Iran’s Trump Card: Hormuz | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS
We break down the Iran MOU, the fight over the Strait of Hormuz, Lebanon’s role in the deal, and why the panel sees the agreement as a major strategic win for Tehran and a serious problem for Washington.
We also dig into Iran’s nuclear program, Hezbollah, U.S. military messaging, bad battle-damage assessments, and whether the United States still has any real leverage left in the next 60 days of negotiations.
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"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio
00:00 — Start
03:26 — Iran’s Strategy After the MOU
09:16 — Iran’s Resistance Economy and Regime Survival
14:42 — The Art of a Bad Deal
19:56 — The Missing NSC Process
24:49 — Proxies, Ballistic Missiles, and the JCPOA Problem
31:42 — Verification, HEU, and the Lebanon Fuse
36:42 — Pentagon “Happy Math” and Bad BDA
48:12 — A Possible Clandestine Nuclear Program
54:50 — Iranian Leadership Splits and the Search for Moderates
01:01:11 — Can the Strait of Hormuz Be Reopened by Force?
01:07:23 — CENTCOM, Military Advice, and Strategic Failure
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.
Speaker 1: All right, hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Eyes
on Geopolis. We've got a full crew today, Andy Milburn,
Mark poly Moropolis, Jonathan Hackett, Mick mulroy.
Speaker 2: The boys are all here.
Speaker 1: Too many marines, but we'll figure that out at some point,
I hope. All Right, we've had our dizzying week with
the the Memorandum of Understanding. I'm gonna do a little
bit of context for people, just because, like if you're
following me on Twitter and stuff and like reading like
an article here and there, it's like it changes every
twelve hours essentially at what's going on. We signed a
deal basically over like you know, remotely with Iran for
the sixty day seasfire where they were gonna talk about
the larger issue of the nuclear issue and the enriched
uranium in that fourteen point plan. These are just someone
like the basic points. You guys can correct me and
add a little bit more context. On top of that,
there would have been the straight of Hormuz opening to normal,
the US blockade lifted, some talk about opening up and
giving some money to you a round like their frozen assets,
and then there was also talk of a three hundred
billion dollar I guess sovereign wealth front of reconstruction fund
that was supposedly going to be paid out by the
majority of the GCC countries or the Gulf countries. At
least one hundred and fifty billion of that was supposedly
secured for that. The other one hundred and fifty billion,
I don't know where it's coming from. Some say US,
you know, the US is denying that obviously over and
the big Cavy, the big boy. The big issue that
looks like what will could kill the ceasefire is Lebanon
and what's going on with Israel and Hesbola, who have
been trading back and forth clearly out of Israel. I
would say that Yahoo's been playing at Kanda down the line,
trying to like weasel his way like he's good at
because he's a politician at the end of the day.
But the ultra right homies like Kevier have been freaking
out about this, you know, saying that we're not going
to stop the war no matter what they're not. No
no deal is going to stop us unless we're involved.
That's just like basically like the top little layer of it.
It's been dizzy because I've been trying to keep track
of this ship for the last week, and it's been
I was just I was just fed up. I was like,
you know, who knows what will happen. Vance was supposed
to go to Switzerland. He delayed. He eventually showed up today.
They're meeting now and Steve Wickoff and Jared Kushner are there,
of course, so everything will be great. I'm sure of it.
Vance did bite back at a specifically Gavier. He kind
of he kind of kept net and Yahoo out of
it and gave Net and Yahoo a little bit of
credit while going at Gavier and the the far right
of the war cabinet pretty harsh words too.
Speaker 2: You know. You know there was a I think a
quote saying there's a country of.
Speaker 1: Nine million people and you can't just kill your way
out of your problems. And I'm gonna be honest, for
the first time probably ever, I'm agreeing with JD.
Speaker 2: Vance.
Speaker 1: So you guys give us some context, let us know
you know what you guys are thinking, what you guys
are tracking. I'm gonna start with let's start with Milburn today.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 3: Well, you know I'm gonna be fairly short because I
know Mark wrote an excellent essay on what a tremendous
success this for the United States, the the MoU is.
Speaker 4: So I think we.
Speaker 2: Should to sum that up.
Speaker 4: Well, what do make me?
Speaker 3: You know, just ooking with what just happened. So just
three days after signing, Iron shut US straight again over
over Lebanon, right, because that was part of Iran's stipulation
that Lebanon become part of the deal. So even the
US and Iran's own government kind of agree if if
it was actually closed, Syncom apparently saying traffic's flowing. But
but you know, this brings up an interesting point. And
and you know, I mentioned Mark's Marx article h and
and of course I think it really there's the fact
that the US failed and in our strategy, we really
didn't have a strategy. We have a list of targets,
it was kind of vague, there was no defined end state. Yes,
that is a story in itself, but I think, and
this is where John's expertise, I think will come in.
I think it's fair to say Iran did have a strategy,
and it's one they've been preparing for years. You know,
a lot of people talk about the mosaic doctrine, which
is kind of decentralized command. It's kind of mission command,
which is our own doctrine. But it really worked. I mean,
they anticipated that they would lose a lot of guys
at the top of the pyramid, and they designed a
system that could still continue to function.
Speaker 4: So that worked.
Speaker 3: Number one, and again i'll keep this brief. Number two,
they've built an economy that was some extent resistant to sanctions.
I mean, John's already talked about the fact that the
IRGC didn't suffer too terribly from the pounding that the
Iranian economy took for all the reasons that we've given
on their show, but also the fact that you know,
through deals with China and elsewhere, Iran has again designed
its economy so that so that sanctions are are no
longer such a such a weapon as as they used
to be. And the last thing I'll say on that
on their strategy, which I think is really important, it's
what they went after. You know, all these firing of
missiles and drones and they had, yeah, they had an
extensive inventory, but it wasn't random. You know, they went
after key targets. They went after uh they'd identified what
makes what what? When US employees airpower. What really makes
that work, and it is the what high density or
high demand load density items it depends on, and that
is our command and control notes, right, especially a wax aircraft,
our tanker fleet, which actually is quite limited and it's aging.
And it went after both of those on the ground,
for instance in Saudi Arabia and peace app and caused
extensive damage. And and also ground based command and control
as well as air defense our radars, so ability to
sense all of these things were on the Iran's target list.
It wasn't simply hey, we're going to just fire ship
and show they were not beaten. They were very careful
about what they had. They understood clearly the imbalance between
you know, the cost in effectiveness between interceptors and drones
and missiles, especially drones. And that isn't just about you
know that cliche we always hear about that, you know,
and a Patriot interceptor costs x million dollars and a
Shahad missile costs twenty to thirty thousand dollars. It's not
just about that. It's about death on the bench. How
many interceptors we actually have, all right, how many we
need globally in order to sustain our commitments, and they
understood all that they and they kind of led us dry.
And the last thing was that targeting of golf countries
was very carefully deliberately done and instead of yes, it
did piss off the golf countries, but it also had
the effect of driving a wedge between the US and
our partners here because Iran could show that we could
not protect them, we had not gone to the effort
to build a coalition. And then when it really mattered,
you saw UAE and Saudi Arabia saying at key parts
of this conflict, no, we're not going to support and
I believe I think it was Kuwait right, they said, no,
we're not going to allow our bases to be used
for further strikes on Iran. So again, you know, this,
MoU is kind of I think a natural follow on.
They sustained a beating, but all they had to do
was survive.
Speaker 4: They did that.
Speaker 3: They sent a message of resilience. We've all seen these
lego videos that were masterfully made, and now they've they've
controlled the negotiations. Do I like that? No, of course
I don't like that, And I'm just commenting on how
they've they've and they've really understood. That's how switching thing
about war being politics by another.
