Transcript of Defense Alliance: Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan &... Iran?! | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS New

Hey everybody, welcome to a new episode of Eyes on Geopolitics. I'm joined today by Andy Milburn, Mick Mulroy, Jonathan Hackett, and I'm Demetri Kontakos. Happy Sunday to everybody. A lot going on as usual. It never ends. We never have like just some feel-good stories about like, I don't know, I don't know, soldiers coming home to like happiness and not being stuck on an aircraft carrier for 270 days. Also, a little bit of a funny, uh, we clipped when your story, Jonathan, about, uh, going to visit the aircraft carrier with the Crown Prince of Jordan and the ambassador to Jordan, and a lot of Navy folks got very, very upset about it in our comments and stuff like that. And I just like to say, I don't give a shit. Like, it's the true story, right? Yeah, John. So it's, it is what it is. The Navy traditions seem to be extremely antiquated. And could use a bit of a refresh.

It's also interesting who are the Navy people that complain, and it's the officers because they see what they could lose, what they stand to lose if things were equalized like the Marine Corps, where officers are suffering just like the enlisted, sometimes suffering a lot more than the enlisted. And in the Navy side, that is not how it's designed to work. Maybe it does work that way, but that's not how it's designed to work.

I think we are a Marine Corps propaganda podcast. I think that's official. Forget the CIA propaganda and everything else. or the Atlantic Council stuff. No, it's Marine Corps propaganda. Alright, so a lot happening. Iran's cooking. The thing that popped to the surface for me specifically was yesterday Barack Ravi reported that 40 tankers rode through the Strait of Hormuz, 16-some-odd million barrels of oil, and then that was quickly debunked by satellite data and other news organizations. And as far as— I get Barack Ravi, he's got he's got to keep his sources and stuff like that, but I feel like he could be a little bit more of a reporter and a journalist rather than a stenographer. Um, and it really does seem like, you know, it's an info war between both sides, and the US media seems to be just as complicit in it as the Iranian media. And it's really tough to get like accurate information. You always have to question everything and things like that. That was the thing that really popped out to me. It's like it's like that meme of the general, like everything's fine and everything in the background is rubble, you know what I mean?

Like, that's what it feels like, frankly. Like from the US side, we're still in the same kind of holding pattern. So like, I want to ask you guys, like, what are you guys like tracking exactly? Mick, hit us off. Start us off.

So, I mean, the way I understand Kepler, for example, that tracks ships, yeah, they, they probably are turning their transponders off during going through the strait, but they're going to turn back on. So it seems like, uh, I mean, you don't have to be a maritime specialist to figure out, well, if that ship was there, then it, then it was way over here. So they can just count them.

Yeah.

So I don't, I don't understand how that made— because we— 20 is the magic number, right? 16 is almost there. So if that was the case, like, we wouldn't have the energy crisis that we I mean, we have somewhat of a depreciation, but we wouldn't have the crisis. So I wish it was the case. I'm sure some ships are getting through this other route. That's why Iran was pushing Oman to get an agreement, because going through this other route is not in Iran's interest. But if it was at anywhere near that level, then why would we still be in this? So I just think, I think the, I think the tracking systems that you already referenced, the is the only thing you can really go on because they're, they're not biased. They're not trying to promote one side of this, the other, that I can tell. It's simply tracking ships. And again, once you get through the Strait, out in the Gulf of Oman and beyond, why wouldn't you turn your— turn your tracking system back on? And then you could see where— how many ships actually got through. So I don't know why media— I mean, it's kind of a simplistic concept.

I know media isn't just highlighting that. So, uh, and on a broader picture, I would say, you know, and something I've been promoting for those that, you know, keep track of that, is if we're not going to do the military escalation, which doesn't seem like it would be effective— I think that's what the intelligence community is saying— then the economic one is kind of the only alternative, unless we're just going to throw up our hands and go away. And I don't think we should do that. So It's— is it tomorrow at 2 AM— 2 PM Eastern? