00:00:00
Iran is stronger today than it was before the war started. And this is literally the nightmare scenario that
00:00:07
we've been worrying about. And the reason you're having me here is because in the next few months, the world
00:00:12
economic crisis is going to grow. >> And it does appear that you've been largely correct about what you said
00:00:18
would happen. >> It's because I've been modeling the bombing of Iran for 20 years. And I've
00:00:22
advised every White House from 2001 to 2024 on different issues related to conflict. And right now we're coming
00:00:32
into the stage three prediction. We're like on the Titanic and we're about to hit the iceberg. And when the iceberg
00:00:39
hits, there's not enough lifeboats for everybody. So we are knocking on the door of the world literally running out
00:00:46
of oil. And then on top of that, Stephen, we have another set of problems. For example, and Iran is
00:00:52
attacking our base in Jordan, and we're in our ninth day of bombing in a row. And the scale of eliminating the drone
00:00:59
and missile threat is much bigger than people realize because they hide those drones everywhere.
00:01:05
>> So, how real is the risk that the US will do some kind of limited ground operation with boots on the ground in
00:01:11
Iran? >> It's bordering on 70% now, probably by the end of this week. But I'm concerned
00:01:16
about terrorist attack because controlling pieces of homeland territory is the biggest risk factor for suicide
00:01:22
terrorism. So the choice is do we have a global economic crisis, possibly a recession, possibly worse, or do we let
00:01:30
Iran control the straight of hormones? >> This is not a good place to be. So what
00:01:33
is the most probable next thing that you think happens? >> I think that question, Stephen, is the
00:01:40
most important question in the world. And I think the answer is This is super interesting to me. My team
00:01:49
given me this report to show me how many of you that watch this show subscribe. And some of you have told us according
00:01:53
to this that you are unsubscribed from the channel randomly. So favor to ask all of you. Please could you check right
00:01:59
now if you've hit the subscribe button. If you are a regular viewer of the show and you like what we do here, we're
00:02:03
approaching quite a significant landmark on this show in terms of a subscriber number. So, if there was one simple free
00:02:09
thing that you could do to help us, my team, everyone here, to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over
00:02:15
year and week over week, it is just to hit that subscribe button and to double check if you've hit it. Only thing I'll
00:02:19
ever ask of you. Do we have a deal? If you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make sure every single week, every
00:02:26
single month, we fight harder and harder and harder and harder to bring you the guests and conversations that you want
00:02:29
to hear. I've stayed true to that promise since the very beginning of the D of Sio, and I will not let you down.
00:02:35
Please help us. Really appreciate it. Let's get on with the show. Robert Pap, with everything that's going
00:02:44
on with Iran at the moment, the US Iran war, and everything that I've learned from you in the two previous
00:02:49
conversations we've had on the D of CEO, I'm guessing that you're not really surprised by what we're seeing now. No,
00:02:57
I'm not. I've been modeling the bombing of Iran for 20 years. The uh the fact is
00:03:03
the modeling has held up and literally month by month by month uh when we were first here the big surprise for most
00:03:11
people was that we bombed the regime in Iran and it still stood. It survived even though uh we killed the supreme
00:03:19
leader and something like 137 of their top leaders. Think about that. So that would be like if somebody killed our
00:03:26
president, his wife, the first lady, members of the first family, half of the cabinet, all of the leaders in the
00:03:35
Pentagon, all of the leaders in the CIA, and about a third of the Congress. That is what we did to Iran in those
00:03:44
opening weeks in March. And nonetheless, that regime survived. And that was something that modeling showed for that
00:03:52
20 years that was based on uh substantial um patterns in history uh where air power alone had never toppled
00:04:00
a regime going all the way back to World War I. Most people had not really heard
00:04:05
that before. Many people even in the military did not fully know how much President Trump went up against the
00:04:12
weight of history. Then we shifted. We shifted to uh six weeks of a bombing campaign. And then what did we do? we
00:04:19
shifted over to a two-month blockade. Well, that was another version of punishment. So, the US said that they
00:04:26
were going to block the straight of Hormuse, basically trying to take control of it themselves and therefore
00:04:31
kind of punishing the rest of the world. >> U well, they they didn't want to punish
00:04:35
the world. What they were that did happen, but what they wanted to do was punish Iran. So, they were trying to
00:04:43
coers Iran to get the government to surrender control of Hormuz. So keep in mind what happened is on February 28th
00:04:52
that regime change bombing happened and it went on for a few days but by March 2nd March 3rd Iran controlled Hormuz
00:05:00
literally within a few days the ships stopped cold and they basically have not reopened except for teenytiny periods of
00:05:07
time in a small in a modest way and then you're stuck. How do you get Iran to give up control of Hormuz? Or do you let
00:05:16
Iran continue to uh control Hormuz for as far as the eye can see? That's been the dilemma we've been in, Stephen,
00:05:25
since really the first week in March. And now it's become clearer to the world that has the core dilemma. We're at a
00:05:33
fork in the road. Either we physically take Hormuz back all those other tactou didn't work. didn't get
00:05:41
>> theou >> uh the memorandum of understanding >> which was the I sat here with JD Vance
00:05:45
and he told me that they were about to sign an agreement with Iran to ultimately end the war and they had that
00:05:54
agreement. >> Yeah. >> JD told me that it was about to be signed. Couple weeks later here we are.
00:06:00
They're back to bombing each other. >> Yeah. There's really two big issues with this Stephen with theou
00:06:06
the memorandum of understanding. Um, I do believe that uh uh Vice President Vance sincerely thought it was going to
00:06:14
uh had a good chance of ending the war. Uh, but there's a big problem here, Stephen, which is when you listen to
00:06:22
Vice President Vance, he approached this as a business deal. So, he kept talking
00:06:27
about all the benefits that were going to come to Iran if they performed a fee for service. We want the straight open
00:06:35
and we're going to offer you money in different ways if you will open the straight. Well, this is just a
00:06:42
fundamental misunderstanding of international politics. This may work great in real estate. I'm not saying it
00:06:48
doesn't, but in a ma major war like this, what's at stake is the balance of power. The balance of power. Now, I want
00:06:56
to explain that before the war, before the war started, there was a balance of power where America was ascended. Israel
00:07:03
was the rising power and Iran was actually the declining power in the region. What happened almost within
00:07:10
again two weeks of the war starting is the balance of power was shifting dramatically when Iran became in control
00:07:19
of form. This represents tremendous power in the future. that wealth, all of the potential that uh even though it
00:07:27
hadn't been realized yet, equates to not just money to put in coffers, but it equates to military power. It equates to
00:07:36
the ability to influence other states in the region to build a sphere of influence. This is power in terms of
00:07:43
major power politics that was shifting here. And so with theou as uh you look at theou JD Vance appears we could just
00:07:52
look at it he appears to have thought this was a business deal. So he appears to have thought we're going to hold up
00:07:58
the uh promise of say $300 billion it will eventually fall on you if you will just to agree to do what we want and
00:08:08
behave. Those aren't the clauses that matter to Iran. The clauses that mattered to Iran were the clauses which
00:08:16
directly relate to the balance of power in solidifying Iran uh its control of Hormuz and essentially
00:08:26
thisou is fundamentally a road map to Iran becoming the regional hegeimon. >> Hegimon what does that mean?
00:08:34
>> The most dominant state in the Persian Gulf in the Middle East. Wait, so you're
00:08:40
saying that this agreement would make them the most dominant state in the Middle East?
00:08:42
>> Absolutely. >> So why wouldn't they sign it within a heartbeat? >> They did. They did. Iran sign. In fact,
00:08:48
most of these points were exactly the points that President Trump said he would never sign in April when Iran
00:08:55
presented the initial 14-point plan in April. And the key at war then? Well, well, let me just explain the key the
00:09:02
key things that happened here is that number one, notice in article five, it says that Iran will make the
00:09:11
arrangements uh with Hormuz, that is the ships with Hormuz. And it will not charge for 60 days. It doesn't say will
00:09:19
never charge. It says only 60 days. So, think about that. That this is already written into the agreement that
00:09:27
President Trump is signing. And then if you say, well, what's going to happen down the road? It's going to be Iran and
00:09:34
Oman who are going to determine the future fees. There's no mention here of the United States. There's no clause to
00:09:41
even let the United States wiggle itself in. This is a perfectly clearly written
00:09:46
clause. And this basically gives Iran control of the straight of Hormuz and also of the the the discretion to set
00:09:55
the fees for as far as the I can see with no constraint whatsoever. >> How do we know that this is the actual
00:10:01
document >> because both the Iranian government and the White House put out exactly the same
00:10:06
document word for word um so that we can actually compare them literally word for
00:10:12
word. So this is exactly the document that President Trump signed. There's no question that uh we have like an earlier
00:10:19
draft. Now, there were some earlier drafts leaked by Bloomberg. That's not what this is. This is the final one. But
00:10:26
let me go a little bit further here, Steve. So, here we're talking about the strategic base of Iran. And keep in
00:10:32
mind, controlling hormuz means controlling 20% of the world's oil. That's a fantastic amount of wealth and
00:10:39
strategic power to build on in the future. No limit says that nothing about you can't spend it on missiles, anything
00:10:46
else. But up here with Lebanon, the first article. So here, >> so when you say article, this document
00:10:53
contains 10, is it 10? 14 >> 14 different points. And when you say >> 14 different points and there are three
00:10:59
points that are really the critical action points that matter here. this promise of $300 billion dollars down the
00:11:07
road, this is so far, you know, this is like holding out um uh funny money to the Iranians. These are the things that
00:11:14
are actually short-term because this is happening now. >> So, point one, you're saying
00:11:19
>> point one I want to come back to, Stephen, because I want to explain this is Iran's strategic base.
00:11:24
>> Point number five, >> point number five. But what happens to become the dominant power in the region?
00:11:29
You need more than a strategic base. You want a sphere of influence. You want a sphere of influence here. And can I just
00:11:36
can we so I'll hold this up here. Is that >> Yeah, that's good. That's good. Point
00:11:40
number five is controlling the straight of hormones. But many of uh the different countries including Saudi
00:11:47
Arabia. You have already started to have pipelines to bypass the straight of hormones. There were plans to do this
00:11:53
for years. They were too expensive. But almost immediately uh they started to do
00:11:58
that. So the Saud Saudi Arabia started to put out four to five million barrels of oil a day starting in mid-March uh
00:12:06
into the Red Sea on a pipeline that had already been built and hadn't been used.
00:12:10
There's a a little area here called Fujyra which is where the UAE had a pipeline that's almost 2 million barrels
00:12:18
a day. So 20 million barrels a day were going through Hormuz almost immediately 7 million were being bypassed. Then
00:12:26
there's all this discussion that Iraq might build some pipelines. There might be other pipelines here going through
00:12:32
Syria. So what if you're Iran, you now control this. But notice it's a declining asset that way. If you only
00:12:42
control Hormuz within 5 years, good chance your power is going to be whittleled away. What you want to do is
00:12:48
you want a sphere of influence. So what Iran started to talk about is their security resistance belt where they
00:12:57
wanted to control and they said from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea to the Gulf. This was the
00:13:05
leaders of the Revolutionary Guard. And why would you do that? Because you want to prevent all of those bypasses to
00:13:14
Hormuz. And they're already happening. And where's the key one? You don't. You already have the Houthies down here. You
00:13:22
have Hezbollah here. But you want to make sure the Houthies are pretty secure right here. It was
00:13:28
>> So just again for the people that can't see. >> Yeah. >> So you're saying the Houthies are pretty
00:13:32
secure where >> the Houthies are pretty secure down here in Yemen. They've been fighting uh with
00:13:37
the Saudis for quite some time. They've held their own. Uh we fought a war with the the uh the Houthies in May 2025
00:13:46
to try to get them to uh pull back from a temporary shutdown of the Red Sea. And
00:13:52
we lost essentially. Um so we couldn't beat them. But the big one that was at issue was uh Lebanon. And it's and my
00:14:00
point is it's not so much that they love Hezbollah. They do of course they've had
00:14:05
long time uh decades of relationships with Hezbollah ideologically. There's there uh there's good reasons for that,
00:14:11
but there's something else that's a power reason that's being ignored uh here, which is you want Hezbollah to
00:14:19
have drones right here in Lebanon. So if there's a pipeline that comes out here through Syria, if you've got some other
00:14:26
pipelines that are coming out here, you've got Hezbollah here that can act as your Houthies. They can actually
00:14:33
attack the shipping. So now you have a you're you're Iran. You're a major power. You're the dominant power in the
00:14:40
region. You don't just control this area here and the straight of >> the straight of Formuz and Iran itself.
00:14:46
You have an arc, a security arc here that in uh is a sphere of influence, but it's an operational sphere of influence.
00:14:55
This is not just a piece of paper or something to talk about. This is what's guaranteeing you. You control all of
00:15:03
that oil whether it the oil from the Persian Gulf comes out through Hormuz, whether it comes out through Syria or
00:15:10
whether it comes out through the Red Sea. And that's what article one is about. >> So how come
00:15:15
>> that's what I'm saying is not when I listen to Vice President Vance, which I've listened to your interview and
00:15:21
other interviews, a super smart guy. Okay, this is not a matter of that. Okay. Uh but he's thinking of it as a
00:15:28
business deal. We want Hormuz open. what's it going to take to pay? They're not looking at that. They're looking at
00:15:33
they want to be a regional hedgeimon. This is their roadmap and that's why they stuck to those goals. But they
00:15:41
signed this document, but then the war has kicked off anyway again because what happened is President Trump signed the
00:15:48
document. He owned the document for it for a day. He explained that he signed the document because this was literally
00:15:56
four weeks ago because the world was going to run out of oil in four weeks and he wanted to open Hormuz. So,
00:16:03
President Trump saw this as a way to try to uh open hormuse. But what happened immediately after President Trump signed
00:16:10
the document, literally starting in the next 48 hours is uh President Trump started to and his administration
00:16:17
started to undermine the document, violate the clauses in that document. So issue number one was Secretary Rubio
00:16:27
establishing a framework accord agreement in Lebanon which essentially would lock in Israel's military presence
00:16:36
in Lebanon as far as the eye could see. Whereas article one in the document says
00:16:42
that uh the United States would guarantee the territorial integrity of Lebanon which
00:16:49
everybody would realize would mean Israel is is violating the territorial integrity of Lebanon. It's not ensuring
00:16:56
it. So that would mean Israel can't be locked in there and still be faithful to article one. So the framework agreement
00:17:02
immediately violates article one. The second thing that happened and this happened shortly after the framework
00:17:08
accord started to encourage uh passage through the straight of formos uh through the
00:17:15
southern uh there's three routes through the straight of hormos. The central route which used to be in existence the
00:17:21
main route before the war now that's where the 80 mines are so nobody's using the centra. They're either passing
00:17:26
through the southern avenue, which is the one close to uh Oman, or they're passing through the Iranian passage,
00:17:33
which is of course near the coast of Iran. And what President Trump did is he started to encourage this passageway
00:17:40
ships to um bypass or pass through Hormuz on the southern passageway, but with no coordination with Iran, with no
00:17:48
um even um often with their transponders turned off. In fact, President Trump was
00:17:52
bragging about this as his secret way to sort of uh bypass Iran's control of the
00:17:58
straight of form. He literally bragged about this on multiple posts on true social. Well, that directly uh
00:18:05
contravenes article 5. Um and then the third thing that happened is if you look at we haven't looked at article 11 but
00:18:12
if we look at article 11 you would see that Iran was um uh due to have some of its frozen asset some of its assets that
00:18:21
were seized by the United States and have been held for decades unfrozen and it and there's a specific sentence
00:18:28
which gives Iran the exclusive right to determine um what's going to happen with
00:18:34
that money and what President Trump said is they can have their money but only if
00:18:39
they give it to the farmers the US farmers and buy American grain that's the third violation of theou so what
00:18:46
happened here Stephen is President Trump owned theou he and was faithful to it uh
00:18:53
for at least a day maybe two and this represented a strategic defeat for the United States and he even explained why
00:19:00
he accepted that strategic defeat very clearly and forthrightly I call that owning the loss He owned the loss for
00:19:08
about a day or two, but then he tried to reverse the loss almost immediately, Stephen. And that's how we're back at
00:19:16
war. Because the big miscalculation that happened in this period was assuming that if President Trump didn't restart
00:19:25
the war, the war would be over. The mis what? Who started the war? Who started to shoot the ships in the straight of
00:19:33
Formos? It was the Iranians. Why did they do that? Because we were violating theou, bypassing their control of the
00:19:43
straight of Hormuz. And that means preventing Iran from becoming the regional power, the rising regional
00:19:51
power, ultimately the regional hegeimon. So this is why they violated. It wasn't
00:19:56
so much a legal understanding. This is great power politics. Stephen, Iran wants to be the dominant state in the
00:20:06
region. The United States does not want Iran to be the dominant state in the region. That has what is what this war
00:20:14
has been about since the first week in March and now it's 5 months later and we're still at that point.
00:20:24
There should be a button just down below here and if it says subscribed, you're already subscribed. If it says
00:20:30
subscriber, that means you're not yet. And if you're not subscribed, please could you do us a favor and hit that
00:20:34
button? It helps the show more than you know. And according to the algorithm, you're someone that watches our show,
00:20:39
but you haven't yet hit that button. Thank you so much. >> Did Iran charge people to go through the
00:20:45
straight of Hormuse before this? >> No, never did. Did they control the straight of horses at all? Well, before
00:20:51
uh the war started, not at all. Before the before February 28, Iran did not control the straight of hormones. What
00:20:57
Iran did is it moved from survival to ambition. So Iran saw there was an opportunity with the bombing uh because
00:21:07
the United States had no mil we didn't even have our navy here. There was no means whatsoever uh to sort of offset
00:21:14
this this uh Iran's uh control of the straight of hormoons. Nothing at all. Iran took this as an opportunity and the
00:21:22
opportunity was to seize power. So is it fair to hypothesize that actually this war might have strengthened Iran because
00:21:34
now it has this control over energy on a global basis that it didn't have before.
00:21:39
>> Without a doubt. Without a doubt, Stephen. I don't say this with any happiness. There's really no question at
00:21:46
this point that Iran is stronger today than it was before the war started on February 28th. And that's because it
00:21:56
controls uh the Strait of Hormuz, meaning that it can threaten at will virtually any ship that goes through the
00:22:05
Straight of Hormuz. It's demonstrated this over and over and over again. Even when the ships turn off their
00:22:11
transponders, they are still able to threaten ships as they go through. And every time a ship tries to run the
00:22:18
gauntlet, they run into a drone, a mine, they run into basically Iran's barrier,
00:22:24
and that is Iran's power. >> There was a a tweet that went viral this week um about this. I'm going to read
00:22:31
the tweet here. It says, "I'm confused. The US has the most powerful military on
00:22:35
Earth. We've bombed the hell out of Iran for 4 months. Trump says their air force, navy, and nearly all of their
00:22:42
missile capabilities are destroyed. So, how is Iran still capable of hitting US bases right now? Because only a small
00:22:50
fraction of its drone arsenal is necessary uh and missile arsenal in order to inflict that damage. Iran
00:22:59
entered this war with thousands, we think tens of thousands of drones, missile uh ballistic missiles,
00:23:08
anti-shipping missiles, which are lower sea skimming cruise missiles. Um, and even though we have destroyed large
00:23:16
fractions of their uh of their missiles, they have plenty left over to hit these
00:23:23
uh these targets because they're doing saturation attacks. They're essentially doing swarms. They're saturating our uh
00:23:30
our defensive capability and the the uh the drones and missiles to get through plenty enough to damage it to the point
00:23:39
we can barely use it if if if at all. >> So is it is it mainly drones that they're using at the moment to conduct
00:23:45
these attacks on the straight of Hammuz and on US bases? Uh it's been a combination in the m in in March. It was
00:23:53
mostly intermediate range ballistic missiles and then drones since about the middle of March. Um until just quite
00:24:01
recently, it's mostly been drones except for Israel when Israel's been attacked.
00:24:05
It's it's been very heavily with ballistic missiles. Uh but what you're seeing now that's just in the last week
00:24:11
is you're starting to see the use of ballistic missiles. You're seeing the use of cruise missiles. These are these
00:24:17
sea skimming missiles here and they're being used in against multiple targets. So the full arsenal
00:24:26
that Iran has the full range of the arsenal it appears to be fully there full stocked very well and they're
00:24:36
showing no signs of running out of ammo. If anybody's running out of ammo, it might be America running out of
00:24:43
interceptors to shoot things down. Um, but we don't know that as a fact. And I think that what you're seeing is Iran
00:24:50
has been highly intelligent intelligent about how it has deployed its its missiles. Trump said they have no navy.
00:24:59
It's been knocked out. They have no air force that's been knocked out. They have
00:25:02
no air detection that's been knocked out. Their radar has been knocked out. And just about everything's been knocked
00:25:09
out. Virtually everything they have has been knocked out. He said that on Truth Social in May 2026. If everything has
00:25:17
been knocked out, >> Mhm. >> then how come there's no safe passage through the Straight of Hermoose? How
00:25:21
come this weekend we saw more Americans tragically die um because of Iranian attacks?
00:25:28
>> Because what they have left we can't knock out and is plenty to do the damage. That's the fundamental problem.
00:25:35
We took out the easy stuff to hit. they didn't need it in order to seize control
00:25:41
of hormones and keep hormones and start to defend themselves against uh more aggressive pressure. And the bottom line
00:25:49
is that it's it's very difficult, if not impossible, to eliminate that capability. We would do it in a
00:25:57
heartbeat if we could right away. >> Explain to me in just simple terms why it's so difficult to remove that
00:26:02
capability. You know, I was looking at this picture here which shows the size of a drone relative to another object.
00:26:11
So, I guess there was two questions which is like where do they hide these and how easy it is is it to make one of
00:26:17
these drones? So, they hide those drones, Stephen, everywhere. Okay. >> Okay. They can they're in drone caverns.
00:26:26
They're in warehouses. They're everywhere. They could be. So that drone, just to kind of give you a
00:26:32
sense here, would easily fit in this room. But the reason this is so difficult is notice how small that is
00:26:39
here. That that drone compared to the scale of where it could be. And this is what I really want to uh show you
00:26:47
because this is I think the hardest part to explain to to people as I'm talking in whatever format I'm talking is it's
00:26:55
the scale of eliminating the drone and missile threat is much bigger than people realize because they're hearing
00:27:04
measurements well we've destroyed x% and y% and that's why you're getting the question but if you look at this map
00:27:11
this is what they where these drones these shah Heeds 136 could literally be anywhere in this radius, 500 mile area.
00:27:23
And notice how huge this area is. This area, this area like this is bigger than California. It's one and a half times
00:27:36
the size of California. >> So I guess it's like trying to find a truck in California.
00:27:41
>> It's like trying to find a truck in California. These little things here are the Shahed drones. Yeah.
00:27:48
>> Okay. And what we're doing in this area, which is mountainous. So, this is why we
00:27:54
have a a threedimensional, it's not just a two-dimensional problem. It's a threedimensional problem.
00:27:59
>> We'll show some of these uh visuals on screen now just to show what the train
00:28:03
where they're hiding these drones might be like. >> They could be anywhere in these
00:28:07
mountains. There's all kinds. And if we kind of imagine this as a visual. So this is the general problem here we have
00:28:15
which is just this stuff could be anywhere. And now these are the drones and this is the terrain that the drones
00:28:24
are going to hide in. And notice I've just sprinkled some here. But now I'm going to cover these up with more
00:28:31
terrain. And notice you can't see those drones anymore. And now I'm going to put in
00:28:37
some more drones somewhere else. And now we're going to put another layer in. And
00:28:41
this is this is again it's the three-dimensional part of the problem. Meaning hard to find from the air. Now
00:28:48
if I get my people out and I start going in now, I could start to dig them out. But let's just keep doing this for a
00:28:53
while. So now I'm putting in another say 20 drones. And I'm going to cover it yet
00:29:00
again. And then I'm going to put in uh another set of drones. And I'm covering it yet again.
00:29:09
>> I guess you could put all the drones in there and you you would still be able to
00:29:12
cover them. >> You would. Yes. But you wouldn't do it in You would do it in layers. So they're
00:29:16
going to make it so that if you find one, you're going to have to work really hard. You have to get them drone by
00:29:21
drone by drone or at least in clusters of them. >> I guess also an important point of
00:29:26
context is they're also making new ones this whole time. >> Exactly. So our estimates that we have
00:29:32
leaked from the Pentagon are in April. That's months ago. these drones, they're they were making u
00:29:39
55,000 a year and giving them to Russia. So just think about that. That's thousands every single month. Why
00:29:47
haven't they made uh another 5 or 10,000 drones since April? If you want this to
00:29:53
open, so let me just of >> the straight of form. So now let me just explain. So this is our problem. If you
00:30:01
want the straight of Formoose to open, it's not good enough to say, "Oh, look. I' I've found like dozens or hundreds of
00:30:08
these drones." You've got to persuade the shipping companies that their ships are safe.
00:30:16
They don't obey orders from the Pentagon. You can't order the shippers to go through
00:30:21
>> because the ships are expensive. >> The ships are expensive and the crews don't want to Oh, in the many millions.
00:30:28
millions and millions of dollars. I don't know the exact amount of these uh tankers, but each tanker will carry
00:30:34
between 700,000 and over a million barrels of oil. And so they have quite a the just and you can do the math right
00:30:41
there to see how much each ship is worth carrying that much uh uh that much oil.
00:30:46
>> I was looking at the cost here. It says when you combine a brand new vessel with
00:30:49
a full tank of oil, a sh single tank crossing the straight of Hamuz is a floating asset worth 300 million.
00:30:56
>> Oh wow. See, I didn't that I learned I learned something from you every time.
00:31:00
Um, and >> that's not even the lives on board, which again are going to cause an
00:31:04
insurance problem, but also no one wants to people to die. >> Well, and they don't want to die. So,
00:31:08
you're going to have mutants. They're not going to. So, this is why you're seeing more ships leaving than you're
00:31:14
seeing ships come in. And the ships that are coming in are very heavily coming to
00:31:18
Iran's ports. That's one of the reasons President Trump put the blockade back on. It's because what happened here is
00:31:25
theou this whole idea is not opening up the straight of hormones. It's not preventing what's going to come in the
00:31:35
next few weeks maybe months which is the world economic crisis. We are knocking on the door of what President Trump told
00:31:42
us he was trying to avoid which is the world literally running out of oil. And just today before we started the Houthis
00:31:51
which big ally of Iran. So just to come back here and and reshow the map. Uh remember I said that once uh the
00:32:00
straight of Hormuz became shut down, there was 2 million of barrels coming out every day through um for the UAE
00:32:09
coming out through Fyra and then four to 5 million uh coming out from Saudi Arabian oil going out to the Red Sea. Uh
00:32:18
and this is the the port there at the Red Sea. Well, the Houthies have just shut this down literally today. Oh,
00:32:25
really? >> Literally before we came on, uh happened about 6 hours ago. This has been
00:32:31
escalating for several weeks. Iran's been asking for this. This is part of the general escalation that we're
00:32:36
seeing. Okay. So, we've got the Straight of Hermoose closed. We've got the Houthis closing,
00:32:43
>> the Red Sea. So, there's no oil flowing through there. >> Yeah. >> So, are we on the verge of an economic
00:32:49
crisis if things don't change quickly? >> Yes. Yes. This is a this is literally the nightmare scenario that we've been
00:32:56
worrying about and the reason is is this. Go back and let's let's think about this from the 20 million barrels
00:33:04
of oil that was going through the straight of Hormuz. So when Iran gained control of the straight of Hormuz, what
00:33:12
happened immediately is the uh Saudi Arabia and the UEE started to bypass Hormuz with 7 million barrels a day. So
00:33:21
that means only 13 million at issue, right? That's a little that's helpful. The next is the strategic petroleum
00:33:28
reserve the United States and we started to release about five or six million barrels a week through the through the
00:33:38
strategic oil >> when >> uh we started to do this. It's right around the middle of March. I can't
00:33:44
remember the exact date, but notice that you put a big dent in that. And so that's one of the reasons the oil
00:33:50
markets did not go crazy right away. >> So I've got some data here. Then it says
00:33:54
um President Trump authorized the emergency release of 172 million barrels of oil from the strategic reserve
00:34:01
designed to be pumped out over roughly 120 days. This wasn't just a US issue or the US acting alone. The US draw down
00:34:09
was part of a massive coordinated effort by 32 member nations of the international energy agency who
00:34:16
collectively agreed to release 400 million barrels from their emergency stockpiles. Because these massive
00:34:22
releases um were done to offset the Hormuz blockade, the US strategic reserve has been heavily depleted. And
00:34:30
as of July 2026, the reserve has dropped down to roughly 300 million barrels, which marks the lowest level the reserve
00:34:38
has since 1983, a more than 40year low. >> They're being depleted. Once you spend
00:34:45
your reserve, you don't get it refilled. And that's what I think President Trump
00:34:48
was talking about when he said we're about to run out of oil in four weeks. That was exactly the date because we've
00:34:55
just run to the date of uh that that quote what you just read is we're coming to about the 120th day. And so what that
00:35:04
means is all of that cushion that we had in the system to protect the g the price
00:35:09
of gas already went up. Now you have even more risk. And then on top of that, Stephen, we have another set of problems
00:35:17
besides the oil itself, which is refining capacity in the world. So we we don't uh put crude oil in our cars. We
00:35:27
put gasoline in our cars, diesel as well. Well, how do you get the gas and the diesel? You refine the crude. So
00:35:33
that means the refineries need to work. Well, where are much of the world's refineries? In the Persian Gulf. Not
00:35:42
just oil comes through the Persian Gulf. Refined product, they're called distillates, they come through the
00:35:48
Persian Gulf as well. Now, so that means you've shut down something like uh 25% or a third of the world's refining
00:35:56
capacity. Now, let's marry this to what's happening with Russia and Ukraine's blasting Russia refineries in
00:36:03
Russia. So what's happening Stephen is you are getting not just the decline of crude itself is about to run out but the
00:36:13
refining capacity now has been heavily uh uh strained and and limited uh it might be down you know 40% I don't know
00:36:22
the exact number but it's something on that order and what you're seeing then is what I think President Trump was
00:36:28
seeing a month ago which is he wanted the straight of hormuz to open but He also didn't want to own the L. And what
00:36:36
President Trump has decided is he'd rather take the risk with the world's economy than own the L. Own the
00:36:43
loss. And maybe he'll change his mind. >> He'd rather take the risk with the world's economy than just own the L. So
00:36:51
what would owning the L in this scenario? >> Owning the L would allow Iran to follow
00:36:57
through with Article 5. So if we go back to article >> to control to control the straight
00:37:00
>> to control the strait on its terms >> but they that would be set a pre presidents for all of these straits.
00:37:07
>> Yes. >> Around the world that >> that's exactly right and you can't have that.
00:37:11
>> Well these are the choices we have Stephen. So so the choice is do we have um a global economic crisis possibly
00:37:20
recession possibly worse or do we let Iran control the straight of foremost? >> This is not a good place to be. Well,
00:37:26
that's the fork in the road that I was telling you was the stage three dilemma. So, that's exactly where we were in Mar.
