Transcript of Ceasefire with Iran...What's That? | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS New

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Eyes on Geopolitics. I'm here with Jonathan Hackett, Mick Mulroy, Mark Polimeropoulos, and myself. A lot, a lot has happened in the last week since we left you last. Um, we just found out this morning Lindsey Graham, Senator from South Carolina, passed away suddenly at his house, uh, recently returned from a Ukraine trip. Um, you know, very sad to see any— anyone die, really. Um, Yeah, you know, rest in peace, Lindsey. A lot happening too. If you got— you want to just want to say a little bit about Lindsey first, and then we'll get into the Iran stuff.

Mark, you go.

Yes, I mean, one of the things that I mean, it's a very complicated legacy. I think first of all, in a time like this, you know, everyone, you go on social media, everyone has a propensity to say kind of shitty stuff. So it's not the time for that. Because clearly he, you know, he has had an evolution from a kind of foreign policy giant to someone to kind of a sycophant for Trump. But I think that ultimately, you know, his heart was always with the notion that the US is stronger when we have a robust, aggressive foreign policy, when we have a strong national defense, strong intelligence services, where we do champion human rights and democracy. And he, you know, I mean, he passed away after he came back from Ukraine. And that's something where he differed with Trump, you know, very strongly on. So, you know, lots of stuff in the news about him, but I think his relevance will be that he was relevant on foreign policy. And for those of us in the US government who had a chance to ever see him during congressional delegations, which he was on constantly, he generally was on the right side of issues.

And so put aside his, you know, the politics of it. And I was joking with Mick before in the green room, There's always this story that kind of is in our circles, and I don't know if it's right or wrong, and if it's right, I probably can't say it, but it's a story that him and John McCain, his best friend for a long time, came to one of our bases in the war zones and they helped launch some mortars at Taliban positions from Afghanistan into Pakistan. And then I think that endeared him with a lot of people of our ilk. And so leave the politics aside of it afterwards. Certainly someone who's relevant. I would say that's probably a fair apolitical thing to say. Relevant in terms of foreign policy.

Yeah, so I briefed him many times. I think he, at his best, um, you know, I'm just talking foreign policy, uh, not the personal stuff, um, was when he was with John McCain, right? I agree with what Mark said. He was a champion for what I would like to see, um, for the United States, be the leader of the free world, uh, look out for democracies, individual liberties around the world. Be willing to fight when you have to, right? Passivity is not a virtue if it, uh, is at the expense of liberty, right? Um, so I, I think that was, you know, from a legacy perspective, uh, his biggest contributions. And hopefully that continues in both parties, right? Uh, Republican Party included, to have the Reagan, the Reagan kind of ideology come back— philosophy, I should say. And then another interesting point, because I briefed him a couple times in his office, but I learned this, is that he became the parent, if you will, or guardian of his sister when he was 19, as he was orphaned. So he did overcome some serious challenges in his life, and I think it's important to point that out.

So, but you know, Here's thoughts to him, or his family I should say, and those at his colleagues and his friends.

John, you got it. Have you met Senator Graham in your travels?

I haven't seen him on a CODEL, but I think that even if you disagree with his foreign policy, you have to appreciate that he was informed. And I think a lot of people in Congress and the Senate today are not informed on foreign policy the way that he was. So you have to appreciate that he actually cared. He was dedicated. He got out there and actually went on those CODELs and was on the ground, not just in the embassy, because, you know, the embassy is always usually the safest place in the country. He got out of the embassy and actually went out to go see people around, US people and interests around, as we just talked about with the Afghan example. He did that all over the world and he cared about that. So it wasn't that there was just these, you know, policy positions that were domestic to him, like a lot of people today are. Instead, he was thinking long-term about US interests globally. And I think that's a very important thing to not let go of and to appreciate.

Yeah, a big topic that he was, uh, very much into, uh, is what's going on with Iran now. Obviously the ceasefire is not— is no longer. Iran hit a couple of ships in the Strait, we retaliated, and then Iran last night, um, started shooting ballistic missiles and drones at Bahrain, uh, Qatar, I think, UAE. And, um, I think Oman got some flack too. No, didn't Oman get like, uh, something headed their way, which was surprising because, you know, it seems like Oman and Iran are kind of sort of in lockstep in terms of how to like figure out the Strait. Um, if I'm missing anything, Jonathan, you let me know, like fill in the blanks if there's anything else in the timeline that we're missing.

Um, yeah, on that missile debris, that's an important point that when you fire ballistic missiles, there's oftentimes misfires, bad trajectories, miscalculations just pieces that come off. And actually in the Gulf War in 1991, we saw that when Saddam was firing Scud missiles, some of them landed like way off target or just went down in the desert in Jordan and Western Iraq and all over the place. So these are very imprecise weapons that are based on the V-2 rocket that the Germans invented in World War II. And they still use basically the same technology. They're pretty low-tech as far as weapons today are concerned. So if peace fell in Oman, that would not be shocking. But the problem is that means the Iranians have to be careful about how they do use their ballistic missiles with the knowledge that they could malfunction as they're firing. And that could backfire, like the use of it. If they're trying to strike Bahrain, for example, and instead it hits inside of Saudi Arabia, that could mess up what they're trying to do diplomatically. So they have to measure carefully how much risk are we willing to take when we fire each of these ballistic missiles?

And that's a challenge because we talked about previously the decentralized command and control that Iran has over the IRGC Aerospace Forces. The individual provincial-level brigadier generals in charge of those ballistic missiles can in some ways fire at will if they think it's the right time, whereas the central government in Tehran may not be able to intervene and say, hey, we hold off on those ballistic missiles today, we're trying to do something here with Oman. So you might actually get like a dual-track problem where you have the localized IRGC Aerospace Force commander launch a ballistic missile at a legitimate target in their eyes, but that the central government in Tehran was like, ah, we didn't want that to happen right now because we're trying to do something with Oman. So you might see some of that crosshairs, uh, or crossing of wires as well, which can be difficult for Iran to juggle.

