

845
01:21:13.000 --> 01:21:16.000
You've got the US and the other Europe and NATO.

846
01:21:16.000 --> 01:21:18.000
What happens? Are they going to come?

847
01:21:18.000 --> 01:21:23.000
NATO is, for all practical purposes, dead.

848
01:21:23.000 --> 01:21:28.000
We're just writing it so bitchy where it's a body in the morgue already.

849
01:21:28.000 --> 01:21:32.000
Most people don't think that NATO is a political alliance.

850
01:21:32.000 --> 01:21:34.000
NATO is much more than that.

851
01:21:34.000 --> 01:21:41.000
If there's an article five, what that means, Stephen, is there's a military operation with an American general at the top.

852
01:21:41.000 --> 01:21:50.000
And with article five, the American general tells the other countries' militaries, including their nuclear weapons, what to do.

853
01:21:50.000 --> 01:21:58.000
Now, if you're Britain and you have nuclear weapons, or even if, besides the nuclear weapons, if you're Germany, you don't have...

854
01:21:58.000 --> 01:22:06.000
Are you going to follow General Keynes orders on anything at this point? I don't think so.

855
01:22:06.000 --> 01:22:10.000
So, article five is the document that all the NATO countries have signed?

856
01:22:10.000 --> 01:22:24.000
No, it's the part of the NATO treaty, which says if there's a NATO operations like in Afghanistan, it's American general who orders all the other countries' militaries, what to, it's a hierarchy.

857
01:22:24.000 --> 01:22:33.000
So, it's not a collection where the countries get together and they have these big, like, cooperative decisions.

858
01:22:33.000 --> 01:22:47.000
No, the Americans run the plan. They are the ones who organize the military operation, they run the plan, and they just assign the other countries' roles, the way they would, the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force inside of the Pentagon.

859
01:22:47.000 --> 01:22:56.000
What I'm saying is what you just saw with Iran is such a horrible, catastrophic failure within just weeks.

860
01:22:56.000 --> 01:23:06.000
The idea that any Europeans are going to follow the orders of an American general, and I don't even think this is going to be just under Donald Trump.

861
01:23:06.000 --> 01:23:09.000
I mean, I think for years, I think this is just laughable.

862
01:23:09.000 --> 01:23:17.000
Trump was quite angry and scathing with his words about NATO. He said it's a paper tiger and referred to them as cowards.

863
01:23:17.000 --> 01:23:23.000
And as we've been sat here today, you might be aware that NATO were meeting with Trump today in Washington, D.C.

864
01:23:23.000 --> 01:23:35.000
And the NATO Secretary General Mark Root said when it came time to provide the logistical and other support to the United States needed in Iran, some allies were a bit slow to say the least.

865
01:23:35.000 --> 01:23:43.000
In fairness, they were a bit surprised to maintain the element of surprise for the initial strikes. President Trump opted not to inform us ahead of time.

866
01:23:43.000 --> 01:23:52.000
But what I see when I look across Europe today is allies providing a massive amount of support. Nearly without exception, allies are doing everything the United States is asking.

867
01:23:52.000 --> 01:24:00.000
They have heard and are responding to President Trump's request. So it sounds a little bit like an apology tool coming from NATO.

868
01:24:00.000 --> 01:24:05.000
And the German Chancellor has also made a comment saying that they do not want to split NATO.

869
01:24:05.000 --> 01:24:16.000
Well, they don't want American troops to leave the European continent because that provides some deterrent to Russia.

870
01:24:16.000 --> 01:24:18.000
That's what you're hearing there.

871
01:24:18.000 --> 01:24:30.000
That NATO was always had an anchor. Remember we talked about anchors. The anchor in NATO was America's protection of European security.

872
01:24:30.000 --> 01:24:41.000
What you're seeing when President Trump creates a problem, a catastrophe for the world, and says he won't send American forces in to the straight of our moves.

873
01:24:41.000 --> 01:24:48.000
And he wants the Europeans to send their forces into the straight of our moves. This is the opposite of protection.

874
01:24:48.000 --> 01:24:58.000
He's making NATO countries or European countries vulnerable. And they're reacting to that by saying we won't do it.

875
01:24:58.000 --> 01:25:10.000
According to diplomats NATO Secretary, briefed member, capitals today that Trump is demanding concrete commitments within the next few days from NATO to help to secure the straight of whole moves.

876
01:25:10.000 --> 01:25:15.000
Which would only make sense if you were doing phase three, the ground operation.

877
01:25:15.000 --> 01:25:22.000
So you cannot secure the straight of our moves only with air power. If we could, we already would.

878
01:25:22.000 --> 01:25:31.000
You can't secure it only with naval power. If you could, we already would. We have a much bigger Navy, much bigger air forces than any of those countries individually or even combined.

879
01:25:31.000 --> 01:25:41.000
The only reason you would really want those forces from NATO is because you're planning on a bigger ground operation.

880
01:25:41.000 --> 01:25:47.000
And that's what you're seeing right there. And I don't think Europeans, let's not even talk about the word NATO.

881
01:25:47.000 --> 01:25:55.000
I don't think the Europeans are likely to do it because you're seeing why would if they're ever going to do it, Stephen, they would want Trump out of office.

882
01:25:55.000 --> 01:26:01.000
The number one thing that I don't think is going to happen here is anybody's going to bail out Trump.

883
01:26:01.000 --> 01:26:04.000
It's political suicide, really, for a lot of the European leaders.

884
01:26:04.000 --> 01:26:06.000
In fact, we're sitting in the head.

885
01:26:06.000 --> 01:26:12.000
It's going to start to become political suicide for even Republicans to bail out Trump.

886
01:26:12.000 --> 01:26:18.000
That's what you're going to start to see in the fall. And it's going to be political suicide for the Japanese, for the Indians.

887
01:26:18.000 --> 01:26:23.000
This is the problem. Trump caused the problem.

888
01:26:23.000 --> 01:26:29.000
As I said on your show last time, he's going to become LBJ if he doesn't take a deal soon.

889
01:26:29.000 --> 01:26:33.000
Well, that was 40 days ago, Stephen, and he still hasn't taken the deal, not really.

890
01:26:33.000 --> 01:26:38.000
And he's becoming LBJ. Nobody's going to want to be associated with it.

891
01:26:38.000 --> 01:26:41.000
Here in the UK, we have Kirstalmer as the prime minister.

892
01:26:41.000 --> 01:26:50.000
And it appears to me that since he's come out and started saying that he won't support Trump's law, we won't send troops to the Middle East.

893
01:26:50.000 --> 01:26:54.000
It appears that that's actually driven up his favorability amongst certain people.

894
01:26:54.000 --> 01:27:03.000
And it makes me think that actually, as we say, it's political suicide for European leaders to send troops there because they will lose the next election in their country.

895
01:27:03.000 --> 01:27:08.000
I think you put it excellent, Stephen. I really can't improve on that.

896
01:27:08.000 --> 01:27:19.000
Let me just say that a year ago with the tariffs, I started to do a study of tracking how European support for America was starting to go into the tank.

897
01:27:19.000 --> 01:27:22.000
And that was with tariffs.

898
01:27:22.000 --> 01:27:26.000
Now what Trump has done is he's driven up the price of oil.

899
01:27:26.000 --> 01:27:29.000
He's hurting their economies in a serious way.

900
01:27:29.000 --> 01:27:38.000
And as that actual damage occurs, and it's still in the pipeline, it hasn't hit as strong as it likely will in the next month.

901
01:27:38.000 --> 01:27:45.000
You are likely going to see that the public's in Europe are going to become anti-American.

902
01:27:45.000 --> 01:27:48.000
And it's not just going to be can't support Trump anymore.

903
01:27:48.000 --> 01:27:52.000
Coming here, I had to pay the visa, the ETA.

904
01:27:52.000 --> 01:27:55.000
And it took forever. And what's happening here?

905
01:27:55.000 --> 01:27:58.000
We're getting some pay back here in America.

906
01:27:58.000 --> 01:28:04.000
I think this next next time I come to London, I'm not going to be surprised that the price of that visa is doubling or tripling.

907
01:28:05.000 --> 01:28:09.000
What is your closing high level remark about all this stuff?

908
01:28:09.000 --> 01:28:17.000
I guess I really want to focus it on the average person who is going about their life as a normal civilian in any of these countries that are affected.

909
01:28:17.000 --> 01:28:20.000
What is the high level point of view here that we need to close upon?

910
01:28:20.000 --> 01:28:27.000
The high level point of view is we're about to start think seriously about the election.

911
01:28:27.000 --> 01:28:40.000
And what we need to do is not just choose but bounce back and forth between Republican and Democrat and actually Britain is a case study of what could happen if you bounce back and forth here.

912
01:28:40.000 --> 01:28:50.000
We need to start to really support strong stable policies that will empower the middle.

913
01:28:50.000 --> 01:29:05.000
The problem that we face, Stephen, is we're moving back and forth from really ideas here that one year we really don't like what Biden's doing and now we have the radical wing on the other side and we certainly don't like that.

914
01:29:05.000 --> 01:29:15.000
Well, if we keep going back and forth here between two extreme alternatives, we'll just get different versions of bad outcomes and it's not making things better.

915
01:29:15.000 --> 01:29:18.000
It's a cycle that's making the solution.

916
01:29:18.000 --> 01:29:32.000
The solution is the public needs to hear that every election, every choice, we are, we have an opportunity here to focus on the more centrist candidates.

917
01:29:32.000 --> 01:29:46.000
And this is something that we really can make decisions about and it's just simply the case that if we don't do that, what you're going to get is you're going to get back and forth bouncing around.

918
01:29:46.000 --> 01:30:01.000
And I don't think a third party here, these ideas are really very meaningful. This really comes down to talking to the public and it's one of the big reasons, Stephen, I'm going to the podcast world because I remember I advise every White House and so forth.

919
01:30:02.000 --> 01:30:21.000
We've got to get beyond that. We've got to actually talk to real people and this is what you do and increasingly I'm doing it and I really believe that the podcast network is an opportunity to do that, but it doesn't mean that it forces people to vote Democrat or Republican.

920
01:30:21.000 --> 01:30:32.000
We've got to understand that we can't just keep thinking about well, okay, now we're really mad at Donald Trump and we're going to get the independence and now they're going to vote with the Democrats.

921
01:30:32.000 --> 01:30:43.000
If all we do is end up getting another extreme on the other side because what you're going to do is you're going to keep pissing off the middle and they're going to keep bouncing back and forth and round after round.

922
01:30:43.000 --> 01:30:51.000
We've been doing that now for years in the United States and what does it look like? It keeps getting worse.

923
01:30:51.000 --> 01:30:55.000
What are you suggesting the solution is vote for the centrist candidate all the way through.

924
01:30:55.000 --> 01:31:07.000
Yes, yes, it's a very simple thing, but it's not going to happen unless we talk about this because it does mean that sometimes the centrist candidate is the person, the woman on the other side.

925
01:31:07.000 --> 01:31:12.000
And if we're not willing to do that, then we're really condemning ourselves to this cycle.

926
01:31:12.000 --> 01:31:17.000
I'm going to explain more about it. It's a version of the escalation trap gone domestic.

927
01:31:17.000 --> 01:31:22.000
It's called the legitimacy shock cycle and I'll be talking more about this in September.

928
01:31:22.000 --> 01:31:32.000
So the trap I'm talking about here with violence and politics isn't just international and you end up with traps here domestically as well.

929
01:31:33.000 --> 01:31:36.000
And I'd like to close with a few thoughts for the people in Iran.

930
01:31:36.000 --> 01:31:46.000
I think ever since I've put myself mentally in a situation where there was a world leader saying that they were going to annihilate my civilization and there was bombs going off.

931
01:31:46.000 --> 01:31:57.000
We're currently filming this in our London studio, but if there was bombs going off around the studio and there was threat that someone was going to annihilate civilization, it's quite unthinkable for me how I would be functioning.

932
01:31:57.000 --> 01:32:02.000
And immediately I think shines a light on the mental health and psychology of the people in Iran right now and how they must be feeling.

933
01:32:02.000 --> 01:32:12.000
So I think that's probably an important message to share because we can sometimes get a little bit caught up in the hypotheticals of war and strategy and all these kinds of things.

934
01:32:12.000 --> 01:32:17.000
But at the end of the day, there's 19 plus million people in Iran that are right in the middle of this.

935
01:32:17.000 --> 01:32:20.000
And we're sat in this very warm cushy London studio.

936
01:32:20.000 --> 01:32:31.000
Well, there's a bond that is occurring between the middle 60% of the American public and the 92 million in Iran.

937
01:32:31.000 --> 01:32:37.000
They don't like the radicalism on either side.

938
01:32:37.000 --> 01:32:46.000
And what you were vocalizing, Steve, it is the frustration that our politics has been locked up by the extremes.

939
01:32:46.000 --> 01:32:51.000
And I suspect the 92 million in Iran are feeling almost exactly the same thing.

940
01:32:51.000 --> 01:32:54.000
Their choices now are being locked into extremes.

941
01:32:54.000 --> 01:32:58.000
And that is that bond here that you're trying to vocalize.

942
01:32:58.000 --> 01:33:04.000
I believe it's valuable to vocalize it because this is what it means to empower the people.

943
01:33:04.000 --> 01:33:11.000
And this is what it means to be a democracy, which is that we actually talk about not just the other side is bad.

944
01:33:11.000 --> 01:33:17.000
And we're always good is we talk about where the future really should go.

945
01:33:17.000 --> 01:33:30.000
And the idea that we're even imagining the possibility of a $40 trillion in debt country getting rocked by Iran and Russia here who have their own reasons for wanting to hurt us.

946
01:33:30.000 --> 01:33:36.000
We may not fully realize that, but we really hurt Russia in the 90s here with our ideas of shock therapy.

947
01:33:36.000 --> 01:33:39.000
And we may not like bandits, by the way.

948
01:33:39.000 --> 01:33:45.000
So that we really do have some real growing bonds at the social level.

949
01:33:45.000 --> 01:33:47.000
Professor Robert Payne, thank you so much.

950
01:33:47.000 --> 01:33:49.000
It's a pleasure to speak to you once again.

951
01:33:49.000 --> 01:33:51.000
And this is such an evolving situation.

952
01:33:51.000 --> 01:33:54.000
So I feel like we might end up talking again at some point in the future when things play out.

953
01:33:54.000 --> 01:33:58.000
Hopefully, you know, one can only hope for peace for everybody.

954
01:33:58.000 --> 01:33:59.000
Oh my gosh.

955
01:33:59.000 --> 01:34:00.000
Every day.

956
01:34:00.000 --> 01:34:01.000
That's my number one thing.

957
01:34:01.000 --> 01:34:02.000
And just ask my wife.

958
01:34:02.000 --> 01:34:09.000
And by the way, we start being so charismatic because my wife, when we listen to this, she turns my voice off.

959
01:34:09.000 --> 01:34:11.000
All she wants to do is even as listen to you.

960
01:34:11.000 --> 01:34:12.000
Is she American?

961
01:34:12.000 --> 01:34:13.000
She's American.

962
01:34:13.000 --> 01:34:14.000
I'm just.

963
01:34:14.000 --> 01:34:15.000
You have.

964
01:34:15.000 --> 01:34:17.000
You've made me up my game.

965
01:34:17.000 --> 01:34:20.000
Well, thank you so much for your time.

966
01:34:20.000 --> 01:34:23.000
And you've put a lot of time into explaining this to layman's like me.

967
01:34:23.000 --> 01:34:26.000
And it's really helped turn the lights on to some degree.

968
01:34:26.000 --> 01:34:31.000
I'll be honest, it's turned the lights on and with the lights on, I am.

969
01:34:31.000 --> 01:34:32.000
Confused.

970
01:34:32.000 --> 01:34:43.000
I'm confused about which path is productive and most beneficial to society and humanity.

971
01:34:43.000 --> 01:34:49.000
And even though I can see more clearly now about the dynamics of all of these potential pathways,

972
01:34:49.000 --> 01:34:52.000
none of them seem that great.

973
01:34:52.000 --> 01:34:54.000
So that's where I'm going to leave it for today.

974
01:34:54.000 --> 01:34:57.000
But we'll pick up this conversation again soon there when more information comes in.

975
01:34:57.000 --> 01:34:58.000
That's right.

976
01:34:58.000 --> 01:35:02.000
And let's hope it's not as much as a trap as I'm as I'm painting it.

977
01:35:02.000 --> 01:35:07.000
But if it is, then it's really even more important that when we get to the fall,

978
01:35:07.000 --> 01:35:13.000
we don't mislead ourselves into into thinking that this is just temporary,

979
01:35:13.000 --> 01:35:16.000
that it's all going to be solved quickly.

980
01:35:16.000 --> 01:35:20.000
We need to understand that we're going down some major, major roads here.

981
01:35:20.000 --> 01:35:23.000
And this situation is bad as it is.

982
01:35:23.000 --> 01:35:26.000
Notice that it's actually worse than it was a month ago when we were here.

983
01:35:26.000 --> 01:35:28.000
It's worse, Stephen.

984
01:35:28.000 --> 01:35:33.000
And the reason it's worse is we didn't head it off enough at the past.

985
01:35:33.000 --> 01:35:35.000
When I was here four weeks ago,

986
01:35:35.000 --> 01:35:39.000
if President Trump had taken some of the deals that we were talking about then,

987
01:35:39.000 --> 01:35:43.000
we wouldn't be anywhere near where we are today.

988
01:35:43.000 --> 01:35:46.000
So as bad as that negotiating position, I say,

989
01:35:46.000 --> 01:35:49.000
of can military containment of Israel, I realize people were saying,

990
01:35:49.000 --> 01:35:51.000
oh, my God, it could never happen.

991
01:35:51.000 --> 01:35:55.000
Well, think about the things that could never happen that are happening right now.

992
01:35:55.000 --> 01:35:57.000
This is the better pathway now.

993
01:35:57.000 --> 01:36:01.000
And if we don't take this pathway now, we come back in a month or two,

994
01:36:01.000 --> 01:36:04.000
it will be worse.

995
01:36:04.000 --> 01:36:05.000
Thank you, Robin.

996
01:36:05.000 --> 01:36:06.000
We're done.

997
01:36:06.000 --> 01:36:07.000
Thank you so much.

998
01:36:07.000 --> 01:36:08.000
Thank you very much.

999
01:36:08.000 --> 01:36:09.000
Thank you very much.

1000
01:36:09.000 --> 01:36:11.000
Thank you.