00:37:33
So, so Stephen, just to explain to your audience because they were trying to figure out how are we getting here? This
00:37:38
is what the 20 years of modeling was really showing. We would very quickly get to this fork in the road. It
00:37:46
wouldn't take months and months. It would happen right away. And President Trump has been trying to avoid the
00:37:52
escalation trap. This is called an escalation trap. and he's been trying to avoid that trap. He tried to avoid it
00:37:58
with bombing for 6 weeks. He tried to avoid it with the blockade. He tried signing theou. He let JD Vance offer
00:38:05
money. And that that none of those were were actually working. And what he where
00:38:10
he is now is still at this fork in the road. The dilemma of the escalation trap. Either he owns the loss which it
00:38:19
means everything you just said and becomes known as the president who allowed not just the straight of form to
00:38:26
be uh be controlled but set a precedent for other countries and other non-state actors to control their their choke
00:38:34
points or we have the u we take it back physically. Are we going to physically take it back? So, we'll go through the
00:38:42
stages and the escalation trap straight away after this after we move on from this point around oil because I think
00:38:48
some of my audience might not know that this escalation trap is historically predictable and that you've been talking
00:38:53
about this for a long time and it also allows us to understand exactly what happens next. Um, I was quite shocked
00:38:58
when you just said that Trump said recently that the US would run out of oil within 4 weeks. So, I did I just
00:39:04
looked down at some research here and it says that during a recent press conference at the G7 summit in June
00:39:09
2026, President Trump made a blunt admission about how dangerously low global energy oil stock piles have
00:39:17
become due to the ongoing crisis in the straight of Hammoo. His direct quote was, "We run out of reserves at about 4
00:39:25
weeks." You know, there are reserves all over the world and we would run really,
00:39:30
really low. But we would run out and there'll be a time when you wouldn't be able to get it. It would be bedum.
00:39:37
>> Yes. >> Why is he saying that? Isn't that because >> doesn't that make him look bad?
00:39:41
>> It it makes him he's being I think forthright in why he signed theou which is to avoid that bedum the world
00:39:49
economic crisis. However, the problem for President Trump is in order to avoid the bedum, he has to let
00:39:59
Iran control the straight of Hormuz, establish that sphere of influence I was explaining and he almost immediately
00:40:08
after he said that statement within 48 hours undermined thatou that would have avoided that. Had theouou just been uh
00:40:18
implemented as written, we may not be sitting here today talking about the impending world crisis. And I believe
00:40:26
one of the reasons we're knocking on the door of more escalation right now is because President Trump is desperate to
00:40:35
open the straight of foremost. I think he's taking lowrisk uh high risk military option mil. I think he's
00:40:42
pursuing military options he likely knows are unlikely to work, but they're his best chance to open hormuz before
00:40:50
the crisis literally hits. >> But there's also another before, which is the midterm elections.
00:40:56
>> Yes. Am I right in thinking that this midterm election takes place in 3 months
00:41:00
time and if his approval rating is low at that point because of what's going on with the war because when Americans go
00:41:09
to the pump to fill up their cars they notice the prices are way high higher than usual that means those Americans in
00:41:16
the election in the midterm elections will vote for the Democrats which means he will lose the Congress. So he
00:41:22
basically needs to make sure Americans are happy in three months time. He he needs to take the best chance he can can
00:41:27
to make that happen. Okay. And I think that what happened here, Stephen, is >> he his quote, you just quoted him, I
00:41:35
think it was June 17th. >> He's saying that within a month those reserves are going to run out and we're
00:41:42
heading to that bedum that economic crisis and that is already happening. His s four weeks later, we're right on
00:41:51
that trajectory. That trajectory has not changed. Maybe we've bought an extra week or two of time because some oil did
00:41:58
get out from the from the Persian Gulf. Not that much, but enough for a few weeks here. So maybe it's it's going to
00:42:06
now not fall on August 1st. Maybe it'll be August say 15th or 17th. But it will hit. It's And that's what he was. And
00:42:14
now I think he's he sees when it hits he's going to lose uh there's a good chance that the Republicans will lose
00:42:22
more seats in the House and in the Senate. That will make him the lamest of lame ducks for his last two years. Uh it
00:42:29
may not be that he would be removed from office. That's probably not going to happen. But it could be that he will be
00:42:34
impeached again. He will be tied in knots by the uh by the Democratic controlled House or a Democratic
00:42:40
controlled House and Senate. And um this is what he's trying to offset. And but he knows something that most of us I
00:42:48
think um are not really taking seriously uh which is that the world is like we're
00:42:54
like on the Titanic and we're about to hit the iceberg. And maybe that iceberg moved a little bit further away, but
00:43:00
we're still right on the trajectory to hit that iceberg and it's coming. And when the iceberg hits, there's not
00:43:07
enough lifeboats for everybody. And who's going to be short of lifeboats? The Republicans. And that's what I think
00:43:14
why I think people made the mistake when they said, "Well, President Trump couldn't possibly escalate before the
00:43:20
midterms." Couldn't possibly for weeks, Stephen. I've been on shows talking about, you know, why President Trump
00:43:26
will escalate maybe after the midterms, maybe next year, but he certainly and I kept trying to explain this is not
00:43:32
that's probably not right. And that's what you're seeing now. You're seeing that that President Trump is desperate
00:43:39
to try to open the straight of H for H for H for H for H for H for H for H for H for H formos. He's he I think is being
00:43:43
told probably directly from his military these options are very low uh risk. They're very high risk. They're very
00:43:50
unlikely to succeed. But now that the Titanic is going to hit the iceberg, his only other choice is to completely walk
00:44:00
back and say, "You're right, Oron. You control her moves. You set the fees. You don't have to make any limits on your
00:44:08
nuclear program. You are the fourth center of world power. And I, Donald Trump, it happened under my watch.
00:44:18
That's a big L to wear on your chest, Stephen. And that would be true, I think, for any president. This is what
00:44:25
Lynden Johnson faced in Vietnam. Uh, we now have the tapes that Johnson was making in the White House in
00:44:35
conversations. It wasn't just Nixon making tapes here. Johnson uh was making tapes. And we now have tapes of Johnson
00:44:44
as he's making decisions to escalate the Vietnam War, explaining that he knows this is very unlikely to end the war.
00:44:55
It's likely to make it worse. And why is he doing it? He's doing it because he's
00:45:01
trying to uh hold on to his uh Great Society program just for another four or five months. And what he's hoping is
00:45:10
that even though the escalation is likely not to work, there's some tiny chance it will. And in four or five
00:45:17
months, he'll be able to pull a rabbit out of the hat. He became uh it failed domestically. Lyndon Johnson had to uh
00:45:25
pull back from running for reelection because of the escalations in the Vietnam War. And President Trump is
00:45:32
running the same risk that even though I believe that he's doing this because he's trying to give him him himself and
00:45:38
the Republicans the best chance to win uh in November, uh it may not work. That's why I think President Trump
00:45:46
already planted the seed of uh China meddling in the elections. He's already started the conversation uh that um uh
00:45:55
that there's another possible stone election in our future. This time possibly uh by foreign country, possibly
00:46:03
China. >> One of the things you've heard me talk about quite a lot over the last couple
00:46:07
of years, and this is something that's true in business and content, but also with everything in life, is that
00:46:12
consistency is the thing that really, really compounds. The same is true in sales. When your team is small,
00:46:18
consistency happens naturally. The team knows of every deal, so nothing gets missed. But as I've experienced, when
00:46:24
you grow, this starts to break down, and deals start to slip. Follow-ups don't happen. Leads go cold that shouldn't
00:46:30
have. And when this happens, a lot of leaders look at it and think they have a people problem. When actually, it's a
00:46:34
systems problem. The businesses that I've watched scale well commercially all have a system their team uses every
00:46:40
single day. And for my team, that system has been our sponsor, Pipe Drive. It's an easytouse intelligent CRM tool for
00:46:46
growing sales teams that gives you visibility of every deal in your sales pipeline at every single stage. And it
00:46:52
shows you what needs to happen for that deal to move forward all in real time. It's what keeps our commercial operation
00:46:57
consistent when we're a team of five or when our commercial team was a team of 50. Over 100,000 companies are already
00:47:04
running their sales on it. So, if you'd like to join them, sign up at piperive.com/ce
00:47:08
where you'll get an exclusive 30-day free trial instead of the usual 14 days. And there's no credit card needed at
00:47:15
all. Head to piperive.com/ceeo. I don't speak Vietnamese, but this show can because of AI video technology from
00:47:26
our sponsor, Hey Jen. I get messages every single week from those of you listening to the dire all around the
00:47:31
world, and you express how much impact it's had on you and your life. And if that's true, then those conversations
00:47:36
shouldn't only reach people in English. Ken can take one recording of me and deliver it in any language while keeping
00:47:42
my voice, timing, and expressions intact. But you don't need a studio like this to make it work for you. Record 15
00:47:49
seconds of yourself and get an AI avatar that delivers studio quality video in over 175 languages. We're up to 20
00:47:57
languages now. And we're not the only ones using it. Hey Jen is already used by 30 million people, including 85% of
00:48:05
the Fortune 100. Whether you're building an audience on social media, launching an online course, or rolling out
00:48:10
training across your team, check out Hey GenE now. Your first three videos are totally free at heygen.com/dac.
00:48:17
That's h e eyen.com/doac. See you there. On this point of the escalation trap, um, it has several stages to it, the
00:48:28
escalation trap, as far as I understand. >> Uh, yes, I think you have the picture.
00:48:32
Do we have the picture? I have a I have the escalation ladder. >> Yes. So, I made this I think it was uh
00:48:39
something like March 2nd or March 3rd. >> Okay. So, for people that can't see the
00:48:43
visual, we'll also explain what we're showing here, but we will put it on the screen for those that can see.
00:48:48
>> Yeah. So, what I did um is I was um uh trying to find a way to um graphically
00:48:55
show the escalation trap. And what this looks like for those who can't see is an
00:49:00
upside down pyramid. So basically it starts small at the bottom and gets worse and worse and more and more red
00:49:06
and more and more red as you get through more and more stages as you go to the top. In the beginning you start with
00:49:13
limited strike. That's the bombing of leadership bomb. You kill the leader. You kill uh you you try to topple the
00:49:19
regime with leadership to uh and that leads to retaliation. Stage two. Stage two retaliation is Iran takes hormones
00:49:29
and that then leads to us doing some retaliation. I would still call it in stage two by the way. Um that's why I
00:49:35
kind of kept it the same color where we're doing the uh 6 weeks bombing. That's also where the blockade is. And
00:49:41
notice then you get to this red stage here. Notice it's where economic crisis is. This is where stage three really
00:49:49
starts. Okay. Now we were able to offset that economic crisis. So when we talked
00:49:53
in March and April, it wasn't clear, especially China, they were still buying. So that economic crisis was a
00:50:00
lot closer in um March and April than it became after the summit with she because
00:50:05
she stopped buying 5 million barrels of oil a day. I want to underscore that. And what did she get for that? Uh
00:50:14
President Trump last week just blamed him for uh meddling in our election. So, I'm not sure she has thought that was a
00:50:21
good deal. But still, we're at this point now. And this is where stage three is or the choice is if you want to get
00:50:28
off of the escalation trap, you then have to let Iran become uh the gain power, become the rising power in the
00:50:36
region, the regional hegeimon and essentially the fourth center of world power because once it um gains power uh
00:50:43
with Hormuz has a sphere of influence a year or two from now, Stephen, they're very likely to have nuclear weapons. So
00:50:50
this is this this is what it means to let Iran win. It's not Iran will win and be nice. Iran is going to become a very
00:50:59
powerful state in the region. If we go further and this we actually uh do escalate and with the other map I'll
00:51:07
explain what I think the real issues are going to be between now and the midterms.