That, that seems to be the excuse, I think, Jonathan, that the administration used. I mean, there's really weird reporting over the last couple days when they came back and they're talking about, you know, the, the, they claim that the Iranians apologized, um, for some of the strikes, which I frankly don't believe. That doesn't seem to me to be even in the realm of even remote possibility. Um, the scenario you lay out, just because of the kind of situation they're in, in terms of issues with command and control. I think that is certainly possible, but I don't think an apology came from Iran. And of course, all of that notion is all thrown out again after what happened over the last 12 hours or so. And so this idea of kind of these, you know, are there really rogue elements? I don't know. But I mean, these Axios reports that come out, everyone kind of just rolls their eyes now. It's kind of a different alternate reality. I mean, I think what's amazing right now, this entire conflict has nothing to do with the nuclear program anymore. Does not have to do with regime change, doesn't have to do with ballistic missiles, doesn't have to do with proxies.

It's only about the Strait of Hormuz. And to me, that is a complete kind of encapsulation of how we have failed on the policy level on this. Because I think Trump will declare victory if the Strait is opened. And so what did we do this for? And I don't even know if, I mean, there's now differing interpretations if the Strait is open or not. But what a mess. I mean, it's almost to the point where, you know, as they climb the escalatory ladder, I mean, you know, you wonder if the Iranians are overplaying their hands and that's certainly possible. But my God, are they not deterred by us at all? I mean, it's not working. Whatever we're trying to do is not working. And I don't know if there's a military solution, save something really dramatic. So it's going to be kind of interesting to see what Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff is recommending, what CENTCOM's recommending to the president, because I don't know what the solution is here. Because, you know, the US strikes, the reprisals are not working right now. And so how much do you have to actually up the ante and what does that really actually mean?

So, you know, Mick, thoughts on that? I mean, is there a military solution to this right now?

So I think the military can play a part, obviously. But what I'd say is, yes, I agree. If the strait is open, that does not make it a win. That just gets us back to norm. If the strait is closed, that does make it a loss. So we have to get the strait back open. We can't just say, well, we don't get that much, you know, energy from this region. It affects everybody, right? So if there's— doesn't matter where you get your energy, if there's that much less energy in the world, everybody's paying more. So like, this is— I mean, I'm not an economist, but I get that, right? So it has to, it has to come open. And now I heard, uh, I think it was Brett, uh, talking about his— Brett McGurk talking about his recent trip to the Middle East. Everybody's trying to come up with alternatives to the Strait, and I think that's a great idea because eventually this is going to go away. The leverage is going to go away, I think. Uh, but I know we can't count on that, man. It's— I don't know how long it'll take, but I imagine it's too long to make an immediate difference.

But I think that's the right move. So then the question is we need to make it— and I agree with, with Mark, uh, you're saying like now it's all about the Strait, but we need to make it stay about nuclear weapons, right? Because the US needs to win. I mean, I know I say this all the time, um, we need to win. I don't care who's— I'm not a partisan in that regard. I want the US to win. So how are we going to do it? We're in it, we started it, we can't change that. They, they closed the Strait, we need to change that. How do we do it? So I think what the administration or the White House is really planning is to, okay, these negotiations from the US point of view seems to be a stalling tactic. And to what you're talking about, Marco, and well, I doubt they apologize, but I think the problem is you've got this maybe new Supreme Leader calling the shots. And I think he actually is from what I'm being told. And then you have the IRGC, And then you have the negotiators, which are like the Iraqis and the Ghalibafs, right?

These two don't respond to the other. Like, these guys don't control these guys. These guys don't control these guys. So they can go say all these things over here and agree to things. And then the IRGC says, uh-uh, we're still going to close the strait and we're still going to fire at ships to do so. Because that's the only way they can close the strait, right, is to take direct action. And then these guys might be saying, well, I wish they wouldn't have done that because we really want, I don't know, assets unfrozen, sell our oil. But ultimately that might be the problem. We're talking to people who aren't making decisions and have no real direct control over the people who can blow the whole agreement. And that's what they're doing, right? I mean, honestly, if I was looking at this objectively, I would say if we're getting to sell our oil and we're getting to You know, get our assets unfrozen. Just act like the straits open. Just do, right? Why not? You're making money and it goes straight to the regime. So I, you know, I just don't get it. But ultimately they feel like they have the highest leverage that they're ever going to have and they're going to use it.

They know the regime isn't going to change. They won't even talk about the nuclear. In fact, every comment that comes out of like Pesetskyan and all that is Uh, we're never going to give up enrichment. So the best we can do is get back to the JCPOA, if that's true, right? I'm just saying, they're not letting inspectors in, which they are required to do as members of the non— the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. They're not even doing that. So I think that, one, they're going to try to get a nuclear weapon. We got to prevent them to do that. So that's one of the things the military can do. And then two, if they don't open the strait, I think we're going to go up the escalatory ladder. It's not going to be good though. It's not going to be good. But I don't know what else you can do because we are in the situation we're in. Yes, economic pressure, diplomatic pressure, it should be hand in hand. But if you don't cause cost directly to the regime, which might be cutting off these logistical supply lines like the rail, and I think Jonathan could certainly touch about how that could affect them directly, or I guess everybody could.