Speaker 2: Means well, wants it back at you go, I'm gonna
take it. I'm taking charge here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'll branch off of what Andy mentioned about the
economy and sanctions and all this. You know, the regime
has been framing their economy as a resistance economy since
the nineteen nineties, and in Farsi they actually call it
this a resistance economy, and what that means is a
resilient economy that can survive external impacts, whether those are
sanctions or reductions in capacity, or just actual logistical challenges
of getting things done out of the country due to geopolitics.
They've designed their economy to survive this way, and it's
very clear that their structuring of that was successful. And
that doesn't mean it was successful for the running people.
It means it was successful for the regime elites, the
small minority of people in and outside of Iran who
are able to maintain their safety, security, and their grip
on power throughout this really high intensity conflict against their country.
The US is very good at overwhelming fire superiority. This
is something that we're very good at we're very precise
at that we can put a lot of ordinance on
targets very rapidly in a very large geographic dispersion, which
we saw was true especially in Western Iran during the war.
Despite that, Iran was able to use, as Andy mentioned,
very precise, careful, deliberate strikes on allies and partners in
the region for non military purposes. And that's contrast to
what it seemed the US strategy was was a purely
operational or campaign level strategy of striking a certain series
of targets or a target deck to affect a military outcome,
whereas the Iranian regime the IERGC was thinking beyond the
military objective. They were thinking about political outcomes and impacts
of their military actions, which again is just like Andy
mentioned a klouds Whitzy in concept, where military is a
policy instrument, it is not an end.
Speaker 2: And it seemed that.
Speaker 5: Iran was using that and understood that that if they
hit Katar or they hit Kuwait, there will be political ramifications.
That true, there is some sacrifice on their side that
are negative impacts for Iran, but they will also negatively
impact the United States. So they're kind of using that
concept of the Samson option that Israel actually uses for
its own nuclear policy, where they understand that once they
unleash this weapon, it will harm them, but it will
also harm their enemy in a way that's beneficial to
them unleashing this strike. And Ghalibaf, the Speaker of Parliament
who's now in Switzerland sitting across the table from Jdevance,
negotiating a very uneven settlement right now in favor of
Iran and against the favor of the United States. Yesterday, Glibaff,
before he got on an airplane, said that he is
a post war economic commander, which again underscores this understanding
of economics for Iran, for the elites in Iran, that
it's about the money. It's not about protecting their people,
it's not about political institutions, it's not about these esoteric
philosophical concepts that we appreciate in the West. It's about
surviving and enriching themselves and surviving to enjoy that enrichment
and a lot of their money. Almost all of it
is not in Iran. It's in Europe, it's in Hong Kong,
it's around the world. It's in Canada. Billions of dollars,
and they've designed these systems to protect those dollars and
protect themselves. And if you see, for example, Golibov's son
has hundreds of millions of dollars in Iran and outside
of Iran he posts on Instagram. Other IERGC commanders their
children have yachts in the Mediterranean that on Instagram. These
are not secrets. And there's even a website called I
think like the Children of the Regime or something like
this where you can go see their daily lives, documented
them spending just untold amounts of money. None of this
money from work they ever did. This is from either
oil sales or other illicit activity. Right now, Iran has
a special program where if you own a vehicle in Europe,
you can import it into Iran and just pay a
small tax on it, and now you can bring it
into Iran, so you can buy it in Germany, for example,
and then bring it to Iran. There's sanctions that are
supposed to stop this from happening, but it's happening just
totally allowed, right and even I think we've talked about
it before. Companies like Audi for example, or BMW, they
know about these action, so what they do is they
take the vehicle slightly apart and they'll put little pieces
in between the doors and windows and things, and it
arrives in a box so it's not technically assembled in Europe,
and they'll bring it to Iran, take the little pieces out,
reattach everything, and now it's a vehicle that should not
have been there in the first place. And it's not
the average person doing this, it's the elites. And the
reason I'm kind of pushing this elite's button is because
these are the people in Switzerland right now negotiating with
the United States on a three hundred billion dollar cash infusion. Again,
money is there objective. We are about to give them
more of it. They use this money for very specific reasons,
like we mentioned corruption and things like this, but also
to fund has Bullat. After we exited the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action in twenty eighteen, the Hesbola funding levels
went up from about two hundred and fifty million dollars
a year to a billion dollars a year until last December.
We don't have twenty twenty six numbers yet, but there's
going to be more of it. And we can see
that this connection to has bullet remains relevant because that's
why the negotiations were threatened this past seven days in
the first place, is because Israel and Hezbola were fighting
war in Lebanon, and Iran said, that's point number one
on our fourteen point plan. You've got to stop fighting
in Lebanon, Israel or else we're not going to negotiate.
So they're telling us that this is important to them financially,
for security reasons, and many other things in between, and
they're not going to give up on this point. So
I think focusing on Lebanon and economics of this conflict
are probably the two most important things if the US
wants to do anything to salvage this disaster happening in
Switzerland right now.
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Speaker 6: So Jonathan you gave I think you raised a really
good point. I don't want to reiterate all the great
things you guys said, but I think that and it's
an article I did write in Engelsburg Ideas, which you
guys were referring to. I think the title was the
art of a Bad Deal. I co wrote it with
Sam Worby. But it's the idea of putting a carrot
forward deal. And it's exactly what you're talking about, Jonathan. Like, so,
I guess, first of all, the wisdom of that is
kind of beyond me. We're actually putting carrots for it.
Jd Vance, in a press interview, basically came out and
said we're not doing that, and I think he's lying.
I mean, you know, of course, the press never challenges
him and anything. Because everything I talked to, all the
oil analysts, everything, they said that Iran is going to
get between the ability to sell oil and which is
the waivers as well as some relief of some type
of assets. You could be six to twenty billion right
off the bat. Jd Vance is saying it's not gonna happen.
But so you know, first of all, where's the truth
on that? It looks like it actually is gonna happen.
But again, the idea of putting carrots forward first just
doesn't make any sense. And it shows how desperate the
United States is and I think that that is that
is certainly problematic. The other piece I would add, and
you know, I'm there. You know, maybe Mick is too,
and who knows the kind of the resident Israel whisperer,
But it's the notion of Look, I don't care with
you if you like bb net Nyahu or not. But
the idea of linking this to Lebanon, the US allowing
this is insane. You know, I live in northern Virginia
right across the way is d C. If you know,
if I you know I live in Vienna. If I
don't know, if McLain was getting pounded and was evacuated
because someone's firing from d C, that would be a problem.
And yet we have not managed to link this. So
the Israelis do need to have kind of freedom of action.
You know, you can you can debate whether or not
they should have gone into southern lebanon the ground force.
I think that's just unwise. But the idea of you know,
removing that ability there to strike back his bullet, the
US did Israel a terrible favor, and in fact, let's
not forget his ball as a terrorist entity that killed
more Americans up until nine to eleven than than Al Kaida.
And so I think that was a that was an
awful mistake overall. It's the notion of I think, Jonathan,
you're right, Israel survived. Andy. I think you said this.
I mean it's not Israel Ron survived. I think both
Jonathan Andy said that they controlled. They demonstrate they have
the control of the straight ufore moves. That's what we're
the MoU is just to to reopen the straight because
Trump panicked about the economy period. That's it. It's a
it's a cash tran it's a transaction of funds for
reopening the strait. So they demonstrated that again linking the
linkage to Lebanon was a terrible diplomatic error by the
United States.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 6: And then this inclusion of of some type of financial relief,
which is Jonathan says, is so paramount to the to
the regime, the Iranian regime. I'll finally, you know, it's
something I stupidly have done every day on Twitter. I'm
having fun doing it. I post how many days it's
been each day since January thirteenth, and it's one hundred
and fifty nine days right now since President Trump said
help was on its way, and you know, and a
lot of us were exercised about things like the botched
Afghan withdrawal for good reason. We criticized the Biden administration.