00:51:12
Then we're going to head into 2027 into the deep red which is the actual forever
00:51:18
war. So many people this week and next week they're going to I'm going to be on a lot of shows Stephen talking about are
00:51:23
we in a forever war? Well, that's coming. Okay. Possibly. But right now we're coming into the stage three
00:51:32
question which is are we going to physically use force for the first time for real to seize back control of at
00:51:40
least part of hormuz and so forth and that is the big question because if we do that and that's why I think the real
00:51:48
issue on the table right now is uh can the United States physically open hormos between Now, in the midterms, I think
00:51:59
that question, Stephen, is the most important question in the world, for the world, for the world's economy, for
00:52:08
international terrorism against Americans, uh, for whether or not we truly will be in a forever war. This is
00:52:15
going to be decided between now and the midterms. And the and the and the key issue is can we physically open the
00:52:24
straight of horn moves between now and the midterms and I think sadly the answer is almost surely not.
00:52:34
It's funny cuz you mentioned LBJ. So I was looking at some of his quotes around the time to see how they link because
00:52:40
everybody knows the Vietnam War as being a war that just lasted forever and really achieved nothing. I mean that's
00:52:45
generally the consensus that you read about. Yeah. And LBJ said at the time, "I know we ought not be there, but I
00:52:52
can't get out. I just can't be the architect of surrender." And by this, he knew that the current strategy was a
00:52:59
mistake, but he felt politically paralyzed because backing down would be like a humiliating defeat, which again
00:53:05
links to Trump's situation. He also said, "Let's get somebody that wants to do something besides drop a bomb, but
00:53:11
that can go in and take in after these damn fellas and run them back where they belong." And by that, he meant relying
00:53:19
entirely on overwhelming American air power wasn't actually solving the unconventional ground level problem,
00:53:26
which again links to Trump's situation as you've described. >> That's the transition from air power,
00:53:30
rolling thunder to the heavier use of ground forces. And both of those of course ultimately fail.
00:53:37
>> He also said, "I don't," this is again LBJ's comments as president during the
00:53:41
Vietnam War. I don't think that we can fight them 10,000 miles away from home and get anywhere in that area. It's just
00:53:50
the biggest damn mess that I ever saw. By this, he meant trying to project military power halfway across the globe
00:53:56
against an enemy fighting in their own backyard is incredibly difficult and likely futile, which again links to the
00:54:01
Orange situation. And lastly, LBJ said, "A man can fight if he can see daylight down the road somewhere, but there ain't
00:54:10
no daylight in Vietnam. There's not a single bit." And by this he meant that there was no realistic achievable end
00:54:16
point or path to victory for its military strategy. And that also links to how like when political pressures
00:54:22
change. And you know, Trump's recent admission at the G7 that the world is about to run out of um their energy
00:54:28
reserves is a stark realization that the current strategy is hard. It has a deadline and there's no clear solution
00:54:34
in sight. >> Yeah. It's so tragic. It's so tragic that we're essentially replaying the
00:54:40
Vietnam War. Trump is replaying the decisions that Lyndon Johnson made and coming to very similar decisions, which
00:54:49
is he believes, as Lyndon Johnson did, that even though the military escalation would be a likely loser on the on the
00:54:58
battlefield, that loss would take months and months to play out. So, there was some chance he could pull a rabbit out
00:55:05
of a hat. But if he accepted immediate abrupt defeat, that would totally undermine and destroy his domestic
00:55:15
political agenda. >> So, I've got I basically before you came, I looked at the top 20 questions
00:55:20
that the internet currently wants to know about the Iran war. >> Oh, great. >> And we've knocked off a few of them
00:55:24
already. >> Okay. >> We've got a couple of them left. >> Yeah, I love it. Um, one of them is can
00:55:28
the United States actually force the straight of Hummus fully open with our current strategy or does Iran now hold
00:55:35
lasting leverage over this critical choke point? The answer is um it the United States cannot do it and this
00:55:42
would be an opportunity. Stephen, could I have that map back? Let me explain. Yeah, let me let me show you what I
00:55:48
think is really in the offing here. So, a lot of people are wondering what are we going to do with 8,000 ground troops?
00:55:54
So, we have somewhere around 4,500, 5,000 Marines, somewhere around 4,000 or so troops from the 82nd Airborne. What
00:56:03
are these troops actually going to do? And I think that what President Trump is doing here, and I think you can really
00:56:10
we can really see this if I kind of explain this is what we are doing is we are concentrating our forces, our naval
00:56:18
forces here into the Gulf of Oman. We are not moving them through the straight of Formos. We're constant. Our carriers
00:56:26
are in the Gulf of Oman and also our marine expeditionary unit is in the Gulf of Oman. Now, previously these had been
00:56:36
further away, way off the board in the Indian Ocean. We moved them here closer. And this is important because these guns
00:56:46
are are guns that have range to be able to hit the shore within about 12 miles. So what are you doing with these ships
00:56:55
and what are you doing here is you are building a force that might be uh able to take a piece of territory at
00:57:05
Charbahar or there's a um uh right in between Bandraas and Charbahar there is a little port town called Jas
00:57:15
and this would be exactly the kind of armada you would build in order to take one of those objectives, either
00:57:25
Charbahar or Jaskque. And the reason that you would do it politically for President Trump is because this could
00:57:34
possibly be a symbolic victory. You could possibly take the territory and hold it for weeks. Now, why would you be
00:57:44
able to take the territory and hold it for weeks? It's because this is Pakistan.
00:57:50
We haven't even shown the rest of Iran here. Uh Thran is is is over here. So maybe we want to Yeah, why don't we uh
00:57:58
bring the other map here as well. So what we have done, Stephen, is we have concentrated our forces here in the Gulf
00:58:06
of Oman. This is our carriers, our destroyers, our battleships, and they can provide some air cover here for
00:58:13
ships that might pass through uh the southern part here. So, I'm not saying this is the only possible mission. Uh,
00:58:20
but those Marines and the 82nd Airborne, they're not helping. They're not really
00:58:25
there to help ships pass through the straight of Hormuz, but they're here. Okay. At least the Marines are here.
00:58:33
>> Where? >> Uh, we don't they're somewhere in the straight of in the Gulf of Oman. We
00:58:37
don't know exactly where they are. That would not be good. >> I'm just saying that cuz some people
00:58:41
can't hear. >> Yeah, that's right. So, they're in the Gulf of Oman uh here, which is to the
00:58:45
east of Hormuz. The Gulf, the Persian Gulf is to the west of Hormuz. So Hormuz is the true choke point between these
00:58:52
two Gulfs. And the Gulf of Oman here is then what's north of it is the souththeastern coast of Iran, which is
00:59:03
the the least populated part of Iran. Iran's population is mostly up here around the word Iran. So, you're saying
00:59:10
that the US might take a small part of Iran from here? >> A small part of Iran >> with ground troops?
00:59:16
>> With ground troops. That's right. And literally hold it here uh in order to get a symbolic victory. And in order for
00:59:24
Iran to knock us out, they have to redirect all of their attention to this. Uh and this would be this is why I don't
00:59:34
think it's going to work is ultimately they will do this. uh but in the short term in a period of say a few weeks or
00:59:40
so this uh there's a there's a chance and I say it's a low chance I'm not trying to tell you I would advocate for
00:59:46
this I would not advocate for this I'm trying to explain what these troop these forces are doing here because otherwise
00:59:54
there's no point in having these forces here >> okay so some questions on this then if
00:59:59
they if the US do I guess invade Iran from >> capture port one of these port towns
01:00:07
>> from the sort of south east here. >> That's right. >> This would mean that Iran have a target
01:00:14
to kill American soldiers. >> That's right. >> And the cost of losing American soldiers, especially back home in
01:00:19
America, would be tremendous. >> You're talking about hundreds dead over a period of at least weeks.
01:00:26
>> And this would be just the terrible politically for boots to be on the ground and be dying in Iran.
01:00:31
>> Well, it will be divisive politically. So for people that are opposed to the war, this will make them even more
01:00:38
opposed to the war. But for people that are supporting the war, and this is the part of the politics that I study,
01:00:44
Stephen, uh it's important to understand that there's a large part of MAGA that is incredibly supportive of this war. In
01:00:51
fact, the opinion polls uh uh tend to show that more MAGA supports regime change uh for Iran than oppose it. So
01:01:00
this is not like MAGA has become Tucker Carlson country or something. This is still Trump country uh here and they
01:01:07
want Trump to win. Well, what you are seeing here is that if there are if there are troops that are killed, you
01:01:15
are likely going to see and you're seeing this on Fox News this morning after three more died over the weekend.
01:01:22
You're seeing a tremendous amount of support for our troops and therefore the war. Okay, so I've got some numbers here
01:01:29
about public support. Based on recent polling from mid 2026, the ongoing military conflict with Iran remains
01:01:36
highly unpopular with the general American public, but support is sharply divided along political lines. Overall,
01:01:43
roughly 27 to 34% of Americans support the war, while a solid majority of 53 to 57% oppose it. But then when you look at
01:01:54
MAGA, it says that 77% to 85% of MAGA support the war. There's a MAGA Republicans and only 5% to 14% of MAGA
01:02:06
Republicans oppose the war. >> That's right. So what you are seeing is the divisions in our country which have
01:02:14
been building for years are still in existence with this war and they're becoming hardened in this war.