But it's going to have to go up the escalatory ladder. And I don't think they should stop fighting necessarily to do the negotiations, because if they do, from the Iranian perspective, they're like, fine, we'll talk to you guys till kingdom come. As long as there's no consequences, they don't care. That's the way they roll. So I think that's where it's heading. It's going to be military action amidst negotiation to try to get to the point where it affects their their position and they come back with a real MOU. Because the last one, at least the way Iranian interpret it, is not in our interest.

I just don't know what that military action is. Jonathan, what is that military action? What could they— what could we do to hurt them that would ever compel them to be more responsible?

Well, something I don't typically advocate for, which is killing specific individuals at the top of this structure, is probably a helpful way to actually make it happen, even though I disagree with that strategy. Myself because of how the long-term impacts of that are. But if you want acute short-term wins, you need to remove people like Fahidi. You need to make sure that Mojtaba is actually dead and go after other decision makers that are holding the levers of power, including Ghalibaf, and get rid of them. Now, that's a short-term win. Like I said, there's, there's long-term negative impacts globally if we do that because we lose control of the situation because the devil that you know is sometimes better than the devil that you don't. And the one, like for example, Fahidi is a really bad guy, but we understand him. We know him, at least those of us who actually do know and understand this problem set. Get rid of him. And now you've got like a 35-year-old guy that you don't even know his name right now. That was like a low-level deputy in the, um, Unit 400, which is their special operations directorate, that nobody knows even on the CIA side.

And now that guy might be in charge of the IRGC, and he's going to probably be a hothead just from his youth alone, but also forged in what he sees as this crucible of the world against Iran. So that's that long-term problem. But if you want a short-term win, get the straits open and have things flowing smoothly for the next few months, sure, kill all the top-level leadership, which is what we did from February 28th till now. And there's always that tension between the short-term military victories, you know, tactical and operational strikes, which we're very good at, we and Israel too, versus the long-term what happens next of that. Because you cannot use a military instrument to force political change alone. It has to have diplomatic and economic buttresses, if not those things being the main effort with military as a support. So it's a real challenge that we've kind of dug ourselves ourselves into here where we've basically forced ourselves into a military problem that didn't have to be in the first place because of how we're— we, you know, the US government's focusing so much on the Straits of Hormuz now, which is chiefly a security concern, a military security concern that has economic remnants around it.

And it should be inverted where the economy is the main point. I can't remember which politician it was in the early '90s that said, "It's the economy, stupid." Maybe it was Bush Senior. But it's true. I mean, the economy is the thing driving everything.

It was Clinton, right?

I can't remember, but I remember that was during that election.

Maybe it was Clinton.

Yeah.

That was one of their mottos for—

Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things they should care about.

They're going to go after personalities, to your point, Jonathan. We all heard that there was a credible threat to President Trump. So just from the emotional perspective, and then, you know, allegedly the Supreme Leader came out with a statement saying we're going to go after the US and Israel. From every direction, calling on a, like an international movement to target them. So I think that, and Vahidi would probably be high on the list as well. But I think that's going to be part of it. But the other part, just from, I mean, we've heard this for months, is going after infrastructure targets. They're going to make it miserable to live there. I would, I would advocate for going after, you know, ones that are military. And ones that allow the regime to make money. So the railroad, if that's, if that's one of the main economic lifelines, I wouldn't advocate going after what's primarily civilian, but I'm not in the administration. So there's like 3 major, I think, energy-producing facilities in Iran. I think they're probably on the list. It's just going to gradually go up and maybe that's That's what the escalatory ladder is, right?

It's a gradual going up so that the adversary, in this case Iranian regime, knows if they don't comply, then they go up another rung. You have to put the pressure on, and it's not gonna come from, you know, harsh statements or threats on social media. It's just they ignoring all that now. It has to be, you know, walk softly and carry a big stick. You got the stick, you're gonna have to use it, but you have to use it effectively. In line with diplomacy, economic, uh, I think, uh, pressure, and, and having the right information. And what I mean by information, just to use a DIME model, is you got to start bringing other countries into this. And you're not going to do it by, uh, insults, right? But the Strait is not the war. The Strait affects every country in the world. So, and I don't think we're getting a lot of people sign up to fight Iran, but we could get more countries signed up to economically isolate them. Because this is, I mean, there's countries, as you all know, in the Far East that are, we're about to run out of fuel, right?

So this isn't about like, do you agree with the United States? Do you like the United States? It is just as much their national security issue as it is ours right now. So hopefully we can, on the information side of the DIME model, get more countries to start helping us isolate the regime. Which means not buying, you know, things from—

I'm not— on, on the, on the Israeli intel piece, I mean, I, I must admit, I was, you know, I— look, I've worked with the Israelis, I like them. Dee has a heart attack when I say that. Um, uh, but, but I was a little skeptical when that came out. And I think of the repress reports, there's been a number of US officials who said it was not very— it was not necessarily credible and it was not very specific. It was just kind of the general threat of the Iranians talking about doing what they have been planning on doing anyhow. So I don't put it past the Israelis, especially with the, you know, the tensions with between Bibi and Netanyahu.

But we would have done our own assessment on that, right? I mean, in the, if it was functioning, we don't just go, and I like the Israelis, I work with them all the time and a big supporter of a lot of things, but like we would have done our own assessment. But my question on that one is like, I don't think President Trump really wanted to get off the new Air Force One and get on an old one. So that indicates to me that there was something that was legitimate to the threat.

Or finally, the secrets. I mean, look, that plane was not mission capable for overseas travel, period, right? Every— like, it's amazing that they're trying to subpoena the New York Times reporters, um, you know, they raid one of their houses. It's just, it's so ludicrous. I mean, I know all these reporters are really good reporters, but I mean, anybody on the planet could have said that.

Like, this is a democracy when you're raiding reporters' fucking houses and subpoenaing.

Well, it's, it's, it's obvious by switching planes that it wasn't. No, no, you don't have to, you know, like, what is it?

There's no way an aircraft like that with all the countermeasures that allegedly Air Force One has, you know, that a, that a, a plane could be retrofitted in a couple months and just, and, and be capable of going to Turkey, which is a high threat place.

Yeah.

Yeah. So maybe the Secret Service, you know, used this as, as final leverage because Trump could say no. Trump could do whatever he wants. He could take whatever plane he wants. I'm sure the Air Force and the Secret Service were not happy about this new Qatari airplane. Which did fly over my house the other day. It actually is pretty cool. It's nice. I didn't have to go to July 4th celebrations. I had F-35s and B-1s flying right over my house. And then I was changing bird food. This is what happens when you're 57 years old. I had a bird feeder. I was putting in bird food and I looked up and there's the recovery plane. But going back to that, but I think that you guys raise a really interesting point and time will tell, like, are we going to start? Doing kind of these targeted assassinations again of senior leadership. It's a war.

When it's a war, it's on.

It's rambunctious.

Don't just kill the privates, man. Don't just kill the privates, get conscripted.

Go to the top. Is Trump going to want to— I guess the question is, is Trump going to want to climb this ladder too? Because every time he does this, you risk the US economy right before the midterms.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think that's the big thing. I mean, Trump, you know, theoretically, if Mr. Tough Guy, this should be an easy call. I'm gonna go fuck the Iranians up right now. And we should.

Uh, here's a question for you, Mark.

Yeah.

Um, because I talk a lot about this as you do on, uh, TV and stuff. Everybody's talking about like their election, but nobody's talking about the day after.

I know, right?

So they act like there's all this pressure on, on the White House right now for, for the election, and probably true. But the day after the election, it is what it is.

Then it's— then he's on.

It is what it is. He's not running again and his party doesn't have another election. So he's got the hand is dealt. So it's going to— the Iranians, because I go on with Iranians, they know this, but they never talk about the day after. Like, okay, you better come up with an agreement before Election Day, Mr. Supreme Leader, because it's going to switch the day after.

That would be so interesting to see if they get more reasonable right before the election. Knowing— anyway, we'll see. But that's a great point.

Well, I mean, like, all indications are that, like, the Democrats are going to take back the House for sure and possibly the Senate. I don't know if, you know, after January 1st, when the new Congress comes in, I don't know exactly how much latitude Trump's going to exactly have with this, where he can put together a sizable force to go after Iran for real. I don't know if that's exactly what's going to stop him.

Which, what are they going to stop him?

No war powers. It's veto-proof. It doesn't even matter if Congress both votes to restrict funding and what— it won't be veto-proof. I mean, there's, there's no stopping this guy.

So the fact is, what that question you just said, what's going to stop him, is what's fundamentally wrong with this country right now. Generally, I'll be honest with you, because not only shouldn't— I'm editorializing— a lunatic like Trump have the keys to this, shit. Nobody should. Even somebody—

I think what Mark was saying is there's not legislatively— even if they win the House, and I don't think they're going to win the Senate, but say they won the House legislatively, they can't— whether you support the war or support escalation or not, what is it they can do to stop?

The NDA is the only mechanism you'd have to get.

Yeah.

And when has the NDAA ever been, uh, shut down?

It's, you know, it's way lagged behind anyway. It's like 18 months behind what it's supposed to be as far as policy movement's concerned.

That's crazy, guys.

Hey, one thing that I just, I just, uh, I was just taking notes before on this thing that we should, we should touch on. Are we— yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, no, please.

I think there's actually an interesting day coming up where you have Jay Clayton, the new DNI, his confirmation hearing. That kind of was just snuck in last second. But we do in our world of intelligence, though, all of us here, that is rather significant only in the sense that the Senate senators will actually be able to question someone in public. So Clayton's hearing is going to be on Wednesday. And I think that was just announced on Friday. I was a little surprised at that because obviously Trump has put in this acting DNI, Pulte, who is— everyone is freaking out over. I don't think anything awful has happened yet, but it could. So that'll be kind of interesting to see. Rarely do you get a chance for senators to actually ask really pointed questions. Um, so we'll see how that goes.

Yeah, that would be interesting.

Mick, I wanted to talk about a point you made about like our allies and stuff like that. Um, and you kind of mentioned it yourself too, like, are our allies really going to be interested in helping us out in a war that they weren't interested in starting to begin with? And also at a NATO summit when they're getting fucking berated by the president? I don't know exactly how, how amped they would be to help us out, frankly.

Yeah, and so we had the NATO summit too, so we should talk about that. Um, so I mean, to start with, NATO is a defensive alliance. I think everybody knows that. They don't go to the aid of a country who starts a war. They didn't do it. They weren't in Vietnam. They weren't in the Falkland Islands, right? Let's say, you know, whether you agreed with the war or not, that's not what the alliance does. The alliance comes to the defense of somebody in the alliance. And it's only done it once, as we all know, for us. Uh, so, uh, on the positive, I think, you know, President Trump wasn't the only president that pushed the countries in NATO to do more to meet their obligations for their national security. They had decided just let the United States do it. We had the biggest military in the world. I mean, there's plenty of countries in Europe who couldn't even deploy anything. Uh, that's changed, right? So now we're going past the 2% and we're— everybody's trying to get countries to pledge at 5%. We're at 3.5%, just for the record. Uh, but our country, our economy is so big that it still like dwarfs everybody else when it comes to military spending.