I certainly did, though. I work for a network ms now,
which is super pro kind of Democrat and supports Biden.
I was on there every day howling about it. I
just was period this this is going to be seen
as a betrayal of the Iranian people. Again, help is
on its way. As protesters run the street. They stayed
out there, they got slaughtered, and we are doing nothing
to help them. And in fact, if you talk to anybody,
the infusion of whatever it is, six billion, twelve billion,
God forbid the three hundred billion that allows the regime
to further survive.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 6: Bottom line is, I think we have done a great
harm to the ability for people like all of us
we are don't. We don't do this anymore. Maybe some
of you guys do clandestinely. I certainly don't. I sit
on my ass in northern Virginia. But the idea of
going out into the field and working with indigenous groups
and making promises, we don't look so good right now.
And I think that's a you know, and if you
I was just at a conference in Sweden. Uh. There
was a whole bunch of really really famous Iranian academics
there anti regime.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 6: But to a t they said that in the beginning
Iranian people welcomed the US and Israeli strikes. They do
not do so anymore now. And there is the incredible
feeling of betrayal right now. Again, you're gonna have the
scene at some point, I hope not. Maybe it's politically
suicidal for jd vance of him shaking the hands of
Valeyboff The from the Iranian side, and and and Mick,
I thought of you today, this that you know, and
of course I freaked out. This is this is my
not promise practicing stoicism. But when jd Vance at the
beginning of the talks said to the cameras, I love Pakistan,
there's nobody on the planet who served in Afghanistan who
says those words I love Pakistan. And so I just
saw that, and I thought of all of us, Andy
and and Jonathan, you two little friends, one more thing,
d I got something for you. Look at this little
I love Friese thing. Oh yeah, I love that too.
That's my that's my two sides.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm gonna start with something. I agree with all
you guys on this stuff. I can remember you said
the I'm gonna start with a positive, right, and the
positive had nothing to do with the MU. Major James
Capers finally received the Medal of Honor, way overdue most
most Marines certainly, but people from the Special Operations military
community have been waiting for this for a long time.
He he actually came and spoke to us at and
I mean it was such a memorable speech that, like
I it all came back when I was seeing him
get the metal honor. So let's start on a positive.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: One thing I would start advocating for I haven't stopped
advocating for, is to get the NSC back up and
running in full splendor, like get the careers back in there,
get people that can talk about like, well, are you
really going to change the regime if we do airstrikes?
Are we really going to are they not going to
close the trade? These are all things that would have
been discussed all the potential like Okay, if we do this,
they'll do that. What are we going to do? Are
we willing to adhere to and take the economic pain right?
And what is the economic pain? There's experts in every
one of these areas that could have informed up the
chain of command all the way to the you know,
the actual principles. I think Secretary Ubio is a very
capable person, but he can't be both. He can't be
the Secretary of State and get somebody on where is
he he's because the Apartment doesn't agree with any of this.
Let's face it, we all know that. Everybody knows that.
Everybody knows that, right, But I'm just talking about the
process and process matters because I don't think we'd be
in this position if that was something that was actually
done before the decision. Get somebody like Jack Keane, you know,
Jene Keane or somebody that has the gravatas and has
the uh anyway, so uh if we done if we
had done that, I don't think we'd be in the
situation we're in. So to go down the list of
strategic objectives we had before watching this regime change, I
know now they're saying they didn't plan on that. They did.
They said it over and over again. Helps on the
way mark you just said it. They said we actually
did have regime change before it was clearly we didn't.
And then the so that was an objective, we're not
going to meet it. The intelligence community said that wasn't
going to happen. You're not going to do you know,
air war people just quit, it's never gonna happen. Yes,
we did strike and do the decapitation strikes. And you know,
I'm somebody that if you kill servicemen and women in
the United States or CI officers, you should always be
on the list. So there's zero love loss of the
de capitation strikes. But Strategically, all it did is give
us a younger, more pissed off version of the regime. Right,
So we went from an eighty six year old Iyatola
Kahmane to a fifty six year old Ayatola Homani, right,
and we now have Lahiti as the IRGC commander. These
are and he is I'm sure and correct me if
I'm wrong. Jonathan one that has always been advocating for
Ron to have a nuclear weapon, like has been the
guy that's always been like, hey, you're wrong. No, fought
was on not having nuclear weapons. Let's get a nuclear weapon.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So strategically we did not change the regime. We now
embolden them and with these financial benefits, it's going to
put them in place, probably in perpetuity, right if they
actually realize the unfreezing of assets. I think there's around
one hundred billion total if you look at restricted and
frozen assets, but immediately like twenty billion if you could
sell your oil sanctions are gone. I think that's around
eighty billion a year. This three hundred billion dollar reconstruction
fund with really baffles me, because what are you reconstructing?
We struck military targets? Are we going to ask the
Gulf countries to pay to reconstruct the military targets that
we use to tack them and cause them damage. I
don't see them doing it, and it's the logic behind
it is just it escapes me. So we didn't change
the regime. So what did we do? That's positive? We
did destroy their navy, we did destroy their Convention Lavy,
the Air Force. But we then are giving them all
this financial incentive. What do you think they're going to
do with it? They're going to replace the ballistic missiles
that we did degrade that we talked about so much
as as a plus, which I talked about as a plus.
The concern with the ballistic missiles, that is, if we're
going to protect their nuclear program, so we had to
degrade it. Now we're get them the money. What do
you think they're going to do. They're going to rebuild
their ballistic missiles and now the White House is defending
their ability to have missiles. Why why? I mean that
was the biggest criticism or one of the bigger criticisms
of the JCPOA. Didn't address ballistic missiles, didn't address proxies.
So that's not even our list of objectives and it's
still not being discussed in the MoU or in Switzerland
right now. Proxies and ballistic missiles. We're now defending their
ability to have ballistic missiles and their proxy forces. Obviously
we're not even talking about them doing that. So that's
not healthful at all now. So we haven't met necessary objectives.
The other one, of course, the biggest one, the priority one,
is no nuclear weapons. And although the White House was
saying that they agreed to give up their highly enriched uranium,
they did not. It's right in the agreement. You can
look at the MoU. It's not a secret they did not.
They did not. They haven't agreed to do anything on
their nuclear front. In fact, Posesskian President Pozeski just came
out and said they're never going to agree to not
enrich uranium. He just came out and said that. So
if that's the case, almost the best we could do.
And I don't like this. I'm just pointing out, and
I think is fact is to get back and something
that looks exactly like the JCPO way right, we're giving
them billions of dollars, they're going to enricheranium. What are
we going to try to keep him to three point
sixty seven. Maybe that's what it was, and I know
that it was going to expire, but we could have
simply made it better rather than tear it up. So
I think I've hit every major point. We should probably
go on some of the nuances, but I would like
to see the next sixty days turn this around, right.
I want to see the United States come out strategically ahead.
We are not headed there right now. We're not. Everybody knows.
It doesn't matter what party you're in, you know, right,
left center, people can see that this is not happening.
The straight up hormose, I'll stop on this straight of
humose is not actually open. The Iranians have not agreed
to give up their control of the Strait only to
bring it to pre war levels and then in the
future they're going to charge fees. We all know it's coming.
In fact, they already close it again. But so it's
even that wasn't a war objective because it was open before,
and we haven't gotten that back to where we wanted.