01:02:23
And if as deaths occur, this is likely to harden the division, not shift, at least not shift much of MAGA to the
01:02:34
anti-war position. >> And the reason is because just as Trump complained when President Biden pulled
01:02:42
out from uh Afghanistan there, this is going to be uh not just a loss for Trump if he pulls out. This
01:02:50
will be viewed as a as as an insult to the people who died. And so people will say, "So if we leave, did those people
01:02:58
die as a mistake? Was it a mistake? Is their death were their deaths worthless?" That's a hard thing. And
01:03:04
that's one of the reasons why when troops die in war for months, this can harden support for a war, possibly even
01:03:14
grow it. Over time, yes, it tends to whittle down, but in the in the near term, deaths can actually harden support
01:03:22
for the war. And that's a thing that most people aren't really fully grasping yet.
01:03:27
>> How real is the risk that the US will do some kind of limited ground operation
01:03:31
with boots on the ground in Iran? uh well over 50%. I think it's uh bordering on 70% now. Um and the reasons are that
01:03:43
uh number one, the economic crisis that President Trump was trying to prevent and therefore the economic costs that
01:03:50
will hurt him later is already starting to become baked in. what you're hearing this morning with the Houthis closing
01:03:56
the pipeline area around Yon Buu it's called this uh port city in the Red Sea where the uh 4 to 5 million barrels of
01:04:04
Saudi oil is coming out. What you're hear what that is going to do is make the economic crisis even more baked in
01:04:10
even more likely unless it's immediately reversed. And even if it was immediately
01:04:14
reversed tomorrow, that could be reversed again the next day after that. this is starting to spiral out of
01:04:19
control because it's not just up to President Trump now to to put this genie back in the bottle. President Trump can
01:04:26
actually still uh can withdraw and uh but right now Iran has to stop the escalation. It has to let the Red Sea
01:04:36
oil flow. It has to allow ships to flow from Hormuz. And Iran is not is in a mood for revenge. Iran is uh there is
01:04:46
emotions coursing through Iran, but it's not um causing Iran to uh uh pull back.
01:04:53
Uh it's causing Iran to want revenge. And the leader statement, the Supreme Leader statement just of a couple days
01:04:59
ago, this was Saturday, uh two uh US soldiers were tragically killed in Jordan. Um he called it uh what the
01:05:07
Supreme Leader did was uh used the phrase that he's going to deliver unforgettable lessons to America.
01:05:15
Unforgettable lessons is the exact phrase by the Supreme Leader over the weekend. What you are seeing here,
01:05:22
Stephen, is as we have essentially as Iran um started to shoot at ships here to try to reinforce theou, President
01:05:33
Trump up the ante. Now we're in our ninth week, ninth day of bombing in a row. Now Iran is upping the Annie. And
01:05:40
Iran is upping the Annie in multiple ways. It's attacking our base in Jordan, which it only rarely done since uh since
01:05:48
March, actually. It's now with the Houthis closing the Red Sea. And we haven't yet talked about Kuwait. And we
01:05:55
should talk about what happened here over the weekend here in Kuwait because this is a harbinger of what's to come
01:06:02
because it shows how ferocious the anger is by Iran and how hard it's going to be
01:06:08
to stop this spiral of escalation. And that is what is one of the the that's what's going to lead to President Trump
01:06:17
thinking long and hard about putting those ground forces in because we're not making an independent decision now.
01:06:24
>> So you said there's a 70% chance Yes. >> that troops could be put on the ground
01:06:29
in Iran. >> Yes. I think within I think probably uh within the next month, maybe even
01:06:36
shorter than that. It could even be by the end of this week. This is something that I've made for
01:06:42
you. I've realized that the DVIO audience are strivals that we want to accomplish. And one of
01:06:49
the things I've learned is that when you aim at the big big big goal, it can feel
01:06:54
incredibly psychologically uncomfortable because it's kind of like being stood at
01:06:59
the foot of Mount Everest and looking upwards. The way to accomplish your goals is by breaking them down into tiny
01:07:05
small steps. And we call this in our team the 1%. And actually this philosophy is highly responsible for
01:07:11
much of our success here. So what we've done so that you at home can accomplish any big goal that you have is we've made
01:07:18
these 1% diaries and we released these last year and they all sold out. So I asked my team over and over again to
01:07:24
bring the diaries back but also to introduce some new colors and to make some minor tweaks to the diary. So now
01:07:29
we have a better range for you. So, if you have a big goal in mind and you need a framework and a process and some
01:07:37
motivation, then I highly recommend you get one of these diaries before they will sell out once again. And you can
01:07:43
get yours at the diary.com. And if you want the link, the link is in the description below.
01:07:49
You've shown me on the graph that you've just shown the escalation ladder, you can call it, and and where we are now.
01:07:56
What is the most probable next thing that you think happens with this war? The biggest thing I'm worried about is a
01:08:05
mass casualty attack against American troops or American civilians. >> Wow. >> Against American troops in the Middle
01:08:14
East, but I'm specifically worrying about a barrage of ballistic missiles against our uh naval ships in the Gulf
01:08:20
of Oman. So the Iran is showing a uh through its the targeting it's that it's already been doing in the last uh week
01:08:30
and a half an exquisite ability to precisely target and um we don't know for sure they're able to track the
01:08:38
movement of our naval ships in the Gulf of Oman uh or they're getting help with either the ch from the Chinese or the
01:08:45
Russians in doing that. But I'm specifically worried that as this escalates, they've just closed the
01:08:51
straight. They've just closed the Red Sea. If we keep going forward, and we'll find out if we're going to if Trump will
01:08:58
pull back or not, but if we keep going forward, one of the big things I'm concerned about this week, next week,
01:09:04
would be an attack on a ship. Uh, and I think it would be a barrage attack. The second thing I'm concerned about is uh
01:09:12
because we are now um literally threatening ground occupation. That's the biggest risk factor for suicide
01:09:19
terrorism in my 25 years of studying suicide attacks. We haven't talked about that, Stephen. And the reason we haven't
01:09:26
talked about it is because we were pretty far away from the big risk factor of how you start a big suicide terrorist
01:09:32
campaign. That is now changing. Um I've talked to my substack about this. glad to talk to you about it now. Uh, but I'm
01:09:41
concerned about a mass casualty attack against Americans. This could be against an American airliner. It could be
01:09:50
against I mean Americans on a a commercial airliner. This could be um against uh uh Americans say business uh
01:09:58
men in uh Aquaba. So you you might know there have been attacks recently in Aquaba, which is this really lovely
01:10:04
resort town. I've never been there. And the uh and the fact is um there are business American businessmen um uh
01:10:12
moving all around the Middle East now to build these pipelines. And so I can imagine there being terrorist attacks
01:10:18
against the uh the hotels that are staying at uh the um German and um British embassies have just ordered
01:10:26
their evacuation. America State Department has issued an advisory over the weekend for Americans to start
01:10:32
leaving the region. But I'm concerned about terrorist attack because threatening in or actually doing ground
01:10:39
control, controlling pieces of homeland territory is the biggest risk factor for
01:10:45
suicide terrorism. That's what causes people more than anything else to strap on bombs to kill others while they're
01:10:52
killing themselves. So before we explain in detail, so when you say Stephen, what
01:10:57
I'm looking for in the next few weeks, >> I'm seeing the spiral of escalation now
01:11:02
occurring. It's a two-sided spiral. It's not just President Trump. Iran is uh uh
01:11:08
escalating here as much as Trump, if not more. And uh in this spiral of escalation, there could be a mass
01:11:15
casualty attack either against our troops or against American civilians. And the American civilian attack could
01:11:21
be anywhere in the world. It could be in Indonesia. It could be London. It could
01:11:24
be anywhere. And if that mass casualty event happens, I think what you're going to see is that this is likely going to
01:11:34
cause that division we just discussed here to in America, support for the war to harden even more. And you're going to
01:11:42
get though intense support for continuing the war now to stop uh mass casualty attacks by Iran in the future.
01:11:52
So you have spent some of your career studying terrorist attacks >> and I guess suicide terrorist attacks
01:12:00
>> specifically. Yes. >> Give me a view into the research the work you've done there. You've written a
01:12:06
book on it. >> Two >> two books on it. >> And then ladder me up to how that's relevant to the moment we're in now. So,
01:12:13
shortly after 9/11, this was, remember, America was hit with a a terrorist attack here in uh New York, the World
01:12:19
Trade Center, the Pentagon. Uh nearly 3,000 Americans died that day. I wanted to understand why, and I wanted to
01:12:27
understand more. The more I studied it, I noticed that 9/11 was a suicide attack. It wasn't just a terrorist
01:12:34
attack. So, I started to collect what became the first complete data set of all suicide attacks around the world. Uh
01:12:41
I did this uh at the University of Chicago. I did this with a few research assistants, basically work study
01:12:48
students. The suicide terrorism, the reason I studied it, Stephen, was because it's the lung cancer of
01:12:54
terrorism. Suicide attacks kill more people in the category of terrorism than all the other different kinds of
01:13:02
terrorism combined. The suicide attacks are the biggest killer. Uh it's like lung cancer. We have other kinds of
01:13:09
cancers, but lung cancer is the biggest killer. And what is the key risk factor for the lung cancer of suicide
01:13:16
terrorism? It's military combat presence on territory the terrorist prize. >> So with suicide terrorism, is it hard to
01:13:25
stop? Because you know, we can intercept missiles that are coming over pretty well it seems, but suicide terrorism
01:13:31
seems to be a completely different type of challenge. Suicide terrorism is like a precision guided is like turning a
01:13:38
person into a precision guided weapon because literally nothing can better identify the most
01:13:47
vulnerable point in a crowd, the most vulnerable point in a building, the exact split second to set off the the
01:13:54
the explosive better than a human. >> And the how does the US, for example, you're saying two things. was saying
01:14:01
that that attack could happen in the United States, but also it doesn't have to. It could happen anywhere in those
01:14:07
regions where there's a high density of Americans or Westerners theoretically. >> That's right.
01:14:13
>> Because you know the Americans could say, "Well, we're not going to let in anybody from those regions. We're going
01:14:17
to get more diligent with passport checks, whatever." >> That will happen after the fir, God
01:14:22
forbid, I hope I'm wrong, Stephen, but if and when that first attack happens, you're going to see all that come out.
01:14:30
You're going to see what can >> you're going to see all the idea of what can we do? Can we do passport checks?
01:14:34
Can we do X or Y? What this is right after 911, similar thing happened. Let's hope nothing that large would would
01:14:41
happen. But let me just further explain that when I when I um compiled that database and it made a specific
01:14:48
prediction. It predicted then that if we invaded and occupied Iraq, we would touch off the largest suicide terrorist
01:14:56
campaign in modern times. What is it? What is it about okay invading their country in particular versus
01:15:05
bombing their country in particular that causes suicide terrorist attacks from your research? Like what is it? Because
01:15:13
bombing them from the sky is is killing people that it's not the killing people part of this that matters. It's the
01:15:20
political control part that comes with the ground forces. So the reason to use the ground forces is to impose political
01:15:29
control. >> So >> that's not just killing people, Stephen. >> So the reason why America put in ground
01:15:35
forces >> is to get political control and that political control means the group
01:15:43
controlled doesn't control its way of life. >> It's sort of seen as a deeper violation.