But now these countries are going to 5%. They are building their military to be functional, integrated. I think, you know, to a certain extent, President Trump and the other US presidents advocated, which was all of them, can take credit for that. And then of course, there's the invasion of Iraq— of Ukraine, which probably is the primary reason. So I would just keep advocating that we're, we're talking about a NATO who's going to be more capable than it probably ever has been eventually. So we want the alliance. It's in our interest, period. It is, it is probably the most significant military alliance in in history. So I hope we keep that. I know that there are many on the, obviously on the, on the far right or the hawk right, I should say Reagan right. Uh, and on the, on the Democrats that believe in that. So hopefully that's the case. It's to your direct question, D, I get it. They were apparently notified, asked, but that's why I'm highlighting the Strait. Right. The strait affects every country in the world. So you can, if you as a leader of any country are getting significantly impacted economically by the strait being closed, then you as a leader need to go past your, I'm hurt because President Trump didn't ask me about this in the first place, or I don't like his policy, or I don't like him personally, and realize that this is in your own country's interest.

So what are you going to do to help open the strait? You can still be critical of us if that's your thing. But what is it you're going to do? Because if you're just going to tweet, you're useless. And if your people are all paying more for everything that they're purchasing, which is the case in Europe for sure, what is it you're doing as a leader of those countries to alleviate that? And if your answer is, well, I didn't start the war, well, that's not a leader. That's just a commentary, a commentator on social media.

Well, I mean, I think like the, the everything we kind of abuse, not abuse, but we make fun of European leaders because they don't really say shit to Trump. They don't stand up to him. They don't do any of that, basically. And frankly, like, I don't know, you know, most of these European countries, like our NATO allies, who would be a coalition that we try to, you know, build with, you know, the French, the Italians, the British, people that have navies that can actually probably do some something with this. Is it politically worth it to send their boys there to die? I don't know. I don't think so.

Well, that's not the only option.

I mean, I agree with you, but like, we want the strait to be open, and Iran seems to not be interested in playing ball whatsoever. They're not backing down, clearly. So I don't know if it's politically advantageous for a democratic country to send their, you know, armed forces.

We're not sending our boys to die, so I'm not advocating for that.

Well, what can we do more?

13 servicemen have died Yeah, but I mean, well, I mean, like sending in forces to fight on the ground.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I'm not just advocating for that. It's like, why not get with— I mean, you could do it the UN. I mean, it's— the system's already there. What are we going to do to further isolate diplomatically, economically, anything we can, the regime? There's more we can do. Everybody knows it. Everybody knows it. Like, if, if you just got some Iran experts, um, you know, take Jonathan and a bunch of guys from me and, uh, Mark's old organization and say, what can we do to make this harder on the regime that doesn't involve ground forces? I guarantee you there's a list, and some of it can be done by certain countries but not others. You see what I mean? So what I'm saying is, if you like us, you don't like us, whatever, this is about you and your people. So if you had a constituent stand up and you were the President of fill-in-the-blank country and said, I get it, you don't like Trump. So what? I'm still paying too much for everything. What are you doing? You see what I mean? Like, you can't just say, well, I don't like him, because that's not what a leader does of a country.

You've got to actually advocate for your people. You can be critical, but what is it they're doing other than huddling around talking about how they're going to get, you know, uh, also, I don't know, I don't, I don't know if it's just I don't like them.

I think it's also You know, Iraq, we built a coalition and sold it to the American people. This, we bilaterally acted with Israel, um, without a coalition, and we expect things to work out, you know what I mean?

But that's—

they're clearly not. And now we're asking for Europe or whoever else, allies. I mean, it could be Japan, South Korea, right? They have interest obviously in, in the oil price being high, um, because since they get a lot of the oil from the Strait to jump in or help in some way. I mean, I'm interested in, John, like, what do you think exactly we could do specifically to, like, squeeze them more economically, or, you know, what angles are there?

Well, one thing I think we're forgetting is that there is already a Combined Maritime Task Force that operates in the region, both inside the Persian Gulf and outside of it. There are 47 member nations there, including Japan, including France. There's also the UK Maritime Organization or UKMTO, which is actually a lot of the announcements about these vessels getting struck and like their locations is coming from the UK Maritime Organization. So there is actually a lot of international presence and capability there that needs to kind of perhaps orient in a different way or slightly maneuver in a way that helps to support the increased flowing of goods through the strait, because it's not just oil, there are other goods as well. And it puts pressure on the port, especially in the Suez Canal, because that's the major outlet for a lot of the stuff that can't get through the straits. So if for especially the CMF, the Combined Maritime Task Force, this has counter-piracy experience, it has boarding experience. They have done opposed boardings of vessels before. So this is a very high-risk capability that usually special operations forces have in the US side that this maritime task force has.

And it was actually task organized and designed to do exactly that, board vessels opposed. So if that means instead of just boarding pirated vessels and boarding rogue vessels, let's say, how about we board blacked out, AIS turned off vessels that that belong to the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, or IRIS-IL, that are part of the network of shipping oil? How about we start boarding and stopping those vessels? How about we start rerouting those vessels and pushing them over to Oman, and then having some of those states sell that oil on the market and give that money to fund the allied effort against it? You know, similar to what we've been discussing about Russian assets for Ukraine, instead of just using our money, let's use the adversary's money to pay for us, you know, and to help pay for reconstruction in Bahrain and Qatar and Emirates and Saudi Arabia, that would be helpful, or to help at least alleviate some of the pressure off those Gulf nations, especially Bahrain and Qatar, who are stuck inside the weapons engagement zone, relieve some of the pressure off of them by bringing in that maritime task force to ask to act as a, uh, either an ally or a buffer to help with the, the northern threat.

I think that's a good starting point, but it would require some coalition building. And I've mentioned this before, Pakistan is a key to that because Pakistan has one leg on our side and one leg on the other side. They're a great bridge, but they have their interests in mind. We have to remember that they're not there to be our friend.

We started that in the first Trump administration. So it's called the International Maritime Security Construct when we started. It still exists. And to Jonathan's point, that's what they could do. They could help us, again, diplomatically, economically isolate the regime. Because remember, this was the regime that was killing tens of thousands of its own people before the war started. Right. They're, they're bad dudes. So that's what they could do without actually directly becoming, you know, forcing open the strait, which we're not going to do. I don't see it. I don't see we're going to do that. I don't think we're going to use ground forces to do it. And certainly we're not going to get other people to do it, do it for us. So what Jonathan's saying is, is doable.

And the great thing is those assets are already in theater. What were you going to say, D?

Who swings like the big stick with that? Us? With that maritime?

So the US is leading that because it's based out of Bahrain. And the, the headquartering of it in Bahrain was designed to put it right next to the Fifth Fleet so that the US Naval Forces and Central Command are adjacent to the headquarters of this maritime task force, which allows this very quick movement of, of, you know, US-only stuff into that, that maritime framework of multiple partner nations. So that's important. But like I mentioned, Pakistan is important, Qatar and Oman, those three countries have to be on board with this. They have a huge stake in what happens here, whether it goes for Iran or goes to the United States, as far as who wins, quote unquote, because they, they stand the most to lose in both situations. So they have to be totally bought in to participating, or at least allowing their waters to be used, especially vis-à-vis Oman, because their waters are the waters that will be at risk if this maritime task force has to start boarding vessels at the mouth of the straits.

And the Fifth Fleet HQ, I mean, you saw the videos yesterday. Looked like it was, uh, on fire. It's largely abandoned for the most part. Um, so why don't we, uh, start doing that?

Like, start boarding about it? And this MOU that we signed— the MOU we signed is an executive agreement between the executive branch of the United States, like one branch of the three branches of the United States, and another sovereign country. This MOU is not even strong enough to stand up to U.S. domestic politics. Other nations are going to look at that and they're going to say it's too high risk, it's too likely that this thing's going to fall apart because even the United States government can't allow this thing to continue if Democrats come to power. It has to be some kind of sustainable agreement, a treaty, let's say, or at least a congressionally supported agreement that can't be destroyed easily or taken away easily. So those nations have a lot to lose if they look at that and they say this is written on a piece of toilet paper, and if a new president comes in, they're going to crumple it up and throw it away. They need a— they need either a treaty or something in law from the legislative branch, not from the executive branch, that creates difficulties for the president to withdraw from.

And NATO is a good example. A few years ago, Congress passed a law that made it so the president cannot unilaterally withdraw from NATO. There needs to be a similar law in place to assuage the concerns of these other countries that, okay, even if a different president comes in, there are going to be several steps and mechanisms along the way and checks and balances to prevent them from pulling this thing out. Like the JCPOA and this MOU, which by the way is not a peace agreement, it's a memorandum, it's a piece of paper. So there needs to be this broadening of US government backing of this agreement for other nations to actually say, all right, I'm ready to participate.

Good God. Mark, you've been quiet for too long.

I'm trying to find a good, good place to interject something that I thought was funny that I wanted to talk about today because I, because I always like talking about Mick and bears. There's something on social media there about a tourist at Yellowstone and the bison. Yeah, yeah, messing with, and then the bison attacked them and jacked this guy up like 10 feet into the air.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you got to take this— I mean, these are wild spaces, man. People act like it's a theme park. Yeah, right, theme park, man. The glacier's only 30 minutes that way, right? 30 minutes, man. And it's— we just had a guy get killed. And apparently, I mean, it had to be gruesome. They found his— the can of bear spray in his hand, but his hand was not with his body. I think it was expended, but— and bear spray does work. But, you know, if you're coming out here, I got friends— that's why I'm in a different room today— had friends coming from for the, uh, Under the Big Sky concert, which is 1 mile through those woods, um, and they all gonna want to go to Glacier. So if you're doing that and you listen to this podcast, get bear spray. Like, it works, and the, the difference between using it, not using it, could be substantial.

There was a giant moose when my wife and I were in Alaska that was walking along the side of the road, and we pulled over, got a little too close, and started charging at us. There's a video I have of my wife running, and I might— my wife and I running to the car. Looked like from like The Blair Witch Project.

Oh yeah, they'll kill you too. The moose will kill you.

Oh yeah, yeah.

It's— it— the thing is, not that you get much chance, if you see any big animal with a baby, a calf, oh, you need to stay away, right?

Because they're protective. Yeah.

Oh yeah, stay away.

You like going outside and hiking and stuff like that, or— I mean, are you always thinking about something gonna— something's gonna eat you when you go out? D would get eaten in about 2 seconds.

100%.

Brooklyn.

Yeah, the New York boy is gone.

We got a, we got a half Malinois, half German Shepherd, um, who somehow came bigger out, bigger than both. Uh, she's like £105, female. And, uh, you know, I'll carry pistol and I carry bear spray because I go hiking like all the time.

Yeah, yeah.

And they say that, you know, I obviously carry both, but bear spray is way more effective. People have tried to defend themselves against a bear with a pistol, just in combat, we get nervous and these little bullets.

I remember I remember you saying that it was like, it was like 90% effective for bear spray, but like 40% effective for like pistols.

Yeah, that's the stat. That's the stat. I mean, it's like shooting a shotgun, right? It shoots a blast. Apparently it doesn't work for mountain lions.

We're gonna arm D to the teeth when he's out in Montana.

Yeah, I'm gonna need an AR-15 or something. I'm gonna need something shotgun, something stout for— yeah, when I get out, when I go out. I'm not leaving the fucking main strag, dude. I ain't going fucking hiking. Get lost.

