00:00:00
Iran has figured out that we can't beat them. We're not weakening Iran. We have
00:00:05
strengthened Iran and we can't stop their drone attacks. And what you're
00:00:11
seeing is far more chaotic decision-making is happening in the White House than is happening in the
00:00:16
government of Iran and it's evidence Trump is losing power. So when I look through the response to the last
00:00:22
conversation, the audience had lots of different types of questions. Like there's 90 odd million people stuck
00:00:26
right in the heart of this that often don't really have a voice. What do you
00:00:29
think happens next for them and what is Israel's role in this? >> Well, Israel is playing two roles here
00:00:34
that have not helped us correctly assess the situation and we'll talk about that.
00:00:39
>> And then what do you think happens with Europe? >> NATO is for all practical purposes dead
00:00:45
and what happens next. >> So for 21 years, I laid out what a hypothetical bombing campaign of Iran
00:00:51
would look like. And when I was here last time, every single thing we talked about unfolded in the first several
00:00:57
weeks of the war. >> So when you did this 21 years of modeling these attacks, how did America
00:01:03
come out of this situation? >> So there was a consistent set of findings and America can bomb them,
00:01:09
attack them. We could even threaten to murder all 92 million of them. But the bottom line is
00:01:16
that is the real danger for us. This is super interesting to me. My team gave me this report to show me how many
00:01:26
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If you are a regular viewer of the show and you like what we do here, we're approaching quite a significant landmark
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00:01:59
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00:02:03
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00:02:13
Let's get on with the show. Professor Robert Pabe, good to see you again. >> Great to see you again, Stephen.
00:02:26
>> It's been 4 weeks since we sat down and talked about everything that was
00:02:29
happening in the war and it's all moved at light speed. You made some predictions then. Many of them have come
00:02:35
true already and many of them still unfolding. But I wanted to get you back to talk about what the hell is going on.
00:02:41
And I think that's kind of how I started last conversation. But there's so much
00:02:47
that's being said and I get the sense that there's a truth that sits underneath there somewhere because when
00:02:53
you look at what the Iranians are saying, when you look at what the Israelis are saying, when you look at
00:02:56
what Trump and America are saying, and then you look at reality, at some level, I feel like we're not being told the
00:03:01
truth. My first question to you, professor, is who are you and who are you to speak on this subject matter?
00:03:08
>> I am a professor at the University of Chicago. I have been there for 26 years
00:03:13
almost 27 years and before that I was a professor who taught for the US Air Force. I taught conventional targeting
00:03:21
and I thought I was going to go into the foreign service. I wanted to understand
00:03:25
how we lost the Vietnam War and this became the origins of bombing to win >> which is your book I have here in front
00:03:31
of me. >> That's bombing to win in 1985. I've just finished all my classes and I have to
00:03:36
pick a topic for my PhD. I wanted to find the book that laid out all the air campaigns and that explained why Vietnam
00:03:44
was a loser. Where did that L come from? When you say air campaigns, for someone
00:03:49
that knows nothing about military conflict, what do you mean by air campaigns? >> What I mean with an air campaign is when
00:03:55
you have military aircraft who were not just doing a single raid bombing one target one day, but doing a campaign
00:04:04
over days, weeks, months. in the case of Vietnam over years. >> And you wanted to figure out why
00:04:12
countries that do these military campaigns, which is pretty much what's going on now in the Middle East, why
00:04:17
they don't tend to win. >> Why they don't win when they're so strong? Why is it that when a strong
00:04:25
power really gets its act together, it's not careless, it's really thinking hard,
00:04:31
it then applies this force, a campaign overtime and comes out a loser. >> And you modeled for 20 years a war with
00:04:40
Iran versus the United States. >> That's exactly right. I imagined uh in
00:04:46
class for 90 minutes I laid out what a hypothetical bombing campaign of Iran would look like starting with the
00:04:54
bombing of its nuclear enrichment sites. There's multiple sites. There's uh Ford
00:05:00
which is an industrial enrichment where there are centerfuges. There's Natans
00:05:05
also centuges. There's Esphon where you have gasification of the ore so you can
00:05:10
make the centurfuges more efficient. So, it's not just one target. There's a
00:05:15
whole target set, a complex of targets. And so, what I would do is I would lay out here are the aircraft that could be
00:05:22
used. Uh, here are the likely results at a tactical level. Ah, yes, just for context. So, we're
00:05:30
looking at a map of Iran and we're looking at the Persian Gulf. And um Iran of course is to the east of the of the
00:05:38
Persian Gulf and Thran is up to the north middle. Right in the middle are a whole series of these nuclear sites. You
00:05:46
have Sagad which is where the uranium ore actually comes from. They don't have
00:05:51
to bring in ore. They have plenty of ore, but the ore has to be distilled so that you can get the tiny bits of
00:05:57
uranium 235 you need for uh enriching the uranium for either nuclear reactors or bombgrade uranium. That's first none
00:06:07
at esphon to gasify the ore so that when it spins in the centerfuge uh facilities
00:06:15
at Natans and Ford, you can get the purity of the uranium 235. That's what we're talking about here when we say
00:06:23
it's enriched. >> So when you did this 21 years of modeling these attacks, how did the
00:06:28
model show America came out of this situation? >> There was a consistent set of findings
00:06:36
you just couldn't ignore, Stephen, which is our bombers would always be able to
00:06:43
destroy the target, the industrial facility that was enriching the uranium. The problem always was, no matter uh
00:06:52
which year we did this, you wouldn't be able to destroy the enriched material,
00:06:58
the actual gold. So, if you're panning for gold, you see what I mean? And you've got the gold. Uh you can destroy
00:07:05
the pan, you can even destroy the river, you can't get the gold. So, let me repeat that back to you in layman's
00:07:12
terms, and you tell me if I'm correct. So they they could bomb these sites where they're making the enriched
00:07:17
uranium, but it wouldn't destroy the enriched uranium. It would just put it underneath a bunch of rubble.
00:07:22
>> That's right. >> So you can bomb it, but you're basically
00:07:24
just kicking the can down the road because at some point they can go back and get it. It's undamaged. And then
00:07:29
they can carry on their process. >> That's right. And and Stephen, they
00:07:32
might even anticipate the bombs coming because they might get some indications, you know, we're building up and then
00:07:39
disperse in advance. And the at the end of last year they did operation midnight
00:07:43
hammer where they bombed the sides with these incredible >> exactly as we did in class. Literally I
00:07:49
had just modeled it for the students three weeks before and almost exactly the platforms I mean on you know the B2s
00:07:56
the MOAB I mean every single thing we talked about if unfolded just as we had modeled in class.
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>> So what is going on now? I want you to help me cut through all of this noise
00:08:07
and all of this propaganda. What's going on now is uh we're not weakening Iran in
00:08:12
a sense where Iran will be weaker a year from now, two years from now. We have strengthened Iran and we're
00:08:21
strengthening Iran in multiple ways. So far, we've just been talking about bombs
00:08:26
on target. My real specialty, Stephen, is the interaction of military action and politics. You're not just hitting an
00:08:36
industrial target. people in the country, the population, the regime, they're reacting to that politically.
00:08:44
And that reaction is tremendously important. And that's what I discovered in my work studying Vietnam in the
00:08:51
1980s. The why the bombing campaign was failing, the political reactions by the population
00:08:58
often are overwhelming the tactical military effects. So you can hit the target, you can destroy the industrial
00:09:08
facilities um and in fact you can energize the population to work even harder to overcome all that damage and
00:09:20
sometimes they have tremendous geographic advantages. In Vietnam, there was an area called the Ho Chi Min Trail,
00:09:28
which was a where the logistics where the ammo for the um Vietkong guerrilla fighters in the south were getting their
00:09:36
ammo. And in the 1960s, we knocked out 80 plus% of the throughput of that pipeline, of that trail. You know what?
00:09:46
It wasn't enough. And we ended up not being able to stop that little itty bitty bit of throughput that can't still
00:09:53
could get through and incentivize even more to get it through because they knew we couldn't stop it. And that is what
00:10:00
fueled the VC and ultimately uh the Vietkong the gorillas that were uh we were really up against in Vietnam. That
00:10:08
is what ultimately bolstered their morale. They knew we couldn't beat them. Even though we whittleled them down by
00:10:17
80%, we couldn't get that last 15 or 20%. And that was what was energizing their morale.
00:10:25
>> So, how does that apply to what's going on now? In simple terms, what's going
00:10:28
on? >> Iran has figured out that uh we can't beat them. That's what's going on,
00:10:34
Stephen. They are figuring out that we can't beat them. We can bomb them. We
00:10:39
can um attack them. We could even threaten to murder all 92 million of them, which is the civilization threat
00:10:46
by uh by President Trump. And the bottom line is that we can't get to that final
00:10:53
10 20% of um drones and missiles. >> Okay. >> Okay. That Iran has and it's probably
00:11:01
bigger than that that we can't knock out. See, we're able to knock out anything that's above ground. that
00:11:07
there's a launcher and it's above ground, we can see it. We can see it with satellites. We can see it with
00:11:13
other sensors as well. That thing is going to be gone in a few days. And that's what the air campaign that you've
00:11:19
watched for 40 days is doing. When Secretary Hegth or General Kaine talk about hitting 11 12,000 targets, these
00:11:27
are targets, most of the almost all of them that are very clearly visible and above ground. This is true of the Navy
00:11:34
ships as well. Well, guess what? The Iranians knew that was always going to be vulnerable. So what they've been
00:11:40
doing is they have been not just deeply uh burying their industrial enrichment facilities, they've been deeply burying
00:11:48
their arsenals of drones, deeply burying their arsenals of missiles. And so they
00:11:54
are in a position where even though we are unleashing enormous amounts of air power against them and we are
00:12:02
technically superior, we can't stop their drone attacks against the ships in
00:12:10
the straight of Hormuz. They know it. They can use that to their advantage. And boy are they using it to their
00:12:17
advantage enormously. Yesterday, the Secretary of War, Pete Hegsth, did a press conference, and one of the
00:12:24
reporters said to him, "There's been a ceasefire announced, but it appears that
00:12:29
Iran is still attacking neighboring countries." Hegth's response to the
00:12:34
reporter was, "Iran would be wise to find a way to get their carrier pigeon
00:12:40
to the troops out in remote locations to let them know not to shoot any longer. It can sometimes take time for
00:12:47
ceasefires to take hold, which was really alarming to me because it suggests that there is actually not a
00:12:53
centralized leadership structure in Iran. And actually, if there's not a centralized leadership structure, how
00:12:57
does one negotiate a ceasefire if there's lots of different factions doing lots of different things? Now, is that
00:13:02
true? >> I would say it's probably decentralized. I think he's probably right about that.