01:15:49
Is that ultimately what it is? It's a deeper violation that is uh not in control of the local population. So when
01:15:57
we put in ground forces in Afghanistan after we topple the Taliban, we topple the Taliban with their power by the way,
01:16:04
but we don't get much suicide attacks in Afghanistan till we start pouring in ground forces in Afghanistan. That comes
01:16:13
after we topple the Taliban. So we topple the Taliban in fall 2021 and then we get the suicide terrorism starting
01:16:20
several years later in Afghanistan. It's because that's when we're putting in the
01:16:25
ground forces. So Donald Trump has just posted on Truth Social a few hours ago saying every time Iran kills an American
01:16:31
soldier, they will pay for that killing many times over. This directive has been
01:16:35
passed on to the Secretary of War, Pete Hexath, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs and his other military leader.
01:16:41
And obviously this is in response to losing an American life. And he's very actively tweeting as we speak about the
01:16:47
war. Um tweet after tweet after tweet after tweet on True Social. It it it begs the qu I mean I just don't know
01:16:54
what is there a end an achievable endgame or offramp here that restores the free shipping through the straight
01:17:02
of Hermuz but also allows the United States to retract without appearing to have suffered a a strategic defeat.
01:17:09
No, Stephen, there was not an achievable offramp. Um, that ship sailed first when
01:17:16
u President Trump decided in the first week in March not to declare he could have declared, my advice at that point,
01:17:24
first week in March was to declare victory and walk away to say all you wanted to do was teach Iran a lesson.
01:17:30
You'd killed the supreme leader, a bunch of other leaders. Uh now let's go back uh to negotiate uh with um uh about
01:17:38
Iran's nuclear program. He did not do that. When I was with you in April, I was giving a different advice. Um that
01:17:45
advice then was to militarily contain Israel. That advice was to keep a lid. Israel was moving into Lebanon, doing
01:17:52
other things. Keep a lid on Israel militarily. Um, President Trump has taken these ideas, and I'm not saying
01:18:00
because I said them, but he's taken those ideas months too late. If you look at what I'm I think President Trump
01:18:07
might think he is trying to militarily contain Israel right now uh with theou, I do think he tried to declare victory
01:18:14
and and and walk out. But the problem here, Stephen, is that these are now u a day late and a dollar short. They're
01:18:22
just not good enough. So if you wanted to get back to the negotiating track, what exactly are you going to uh offer
01:18:32
Iran to come back to the table at this point? The sameou say, "Oh, sure. We're going to now just we're going to we're
01:18:38
going to honor theou that we already signed and then we violated over and over and over." You're not that's not
01:18:45
credible. >> So is this the forever war? >> No, we're not yet in the forever war
01:18:49
stage. >> But you said there's no way out. There's the way out would be if the midterms come and the Democrats win
01:18:58
either the House or the House and the Senate and they shut down the money for the war.
01:19:04
>> Oh, >> that is a way out. >> Oh, they can do that. >> So, this is Yes. That's what happened in
01:19:10
Vietnam. >> They they they can shut down the money for the war. >> They can shut down the That's what
01:19:15
Congress did. Yes. Congress has the power. It doesn't use it very often. And the last time it did this was in 1974.
01:19:22
The reason I, as I showed you on that escalation ladder, I said there is a stage five, a forever war. We're not at
01:19:28
a forever war yet. What would be a forever war would be um uh where that will come. And and the reason I'm
01:19:37
defining the the escalation period between now and the midterms as the most crucial period right now. This is going
01:19:47
to determine everything. And the and what's going to determine the outcome of the next few months is can America open
01:19:53
the straight of form physically. What could easily happen between now and the midterms is President Trump tries to
01:20:00
open the straight of form moves or he allows Iran by the way to um he pulls back. He could actually pull back.
01:20:07
Either way, at this point, Stephen, there's um uh there's a good chance he will uh lose in the midterms, meaning
01:20:14
that the Republicans will lose one or both houses in Congress. And if that happens, then uh whoever takes over
01:20:22
control will be a Democrat. They'll be hotly um anti-war. And there will be uh great efforts here to shut down the war,
01:20:30
meaning shut down the money for the war. So, it's always about the money. >> I need to get an understanding of the
01:20:36
role. So this sort of link between the midterms, the money, and then the war. So the midterms are going to change
01:20:42
who's in Congress. >> Yes. >> And then the people in >> who controls it. >> And the people in Congress, they decide
01:20:49
how much money the military get. >> They decide whether or not um they can pass laws, and this is what happened in
01:20:56
1974, uh to prevent money from being spent on the war. >> And Trump can't overdo that. He
01:21:03
>> he can try to work around it. Uh there can be then Supreme Court cases and so
01:21:08
forth and so on. >> So even if Democrats win the midterms and try to halt the war, Trump could
01:21:13
bypass them because he holds massive constitutional advantages as commander-in-chief. He can simply veto
01:21:20
any war powers resolution or funding restriction passed by Congress, which would then require an incredibly
01:21:26
difficult 2/3 supermajority in both chambers to override. Furthermore, mirroring the arguments of almost every
01:21:33
president since Richard Nixon, Trump could evoke his Article 2 constitutional authority, claiming he has the inherent
01:21:39
power to defend America's interests and troops without needing legislative approval. Finally, even if Congress
01:21:46
refuses to authorize new funding, the president can use emergency transfer authorities and creative accounting to
01:21:52
shuffle existing Pentagon budget funds to keep the military operations running in the short term. You've just defined a
01:21:59
constitutional crisis. Congress will think it has the power. President Trump will think he has the power. That is
01:22:07
what is a constitutional crisis. And that's why these midterms, as my um don't mean to to say it quite in this
01:22:16
context, but as you know, I have a book coming out our own worst enemies. The preface is called uh the most dangerous
01:22:23
elections in our lifetimes. That is why this election coming up will be the most
01:22:28
dangerous election in our lifetime because the tensions now are growing. On top of all that, they're not calming
01:22:34
down those waters. The Iran war is making all these worse. And what you just read is the tension here that is
01:22:42
that could well come because the Democrats are not going to want it to there to be a forever war. and they were
01:22:49
going to they're likely to fight really hard once uh once they control the um uh
01:22:56
once they control one or both houses of Congress. President Trump will want to fight really hard for his legacy and his
01:23:03
um uh domestic agenda, including uh deportations, including ICE. So, this will all come together. These will not
01:23:12
be compartmentalized separate issues as we get into the midterms. That's why I'm
01:23:18
saying that we're coming the midterms, the midterms, the midterms. We're not heading to a future where it's just
01:23:27
about what happens to military bases overseas. It's just about what happens to ships overseas, what's happened in
01:23:33
Hormuz. these lines, the domestic political violence in the United States, I call this the era of
01:23:41
violent populism and the growing tensions in the country over the Iran war. These two lines, the domestic uh
01:23:51
crisis and the international crisis are about to come together. And as I told my
01:23:56
research team in the summer of 2024 and talks I gave in Chicago, my nightmare, they asked me what my nightmare scenario
01:24:03
was. This was in the fall of 2024. And I said, "My nightmare scenario is we have
01:24:10
uh an international crisis at the same time as we have an election in the fall of 2024. We really didn't have that. Now
01:24:19
we do. And this is we're heading into the fall of 2026." And this was always my nightmare scenario.
01:24:25
>> Why? What does that mean? What are those two things colliding? >> Those two things colliding start to look
01:24:31
like the 1960s. And what happened in the 1960s? >> The 1960s we had mass uh demonstrations.
01:24:38
We had anti-war violence. We had anti-war terrorism with the weather underground. We had multiple
01:24:45
assassinations uh that occurred. Martin Luther King, it was uh Bobby Kennedy was
01:24:51
assassinated. The convention in Chicago, there was just mass uh demonstration. Mayor Daly in Chicago gave a shoot
01:24:57
tokill order. I already mentioned to you the Weather Underground. um uh string of
01:25:03
bombs that they set off. So what we faced in the 1960s was the collision of domestic uh political tension with an
01:25:11
unpopular war. That's how you got the chaos of the 1960. I have a whole chapter in the book
01:25:17
about the 1960s and why it was so particularly intense. >> So do you think that Trump is likely to
01:25:23
lose the midterms as things stand? Do you think the Republicans are likely to lose
01:25:27
>> here? Here's here's the thing. If um if we have a mass casualty attack, this will increase the odds of Trump uh and
01:25:36
the Republicans winning in the midterms. And I think if uh we uh have a world economic crisis without the mass
01:25:44
casualty attack, uh then I think it's likely that the Republicans will lose in the midterms.
01:25:51
>> Okay. So I think we have the reason I can't give you a clean uh answer to this
01:25:56
which I know people want they they would because we have multiple specific issues
01:26:02
here that are now as part of the spiraling violence >> and three 3 months isn't awful long.
01:26:09
>> It's a long time because that mass casualty attack could happen in in October and it doesn't have to be
01:26:15
command directed by Iran. It can be it can occur the mass casualty attack against Americans uh can occur because
01:26:24
it's an inspired attack. The Iran the the supreme leader is issuing statements that sound almost like Baghdadi that was
01:26:33
the leader of ISIS issuing statements to encourage inspired attacks. That was the
01:26:39
suicide uh attacks in Paris in November 2015 that killed over a hundred people. That was San Bernardino. So we we we saw
01:26:49
leaders inspire attacks before and the Supreme Leader statements are just are eerily close to the same words.
01:27:00
Is the current US air campaign sustainable? You hinted at this earlier on that actually the US might be running
01:27:07
out of some of their their weapons. Um, it's estimated that the daily cost of this this war for America is around $2
01:27:15
billion a day and Iran's ability to continue these sort of asymmetric attacks with drones and other things
01:27:22
>> doesn't come as at such a high cost and seems from the example you gave with the
01:27:26
bowl earlier on to be more sustainable. So, is there actually a risk here that the US will run out of weapons? Um, I
01:27:33
think that there's a risk we'll run out of interceptors to shoot down missiles, but even that's pretty low because
01:27:40
what's really happening in our arsenal of weapons, Stephen, is we are using a lot of interceptors, especially say
01:27:49
Patriot missile interceptors to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles, but we're drawing from stocks um in Asia and
01:27:57
in Europe. This is one of the reasons Zalinsky can't get Patriot missiles. Uh, at least not very many of them. It's
01:28:03
because we're now moving most of the stocks here for the Persian Gulf. So, I think that there's some chance we'll run
01:28:09
out of the uh those interceptors. But even there, I think it's low. But literally, in terms of the bombs, it's
01:28:16
it's an gross exaggeration to expect that uh we are going to run out of bombs to drop from aircraft. And there's two
01:28:26
reasons for that. in order to make a precision bomb. Most people don't know what it takes these days, and it's true.