So what's the alternative. I had a friend tell me,
you know, he picked the best of all the terrible alternatives.
I don't agree with that I think we actually had
him on the road. Economically, I think we and we
if we didn't want to take the economic pressure, we
shouldn't have done this in the first place. We shouldn't
have done it in the first place, because the worst
case is you do it, you then cave. And this
is going to change the power dynamics in the Middle
East and around the world. They now know that they
have an economic nuclear weapon and we have confirmed it.
So I think we have to take the heat a
bit on the economic side of this, but continue on
and if if they rupture the agreement, we should view
that as thank goodness, and then we can go back
and start negotiation this again. I know it's there's no
easy answer to this. I'm not saying that, but I
want America to come out on ahead. I want her
on the regime, not the running people, to come out
way in the rear, you know, in other words, negatively.
So we're not headed there right now. It's super concerning,
and I'd like to see, you know, the smart folks
come together and come up with a plan for the
US to turn this around, starting from a difficult position.
Speaker 6: But Nick, one quick thing on that there are no
smart folks, the NSC doesn't work. Trump doesn't listen to anybody.
So I agree with you, you know, this is a hope.
But there's there's nothing I see on the horizon that
shows any indication of anything positive happening. Jared Kushner and
Steve Witkoff and JD. Vans are the ones who are
in Switzerland. That's a recipe for disaster, you know. So
so the idea there is no one, there's no one
coming to the rescue, there's no smart people involved, and
you know, so I just I don't see how that
is ever going to occur. I don't know what, you know.
Marco Rubio is fleeing from this because of twenty twenty eight.
He wants to be president and this is a disaster.
He knows it, you know. And I'd go back to,
you know, the quart of the State Department's gone. At
least most of my friends in the agency are long past,
are long gone, you know. I mean I was asking
even one of my former you know, counterparts in Mosad,
you know, and he basically said, how can everyone have
made so many mistakes on Iran? Like we all collectively
used to actually be pretty good on this, but there's
nothing I see on the horizon that is optimistic that
we're going to do anything positive here. In fact, Trump
is bored, Rubio wants to go off to Cuba, and
everyone's focusing in the mid terms. I mean, I think
you might have said this that this is the worst
case scenario that we start something and don't finish it,
and we've kind of poked the bear. Uh, but if
you're gonna you know, if you want to poke the bear,
you better kill it. And we didn't. And there's no
I mean, if if anybody thinks we're going to resume
military confrontation in any serious manner, they're on They're on crack.
Trump wants nothing to do with it. I don't think
Sentcom or the Pentagon do as well because of because
of you know, the you know, the depletion in stocks.
And plus there's a question of can it actually work? Uh,
what more can we do without putting in ground forces?
Speaker 4: So you know, those are all those are all good points.
Speaker 6: I mean, really pessimistic on this, I don't know. And
so but here's here's here's my question to you. This
is actually important because we all consider and criticize, and
I'm great at that okay, So what do we do
and what you know or what could we do or
what what do you I mean knowing that there is
we have incompetent people in charge. That's the thing that
drives me nuts. I don't see anyone's you know, I
I like I don't like watching Fox News. I like
watching General Keane because he's up there, and he laid
into Sean Hannity the other day, as he should. I
thank god someone in that crazy network is saying something normal.
And so you know, I don't see I'm not I
don't have room for optimism.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Well, I get your idea. What you're saying is it's
unlikely that they're going to pull these people and make
prebaty fair. But I think there are people out there
that could could be very valuable in an NSC. I mean,
their career is right. There's the military didn't empty of experts,
the Department of Energy didn't empty of experts, the CIA didn't,
the State Department. Yes, I know a lot of there's
still people there. There's still people there, people left.
Speaker 6: I think there are a lot of people who are
gone and you could.
Speaker 4: Bring them back. I mean, they could be retired, you
can still bring them back to the NSC. I know,
maybe I'm you know, Tiltner willneck win bills here, b
I think like it's not going to be an easy task.
But if it, if it doesn't happen, then we already
know what the outcome is.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 4: We're seeing it. We're seeing it, and I don't want
that for the US. I don't care about whose president,
who's party benefits and stuff. I just want to see this, uh,
not end up the way it's headed for the and
the region, all our allies.
Speaker 3: I actually make the last point is a really key point.
We've certainly lost credibility in the region. And and to
your point, Mark, I mean and yours too, make actually
the you know, I know it sounds like we're hand ringing,
but it's difficult not to wring your hands at this
point because look the you know, we we' when you
look at the details. Let's let's take the whole framework deal.
What it says about in the enriched uranium, right, I
mean that potentially, potentially that gives the greatest cause for
optimism and this whole sorry mess. Okay, but when you
look closely at that, because the Framework Deal has Iran
agreeing to down blend its enriched uranium, basically dilute it,
so it's no longer weapons grade under IAEA supervision. So
you know, on the surface, that looks like real progress,
but then you look at the actual language in your agreement,
and that's kind of the minimum methodology, and the material
itself never leaves Iran. It stays on iranium soil, so
while the real terms get negotiated over over the next
sixty days, So.
Speaker 4: They're going to stop enrichment.
Speaker 6: That's right, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: You've got a commitment to a process, not a commitment
to an outcome, and nobody's actually verified anything yet, you know,
to your point about I mean, it's like just a
dreadful divorce settlement, right, it's we made all these all
these things are flowing in Iran's favor before they even
have to do anything. And the IAEA's what's his name, Grossy,
I mean he he was in Switzerland this past weekend
still working out what this semen looks like. In practice,
it's not it. There's no inspection happening, the inspections being negotiated,
so it's really it's hard to be optimistic, but I
think and you know the same thing about hebola. You know,
and I think, I think this is an interesting point,
not because I'm about to bring it up, but I
think we have to be you know, you have to
approach this from a point of view had real politic.
Is his bolla okay, bear with me. Is his bolla
a real threat to the United States? I get it,
they've killed Americans in the past, But I'm not swayed
by that, nor should anyone. I don't think not, because.
Speaker 6: I mean, otherwise we would have never we would never
have made.
Speaker 3: Peace with Germany.
Speaker 4: For Christ's sake.
Speaker 3: Sixty seventy thousand israelis moved out of the neighborhood. I
get it, but that doesn't affect us. However, his bolla
is absolutely disruptive to the regions, so it is in
our interests.
Speaker 6: It is in our.
Speaker 3: Interest to pursue them. But you can't. You're not going
to bomb them into oblivion. I mean, that's so firmly
entrenched right in Lebanese society. I mean, you can you
can read anything about this by people who understand his bolla.
That you have to approach it from by you know,
bringing bringing influence on Lebanon, supporting Lebanon to do what
it needs to do in order to enforce the you know,
UN resolution, what was it, seventeen oh one, all those
things bombing, the bombing has done very little.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: We are here, though, and this is the really pessimistic point.
We are here because we just didn't anticipate and I
don't know how we didn't anticipate that whole moves would
turn out to be as Trump card no pun intended, right,
and that was an improvise. You know, Iran built its
entire war strategy around Hall Moves back in five oh six,
and I just don't understand why he didn't understand that.
Because the US military flagged almost we all know this, right,
it's not it's open, open source. The US military flagged
Hormos is the single biggest risk of a war with
Iran for decades, and it was in all the briefings.
The Joint chiefs warned about it before the strikes even started,
and the assumption was going in was that Iran would
either back down or the Navy could just reopen the
straight by force. But you know who who who even
gave that advice? I mean, and now you can't undo
that through negotiations. So Ran knows the power that it has.
It's been proven and that is what no amount of
negotiation and this next sixty days can undo. And Iron knows.
Speaker 2: That you offriend of Mickey ran Away.
Speaker 4: No, I'm joking.
Speaker 2: I'm joking.
Speaker 6: I was going to pick on him too, because I
want to talk about happy math from the Pentagon because
you know, we had talked about on the show so
many times before got the briefings from Heg Seth and
Dan Kane and I and I challenged everybody here that
you know that. My thought was, you know, the military
has lied to us before, and I think they're they're
lying to us again. And I know that's hard for folks.
I did not serve you all, did I think we
have to question all those briefings, including from Dan Kane.
I really do, uh. And so you know, I think
history and Hegseeth is a fool. But but history might
not be as kind because you know, you know, the
all the all the programs that seem to have been
obliterated other than the ir the Iranian navy, which is
the bottom of the sea, but not really because of
all the fast attack ships and everything, all all this,
all their drone whatever they have. I don't know. I'm
not so sure that we didn't go through a whole
other exercise of the military not being truthful or maybe
the be was bad at the time, but they said it.
And if you had believed that, then the war was
essentially over. And it's not so to provoke Andy and Jonathan, Jonathan,
what do you what do you think on that?
Speaker 5: I think back to Vietnam when we had the whole
body count problem, where we had these whiz kids who
were extremely intelligent engineers that second f McNamara surrounded himself
with to try to get ahead of the Vietnam problem
that that they inherited in the fifties, and so from
France in particular, because France basically gave us their problem
and told us to handle it. And that's what we
did in Vietnam in the early years, and in order
to get ahead of it, we thought of how how
can we rationalize what we're doing there? And they decided
to start doing this body count thing. Well, what that
did was it incentivized people on the ground to first
of all claim kias that did not happen, and second
of all, to kill civilians to increase the number, and
this especially on the on the Vietnamese partner force side,
because that would increase the amount of resources they could
get the hirer the body counts were, whether they're real, fabricated,
or other people that were killed that were not the enemy.
That was all designed so that these numbers could come in,
because that's what the whole thing was focused on, was
how many died, how much damage was done? Numbers, numbers,
And that's exactly what you're talking about, Mark, Where in
the modern world we don't actually have that exact incentivized problem,
but we do have a very similar issue where the
Department of Defense, because that's what it's called by law
and not Department of War. The Department of Defense is
trying to advertise successes that don't exist, and they're doing
that with numbers because it's hard. It feels like it's
harder to argue numbers because you see these things. Oh,
I see the imagery. I see the bomb striking the target.
That must have been a destructive, a destruction of an
enemy target. Well, let's go on the ground and actually
evaluate was that an enemy target. Was that a transporter
or director launcher was that a point of origin site.
Speaker 2: Was there a mortar there?
Speaker 5: We will never know because we on the US side
are not actually going on the ground to do battle
damage assessment. We had this problem in Iraq, even if
we were in the same area, if we couldn't actually
get to the target to evaluate if it was struck
or not, we couldn't beat totally certain that that was
the right target, the right time, with the right impact
that we're saying that it was. And you know, the
same thing with drone warfare. If you don't have someone
on the ground, a human source to validate or signals
intelligence to validate that that was actually destroyed, you can't
be totally certain that was destroyed. And if we're on
the order of thirty thousand, fifty thousand strikes in a
week or in a month, every one of those strikes
needs to be validated. And the law of large numbers
kind of indicates that if you're not validating small numbers
of targets, you're also not validating large numbers of targets.
So there's this kind of runaway problem where you don't
really know. It's almost like shooting in the dark. You
know you're shooting you're definitely expending rounds, but you're not
really sure, like where are those rounds hitting and are
they actually causing more problems than there were before you
fired that round. So there's a lot of challenge here
without us actually being on the ground to evaluate. And
you could be on the ground a lot of capacities,
like I said, it could be recruited sources, human sources,
it could be really exquisite signals intelligence as to use
in a particular way. It could be other things besides
ground troops. But ground troops really help because that's us,
so you could trust us.
Speaker 6: It's the end of gotten no better. I mean, I
hear you. But again, so they're doing these briefings and
they're going to Trump and showing them all this stuff,
and he's getting mesmerized. So Trump was a dufust Thanks
for winning, But so.
Speaker 5: Isn't the same problem Maybe Trump won the same problem
against ISIS because and I remember this because I was
in Syrian and a rock during this time in Jordan
as well, where we would you know, deliver up our strike,
battle damage assessments and things like that. They would get
restructured and repackaged before like they would leave us our teams,
and on their way up to the president they would change.
And this was that time when Trump's name had to
be inserted dozens of times into his President's daily Brief
in order for him to even pay attention, not even
to absorb, but to just pay attention. And I remember
we got our National Intelligence Priorities Framework designed and setting
down to us for collection. It was not approved until
Trump got to put his digital you know that that
really weird signature he has in like size forty eight
font on the actual matrix for our collection matrix. That
was that was that had to happen, or else it
couldn't get approved. So this is the person that's listening
to this stuff. He will only consume what he likes
to consume. So what's happening is these hangers on, these
palace hangers on around him are changing the material and
changing the information in a way that he'll actually digest,
which means they have to alter it's actual subject matter
and fundamental truth. That's my belief, and I saw it
during Trump one, where they would actually modify things that
we said on their way to the presence daily brief
so that he would actually keep his eyes open on
the page that's being dictated to him, because he's not
reading it, it's being dictated to him, and he has
to hear his own name. So this is that same
person now ten years later, eight years later, eighty years old,
just turned eighty, barely can stay awake, and so now
think about how much of a challenge is to even
hold his attention long enough. He doesn't care about what's
happening in Iran. He cares about his image, his legacy,
these things, and so the people around him are trying
to feed him information that makes him believe that his
legacy is positive. And you can see in what he's
saying on social media he believes that the things he's saying.
I don't think he disbelieves what he's saying. I think
the information. If he saw what was actually true, he
might not have such a positive attitude toward what's going
on with Iran and related issues.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and John, you know, also there's there's the fact
and I'm not defending the military here, Mark.
Speaker 6: Look, there's.
Speaker 3: There is an explanation that should have taken place, whether
or not Trump wanted to listen to it or not.
And I don't know if that explanation occurred. But you
know b d A, as as John pointed out, is
really tough unless your boots on the ground. And it's
it's complex. I mean you there's three parts of it, right,
I mean you you've got the physical damage assessment and
and that's alone is quite difficult. You know if you're
doing it just from the air, all right, what is
your and you because you're comparing three m post strike pictures, right,
which is difficult. Have assets that are dispersed and moving
you're doing You've got a functional damage assessment, which asks
the harder question. You know, if something was hit, can
it still do its job? So give an example, I
mean we're going after missile launchers. A missile launcher or
with a created support building can can still do its job.
It's completely operational, right, but it looks as though it's
destroyed and it's easy to explain as such. And then
you've got the really harder part, which is a system
assessment which zooms out further and if individual nodes are destroyed,
can the broader system still function? Reconstitute? And so you know,
understanding all that, the analysts understand that, getting operational commanders
to understand all that in itself is quite difficult to
be honest with you. I think John will agree. And
then and then when you're packaging it for a president
who has quite a short attention span, let's you know,
I'm I'm understating that. Then it becomes near impossible. So
even without intentional duplicity, the whole bda thing was bound
to go wrong. And when you're talking about a system assessment,
you know, let's take the navy as an example, someone
somewhere along the line should have told them the conventional
Iranian navy was never a threat. The threat was always
always small boats, mines and drones and missiles. Of course,
in that order, missiles can be fired from anywhere and
hit the straight anywhere.
Speaker 2: In Iran.
Speaker 3: Around's a big country. It's easy to disperse missiles. The
Iranians use decoys, very easy to hide missile launchers there.
I mean, all these, all these factors play in what
is absolutely unjustifiable is the extreme confidence shown by guys
in uniform when they breathed I agree with you, because
they should understand what I have just explained. Because I'm
not I'm not an intel in a list. I'm an
operational guy, but I at least understand that, and so
there was a sense of of misleading the American public.
I do agree on on that from people who should
have known BETA, or maybe they didn't. Maybe truly they
have reached four star rank been quite ignorant about what
BDA involves, or or you.
Speaker 6: Get the senior levels and you realize that you're there
and if you say anything against the grain, you will
not be there any longer.
Speaker 2: But I too.
Speaker 6: Conventional wisdom, and I'm just throwing this out there, and
just for whatever I you know, you guys know this,
but like, this has nothing to do with the you know,
an F thirty five pilot or someone on a US
ship somewhere, a US marine, like you know, the people
on the ground. This is not them. I'm talking about
the leadership who have to brief the President of the
United States on how the conduct of the war is going.
And and and Dan Kane, the chairman, has been given
a pass because Pete Hagsath is such a complete and
utter fool. Kine has been given a pass. But Kane
also was involved in these briefings. And I don't think
President Trump gets his rosy a picture without Dan Kane
providing that rosy picture. And I think, you know, it's
fair to go back and say because right now, I
mean some people, I think some people, especially on the
right in the United States, are like, hold on a second.
I thought we were winning. We're kicking their ass every day.
All we saw in Fox News was death and destruction
from above. And wait a second. Now the narrative, of
course on the right is shifted that we kind of
screwed the pooch on this. But you know, there is
something to be said out Mick came back, Mick, I
this is I was. I was talking about something that
you would you would we had talked about before, perhaps
disagreed a little bit previously. Just has to do with
kind of the military briefings that were provided over the
last several months. And I you know, we had all
given kind of uh, dan can a pass. But but
I think we do have to go back and because
with the happy math uh and all the things, and
then Andy and Jonathan talked about the difficulties in BDA.
But I do think we can go back and say, well,
hold on a second. You know, the President has been
brief NonStop that we're winning the military and these Pentagon briefings,
even though Haigseth is kind of a fool. Dan Kane
has been sitting there and saying kind of a lot
soberly but saying the same things, and it turns around,
turns out now that will hold on a second. So
I do think that's fair to at least kind of
question that, going back to things such as Andy said,
you know, military briefings at Vietnam with body counts, and
you know there's you know, I look back to times
in Irock in Afghanistan, military briefings turned out really not
to be correct. I think it's fair to just raise
that now as we're sitting in a place where it
looks like we're not coming out. I don't think we're
losing this war at all, but we certainly are. You know,
we didn't win, not yet.
Speaker 4: I mean, this should be something that's reviewed by basically
the arm the services committees. They need to review, like
because the tellis assessment, it's going to come out right,
and then they can look at what was briefed and
what was the case, and they can you know, sometimes
they're just mistakes because they adjust their assessment. But it
needs to happen because the history needs to be correct
and we need to make sure that the presidents get
in the right information and obviously the American people because
at the end of the day, we pay for right
I did right before I had to jump on it. Yeah,
to another media outlet. I did have a question for
you guys, because I heard somebody talking. She was on
the House Intelligence Committee. Now she was trumpeting the idea
that Ron signed this thing and said they won't to
have a nuclear we as a big positive. I would say, well, like,
they've agreed to not have a nuclear weapon, I don't
know how many different times, and yeah, right, And then
she said, and you can look it up. They she
had seen intel, which is kind of an odd thing
to say that they have a clandestine nuclear program, which
kind of counted her position. You know, It's like, so,
what does it matter if they're signing a document to
the Great Satan that they're not going to have a
nuclear and then she's and then it was like, wait
a minute, what, because I mean I don't have access
to information anymore. But she said that yesterday as if
she had read it recently. So if they have a
clandestine nuclear.
Speaker 2: Program, make you sorry repeat that a little bit. You
broke up a little.
Speaker 4: So she was saying as somebody, as a member of
the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, that she had seen
intelligence that they have a current clandestine nuclear weapons program.
I don't know if that's true. I haven't been open.
I don't have access, and nor would I want it
because I talk about this stuff too much. So if
that's the case and we know it, what is it
we're trying to negotiate, And what do we care if
they're writing things that they clearly aren't intending to do?
You know what I mean? Like, do you think that's accurate?
I guess is a question for the group. And then
the other part is how far advanced are we because
we're only talking about the parts of the nuclear program
that we think we know. You see what I mean?
Is there one that's utilizing these fortresses that are impenetrable
right now? I don't know, because that throws a big
monkey ranch into the whole I think scenario going on.
Speaker 5: Well, when Chramani sent the delegation, he said that there
had to be a certain number of these Supreme National
Security Council members that would approve of the negotiations. There's
twelve of them. It required nine yes votes, all twelve
of course voted yes because it's an authoritarian regime. But
in that statement saying that all of them agreed, they
said they're going to approach these talks with total distrust.
That's a quote total distrust. So as you mentioned, Mick,
they're going to go sign this piece of paper with
the Great Satan with total distrust. I would lean more
toward the clandestin nuclear program being true than them agreeing
to give up nuclear weapons verbally or on a piece
of paper in Switzerland. And I think that's very important
to understand. You act versus words. You know, there's a
lot of words being thrown around right now because there's
a financial incentive for them to look like they're doing
what they say they're doing until they get their hands
in that cash and they're going to put something that's
going to get diverted. And that was a big, you know,
dispute with the JCPOA was that if we give them
a credit facility or some kind of special purpose vehicle
with money for humanitarian supplies and things, that that would
divert cash for them to use somewhere else in a
negative way, you know, for purchasing dual use weapons. Systems
or actuators and other in rocket systems. Right, And again,
three hundred billion is a lot more than what was
with the JCPOA. So even if that was used in
a very strict humanitarian vehicle, and they claim there will
be no weapons and no nuclear you know, equipment being produced,
that's what they say. They approached this with total distrust.
They said that I would take them at their worth.
They don't trust the West, they have never trusted America.
That has been death to America, death to Israel since
nineteen seventy nine and remain so. And that's actually what
anser Allah or the Huthis and Yemen, that's their slogan
is death to America, death to Israel, even it's on
their flag, and that's an Iranian proxy force. So I
think we would be kind of deluding ourselves with idealism
and hope, just wishing and hoping that the regime is
being honest. They're telling us that they don't trust us.
I feel like, how can you how can you look
at that and just ignore that and say no, they're
going to sign the document and they're going to follow it.
Speaker 1: I have a philosophical ish question, and I know the
Iranian regime is shit and terrible, But can you blame
them for giving no, not being able to trust us
going into these negotiations, have you know, looking at the
looking at it? Yeah, absolutely, by looking at the history,
can you blame them, especially if their one goal is
regime security, which Jack John's incredible book Our Ant Shadow
Weapons points out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I guess it's from their perspective. They
don't trust us, we don't trust them. And the question
is like, wouldn't you be trying to get a nuclear weapon?
I mean, I know it's not popular to say, but
for pragmatic reasons, like if it like, what would you
be doing if you were in their shoes right now?
What would you be advocating for with the Supreme later? Seriously?
I mean, look at you guys, aren't Yeah, on.
Speaker 6: This issue, I think it was a couple of things.
One is you have to see which member of hipsie
said this. You know, you know at which which member
of the committee. Some of them are complete idiots, and
so who knows if she said this, she probably shouldn't
have the number. Two, there has been some reporting that
suggested when the Israelis came to President Trump and uh,
and kind of convinced convinced him for the nuclears, for
the strike on the nuclear facilities, it had to do
with something new that they had uncovered. So there is
there might be something murky out there, and it's probably
less you know, uh, conclusive that there is a clandestine
nuclear weapon program. Could by the way, just that ended
up itself if it was real. That leaks, Sorry it does.
It ain't our collection, so that would leak.
Speaker 4: In a sentad way.
Speaker 3: It did.
Speaker 6: But but I think there's probably some nuance there.
Speaker 4: On that.
Speaker 6: One thing I wanted to raise with you guys, which
you know, so it was interesting. So CNN reported essentially
there's some side agreements on the MU and and then
insinuated that there are leadership splits within or on I mean,
I was going back and forth with some of the
CNN commentators and they said, Okay, that might be true,
because you really have the political types who are in
Switzerland now. But the idea that somehow there's there's leadership
splits and that you know, first of all, the political
folks can come out on top, but that not that
the IRGC is still controlling everything. I wonder if it
even matters. But and you see this theme with especially
with Vance and Trump, who you know, they say things
I don't even because they've been briefed. But you know,
there's reasonable people we're dealing with, or there are, you know.
But so I guess the question is do you see
any leadership splits? And if there are, doesn't even matter
considering the IRGC are the ones with the guns.
Speaker 4: So the only thing I've heard on them leadership splits
isse these folks that we obviously consider hard liners, the
hard liners don't and they basically told them, don't come
back if you concede anything that we told you not
to concede. Like they're not acting like Gallibov and Arachi,
you know, like they're they're I mean, correct me if
I'm wrong, But most of what I've heard is they
have been told like, even if you want to concede something,
if we told you not to, don't do it. That's
what it doesn't Matt Price, Yeah, right, yeah, but you.
Speaker 6: Know there's always this search for moderates. I mean, Jonathan,
you have a pretty good sense of history of US
Iranian relations, I mean from you know, Bud McFarland's key
in a birthday cake or whatever, the fuck we did then.
I mean, we always have this incredible desire to finding
moderate to speak to in Iran and it never works
and we end up looking like naive idiots.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and actually, for the listeners, what Mark's referring to
is the Iran Contra affair where when we secretly went
to go agree in Iran to delivering weapons for drugs
and so on and all that scandal. There was a
cake also delivered off the aircraft with a key in
the cake, which is kind of a fascinating part of
our history. I recommend people go read about it if
they haven't read about that. But it's interesting.
Speaker 4: Why would we put again, it was like a trust exchange, and.
Speaker 5: It was actually organized by an Israeli businessman and that's
the one who recommended putting the cake or putting the
key in the cake. It's a whole interesting.
Speaker 6: It's I mean, it's really it's a humiliating story. But
again it was a key bugged.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 5: But if you're looking at today right now in Iran,
the question about is there a split, the answer is yes.
And the way I can I can confirm that. So
you know, the regime pays a lot of people to
go out in the streets and do these pro regime
protests to make it look like there are people in
Iran that like widely supporting what's going on. Now these
have actually gotten a little bit out of a hand
because the people that are supporting the negotiations in Switzerland
on the pro regime side are actually telling these protesters
to please stop protesting, and they're not because they're being
controlled by IERGC elements who are telling them to continue protesting.
And you can actually see this played out on different
Iran controlled media outlets. You know, there's the Islamic Republic
of Iran Broadcasting which is the IERGC controlled media. Then
there's a Ministry of Intelligence controlled broadcasting station also, and
there are different narratives on both of these, even though
they're both pro regime on the Ministry of Intelligence side
and the Foreign Ministry supported media. They're saying that these
protests are going down and people are leaving the streets,
and on the IERGC side, they're actually amplifying and saying
more people are coming out to the streets to protest
the US negotiations with Iran. There is certainly.
Speaker 6: I love this, it's interesting, and we geek out on
this stuff. The big question for you then doesn't matter?
Does it?
Speaker 4: Is there?
Speaker 6: I mean, so you know we're seized on this, you
see an intelligence report, they're split. So, okay, does it
actually matter with the final Iranian position? How can the
US take advantage of this argument? And maybe I'm totally wrong,
is it doesn't matter because the herdline think anyway?
Speaker 5: It does matter because the way that we are defining
moderate and hardliner is shifting. They are all hardliners in
my opinion. If we say moderate, we're joking to ourselves.
We're just talking in relative terms. But there's one person
that's on the delegation in Switzerland that tells me that
this matters, and that's Golibof. I actually saw yesterday, I
think it was on CNN. He was described as a moderate,
and I had to reread that sentence because I was like,
how are you calling this guy a moderate? He is
a deep seated hardlining member of the old IRGC crew
that should have been whacked on day one, And in fact,
the US asked Israel not to kill him, him and
Vahiti both because we wanted to negotiate with him, because
we didn't really understand who these people were, and now
we see who they are and he's there in Switzerland.
So if he is there in Switzerland, then whatever he
decides is going to be the law of the land,
which is a very important point. It's not that they
sent a Ragchi this time or Pozeshkian. There's a reason
Pozeshkiin is not on the delegation because Posesshkiin has zero
control over what happens. He can say a lot, and
he does say a lot on social media, but it's
the IURGC who's in charge. In Golibof has held almost
every important position in the IRGC that exists, and now
he is the parliament speaker, so he controls the modules also,
which is their like their Senate. He controls that now
and he's the one that's leading the delegation. It's him
a Ragchi, the Foreign Minister, it's represented from the Supreme
National Security Council. It's the Central Bank Director of Iran
who's a sanctioned individual but has a black diplomatic passport
and travels to the United States to DC and oil representatives.
So it's the mystery of oil. This is the delegation.
So to your point, Mick, this Yeah, exactly. This is
about the straits of horror moves and the movement of oil.
This is not about resolution of conflict. It's about a
specific economic outcome. As you mentioned, Mark, that Trump got
flustered with what's going on economically and is trying to
find a way out. That's why those people are at
that meeting, so that there can be a way out
for the US government to somehow get out of this
with something.
Speaker 6: It seems like we're getting our asses handed by that.
I mean, the Iranians are really good negotiators. I mean,
but just you know, I mean, this is I mean,
I hate to say this, Mick. I'm like, I'm with
you on this, but I want us to win. But
you have this select team versus wit Cooff and Jared
and jd Vance. I just how do we win this?
Speaker 5: Well, plus, these negotiators on the Iran side have been
negotiating the same people, The same named people have been
negotiating for forty years. They're super experienced. Yeah, they've they've
met every American delegation and they've seen them come and go.
It's kind of like us going to Afghanistan every year
and we meet the guys for the first time. They've
been there the whole time, you know, and it's very
similar to that.
Speaker 4: So I mean, like we're trying to come up with
ideas and maybe I'll throw this to any In fact,
they will throw it to any. One of the biggest
issues of getting ships at the Strada Hormos is getting
ships to accept that it's safe enough even with US
military escort. You think there's a way that we could
basically ensure all these ships and even put our people
on it to try to get the free flow, because
if we if we took that away from this becomes
a different discussion. Like I'm throwing out there, I don't
have any basis to know whether that's a potential, but
I think we need to start thinking out of the
box right now because if we're headed down to an
I Runian successful outcome of this, Like, is that a
potential with the military escort and the military umbrella that
would be over that we could start getting the free force?
Speaker 3: I think and answer to your question, I mean, and
I hate to say this, but there's the military side.
There's no clean military fix. The military side could be
used to enable a negotiated agreement about traits of all news.
That's a tough part about this. I mean, keeping it
open by force is what the blockade already tried. It
just turned the Strait into contested space. You know, it
didn't really solve anything. So a long term military commitment
to hold a twenty one mile wide waterway against mines,
fast boats, and drones is.
Speaker 6: Not a strategy, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean it's a it's a liability, right, So the
real fix and it's a it's not a good answer.
I mean it's the only answer. It's just not a
satisfactory one.
Speaker 4: Is it's a.
Speaker 3: Slow structural approach, right, reduce dependence on the Strait itself.
Saudi and Ua pipelines already bypass you know, they're already
working on a bypar bypassing the Straits with exporting their oil.
But that's you know, that's a long term approach. Find
ways to make the cost of closing it land on
Iran's own economy, specifically, not just spike prices for the
whole world. Right now, the threat works precisely because the
pain is global and diffuse. It's not concentrated on Turan.
So we can find a way to do that. I mean,
house isn't home Moose isn't a problem you can off
and it's a fact of geography, and Iran will always
be able to lean on it. The real progresses is
making that leverage work less by finding it, you know,
ways around it, and also directing some of that pain
back on to Tehran. So it's it's it can't be
solved by the military, which course paints me to say.
And you know, while while I'm here and I know
these about to shut us down, he's got to go
on to more important things. No, I'm loving this, but
but you know, Mark and Mick both kind of said
it brought up the point that we need guys who
really know what the goals are and how to negotiate,
and we talked about what we should talk about. You
know what do they do? So very briefly, I think
they need to handle Lebanon first, right, because it's a
live fuse. Iran has explicitly tied or moose access the
Lebanon cease fire holding and we just watched it use
that exactly justification to shut the straight down three days
after signing the MoU So Israel isn't a party to
this deal. Washington's having to manage a partner. It doesn't control,
you know, it doesn't control the clock. And that's going
to mean real pressure on They're going to have to
bring real pressure on Israel, not just public statements asking
for a restraint, because restraint hasn't worked. And until that
is solved, and I mean real pressure, I mean whatever
leverage we have with Israel, it's a time to use
it because our interests as nations have diverged. And again
I don't you know, I don't always agree with JD. Vance,
but he's right in addict at that point. And Lebanon
can make the whole thing blow up on our face
unless we clamp it down right now. And the way
to do that is bring pressure in Israel.
Speaker 4: That's number one.
Speaker 3: Number two is get the nuclear mechanism verified, not just promise.
Speaker 4: Right, So.
Speaker 3: Sixty days isn't going to solve the problem, but it's
enough time to convert the vague language into a binding
kind of verified agreement and similar to the jig poet
right with real inspection, access, a real timeline, something that
costs Iran a real price if it walks away, and
then the other way. The third thing is we've got
to stop spending leverage before Iran has moved on anything.
The blockade's gone, the frozen assets are already moving. That
was round one and it went before anything was verified.
So whatever's left the reconstruction fund, future sanctions relief has
to stay strictly conditional, this time tied to confirmed, verifiable steps,
not handed over on good faith alone. So you know,
I mean, the honest bottom line is nobody seriously expects
sixty days to resolve the missile program or the proxies
or the stockpile. The real tests is narrower, and that
is what we can salvage out of the language from
this mlu I think taking the steps we've already taken.
At the same time, when it comes to a whole moose,
looking for a longer term solution where we are not
so dependent on who moose because this whole talk of
us keeping it open militarily is absolutely impractical and it
plays right into Iron's hands. So we want to figure
out a way to remove that Trump conck from Iran.
Speaker 4: It just makes you wonder, like when they talked about
the straight closing and we knew it was going to
be closed, what was the plan. What was the plan
to either keep it open or prevent it from closing
or I mean that's what you talk about in the
policy coordination process. I mean it's.
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, just describe a problem with sent Com, you know,
and I think I suspect that Mark is right on
this that. I mean, I don't know what advice was offered,
but I feel that if you offer advice, if you're
at that nexus right between policy and strategy, and you
have four stars on your collar, you should be willing
to throw your career away for the sake of the nation.
If you are offering advice and you know that not
following that advice is going to be disastrous to your
country's interests, then it's time to resign. And we didn't
see that. I don't know what happened. I don't know
why sent Com wasn't banging the table harder on that piece,
but it does make me suspicious. I'm very disappointed, of course,
not that anyone's really losing sleep over they.
Speaker 4: Didn't say that. You know, if here's your options and
they all are not good, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, yeah, absolutely, I'm saying and in order
for but there needs to be some bite to that. Right,
here's your options, but if if the boss follow goes
down a path that you know is going to be disastrous,
then what do you do is just troll along and say, Okay,
well he didn't take my advice. No, as a four
star general, you owe your country a little more than that.
That's just my belief. You get treated like a like
a proconsole, like a viceroy. People, Jennif flipped in front
of you, I mean those of you wearing uniform. No,
I'm not exaggerating. It's unbelievable the way we treat four
stars and so they're gods. Well, when the time comes
with that, you know the whole Spider Man thing. Right,
with great power comes great responsibility, and that includes being
willing to say, Okay, I'm going to walk away from.
Speaker 4: This because.
Speaker 3: What you're going to do, what you're about to do
by not following my advice, it's going to seriously hurt
our interests. I know that all the fucking all the
counter arguments to this, blah blah blah, you are. I'm
not challenging civilian control of the military. Far from it.
I'm saying that the military has a very key role
in in uh in in in the long run, helping
political leadership, not do things set out disastrous.
Speaker 6: I mean, look the outcome commander or chief, remember he
he retired. Do you want to know?
Speaker 4: Partners?
Speaker 6: I just you know, so there there is that option.
So I just I think it's yeah.
Speaker 3: And it does happen occasionally, very occasionally in the US
military too occasionally. I mean, break Newball was probably the
last time a three star or full star resigned of
a question of principle, and that was on the outset
of the Iraq War.
Speaker 6: And and Andy. The reason why I think it's fair
to ask these questions is that the possibilities and I
hope it doesn't get that way for a complete strategic
disaster right now for the United States is real. I mean,
that's how bad, no, I I you know, I mean,
this is this is a doozy.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: That's why I'm saying it's not okay to now, Hey,
you didn't take my advice, so I'm still gonna draw
my pay and be jenifucted to Uh No, it doesn't.
Speaker 2: Work that way.
Speaker 3: In my mind, of course, damn above colonel, maybe that's why.
Speaker 2: But man, oh man, Okay, what a show. We'll see
what happens.
Speaker 1: Obviously, this week, and we're gonna once we get off here,
we'll probably be looking on our Twitter to see you
about any kind of updates and stuff like that. With
the talks in Switzerland right now. Yeah, I don't know
what else to say. We're doing plugs. John Hackett, great
book I ran, Shadow Weapons The Theory of a Regular War.
Those links are in the description. Mick mulroy, The white
Fish Security Summit link is in the description. Come me
up in February of next year. Mark, I'm gonna put
the link to the article you wrote recently down in
the description as well that we mentioned, So check that
out of course, Ay Milburn, Uh, when of the type
it's gathers great autobiography. That link is in the description
as well. Do us a favor If you like the show,
hit It Like Hit subscribe rated five stars and check
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A pleasure as always, Unhappy.
Speaker 5: Father's Day, Happy Father's Day, guys.
Speaker 2: Copy Father's Day to John to be.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's right, Wow.
Speaker 2: Mike's always looking for me as always.
Speaker 3: Yes, The Modes of Modern Medical Science it doesn't matter
what age you are now you can still approach Get
on you ju.
Speaker 2: Thanks, Thanks guys.
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