00:13:05
>> I'm trying to figure out who in Iran is negotiating with America and why it
00:13:09
doesn't seem to be the case that whoever is negotiating control the fact that
00:13:12
people are still firing. >> Oh, I see. I see. Yeah. decentralization means chaotic and they can't actually
00:13:18
make decisions. That's just not the case. The more you move up the chain of command, the more the leader can give
00:13:27
pre-delegated orders. If X happens, do do Y. Those can hold for hours and days. Uh and that's true in every
00:13:35
organization. That's why leaders can go on vacation uh for a week and come back
00:13:41
and they're worried of course when they come back. But the bottom line is that
00:13:45
the leaders are setting the strategic direction. >> Who is the leader? >> Oh, it's definitely the supreme leader,
00:13:51
the son of the one we just killed. Oh, without a doubt. I think this idea that that he's not there, there's absolutely
00:13:57
no evidence of that. Yes, it's decentralized in the sense it's hard to find them, to target them. But by the
00:14:03
way, Stephen, I think the reason that we're trying to talk smack about the Supreme Leader, is he is he alive? Is he
00:14:10
dead? is we're trying to goat him into revealing his location so we can kill
00:14:14
him. But that's not working. So, and it's also not stopping Iran from putting
00:14:20
out 10 points to Pakistan uh in the negotiations. It's not stopping Iran from having messages that go through
00:14:28
Pakistan to um the White House. President Trump is then agreeing to the 10 points that are coming from Iran, you
00:14:35
see. And then um later on, of course, President Trump is taking it back. But the bottom line is um what you're seeing
00:14:41
in terms of chaotic decisionmaking far more chaotic decision-m is happening in the White House in the United States
00:14:48
than it's happening in the government of Iran. They're rising power in the region
00:14:54
as our power is is declining precipitously. >> What do you think happens next?
00:15:00
>> We are at a fork in the road. When I was here last time, uh, I was walking you
00:15:05
through the three stages of the escalation trap and you kept pushing me, tell me more, tell me more. Notice I I
00:15:13
was a little bit reluctant to do that. Well, there is a stage four. For anyone that didn't hear that episode, could you
00:15:19
give us a one sentence on stage one? >> And yes, stage one is America bombs,
00:15:23
does leadership change bombing. We hit targets, kill leaders, but the regime actually evolves and is stronger than
00:15:32
before. Uh stage two is that then stronger regime lashes back with horizontal escalation and takes the
00:15:40
straight of horos at least initially takes the straight of horos. And then stage three is that's the ground option
00:15:47
to start to take the straight of Hormuz back. And that's exactly what you saw
00:15:52
play out in the first several weeks of the war. Stage three was about the Marines. The Marines hadn't even moved
00:15:58
yet. And I'm telling you, the Marines are likely going to move. There's going
00:16:02
to be movement to ground options in stage three uh here very rapidly in this war. At that point in time when we had
00:16:09
our first discussion, you wanted to push for the future. I said, "No, we we need
00:16:13
to wait." And the reason, Stephen, is because what you're not seeing with me
00:16:16
is throwing random darts at the future. I'm doing risk assessment out about as
00:16:21
far as you uh you can have stable predictions. And in war, that usually means 2 3 4 weeks. It doesn't mean we
00:16:30
can say where we'll be a year from now. Here though, now that we're in 40 days,
00:16:36
we're at a different point. We've clearly passed stage one. We're past
00:16:40
stage two where they uh control the straight of form moves. We've bellied up
00:16:45
to stage three, the ground operations. Now we're at a branch, a fork in the road. There's no way to go back to
00:16:53
February 27, which is the pre-war period that many people would love to go back to. I too would like to go back to
00:17:00
February 27th. That's not the future. What happens at this point on in the modeling and the is a branch either we
00:17:11
go through with the ground war or Iran becomes an emerging not right away fourth center of world power. That is
00:17:22
the branch that we face now. This branch is becoming more evident hour by hour. >> Explain that to me. So everybody now
00:17:34
knows that Iran is uh controlling the straight of form and controlling shipping. That's selective blockade. I'm
00:17:41
taking it a step further. That's not just about insurance rates of shipping.
00:17:47
That's generating political power for Iran to get other states to cowtow to it
00:17:55
to accept its objectives. What are those objectives? So let's talk about how this affects say Asia. So I'm
00:18:04
going to get into global and then we'll come back to the Gulf itself. So the
00:18:08
shipping that goes through the straight of H for H for H for H for H for H for H
00:18:10
for H for H for H for Hormuz 80 to 90% of it is going right to Asia. The power that comes with that is with say India.
00:18:17
India is not siding with the United States. India is at best neutral and maybe even a little bit more uh uh
00:18:25
edging toward Iran. Well, before this, you could imagine that the United States and India would be much more cooperative
00:18:33
here. That's not what's occurring. And why is that? It's because that oil
00:18:38
that's going into Asia for India, this isn't just about the price of oil. This
00:18:44
is about the supply of oil. When you lose literally all the supply, that is a greater cost than simply having to pay
00:18:55
more for it. So India is in a much more difficult situation than Europe and the United States right now. Now look at
00:19:03
Japan. Notice in the Oval Office, President Trump brought in uh the leader of the head of state of Japan and
00:19:09
basically browbeat her and she still wouldn't budge. She still would not cowtow to Trump here uh and actually
00:19:17
provide military support. What did she do? She's distancing herself from the
00:19:22
United States. That's exactly what Iran wants out of America's Asian allies.
00:19:29
This is geopolitical power and it's rooted in the control of Hormos. It's
00:19:36
rooted in the selective military blockade. That selective military blockade produces vulnerability to
00:19:44
India, vulnerability to Japan. And that is what the we call it the leverage. But
00:19:51
the leverage is is not enough of a I think a full description. This is reorienting America's allies in Asia.
00:20:00
Now, let's talk about what's happening in the Persian Gulf itself. Before the
00:20:04
war, February 27, there was essentially a balance in the Persian Gulf where you had Iran on one side and you had this
00:20:14
growing collection of Gulf states that were part of an emerging web. They're
00:20:19
cooperating with Israel more and more on different um on different issues. President Trump is bringing in his AI
00:20:27
billionaires to sort of grease this cooperation so that there's some material benefits. Well, that was
00:20:34
effectively a counterbalancing coalition to Iran. Now, what's happened after 40 days is this is breaking down
00:20:44
fast. America has military bases in Qatar, has military bases in uh Baharrain, has military bases in Kuwait.
00:20:52
I'm just picking a few. Had military base of course in in Saudi Arabia. These
00:20:56
military bases, they are producing little leverage here against Iran. In fact, our aircraft carriers are not
00:21:06
anywhere near the Persian Gulf. They're a thousand miles away. These bases are
00:21:13
big fat targets. They are above ground. Iran's precision drones can hit things above ground and
00:21:20
they're doing it on those bases. That was their immediate retaliation. What is
00:21:24
what's happening number one is the anchor the military anchor of this coalition started to disappear within
00:21:31
hours of the bombing on February 28th. >> What do you mean by the military anchor?
00:21:35
In order to have this coalition work, >> which is like Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
00:21:40
>> Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, somebody has to be the LA the the
00:21:47
guaranter of protection. It's like the Ma boss who protects everybody else. That is the United States. And that is
00:21:56
what our military bases were supposed to do. They become the military anchor that
00:22:03
allows then for there to become political counterbalancing against Iran. That was the Kushner idea in the first
00:22:12
Trump administration. And it seemed to work and it seemed to uh bring some of these states together who wouldn't
00:22:20
necessarily think you would cooperate with with Israel. Well, this is now this war is torpedoing this whole idea.
00:22:28
President Trump is not even willing to do much to actually defend our own bases, much less Saudi Arabia, much less
00:22:35
UAE. What he's telling them is you go out there and start defending yourself.
00:22:39
Well, that's not a guaranter of security. The next thing that's happening is the three these states
00:22:45
which were operating more in concert are starting to break down and operate in three pools. You have Iraq which is now
00:22:54
complaining more and more about milit US military presence there. They're distancing themselves from American
00:23:01
military presence. And remember we installed that government in 2003. So they're not siding with us. They're
00:23:07
distancing themselves uh from us. Then you have Qatar and you have uh Oman. Uh what Iran's doing is saying, you know,
00:23:16
we should share some of these uh t these tolls with Oman. They're moving Oman
00:23:23
into their camp. So you have Iraq moving closer to Iran. Oman moving closer. Qatar is trying to keep its head down as
00:23:31
much as possible. They're not they're not trying to get their nose in this
00:23:35
anymore. And who is what's the third pool? The third pool is Saudi Arabia, uh
00:23:40
the UAE. These are the states that are most under threat. And what has Saudi Arabia done just in the last week?
00:23:48
They've gone to cooperate more with Pakistan. They have a security deal with
00:23:53
Pakistan. What does that mean? They're looking to Pakistan as much or maybe even more than the United States as
00:24:02
their guaranter of security. So all of this coalition, it's not all siding with
00:24:07
Iran right now. It's fragmenting. And that's weakening America. >> So what happens next?
00:24:15
>> You know, as President Trump wants to do, call the war off. That's not going
00:24:19
to put us back to February 27. Iran has 20% of the world's oil. It's going to be
00:24:24
able to have uh 75 billion hundred billion of of revenues here over the next year. And also those deeply buried
00:24:33
caves and tunnels where they have their drones uh that can be used to fashion nuclear weapons. within a year Iran
00:24:39
could have nuclear weapons and we can't stop it. So if we pull back you can start to see that Iran's power is going
00:24:47
to grow internally. Uh but then even more than that its relationships with Russia, its relationships with China
00:24:56
will start to move closer together against America. And you see this happening from the
00:25:03
moment almost the first several days of the war. Russia almost immediately offered Iran military targeting
00:25:10
information to target US ships. That's why our our carriers are so far away.
00:25:16
It's because Russia has the ability to see those carriers, tell Iran where they
00:25:20
are, and if those carriers get too close, man, they're going to be smashed. But it can get worse than that, Stephen,
00:25:27
because as this power grows over time, as these incentives for uh China, Russia, and Iran to cooperate against
00:25:36
America grow over time, Iran has control now of 20% of the world's oil. Russia
00:25:43
has 11% of the world's oil. That means there can be either formal or tacic cooperation to take 30% of the world's
00:25:54
oil off the global market. Let China soak up a whole lot of that. And that can truly produce mega economic
00:26:07
consequences for America, for Europe. And why are they not going to do that? Because they're nice guys. Is that
00:26:15
really what we're counting on now? Russia, Putin is not going to want to wreck America's economy because he has a
00:26:22
a a bond with Donald Trump. What do you think the fundamental flawed assumption was at the start of
00:26:29
all of this from the United States? >> That Iran was was was weak on its last
00:26:33
legs and all we had to do was uh push it over the edge of a cliff and it was just
00:26:38
a matter of just one more push >> and then the people would rise up and >> yeah, we have painted a picture of Iran
00:26:45
um as beaten down as the reason it's not retaliating very much is they have no
00:26:51
capability to retaliate. And I tell you tell you this um Stephen, so I' I've
00:26:56
been in big debates here at uh the Council on Foreign Relations in New York where I've literally been the only
00:27:02
person on the stage to stand up and warn that this picture of Iran is is is way too negative. There was a a widpread, I
00:27:11
think, false assumption across the foreign policy community. no one willing to really stand up and challenge it very
00:27:18
strongly that Iran was basically collapsing on its own. This was always in my view underestimating the power of
00:27:29
Iran. And you say, well, where does my view come from? It came from the modeling of the bombing. What would
00:27:36
happen as this went forward? And none of these elements of Iran's power were ever
00:27:41
knocked out. When I look through the response to the last conversation, the the audience had lots of different types
00:27:48
of questions. So, I'm going to try and represent some of the audience's questions to try and bring them into the
00:27:53
conversation. One of them was about Israel's role in this. And I thought it might actually link to what you just
00:27:57
said about where we get our intelligence from that informs the decisions we make
00:28:02
because there are some people that are skeptical that the intelligence is coming from Israel and that therefore
00:28:06
that it might not be as accurate as if it was coming from our own sources. I would say Israel has been playing the
00:28:11
role of diplomatic spoiler. So in the 12-day war when last June when the US bomb fore we've been focusing on that
00:28:19
that happened in the middle of the 12-day war. Donald Trump said he was going to negotiate with a certain set of
00:28:24
Iranians and literally the next day uh 36 hours later Israeli air power killed them
00:28:36
killed the negotiators. we were set to negotiate with. This was totally spoiling the idea of a diplomatic
00:28:44
outcome because they were dead. So, you couldn't have a negotiated outcome. Now
00:28:50
if we come to February 28, who dropped the first bombs that killed the supreme leader that uh killed those other
00:28:58
several dozen doves that he was meeting with? >> Donald Trump um as as many of our
00:29:04
governments have um describes that you had a balance of hawks and doves inside of the Iranian government. And uh the
00:29:14
idea here is with leadership decapitation is well if you kill uh the hawks then the doves will just be the
00:29:21
ones left. We did the opposite or more correctly the bombing was started by Israel on February 28. we came in
00:29:29
behind. And in fact, Secretary Rubio, our Secretary of State, explained a few days later that um uh Israel basically
00:29:38
backed us in a corner because Israel said, "We're going to kill that Supreme
00:29:42
Leader whether you like it or not, and that is going to maybe lead to attacks on your military bases, so you better
00:29:50
prepare an air campaign to come behind." and Rubio said that's what happened
00:29:54
because again just before the 20 February 28 bombing we're negotiating with Iran and we're killing the very
00:30:03
people that Trump was saying are the ones we wanted to negotiate with the ones who were going to help move Iran
00:30:10
closer to the American position that was Israel as spoiler >> so there's this individual called Ali
00:30:17
Laurajani the former secretary of Iran's supreme national security council and he
00:30:21
was killed killed in an Israeli le air strike on March 17th, 2026. Trump claimed on True Social that I can't say
00:30:29
his name, but I'm going to try. >> Ljani >> was the primary contact for a 10-point
00:30:34
peace proposal that Trump had called workable and a basis for a real agreement. Trump suggested that the
00:30:39
strike was poorly timed when Israel killed him and complained that Israel's lone wolf actions were complicating his
00:30:46
ability to wrap up the war on his own terms. He famously posted that he was inches away from the biggest deal in
00:30:53
history before the assassination reset the clock. >> So this would be the third instance then
00:30:59
of Israel as diplomatic spoiler. What you're hearing from Trump's own mouth is
00:31:04
he thought he uh was close to a working relationship maybe not a full deal with a certain set of individuals in this
00:31:12
case Ojani. And what did Israel do when they found out about it? They killed that person. And yes, I I understand
00:31:20
there's issues of intelligence, but you know, most of us don't have a clearance,
00:31:24
so we can't talk about that. So, let's talk about the actual public description
00:31:28
that we've heard from. Prime Minister Netanyahu over the last several years.
00:31:32
The public description is that Iran is simply a paper tiger. That that um Israel has been dominating Iran,
00:31:41
knocking out its air defenses, launching other attacks here in 2024. The rhetoric that's coming publicly has
00:31:50
been painting the picture of Iran as a weak and and not just weaken but basically It's down on its last
00:31:59
legs and all you need is a final coupigra. That has been Prime Minister Netanyahu's language.
00:32:06
>> The other thing that the audience wanted to know is they wanted more specifics on
00:32:10
stage three. >> Yes. Yes. >> And is stage three happening? We talked
00:32:14
last time about ground troops. It's very important and I I've been saying this on
00:32:18
the Substack and my and my ex to follow the key indicators here of deployment, not follow just what's occurring with
00:32:25
the rhetoric of our leaders. Um, and the key thing to to know is that if you're
00:32:31
going to um weaken Iran with ground power, there's only a few ways you can get that ground power into Iran. You
00:32:42
could try to come through Pakistan, but Pakistan actually is Iran's ally who
00:32:47
gave Iran the 600 centerfuges in 2002 to start developing its enrichment program.
00:32:53
So, and Pakistan has 100 nuclear weapons or so. So, I don't think we're doing
00:32:57
this uh here. You could try to do it with Afghanistan, but notice you'd have
00:33:01
to get all the troops in Afghanistan. That's not working. You could also go to
00:33:04
Azerbaijan. That's up there. Notice on the first day of the war there was a missile that hit Azerbaijan and people
00:33:11
on CNN there weren't what what's going on here. It's just a random in fact I
00:33:15
think uh our our our public statement on that day was this shows how how incoherent uh the Iran leadership is.
00:33:23
That's not what I saw. What I saw is they understood that Azeraijan was always thought to be a staging area to
00:33:30
go to Thran. And so if you're going to take Thrron with a division or two, you
00:33:37
would really want to have your forces start here from Azerbaijan. Now, so far though, that's not happening. Azarbaian
00:33:44
said, "Nope, don't count on us. We're not getting in the middle of this." Now,
00:33:48
we're back to why would you start to think about Marines uh to take territory
00:33:55
here on the coasts of Iran? So inside Iran where the straight of Hermuz is >> that's the that's the beginning of it.
00:34:03
You would start there around inside Iran around the straight of Hormuz as a beach
00:34:08
head. >> There's some photos which I'll throw up on the screen showing what the terrain
00:34:12
around the straight of Hormuz looks like and it's it is quite shocking. >> It's it's a moonscape and what you can
00:34:17
see is that this is the most difficult terrain for amphibious operations to operate in.
00:34:24
>> What is amphibious operations? uh where you have troops that are on ships on
00:34:28
landing vessels. Uh just like Saving Private Ryan, they go from the water onto the beach. You would also then have
00:34:35
um some air power with some Osprey, but they're doing essentially the same thing. They're coming onto the same
00:34:40
beach. >> What's an Osprey? >> Uh an Osprey is a specialmade plane that
00:34:45
we've made for the Marines. And it's a plane that is a hybrid between a helicopter and a jet. And so the
00:34:52
propellers on the plane are able to rotate. So they can fly as a propeller plane um here or a uh a cheapman's jet
00:35:02
or they can actually um like a helicopter. And that's really great if you want to fly fast to a beach and then
00:35:08
go straight down. >> So are you saying that you think they will put boots on the ground in the
00:35:14
straight of Hammoose? >> Let me just fill out this a little bit more. Okay. So the other big thing that
00:35:20
that the folks need to know is where is the oil? Iran's oil and here I'm drawing
00:35:27
a circle here. Iran's oil is all in this uh southwestern part almost all of it is
00:35:34
in the southwestern part of um of Iran. Kuwait's oil is all right here. Iraq has
00:35:42
couple puddles of oil. It has a big puddle of oil right here. Saudis oil is all right here. You might uh try to land
00:35:52
forces of division here in Iraq, in Kuwait, uh in Saudi Arabia and come around this way. This is why knocking
00:36:00
out these bases as truly platforms here. This was why they I think they start on
00:36:06
day one. This wasn't just to hit the bases in retaliation. They are weakening
00:36:11
our ability. They're taking away different axes of attack. And this is why in the uh Substack I published three
00:36:19
days before the war, I'm specifically talking about Marines moving in limited
00:36:25
areas to take coastal regions as beach heads. >> What's a beach head? >> A beach head is where you have a a
00:36:31
foothold, a tow hold, where you're going to funnel in more forces after that. And
00:36:37
you are going to very likely want to control an area that's at least about 100 miles by 20 m in order to get behind
00:36:46
all this uh this this mountainous terrain. And what does that look like? The oil fields. Stephen, this is what
00:36:53
President Trump is almost surely talking about when he says he's going to take
00:36:58
Iran's oil fields. What he is probably um being given options for is how you
00:37:05
could start in a limited way with an amphibious, submarine, a limited assault to take a a small set of stretch of
00:37:13
beaches and then you would want to follow and take if you're going to start this at all, you're almost surely going
00:37:19
to want to just start to take the oil fields. And President Trump's been talking that way for years really. He
00:37:26
also said in a recent interview that if it was up to him, he would go and take the oil. But he said the American people
00:37:33
weren't like that. And he said it once and then he said it again and then he
00:37:36
said it again. This was during a press conference on Monday, April 6th. He said, "If it were up to me, I would take
00:37:42
the oil. I would keep it all for ourselves and make a lot of money because to the victor belong the spoils.
00:37:48
But people in the country sort of say just win and come home." And I'm okay
00:37:53
with that too. And he said that from the interview that I was watching twice, which made me think that he really wants
00:37:57
to go take the oil. But if he does put troops on the ground in Iran, >> it just creates a clearer target for
00:38:05
those drone strikes. It creates a clearer target for those drone strikes. But what people maybe are not fully
00:38:12
understanding is the political consequences of the deaths of those Marines. Yeah,
00:38:18
>> most people are assuming if those Marines go in and die, this will make
00:38:23
America run away. It'll be like a punch in the face and we'll run away. That's
00:38:28
not likely to be what happens. Again, this is my area of what happens when you have military force in politics come
00:38:36
together. You need to understand that when those Marines go in and say hundreds die or or
00:38:43
so over time, there will be 36% of the public that will have supported that. That 36% is going to see those Marines
00:38:53
died for them. That 36% is likely to double down in their commitment because otherwise they died for nothing. Now,
00:39:04
the 50% 59% excuse me, who's opposed to the war, they'll still be pretty hotly
00:39:10
opposed to the war. I'm not saying they're going to move toward the war,
00:39:13
Stephen. What I'm saying is you have a Republican president supported by 36% of
00:39:19
of the Republicans here, almost no Democrats. If you start to actually have deaths here, this is going to lead to a
00:39:28
bigger version of we can't withdraw now. we must quote finish the job otherwise
00:39:35
they will have died for nothing. This is what happened in Vietnam. In Vietnam in
00:39:41
the early stages you will see that it's sticky up the support for the war. It
00:39:46
takes a while to go down. And why does it take so long to go down? It's because
00:39:52
of exactly what I'm saying. The politics of this of the death of our troops in
00:39:58
battle does not lead to we cut and run. It leads to we double down for the honor
00:40:05
of the troops. That's why I'm saying we start this even in a small way. Even
00:40:11
car. It doesn't really matter where you start it, but once you have those ground
00:40:16
forces go in and they start to take casualties, you're probably in for the sixmonth ground war minimum. It looks
00:40:24
like they're going to try and avoid that outcome. It looks like they're doing
00:40:27
everything in their power, America, to avoid a scenario where they have to send troops in. The the threats that have
00:40:33
come out of Donald Trump's truth social posts really talk about I mean, look,
00:40:38
I'll read this one here. It says, "A whole civilization will die tonight,
00:40:40
never to be brought back again. I don't know what will happen, but it probably
00:40:43
will." Um, and all a lot of the tweets are >> Can we just focus on that one, the
00:40:48
civilization, because it's much that was a few days ago. A lot of people are
00:40:53
already trying to move past it. This has much more importance and endurance than
00:41:00
I think we're understanding now. So, first of all, that statement that President Trump said that he will end an
00:41:08
entire civilization in one night, uh, we need to understand this is not a drunk at a bar. This is the president of the
00:41:16
United States who has at his disposal thousands of nuclear weapons that could in fact achieve that. And let me just
00:41:24
explain how hair triggered these are. We have 500 Minutemen 3 missiles. They have
00:41:31
warheads between 100 kilotons and 300 kilotons which is multiple times more powerful than Hiroshima Nagasaki each
00:41:39
one of them. and they can be retargeted within 45 minutes. That's what it takes
00:41:45
to retarget the gyroscopes. And then it takes about 25 minutes for them to hit Iran. So when the president of the
00:41:53
United States is saying this, he's only one of a handful of people in the world
00:41:57
who could pull who could actually make this credible. Second point is that is the most declared statement of genocidal
00:42:05
intent we've ever seen from an American president. No American president has
00:42:11
threatened to end a civilization before, which is at the heart of the genocide treaties in 1948. The intent to commit
00:42:19
genocide. Harry Truman, people will say, "What do you mean? We had Harry Truman.
00:42:23
We bomb we we bombed Hiroshima Nagasaki." Go and look at his statement on Hiroshima. Harry Truman. He did not
00:42:29
say he was ending Japan as a civilization. He pulled back and said it was about to destroy Japan's military
00:42:37
power. What President Trump has done by making those statements is he's persuading all 92 million Iranians that
00:42:47
he is willing to kill them and he has the power to kill them. And yes, he pulled back from killing them on
00:42:55
Tuesday. And yes, he may not have used nuclear weapons on Tuesday, but if any other leader had said that, if imagine
00:43:04
Vladimir Putin stands up and says he's going to end American civilization tonight, he's got the weapons to be able
00:43:13
to do that. Are we just going to sit back and say, "Oh, yeah, he didn't do
00:43:16
it. He must not have meant it." No. That would mobilize enormous anger against
00:43:22
Vladimir Putin in the United States, even among Democrats. And my point here, Stephen, is before uh this war started,
00:43:30
we had a real pro-democracy movement in Iran. And on your show, I told you this was going to fade. This was one of the
00:43:38
predictions I made to you said this is going to fade over time. You're going to
00:43:42
see nationalism bonding the society and the regime closer together. President Trump is bonding them together like
00:43:50
never before. If you're one of the pro-democracy individuals here, movement in Iran,
00:43:56
where are you going to go for protection? Are you going to go to Donald Trump who's threatening to kill
00:44:02
you with essentially nuclear weapons? Or are you going to go to your own government? This is going to hasten the
00:44:10
support, increase the support for Iran developing nuclear weapons. the pro-democracy movement is now likely to
00:44:18
support this. >> On that point, one of the questions and one of the points raised by the audience
00:44:23
last time we had the conversation was really we didn't spend enough time talking about the 90 plus million people
00:44:28
that live in Iran. >> Yeah. >> That are often many of them caught amongst all of this absolute chaos. And
00:44:35
I I was looking at a bunch of messages from people that are living in Iran. Um I'll read some of them from ordinary
00:44:41
citizens. Um, I'm not great at math, but where will the money, the resources, and
00:44:46
the experts come from to build a country that ordinary people spent decades trying to build?
00:44:51
>> From the This is a different person. From the beginning of the war until
00:44:53
today, we have been bombarded. Not only are we not one step closer to freedom, from what I can see, we are miles away
00:45:00
from it. From another person in Iran, a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought brought back again.
00:45:07
This has deeply terrified me. It's it's it raises really the question a lot of this disc discourse doesn't
00:45:14
speak much to 90 plus million people that are living there and that are having to exist under this terror. And
00:45:20
like the best way that I could conceptualized it is I I I imagined if I had woken up one day and Vladimir Putin
00:45:26
or some other leader around the world had said that they were potentially going to end the civilization that I
00:45:32
live in, the country that I live in tonight, how would I be feeling? And if I was hearing bombs go off all the t
00:45:39
time, how would I be feeling? Um, and if things were escalating when me and my family lived, how would I be feeling?
00:45:46
And it is chilling to think about. It's chilling because this is now moving the
00:45:55
needle inside of Iran to make the ordinary person on the street uh even the pro-democracy movement willing to
00:46:05
tolerate Iran killing Americans because we're killing them and we're saying we're going to do it even worse
00:46:13
and we're say even beyond that we're saying at the whim of a president who
00:46:18
wakes up thinking Maybe this will help his save his presidency. He is willing to uh uh kill the entire civilization of
00:46:28
a country because he thinks maybe this is going to be his off his golden uh offramp to get out of this problem for
00:46:36
himself personally. And by the way, we we in our country when al-Qaeda attacked us on 9/11, there was tremendous fear.
00:46:45
There would be more attacks by al-Qaeda in the weeks afterwards. There was just much fear. And I've done the studies of
00:46:53
the American public opinion on this. It's the fear of Muslims killing Americans that's driving the support for
00:47:02
the Iraq war. If this is happening to Americans, you can only imagine what's
00:47:07
going to happen to the ordinary Iranians. And they've been subjected not to just one attack, 40 days of attack.
00:47:14
>> So for the average Iranian person that opposes the regime in Iran and has been
00:47:20
living under terror and oppression for many, many decades. What do you think happens next for them?
00:47:29
They're they're the group of people that I that I think about and care about the
00:47:32
most in this equation. We spend a lot of time talking about US power and we talk
00:47:35
about lots of these other regional partners, but there's like 90 odd million people stuck right in the heart
00:47:39
of this that often don't really have a voice. >> Their life expectancy will go down in
00:47:43
measurable years. So if we had taken out the electric power, so this is something
00:47:47
I know quite a bit about in the 1990s. I was uh working for the Air Force literally under uh my boss was John
00:47:55
Warden, the leader of the leadership decapitation school. And he brought in, not classified at all, he brought in
00:48:01
engineers of electric power plants to teach us how to take down electric power. The electric power grid in Iran,
00:48:09
it looks like a network. And that network has big nodes. That's what President Trump said he would he's going
00:48:16
to take off the big power plants that produce uh in the 10 20 30 uh megawws uh range. And they're probably about 130
00:48:25
nodes altogether. But if you just take out the top 10, you're probably going to
00:48:29
take down the entire network because the top 10 nodes are distributed in the right places to support different uh
00:48:38
electric power in different regions of the country. You have two choices in a target in targeting sense. You can take
00:48:44
out the transformers in which case you knock it out for a week or two and it is inconvenient. And yes, there will be
00:48:51
some people who will die. There were human chains around those targets by the way. those people would die. But if you
00:48:56
took out the hulls, the generating hulls, >> what's that? >> That's the giant turbines that are huge.
00:49:04
There is no backup to those. Each of those is specially made. You will be knocking the out that generation for 6
00:49:12
months, 12 months, maybe 18 months at a minimum. What that's going to do is stop
00:49:18
all dialysis in the country. that's going to stop all um the uh heart surgeries and other life-saving
00:49:26
surgeries that are going to happen in the country. It's going to take out all
00:49:29
the food refrigeration in the country. So, you know, when power goes out in your house and goes out for 10 minutes
00:49:38
or or or an hour, it's not so bad. You don't really notice it. But when it goes
00:49:42
out for 2 days or 3 days or a week, all the food in your refrigerator spoils and
00:49:47
you can't eat it fast enough. you can't give it away fast enough because it's
00:49:51
happening to everybody on your block. Well, that's what would happen across the country. So, there's going to be an
00:49:58
enormous amount of spoilage of food and that refrigeration then is not going to be available to come back. And so,
00:50:07
you're going to have enormous hunger problems here. So, people that were already malnourished, they are going to
00:50:14
be susceptible to more disease. So you will end up lowering the life expectancy in a measurable way of that population.
00:50:26
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00:52:35
the recent days about a ceasefire and Trump said he was going to he said tweet these horrific things about ending a
00:52:42
whole civilization tonight and then at the final hour said that they had proposed a 10-point plan and that there
00:52:48
was going to be a twowe ceasefire. What do you think was actually going on there?
00:52:53
>> The collision of stages three and four. So what you are now seeing is we can we
00:52:59
we are now understand we're in it for the long haul which means we can't go
00:53:04
back to February 27. We can't undo the last 40 days. It's just not going to be
00:53:09
possible. So there's only two futures going forward. Future number one is that
00:53:14
ground war option and we've talked about how terrible that is and of course that's obviously bad bad cost. But
00:53:21
future number two is Iran as an emerging fourth center of world power. And that is incredibly damaging to America's
00:53:31
power. And that is going to be damaging to President Trump's legacy. >> Is there not another option where Iran,
00:53:40
their leadership says, "Okay, we won't make nuclear weapons. Okay, we'll be
00:53:44
friends. Okay, it's all over. Please stop bombing us. Let's go for peace."
00:53:49
So, so my response to that is I've been studying the history of international
00:53:54
politics for over 35 years. I know quite a bit about uh great power politics and
00:53:59
regional power politics going back 300 years. I have never seen a country at the regional level or at the great power
00:54:07
level surrender power. Did America after World War II decide, well, yes, uh, we we have the capability to build nuclear
00:54:16
weapons, but, you know, we want to get along with the Russians who helped us defeat Germany. So, what we're going to
00:54:22
do is we're going to actually have a a a deal, an arms control agree. In fact,
00:54:27
this was proposed, by the way, um, and we rejected it, which is we're just going to not go down that road. We're
00:54:33
going to surrender the power advantage that we have uh here so that we can be cooperative with the Soviets who had
00:54:41
just worked with us to defeat Nazi Germany. >> So that's not going to happen.
00:54:44
>> We there's no evidence in history in our history. We've never surrendered power
00:54:51
even when it might have been a good idea. We haven't done that. They're not
00:54:55
going to do this. >> They're not going to do that. >> No, they're not going to do this. You
00:54:59
already see this in the in why the uh the ceasefire is breaking down. so fast. It's breaking down so fast because
00:55:06
essentially President Trump, he didn't just declare victory. He said that Iran's uh not going to have all this
00:55:14
power that I'm explaining to you. And what Iran did is almost immediately assert, oh yes, we are. They they've
00:55:22
come right back right away. If President Trump is expecting that out of the goodness of their heart, they're gonna
00:55:29
surrender emerging world power, this is this is just a fantasy. Uh it's not going to happen. Uh he wouldn't
00:55:38
surrender power. Why is he going to expect Iran's going to surrender power? >> So, I'm looking at this apparent
00:55:46
10-point proposal submitted by Iran. Mhm. Um, and you you got to take this with a pinch of salt because there's
00:55:52
different reports about what this 10point proposal looks like, but it says that based on official releases from the
00:55:57
Iranian state news agency, the IRA and international reporting, the 10-point proposal from Iran to the United States
00:56:04
was for a permanent ceasefire, number one, end attacks on allies, a complete halt to Israel and US strikes across the
00:56:11
region, specifically Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen. Number three, reopen the Straight
00:56:14
of Hummos. Iran will allow safe passage through the Straight of Hongos. collect tolls. Iran will charge a fee,
00:56:21
reportedly $2 million, for each ship passing through the straight. Revenue sharing with Aman, which is toll
00:56:26
revenues, will be split with Oman as custodians of the strait. Number six, lift the sanctions, the complete removal
00:56:33
of all US primary and secondary sanctions. Release assets. Number seven, the immediate return of all frozen
00:56:39
Iranian funds held abroad. Number eight, the right to enrich uranium. US acceptance of Iran's right to domestic
00:56:48
uranium enrichment while Iran commits to not seeking nuclear weapons. Number nine, war reparations, full compensation
00:56:55
paid to Iran for reconstruction costs from the bombing. And lastly, number 10, the termination of all UN resolutions
00:57:02
against the regime and a new binding UN Security Council resolution to enforce this deal. Now, listen, I don't know a
00:57:08
lot about what I'm talking about, so that's the disclaimer. However, it sounds like a good deal for Iran in many
00:57:14
respects. on every single point and it also validates Iran as an emerging world power. So all of those points in the
00:57:21
details if you think of them as a flow diagram all 10 of them are adding up to validation of Iran as uh top in the
00:57:32
hierarchy in the Persian Gulf. So why is it so important to be the number one strongest state in the world? It's
00:57:39
because in the last 300 years, whether it was Britain, the United States, or whether it's China in the future, the
00:57:46
number one state typically dictates the rules of how the world systems operate. Well, what you're seeing with Iran is
00:57:53
they want to dictate the rules in the Persian Gulf. And that's what that is.
00:57:56
Now, if we pull this over, which I love your props, uh here, that is good. So right now you see that even though it's
00:58:04
the United States is just um uh that lone flag it has this higher weight and what this is reflecting is uh the United
00:58:16
States as uh the number one country in the world the most powerful. Now if you also then add um this over here. So this
00:58:24
would be Israel. You can see this is the world that Netanyahu is depicting um before on February 27th. But the actual
00:58:36
world I just want to point out is a little bit different. The actual balance of power is closer to this. It's closer
00:58:43
to the United States and then we have China and we have uh Russia. There are three centers of world power and in 1990
00:58:53
um it used to be by the way uh just the United States and the Soviet Union. Then
00:58:59
Russia, the Soviet Union collapses. This is when the United States is the sole superpower, the unipolar moment. It
00:59:06
immediately shifts like this from 1989 to 1992. Dramatic shift. However, along the way in the last 30 years, you see um
00:59:18
this changing. And what's changing? Russia actually still is weak. It's still about 2% of the world's GDP.
00:59:24
That's not really what's changing. What's really changing is is China is
00:59:28
now much much much more powerful. It's still not as powerful as the United States, but notice that we were here in
00:59:34
1990 and now the balance is starting to be uh to come like this. Well, if we start to add Iran as a center of world
00:59:43
power, uh, now we're starting to change this in a much different way. Now these
00:59:48
three powers are starting together in concert to become more powerful than the United States uh especially with respect
00:59:57
to energy and energy matters so much because it's an underlying component for
01:00:04
our economic growth that GDP the way um uh we measure uh great power Stephen for
01:00:12
decades and decades we've used static indicators GDP how big is your military
01:00:18
How many nuclear weapons you have that all rests on the productive capacity of your country which is why the productive
01:00:27
capacity is so important. What does that turn on? It turns a lot very heavily on
01:00:34
oil. Oil today is the commodity. If you lose access to oil within weeks or a month and a half, this has dramatic
01:00:46
cliff effects on your economy. Now, if you lose access to semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, that's bad. And it's
01:00:54
bad over time in particular, you lose access to oil. This is a cliff that you we go off over six weeks, eight weeks
01:01:04
because there's not enough uh storage capacity of anybody in the world to make
01:01:10
up for 20% 30% loss of world oil. >> So on this point of oil, the US don't
01:01:16
get their oil from the straight of Hammoose. >> We don't. But it's a global market and a
01:01:22
lot of the uh price of oil that we're going to pay is going to be determined
01:01:28
by the global price of oil because oil is a funible commodity. It's like a uh
01:01:34
water that runs through the whole system. When there's a shortage, it drives the price of all of us up.
01:01:41
>> Okay. So, I've got a graph here showing the price of oil. And you can see I'll
01:01:44
throw it up on the screen. You can see it's been climbing ever since the 27th
01:01:47
of February. So, this will impact Americans at the pump as well. >> Oh my gosh. And you see it in the pump
01:01:53
already. Where I am in Chicago, I'm paying some I was paying something like 310 a gallon. Now, the last time I I
01:02:00
filled up, it was 460. It's a bit of a misnomer to think that we can as America
01:02:07
get away scot-free with everybody else losing oil and we're not going to we're
01:02:13
not going to pay a price. Now to be clear, we will have supply of oil. The price will go up. This will increase
01:02:21
inflation. This will probably increase bond prices over time. Uh the bond price,
01:02:26
>> the bond is the loans that essentially any uh corporation companies or the
01:02:32
University of Chicago takes out to borrow money to operate. So the University of Chicago borrows uh has has
01:02:39
10-year bonds. This is essentially we're borrowing money and then we have to pay
01:02:43
back that money plus an interest rate. That's what the bond rate is. It's an
01:02:47
interest rate on on borrowed money. Well, if that interest rate goes from 4% on a 10-year bond um to 5% or 6 or 7%
01:02:59
the costs of the interest just goes up massively >> and everybody will feel that in various
01:03:05
ways. the US government right now, the biggest uh budget item in the US government budget is the cost of
01:03:13
interest for the debt of the $40 trillion in debt. We're going to have to shrink social security. You're going to
01:03:20
have to shrink Medicaid. This is not notional, Stephen. Iran and uh Russia together could have a tremendous impact
01:03:28
on America's economy. This this is the real thing. So with your balance of power analogy, this is where we where we
01:03:35
could get to. >> This is where we could get to with the next several years. I would say um
01:03:39
probably two years out. I would say that America has an edge. And I'm trying to
01:03:44
depict it as it's like about a 25 or 30% edge from the combination of China and
01:03:51
Russia today. And China is gaining, but still it's actually slow yearbyear. So
01:03:57
you'll see a little bit of an uptick. So maybe going I'm trying to depict from
01:04:00
say a third advantage for the United States to maybe uh 30% 28% in the next four or 5 years. You add Iran to this
01:04:09
and then especially these combinations I'm describing where they can do things
01:04:14
together. Now in the next several years you're actually talking about uh the
01:04:19
scales where these three are much are stronger than America where I'm not talking about just America's losing it
01:04:27
incrementally. You're getting abrupt changes in the world balance of power. >> So, what happens now if Trump just pulls
01:04:32
out? >> This is the world. Iran is an oil hegeimon in the Persian Gulf. Uh, within
01:04:39
a year or so, they're very likely to have nuclear weapons. I'm saying the
01:04:42
pro-democracy movement is going to be pounding the table to get nuclear weapons. They're going to want to deter
01:04:47
any uh idea from Trump of hitting them again. Um, and then I'm saying beyond
01:04:52
that, you have the possibility of Iran and Russia deciding to cooperate here to strangle uh and coers the United States.
01:05:02
And if the United States doesn't cowtow to them, then they can pull that oil off
01:05:07
the market. >> So, what should Trump do? Do you think if you were president of the United States, what
01:05:14
would you do right now? So when I was here 40 days ago, we had the same question. And what I said was we needed
01:05:19
to accept uh that there would be a deal and we were going to have to accept that
01:05:24
the deal that Iran was offering us on February 27 where they would get to keep their 3.5% enriched uranium wasn't going
01:05:31
to be good enough. We were going to have to lift oil sanctions. We're going to
01:05:34
have to do various things to sweeten the deal, so to speak. Well, notice actually
01:05:39
Scott Besson did some of that. He did lift the but the power of Iran has grown so much Stephen that's not good enough
01:05:48
and that's what you're seeing with why this deal is the ceasefire is starting
01:05:51
to break down from Iran's side. So what would you offer Iran? I think a enforced
01:05:58
military containment of Israel would be a serious uh card that America could play that I think Iran would get Iran at
01:06:09
least in a serious discussion. I don't know if it would be enough. I want to be
01:06:13
careful here that I don't say, "Well, this will certainly uh be the deal Iran
01:06:17
will take." But we have to imagine if Iran has world power, what is it going
01:06:23
to take to get Iran to surrender some of that? Well, one thing would be to have confidence that Israel is not going to
01:06:31
keep attacking it or its allies. >> But then they're not going to believe
01:06:36
that after what's happened. >> Well, it would have to go through. You'd
01:06:39
have to make it enforceable. It's not going to be good enough to try to promise that. What thing President Trump
01:06:45
could do since the Republicans control both houses of Congress is President Trump could push through a bill through
01:06:51
Congress that says if Israel attacks Iran or uh could even extend to to Lebanon, but let's at least start with
01:06:58
Iran. Um all funds for Israel, both military and economic, will be cut off through the end of Trump's presidency.
01:07:06
Now, that passes through uh both chambers of Congress. President Trump signs it. Now you're talking. Now we
01:07:13
actually have as much teeth as you could ever have of a military containment of Israel.
01:07:20
>> So presumably in such a scenario, Iran would continue to enrich uranium because
01:07:25
they've now had a taste of what can happen to them if they're powerless.
01:07:28
>> Well, let me extend this um a little bit more. So let's talk about article two of
01:07:32
the deal that's going to go through the Congress. Israel joins the NPT and that
01:07:38
is the quidd proquo for getting Iran to accept the on-site inspections of its 3.5% enriched uranium. So, Israel gets
01:07:48
to have um its Deamona nuclear power plant where it has plutonium for its nuclear weapons that's measured by the
01:07:57
non-prololiferation treaty, the IAEA. Those are the inspectors. And Iran will have on-site inspections at the
01:08:06
various locations we're talking about. But the second part of this, Stephen,
01:08:10
would be quit proquo. If Iran is going to be subject to on-site verification, on-site monitoring, Israel, which is now
01:08:19
not part of the non-prololiferation treaty, already has nuclear weapons. It's going to have to accept that this
01:08:26
can't be a one-sided deal going forward. It's going to have to be a more balanced
01:08:32
situation when it comes to monitoring um nuclear weapons capabilities. >> So, what does that mean specifically
01:08:38
that Iran would be able to monitor Israel's nuclear weapons >> uh through the IAEA? That's right. That
01:08:43
would be the material for the weapons, not the weapons themselves. So, >> they already have weapons. So, what's
01:08:47
there to monitor? >> Oh, no, no, no. Right now, the number of Israel's uh Israel's nuclear weapons is
01:08:53
not known. We have vague counts. The reason Israel is not part of the NPT is not because it doesn't matter. It
01:09:00
provides the kind of calc the kind of detailed information through the IAEA that would be useful for estimating the
01:09:09
size of Israel. Israel Netanyahu is going to want to give that information to Iran.
01:09:14
>> This isn't about want to anymore. Stephen, what we're talking about is
01:09:17
what are the offer? You've asked me the hard question. What is an offramp to
01:09:22
this tradeoff between the ground war and Iran as the fourth center of world power? And I said, okay, there is an
01:09:30
actual off-ramp here. But notice that the hesitation now is politics. And that's what I'm trying to explain that
01:09:38
that I study the interaction of military action and politics. And I'm with you. I
01:09:44
I don't think Israel will likely they've been trying to spoil these other deals.
01:09:48
I don't think Israel is going to allow this to occur. But now then we're right
01:09:52
back to the tradeoff that nobody wants to confront. So >> So what do you think is going to happen?
01:09:59
What I think is that we are going to go back and forth between stage three and stage four for months.
01:10:05
>> What's stage three and stage four? >> So stage three are preparations for the
01:10:09
ground war. >> Yep. >> And Iran emerging as a force center of world power. I think both of these are
01:10:15
likely to go on for months. I think that uh for stage three, the ground war option to truly be taken off the table,
01:10:22
you would need to see America withdrawing its military forces. You would need to see all the carriers leave
01:10:30
the region and go back to uh other parts of the world. You would need to see the
01:10:36
Marines that have been moved to the Gulf go back to Camp Pendleton in California,
01:10:42
go back to uh Japan. You would need to see the hundreds of aircraft like the F-35s, for example, that have been moved
01:10:50
to the region. They all need to go back to their pre-war locations. So, we're
01:10:55
going to bounce between stage three and stage four. >> Yep. That's the diagram. So, the new
01:10:59
diagram I'm trying to >> we just um I think there's still, if you pushed me on this last time, I still say
01:11:08
there's a 70% chance that we're going to start a ground operation. And it's not
01:11:14
because President Trump wants it. It's not because he's not trying to avoid it.
01:11:18
It's because there's a trap. And the trap that he's gonna face is, is he
01:11:23
really willing to be the president where under his presidency, Iran detonates a nuclear weapon to demonstrate it has
01:11:31
nuclear power? From his rhetoric, and listen, these are just the tweets. It seems like the alternate option he's
01:11:38
considered when he talks about bombing the infrastructure and bridges and roads and power plants is just completely
01:11:45
decapitating the country and I think in his own words, sending it back to the stone ages. will come back. This will
01:11:51
come back, but it would be as I believe the precursor to more ground operations,
01:11:56
Stephen. So, I don't think that this will be a case where you do the electric
01:12:01
power targeting and then it's done. Finally, he's satisfied. He's pounded
01:12:05
them enough and walk away because you do the electric power targeting. You have further incentivized 92 million. They
01:12:13
still have the enriched uranium. You have 92 million people desperate now for not just getting a nuclear weapon for
01:12:20
deterrence, but for payback. And so you will find the pressure for the ground war will be even more intense in the
01:12:28
aftermath of all of that. This idea they're going to be bombed back to the stone ages where we won't worry about
01:12:35
them anymore. um they're going to be this minor country that we will just ignore. As long as they have 1,000 lb of
01:12:43
60% enriched uranium, 10,000 lb of five and and 20% enriched uranium, um this is
01:12:51
this will just not be the case. >> So, you still think the most plausible probable outcome is that Trump ends up
01:12:57
sending ground troops in specifically to do two things? I think I remember you saying last time. One of them is to go
01:13:01
and get the uranium. Yep. >> And the second, I believe, is to defend the straight of Hormuz.
01:13:06
>> Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. I think I think these are the two things that are on the
01:13:10
table. >> And you think it's going to it's probably going to take several months.
01:13:13
>> I think it could go on Yes. for months because I think that you were going to
01:13:17
see that there's going to be uh this back and forth. And the way to monitor this so you can see is the timeline
01:13:25
speeding up or slowing down is literally the movement of the deployed troops. Don't track this by what the
01:13:33
negotiations are. Don't track this by what comes out of President Trump's
01:13:38
mouth or even the Iranians mouth. Track this by the movement of forces. That is the best indicator of what's going to
01:13:48
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01:14:49
Make sure you keep what I'm about to say to yourself. I'm inviting 10,000 of you
01:14:53
to come even deeper into the diary of a CEO. Welcome to my inner circle. This is
01:14:58
a brand new private community that I'm launching to the world. We have so many
01:15:02
incredible things that happen that you are never shown. We have the briefs that are on my iPad when I'm recording the
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conversation. We have clips we've never released. We have behind the scenes conversations with the guests and also
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the episodes that we've never ever released and so much more. In the circle, you'll have direct access to me.
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You can tell us what you want this show to be, who you want us to interview, and
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people that join before it closes. So, if you want to join our private closed community, head to the link in the
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description below or go to daccircle.com. I will speak to you then. on this point where you said you don't
01:15:47
think Trump would want to be the president that presided over Iran releasing a nuclear weapon. Is that
01:15:52
because if he pulled out now they would enrich the uranium and then maybe demonstrate it under his
01:15:58
>> that that's right. So the scenario that I have laid out I've laid this out to my
01:16:02
classes for years. The idea of what Iran would do with nuclear weapons a lot of people have an image and it's coming
01:16:09
from the public so I understand why they have it. People have been a lot of people have said this image where Iran
01:16:14
gets a a nuclear weapon or two and that what they do immediately is they blow up
01:16:19
Tel Aviv with the first one and maybe New York with the second one. This is just highly unlikely because what would
01:16:26
happen is we would retaliate with nuclear weapons under that. uh here much more plausible and everything I'm seeing
01:16:34
from Iran has been completely supporting the idea that they're thinking this
01:16:38
through um uh uh strategically is you would want not to just have one working nuclear weapon or even two. You want
01:16:47
five. Ideally, you want 10, maybe even 15. This is what happened with North Korea. Because once you have, let's even
01:16:56
say five, the most rational thing to do is you detonate the first one as a detonated test. You test it on your own
01:17:03
territory and then you listen for a week while everybody says, "Well, they only
01:17:07
had one. They were stupid. They don't have dot." And you detonate the second
01:17:11
one. And once you detonate the second one, just like when we hit Nagasaki after Hiroshima,
01:17:18
everybody will assume there's a lot more there. And that is how you actually
01:17:25
deter the United States from attacking you. And by the way, that's what effectively North Korea did. When
01:17:32
President Trump took office in 2016, North Korea was a major problem. We were talking about bombing North Korea and so
01:17:39
forth. And there's multiple reasons, but the big issues are that North Korea has
01:17:45
a lot of nuclear weapons. We're not going to be able to get them all. They have some other things they can do too
01:17:51
like like artillery on soul. But this isn't just North Korea and Trump decided
01:17:56
to be, you know, sort of best buds here. >> So the other route that played out in my
01:18:01
mind was that Trump would just keep bombing Iran to keep them weak. But again, that doesn't solve the straight
01:18:06
of Hammoose problem. >> Doesn't solve the uranium problem and doesn't solve the straight of Hormuz
01:18:11
problem because if we knew where that material was and we could just bomb it out of existence. I'm talking about the
01:18:18
enriched uranium material. We would have done this already. >> Which leads all roads to really the only
01:18:24
solution being some kind of deal. >> Absolutely. That's why the best thing to
01:18:28
do is a deal with the military containment of Israel. That's deal. >> The problem you have with such a deal if
01:18:37
when you're going into that deal is the enemy know that you don't really have a
01:18:41
plan B. You don't have a plan B. That's right. >> And so your negotiation position is very
01:18:45
weak. That's why you That's why you're they're going to keep their 3.5%
01:18:49
enriched uranium no matter what. The problem we face here is if we were ever going to get the 3.5% enriched uranium
01:19:00
um to go away, we should never have ripped up the Obama nuclear deal by Trump in 2018. They've been developing
01:19:09
ever since the Biden administration. He Trump one couldn't figure out how to
01:19:13
stop the enriched uranium by by Iran. Biden couldn't figure out how to stop it. Trump now has been trying to figure
01:19:20
out how to stop it. And you know what? It's not stoppable. It's not stoppable
01:19:25
short of these options I'm laying out. There's no way to get that material
01:19:29
without ground forces, Stephen. And you're not going to send those ground forces in just a thousand guys to get be
01:19:37
it some postage stamp of an area for a month or two trying to find that enriched uranium. This is just not
01:19:45
realistic. Going to be a bigger option. >> I think it's clear to me, you know, I do
01:19:48
this podcast and ask these questions and have people on because I'm actually
01:19:51
really trying to find answers for myself. And I think if I've arrived at any conclusion from everything I've
01:19:55
learned over the last couple of weeks, it's that I think Trump made a really
01:19:58
big mistake. Um pro and that mistake probably started when he ripped up Obama's deal.
01:20:04
>> That's right. >> But it's clear that >> Foraux was the really really big one.
01:20:10
>> I think I think he's stuck. >> He is stuck. >> I think he's stuck. I think he's facing
01:20:16
several bad options going forward. So I really have no idea what's going to happen. And
01:20:21
>> well what you're going to what you will also watch Stephen back to politics here
01:20:25
is uh Trump right now we're not it's not just paper anymore who's saying he's
01:20:31
lost control he's losing power the world is saying that and this is going to
01:20:37
start to become the Republican party is going to say that and what this is going
01:20:42
to do is it's going to incentivize Trump even more probably to become more belligerent not to become calmer so as
01:20:50
Trump is becoming the lamest of lame ducks going forward because it's evident
01:20:56
he's losing power and as he loses power here on the international scene this
01:21:02
will mean he will lose power domestically as well and we'll never go to zero but it will be a slow decline
01:21:10
this is where the real sort of future is here why this is not simply a steady state now this is why I won't make a
01:21:18
prediction of what's going happen in September. We are not at a steady state.
01:21:22
It is an unstable balance here between three and four. Three and four. >> What do you think happens with Europe? I
01:21:29
feel like Europe, you know, Europe aren't on either side of your scale here. You've got Iran, Russia, and China
01:21:34
on one end of the scale scale. You've got the US on the other. Europe and NATO, what happens? Are they going to
01:21:41
>> NATO is for all practical purposes dead? We're just writing its obituary. It's a
01:21:48
body in the morg already. Most people don't think that NATO is a political alliance. NATO is much more than that.
01:21:56
If there's an article 5, what that means, Stephen, is there's a military
01:22:01
operation with an American general at the top. And with article 5, the American general tells the other count's
01:22:09
militaries, including their nuclear weapons, what to do. Now, if you're Britain and you have nuclear weapons and
01:22:17
or even if besides the nuclear weapons, if you're Germany, you don't have them,
01:22:21
are you going to follow uh uh General Kane's orders on anything at this point?
01:22:27
I don't think so. >> So, article 5 is the document that all the NATO countries have signed. No, it's
01:22:33
the part of the NATO treaty which says if there's a NATO operations like in Afghanistan,
01:22:40
it's American general who orders all the other countries militaries what to it's
01:22:45
a hierarchy. So it's not a um a collection where the countries get together and they have these big like uh
01:22:54
cooperative decisions. No, the Americans run the plan. They are the ones who organize the military operation. they
01:23:01
run the plan and they just assign the uh other countries uh roles the way they would um the army, the navy and the air
01:23:08
force inside of the Pentagon. What I'm saying is what you just saw with Iran is
01:23:13
such a a horrible catastrophic failure within just weeks. The idea that any Europeans are going to follow the orders
01:23:24
of an American general and and I don't even think this is going to be just under Donald Trump. I mean, I think for
01:23:29
years, I think this is just laughable. >> Trump was quite angry and scathing with
01:23:34
his words about NATO. He said, "It's a paper tiger and referred to them as
01:23:39
cowards." And as we've been sat here today, you might be aware that NATO were
01:23:42
meeting with Trump today in Washington DC. And the NATO Secretary General Mark Root said, "When it came time to provide
01:23:50
the logistical and other support to the United States needed in Iran, some allies were a bit slow, to say the
01:23:57
least. In fairness, they were a bit surprised. To maintain the element of surprise for the initial strikes,
01:24:02
President Trump opted not to inform us ahead of time. But what I see when I look across Europe today is allies
01:24:09
providing a massive amount of support nearly without exception. Allies are doing everything the United States is
01:24:14
asking. They have heard and are responding to President Trump's request. So, it sounds a little bit like an
01:24:21
apology tour coming from NATO. Um, and the German chancellor has also made made a comment saying that they do not want
01:24:26
to split NATO. >> Well, they don't want American troops to leave the um uh the European continent
01:24:34
because that provides some deterrent to Russia. That's what you're hearing
01:24:39
there. But NATO was always had an anchor. Remember we talked about anchors. The anchor in NATO was
01:24:48
America's protection of European security. What you're seeing when President Trump creates a problem, a
01:24:56
catastrophe the for the world and says he won't send American uh forces in to
01:25:02
the straight of Hormuz, but he wants the Europeans to send their forces into the
01:25:07
straight of Hormuz. This is the opposite of protection. He's making NATO countries or European countries
01:25:15
vulnerable and they're reacting to that by saying we won't do it. >> According to diplomats, NATO secretary
01:25:22
briefed member capitals today that Trump is demanding concrete commitments within
01:25:28
the next few days from NATO to help to secure the strait of Hormuz, which would only make sense if you were doing phase
01:25:36
three, the ground operation. So you cannot secure the straight of H for H for H for H for H for H for H for H for
01:25:40
H for H formuz only with air power. We if we could we already would. You can't
01:25:45
secure it only with naval power. If you could we already would. We have a much bigger navy, much bigger air forces than
01:25:51
any of those countries individually or even combined. The only reason you would really want those uh forces from NATO is
01:26:00
uh because you're planning on a bigger ground operation and you're that's what
01:26:05
you're seeing right there. And I don't think Europeans, let's not even talking
01:26:08
about the word NATO. I don't think the Europeans are likely to do it because
01:26:12
you're seeing why would they, if they're ever going to do it, Stephen, they would
01:26:16
want Trump out of office. The number one thing that I don't think is going to
01:26:20
happen here is anybody's going to bail out Trump. >> It's political suicide really for a lot
01:26:25
of the European leaders. >> Political suicide for the Democrats to bail out Trump in our country. It's
01:26:31
going to start to become political suicide for even Republicans to bail out Trump. That's what you're going to start
01:26:36
to see in the fall. And it's going to be political suicide for the Japanese, for
01:26:40
the Indians. This is the problem. Trump caused the problem. He's, as I said on your show last time,
01:26:48
he's going to become LBJ if he doesn't uh take a deal soon. Well, that was 40
01:26:52
days ago, Stephen, and he still hasn't taken the deal. Not really. And he's
01:26:57
becoming LBJ. Nobody's going to want to be associated with him. >> Here in the UK, we have Karma as the
01:27:02
prime minister. And it appears to me that since he's come out and started saying that he won't support Trump's
01:27:10
war, he we won't send troops to the Middle East, it appears that that's actually driven up his favorability
01:27:16
amongst certain people. And it makes me think that actually, as we say, it's
01:27:19
it's political suicide for European leaders to send troops there because they will be they will lose the next
01:27:24
election in their country. >> I I think you put it exact excellent, Stephen. I I really can't improve on
01:27:30
that. Let me just say that a year ago with the tariffs um I started to do a study of tracking how European support
01:27:39
for America was starting to go into the tank and that was with tariffs. Now what
01:27:46
Trump has done is he's driven up the price of oil. He's hurting their economies in a serious way and as that
01:27:53
actual damage occurs and it's still in the pipeline. it hasn't hit as strong as
01:27:58
it likely will in the next month. You are likely going to see that the publics in Europe are going to become
01:28:06
anti-American and it's not just going to be can't support Trump anymore coming here. I had
01:28:12
to pay the the visa the ETA and it it took forever and what's happening here.
01:28:18
We're getting some payback here on Americans. I think this next next time I come to London, I'm not going to be
01:28:24
surprised that the price of that visa is doubling or tripling. >> What is your closing highlevel remark
01:28:30
about all this stuff? And I guess I really want to focus it on on the average person who is going about their
01:28:35
life as a normal civilian in any of these countries that are affected. What is the highle point of view here that we
01:28:41
we need to close upon? The high level point of view is we're about to start think think seriously about the election
01:28:50
and what we need to do is not just choose bounce back and forth between uh Republican and Democrat and actually
01:28:58
Britain is a is a case study of what can happen if you bounce back and forth here. We need to start to really support
01:29:06
strong stable policies that will empower the middle. The problem that we face, Stephen, is we're moving back and forth
01:29:18
from really uh ideas here that uh one year we we really don't like what Biden's doing and now we have the
01:29:25
radical wing on the other side and we certainly don't like that. Well, if we
01:29:28
keep going back and forth here between two uh extreme alternatives, we'll just
01:29:34
get different versions of bad outcomes. And it's not making things better. It's
01:29:38
a cycle that's making it solution. >> The solution is the public needs to hear
01:29:45
that every election, every choice, we are uh we have an opportunity here to focus on the more centrist candidates.
01:29:55
And this is something that we really can make decisions about. And it's just
01:30:02
simply the case that if we don't do that, what you're going to get is you're
01:30:06
going to get back and forth bouncing around. And I don't think a third party
01:30:11
here, these ideas are really very meaningful. This really comes down to talking to the public. And it's one of
01:30:17
the big reasons, Stephen, I'm going to the podcast world because you remember I
01:30:22
I've advised every White House and so forth. We've got to get beyond that.
01:30:26
We've got to actually talk to real people and this is what you do and increasingly I'm doing it and I really
01:30:35
believe that the podcast network is an opportunity to do that. But it doesn't
01:30:40
mean that it forces people to vote Democrat or Republican. We've got to understand that we we can't just keep
01:30:47
thinking about uh well, okay, now we're really mad at Donald Trump and we're
01:30:51
going to get the independents and now they're going to vote with the Democrats
01:30:54
if all we do is end up getting another extreme on the other side because what you're going to do is you're going to
01:31:00
keep pissing off the middle and they're going to keep bouncing back and forth.
01:31:04
And round after round, we've been doing that now um for years in the United States. And what does it look like? It
01:31:12
keeps getting worse. keeps getting worse. >> What are you suggesting the solution is?
01:31:15
Vote for the centrist candidate >> all the way through. Yes. Yes. It's a
01:31:19
very simple thing, but it's not going to happen unless we talk about this because
01:31:24
it does mean that sometimes the centrist candidate is the person, the woman on the other side. And if we're not willing
01:31:31
to do that, then we're really condemning ourselves to this cycle. I'm going to
01:31:35
explain more about it. It's it's a version of the escalation trap gone domestic. It's called the legitimacy
01:31:42
shock cycle and I'll be talking more about this in September. So the trap I'm
01:31:47
talking about here with violence and politics isn't just international and you end up with traps here domestically
01:31:54
as well. And I'd like to close with a few thoughts for the people in Iran. I
01:31:58
think ever since I've put myself mentally um in a situation where there was a world leader saying that they were
01:32:04
going to annihilate my civilization and there was bombs going off. You know, we're currently filming this in our
01:32:09
London studio, but if there was bombs going off around the studio and there was threat that someone was going to
01:32:14
annihilate civilization, it's quite unthinkable for me how I would I would be functioning. And it immediately, I
01:32:20
think, shines a light on the the mental health and psychology of the people in Iran right now and how they must be
01:32:24
feeling. So, I think that's probably an important message to share cuz we can
01:32:29
sometimes get a little bit caught up in the hypotheticals of war and strategy and all these kinds of things, but at
01:32:35
the end of the day, there's 90 plus million people in Iran that are right in
01:32:39
the middle of this and we we're sat in this very warm, cushy London studio. So,
01:32:43
>> well, there's a bond that is occurring between the middle 60% of the American
01:32:49
public and the 92 million in Iran. Yeah, >> they don't like the radicalism
01:32:57
and on on either side. And what you were what you were vocalizing, Stephen, is the frustration that our politics has
01:33:06
been locked up by the extremes. And I suspect the 92 million in Iran are feeling almost exactly the same thing.
01:33:13
Their choices now are being locked into extremes. And that is that bond here that you're trying to vocalize. I
01:33:21
believe it's valuable to vocalize it because this is what it means to empower
01:33:26
the people and this is what it means to be a democracy which is that we actually
01:33:30
talk about not just the other side is bad and we're always good is we we talk
01:33:37
about where the future really should go and the idea that we're even imagining
01:33:41
the possibility of a $40 trillion in debt country getting rocked by um Iran and Russia here who have their own
01:33:51
reasons for wanting to hurt us. We may not fully realize that, but but we really hurt Russia in the '9s here with
01:33:57
our ideas of shock therapy, and we made out like bandits, by the way. Uh so that
01:34:02
the we we really do have some uh real growing bonds at the social level. >> Professor Robert P, thank you so much.
01:34:10
It's a pleasure to speak to you once again. And uh this is such an evolving situation, so I feel like we might end
01:34:14
up talking again at some point in the future when things play out. Hopefully, you know, one can only hope uh for peace
01:34:20
for for everybody situation >> every day. That's my number one thing. Just ask my wife. And by the way, will
01:34:26
you stop being so charismatic? Because my wife, when we listen to this, she turns my voice off. All she wants to do,
01:34:32
Stephen, is listen to you. >> Is she American? I think Americans. >> I'm just You have And you've made me up
01:34:39
my game. >> That's so funny. Well, thank you so much for your time and uh you've put a lot of
01:34:44
time into explaining this to layman's like me and it's really helped turn the
01:34:47
the lights on to some degree. I'll I'll be honest, it's turn the lights on and
01:34:51
with the lights on I am confused. I'm confused about which path is productive and most beneficial to
01:35:05
society and humanity. And even though I can see more clearly now about the dynamics of all of these potential
01:35:11
pathways, none of them seem that great. So that's where I'm going to leave it
01:35:16
for today. But we'll pick up this conversation again soon when more information comes in.
01:35:20
>> That's right. And let's hope it's not as much as a trap as as I'm as I'm painting
01:35:24
it. But if it is, then it's really even more important that when we get to the
01:35:29
fall, we don't mislead ourselves into into thinking that this is just um temporary, that it's all going to be
01:35:37
solved quickly. We need to understand that we're going down some major major
01:35:42
roads here. And this situation, as bad as it is, notice that it's actually worse than it was a month ago when we
01:35:48
were here. It's worse, Stephen. And the reason it's worse is we didn't head it
01:35:54
off enough at the past 40 when we when I was here four weeks ago. If President Trump had taken some of the deals that
01:36:01
we were talking about then we wouldn't be anywhere near where we are today. So
01:36:06
as bad as that negotiating position I'm say of can militarily containment of of
01:36:11
Israel I realize people are saying oh my god could never happen. Well think about
01:36:15
the things that could never happen that are happening right now. This is the better pathway now. And if we don't take
01:36:21
this pathway now, we come back in a month or two, it will be worse. >> Thank you, Robin.
01:36:28
>> We're done. >> Thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> YouTube have this new crazy algorithm
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