We're gonna have like holsters for your bear spray.

Yeah. Oh my God, I don't need that. I don't need that.

And then people are getting fights with— because everybody has bear spray and people get in fight, they use bear spray. And they did it like— there's a, there's like a creperie downtown that's—

oh, you mentioned this and they cleared it out, right?

I don't already say this on the show. Yeah, yeah, they had like the triage people in the front and then it happened at, uh, the grocery store.

My son just arrested someone who— this person bear sprayed their kid.

Oh my God.

Like, that's go to jail.

Yeah. Well, they did. Yeah.

Yeah.

Or just use, you know, prophylactics and not have kids. All right. So as far as—

I threw this conversation right into the gutter. It's great.

Yeah, you did.

You're quiet. What are you thinking about? I was thinking about the bison shooting at me.

Yeah, Mark, you totally derailed this. I wonder, were you in the 7th floor doing stuff like this too during meetings?

No, I'm retired.

Yeah.

All right. I want to touch on a little bit like, what do you guys think of during the NATO summit when Zelensky was meeting with Trump and they had that press conference? Trump floated the idea of licensing out Ukraine, giving Ukraine the license to produce their own Patriots. You think that's bullshit? You think that's just for a soundbite? You think it's really going to happen?

I mean, I think it is going to happen. Look, short term, it doesn't do anything because they're desperately in the need of air defense. But medium to long term, it's great.

But that's important.

It's important. And this is, I mean, look, the way to get to Trump has to do like he appeals to the US defense industry, blah, blah. This is what, I mean, frankly, whether you like Lindsey Graham or not, you know, this is the kind of stuff that he did trying to find a solution that would satisfy Trump's kind of weirdness. And this is one of those things, well, okay, if somehow the US defense industry is going to kind of gain from this somehow, sure, we'll give it to them. And the Ukrainians figured it out. But I mean, anyone who kind of disses this thing is kind of silly. It's a great thing in the medium to long term, but short term, I think they're still in desperate need of assistance. So we can't just say, okay, they're okay now because they're not. But I mean, I think we should, when the administration does something right, you know, you can actually acknowledge it. Yeah, that's a good move. What happened? Yeah.

And by the way, Lindsey Graham was really funny. If you ever talked to him one-on-one, he was really funny. It is important because here's the thing, President Putin, the longer this lasts, the worse it gets for him. The worse it gets for him, right? So he's, every month the Ukrainians produce more Drones every month, lethal ones, more effective. He's taking out the infrastructure. He's losing more men. I mean, even Russia is going to run out of dudes eventually. And now he's seeing this is coming to the end of this administration. A traditional Republican comes in like a Rubio or a Democrat, it's going to go bad for him, him being Putin, right? They're starting to mass— as soon as they start getting their production of interceptors online, Patriots, or it's— they're going to figure out how to do it in a way that we haven't figured out how to do it because it's needed immediately for them and it means life and death. So we're going to benefit from them, but it's only going to get worse for Putin from now on in. He's losing more men. The Ukrainians are getting more effective and there's going to be more support flowing.

I think the— did they commit to $70 billion in support this year? At NATO summit. I think they did.

From the Europeans.

They didn't, they, yeah, yeah, from the Europeans. And then I think soon we're going to start, and there's, there's several provisions in Congress for the United States to significantly up its contribution because there is support for Ukraine on both sides of the aisle in Congress. And it's just going to build because Ukraine has proven that they're not going to lose.

That's where Ratcliffe has been successful in that, you know, we keep putting intelligence in front of Trump suggesting that Ukraine is winning and Trump will not back a loser. And he sees that, you know, Putin's getting his butt kicked. I mean, this is very basic psych 101, but this has worked. You know, this has been, it's funny because we all knew this is what Ratcliffe was doing. I think we might've talked about it here. I think the Wall Street Journal just put something out talking about this, but I think this has been quite obvious, but it's been effective. And this, it's pretty funny because if you think about all the nonsense about the deep state, this is the deep state. This is Ratcliffe and the supporters of Ukraine and the US government finding ways to get Trump to do the right thing. And so they show him intel that Russia sucks. The military is crap. They're getting their asses kicked and Putin's fucking with you. And then so, and that's the way to sway Trump to do the right thing. So good on them doing that, I guess.

Yeah, they're just doing their job.

Yeah.

I have another question. Like, so in terms of like the immediate and short-term, What does— because we're obviously using a lot of Patriot missiles. Is there a remedy for this? Is it a European variant? Is it— do we actually still have enough Patriots to give them? Like, what's the play here?

That's a good question. I mean, we are using our precision-guided munitions, or we were for EPIC Fury at the cyclic rate. And the interceptors were getting used by all of our bases and partner countries. So it's not illegitimate to say we have to balance between providing Ukraine and, you know, the war we elected to start. So it is a, it's going to be a combination. And this is a good start, but to Mark's point, it's not going to happen immediately. But this is the defense production is a huge issue for the United States. It's not overstated. We don't have the capacity to keep up with a full-on war. One, we're seeing it right now.

I mean, Mick, that talks to like a larger point of like, what, where the fuck is all this money going that we can't keep our capacity? Our shipbuilding is trash, absolutely trash, especially compared to the Chinese. Um, but again, like the Patriots or the THAADs or any, you know, pick your poison, we can't get the radars made for the fucking F-35s too. It's like, how much money do we have to spend to get it there?

Yeah, there needs to, there needs to be an overhaul. I mean, that's what, uh, the Pentagon should be doing and both, both of the armed services committees. Like, what is one? Because it's a real issue. We can see it real time, whether you agree with war or not. You don't want to run out of munitions when you're fighting a mediocre military, right? One of them. Think about if it was China. China and Russia at the same time.