01:28:33
We can spend a lot of money making a precision bomb, but we can literally take dumb bombs, 500 lb dumb bombs, and
01:28:40
strap a backpack on them that will uh connect with GPS and have little uh cords to the fins of the bombs in order
01:28:49
to turn a dumb bomb into a precision bomb. Those fanny packs are about 20,000 bucks, maybe 25. So, we can make them
01:28:58
much more easily than people think. >> So, what do you think the United States/Trump's
01:29:05
objective is at this particular point? Like, what is the goal? The the real goal? Cuz there's lots of press
01:29:10
conferences I see where they say it's nuclear weapons, it's this, that, and the other. I
01:29:13
>> I think President Trump's goal between now and the midterms is very simple. A
01:29:19
symbolic victory. >> And what would that look like? That would look like a victory that would
01:29:24
hold for uh a week, maybe two weeks, and that would be uh an opportunity to show
01:29:31
that President Trump fought back. I think that's how this would be framed by uh uh President Trump's supporters and
01:29:38
those who support the war. And it would be uh I think President Trump would say,
01:29:43
"And this shows what we can do if you let us win." I think his words would be a little
01:29:49
different. >> Do you think he's stuck? Yes. >> Do you think he knows he's stuck?
01:29:54
>> I've never met President Trump. Um, my research here, Stephen, has always looked at the actual words by decision
01:30:03
makers. What I can tell you is what his incentives look like. And the incentives
01:30:08
that I've laid out have been quite predictive of his behavior. >> Do you want him to call you?
01:30:13
>> Yes. >> And if he calls you, what is the advice you would give him on what to do next?
01:30:19
Uh what I would do is try to design a several year strategy to build a better balance of power in the region that we
01:30:29
could over a period of time uh stabilize the world and stabilize the region. And
01:30:36
I think that is the big issue that's being missed right now. >> But if he says, "Listen, Robert, what do
01:30:42
I do in the next three months because I've got these midterms coming up?" >> Then the answer is don't call me.
01:30:48
I I want to help President Trump, but I want to help America for real. Uh these are not necessarily at odds, but the
01:30:59
bottom line here is that um everything I have to say to President Trump about the
01:31:05
next three months, we've just done on this podcast, Stephen. Um, but I am absolutely delighted to talk about how
01:31:13
to actually build a more secure future for America and for the Gulf. And I just don't think that's that's happening. And
01:31:23
I don't think the uh the pressure that this must lead to an electoral victory for President Trump is likely to uh uh
01:31:33
make the the the true security for America and the Gulf more likely. In fact, it's going to go the other way
01:31:39
around. It will encourage the escalation trap. So, that's why I'm I am I'm stuck
01:31:44
by my own logic of the escalation trap uh here. It's literally um we we have to move past the idea that uh the only
01:31:56
acceptable option is an option that guarantees um political success for an individual
01:32:05
even if it means the president of the United States. >> What do you think Russia and China
01:32:12
who are often positioned as adversaries of the United States? What do you think they're thinking right now? And what do
01:32:16
they what do they want to happen? You know, I guess China's being hurt by the oil situation. Russia's got their own
01:32:21
situation going on with the Ukraine. What are they thinking? >> Uh I think China does not want there to
01:32:27
be global instability. Uh but at the same time, they don't want this to be uh a situation where Iran comes out
01:32:37
smashed. I think that is um uh that's that's simply not in the cart. I also don't think China is going to insert
01:32:46
itself in a very forceful way. I think the idea that Iran might come out and militarily support the United States
01:32:54
here or militarily support with its own forces Iran is not likely to happen. So I think that what you were
01:33:00
>> Why don't they want Iran smashed to China? >> For President Xi um he explained quite a
01:33:07
bit of this at the summit. He said to President Trump, "You're a declining power. Are you going to uh fall into
01:33:14
what he called the Thusidity trap? Meaning, are you going to launch a preventive war against China in Asia?
01:33:22
And that's what President Xi said. >> What about Russia? >> What Russia is seeing is an opportunity
01:33:29
to squeeze Europe economically. Uh so I believe that what has been happening in the last few weeks here,
01:33:38
the last month is that Ukraine has actually been gaining uh uh not just strength with drones but
01:33:45
in a specific area called Crimea in uh which uh Russia took and Putin took in 2014. There's been a mass exodus out of
01:33:56
Crimea in the last weeks. Ukraine is putting more and more pressure on the supply lines coming into
01:34:04
Crimea and also coming into Ukraine from Russia. And what Putin, I think, is uh is is uh wants to have happen is that um
01:34:15
he will likely escalate more, put more pressure on Europe at exactly the time in the fall when the world economic
01:34:25
crisis is growing because of Iran. And that is going to squeeze Europe, make it hard for Europe to fulfill the
01:34:34
commitment they just made to uh Zalinsky of 80 billion more dollars. I guess my my last question then before I go to the
01:34:41
diary is um if you were to predict how the next couple of months play out, what would your prediction be? And this is a
01:34:49
on a on probability, 51% probability of outcomes. What happens next? I I think we're going to uh in the next few months
01:35:00
cross the threshold with ground operations into either one of the islands or uh part of the coast of Iran
01:35:08
because the world economic crisis is going to grow. The price of gasoline in the United States is likely to grow and
01:35:16
President Trump is going to be even more desperate to try to find a way to look make it at least appear as if he has a
01:35:26
plan to open hormones. It may not be real. It may only be symbolic. But I think Stephen that the uh where we are
01:35:34
heading is um uh the more the crisis the world economic crisis increases and if there's a mass casualty attack the more
01:35:45
that crisis increases the more President Trump is under pressure to demonstrate he has a way to open hormuz even if it's
01:35:55
far off and he needs a down payment on that. He needs something to show tangibly and I think that's where the
01:36:03
pressure will come from for crossing into stage three. >> I think it's worth saying in these
01:36:07
conversations as well that there are 90 plus million Iranians who currently live
01:36:11
in Iran and who are caught in the midst of this craziness and chaos. And sometimes in these conversations we kind
01:36:17
of don't really think about the fact that there's a nation that's just bigger than the nation I come from, the United
01:36:21
Kingdom, who are right in the heart of this. And so every time Trump says he's bombed more people over the weekends or
01:36:27
he's firing bombs, I always think about the the real families that are caught right in in the midst of all of this
01:36:32
that didn't choose this war that are living in an environment where bombs dropping on their heads. And I think for
01:36:37
everybody all around the world that listen to this show, whether you're in the UK or the United States or Australia
01:36:42
or Canada or wherever you are, South America, Asia, wherever, Africa, it's worth taking a second just to imagine
01:36:48
what it would be like to know that the United States are dropping lots of bombs on the nation in which you live and how
01:36:55
that would feel psychologically, how that would feel for your children, how that would feel for for you yourself,
01:37:00
how that would impact your day-to-day life. And also I guess the uncertainty of not knowing when it's going to end,
01:37:05
if it's going to end, and also hearing this term escalation trap and thinking that, you know, this is actually going
01:37:10
to escalate and troops are going to come into my country. And so there's a real human cost to this which sometimes we
01:37:15
leave out of these conversations. >> And I have students um uh and at the University of Chicago who um are
01:37:21
Iranian. They have families in Iran. Uh and they ask me questions about this all
01:37:28
the time. And sadly, what I have to tell them is that real hope for the Iranian people is five or 10 years away. And as
01:37:38
this war escalates, it pushes closer to 10 than five. We have a closing tradition on this
01:37:44
podcast with the last guest leader question for the next. The question left for you is if you could go back to a
01:37:49
certain time and see something occur or ask someone something you've always wondered about, what slash who would
01:37:58
that person slash place be and why? >> I think the key person I would ask would be uh Franklin Delanor Roosevelt. He
01:38:10
died before we dropped the atomic bombs. I would want to know from him when he was developing uh and supporting the
01:38:21
atomic bombs. Did he imagine the world that would be created by the atomic bombs? Because in my lifetime, war has
01:38:32
been a defining feature of my work. Uh but uh the uh the prospects of of nuclear war have always overhung quite a
01:38:43
bit of our work. We never want to get to anything like that. But I'd like to know
01:38:48
from the person who had the most authority power uh in order to make that future happen who never even saw it,
01:38:59
didn't even see it happen, but knew it was coming. I'd like to know from him what did he think was truly going to
01:39:06
come because I think that this would be uh uh extremely useful to know whether or not our leaders truly truly how far
01:39:17
out they can really see and understand how much their decisions today shape the world for decades to come.
01:39:24
>> Robert, thank you. Um we're very excited for your book September 22nd. So, do we
01:39:28
have a pre-order link yet? It's just up. Actually, literally, it's just up. So, yes,
01:39:33
>> I have to say when we first sat down, you said a bunch of things in terms of what would happen next. And I'm not sure
01:39:38
I believed them all because I don't know anything about war. And they and you never really think about the psychology
01:39:44
changes both at home, but also where the bombs are dropping. And it does appear that you've been largely correct about
01:39:52
what you what you said would happen. this escalation that happens across all wars that has happened also in Ukraine
01:39:58
and Russia at the same time but now we're seeing play out in Iran. So I have to give you your credit because you have
01:40:03
been unfortunately you've been right I should say I would agree with the word unfortunately. So, this is uh um part of
01:40:11
me would like to be happy about this, but the truth is uh and this is what I just was talking to my 97year-old
01:40:18
mother-in-law about is um uh I told her that you had invited me again. She's 97 years old, can't even get out of bed,
01:40:25
Stephen. And I told her that um it was it was one of the the saddest things I had to agree to. And it's because of
01:40:33
what it really means. The reason you're having me here is because things are bad
01:40:38
for our country and I want nothing more than for things to be better for our country.
01:40:42
>> Well, Robert, thank you so much for coming back and um you know, if we do come back again and convene, I hope next
01:40:47
time it's on better terms because we're analyzing how it all resulted in peace for everybody, especially the people
01:40:52
that are living and around right now. >> Robert, thank you. >> Thank you. >> YouTube have this new crazy algorithm
01:40:57
where they know exactly what video you would like to watch next based on AI and all of your viewing behavior. And the
01:41:03
algorithm says that this video is the perfect video for you. It's different for everybody looking right now. Check
01:41:10
this video out and I bet you you might love it.