The same.

I mean, that's, that's not, you know, out of the question. That's literally what most of our national security strategy has been based on, that we have to fight two wars at the same time.

And a trillion bucks a year, it's like, and they're talking about $1.5 trillion. It's like, how about we do what we pass an audit and see where the trillion's going first before we say, yeah, here's another $500 billion, God knows where it's going to go. John, what do you think? I know you got something in your head that you're trying to get out.

Well, I'm thinking about back in the Marine Corps when they got rid of tanks, snipers, armored— certain armored carriers of troops, um, to reduce what we had but keep the budget the same so that they could purchase, like, offset purchase other stuff. And that was a very slow way of dealing with it, and we just mentioned Ukraine rapidly kind of innovating because they're at war with Russia versus the United States. And I think a big part of that is the US is not at war with anybody up here. They're at war with a mid-level regional actor right now, one that's decently capable in the region, but not up here. So there's no pressure on the defense industrial base to rapidly innovate and work efficiently with what they've got, you know, so that this trillion and a half dollars, what that is, is congressional interests for the places that they represent. You know, like for example, Huntington Ingalls Industries, which is the nation's largest aircraft carrier builder in Newport News. Whoever's representing Newport News has the— HII has their ear and is saying we need to build more of these ships, even if it's not our foreign policy interest to build more ships.

And I think if Andy was on here, he would talk about how he feels about aircraft carriers. But those companies are massive multi-billion dollar companies with huge interests in Newport News, Virginia, and other places. And they say, no, you need to keep building these ships. In fact, you need 5 more of them over "Next 10 years and we're going to make sure that you get great campaign contributions XYZ." That's why we see that dollar value going up, but the efficiency is not going up commensurately because it's not pressures externally that are forcing us to build more ships or less ships. It's domestic political interests that are pushing each individual representative and senator to ensure that those dollars go to their constituents, which is not necessarily in our foreign policy interest, but it is in their electoral interest. Divide between what makes sense for this item versus who's paying for it and who's buying it.

I gotta, I gotta hop, gents. I gotta—

thanks, bro.

Former PM meeting.

All right, um, yeah, let's just start to wrap up, I guess. Um, yeah, I mean, John, based on what you just said, that's not exactly fucking, uh, confidence-inducing, to be honest with you. Um, Andy— and to give Andy credit about his hatred of aircraft carriers, he does mention how like the defense industrial base is like slow to innovate And the procurement process is like, you know, completely antiquated and a nightmare. Um, but it's like, we're spending real fucking money here. Like, we should get some ROI on this spend, especially like if we're not getting any other nice things that other countries get no problem. Um, healthcare being one. Um, and frankly, the fact that the Pentagon can't pass a fucking audit besides the Marine Corps— shout out to the Marine Corps— is ridiculous, is beyond ridiculous that they can't fucking track where the money is.

So yeah, one thing we're saying, the military budget is going to pass Congress.

That's fucking ridiculous.

That's Democrats and Republicans. It's a massive amount of money. American economy is hurting. And but, you know, and so, so we're definitely in a pickle here. Because if you know that we definitely need a massive infusion of stuff and it's gonna cost money. All the inefficiencies you talked about are true, but politically I don't think anyone's gonna, that, that budget can pass. So we're in, we're in some kind of a national security headache on this.

Yeah. Politically though, they can't do the right thing. John, what were you gonna say? Sorry, you mentioned something.

Yeah.

I was gonna say we have a, a saying in the military about budget dust. So like you talk about like $100 million, you're like, oh wow, that's a lot of money. We would call that budget dust. In other words, it's like the residue of the budget left behind. And you're like, well, what do we do with this $100 mil? I mean, it's just kind of hanging around at our, at our tier of decision-making. Let's just go start this program or that program. And you see a lot of this budget dust, and that's why we can't pass an audit because budget dust isn't budget dust. It's money that's not being spent properly or allocated properly, or like hanging around somewhere in the system and not being spent the way it was supposed to under the NDAA. So you just have this money carried forward, lost, misplaced, hanging around, and everybody in the military and also the rest of the executive knows at the end of the fiscal year, everyone's like, hey, we've got a bunch of money sitting around. Let's go to classes. Let's go to training. Let's go buy 'cause we have just, if we don't spend it, we won't get it next year.

And 'cause, and it's just this like constant slow momentum or inertia of rapidly increasing every year on year of budget dust collecting rather than thinking carefully about how it should be spent before we even ask for it.

Yeah. What's interesting to me is like, all right, you have a surplus, you're gonna go do this extra class or this other thing or whatever. Get your fucking receipts, brother. Get the receipts. Like, why is this difficult? Anyway, all right. I'm leaving this miserable as always. I'm seriously considering stopping to do this. It's always miserable. We need good news, or at least like old men getting tossed around by moose.

Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. The Red Sox are kicking ass.

Yeah, that's what I want to have a game at the playoff spot.

They are the best team in baseball. You know, the Yankees suck right now. So there's some great news out there.

I love when the Red Sox give Mark hope because inevitably he will be let down. I know that.

So it's July next Friday.

All right. Do us a favor, like and subscribe. Obviously, check out Mick's links, Whitefish Security Summit. That link is in the description. Mark P, his links are down in the description. Of course, Jonathan Hackett, Iran's Shadow Weapons and The Theory of a Regular War, his books, those— all those links are in the description. And support the show, patreon.com/theteamhouse. You get ad-free episodes early and, uh, you help support the show. Guys, a pleasure. It's a pleasure as always. I do come out of here feeling distressed, but it's always good to see you guys.

Take care, everyone.

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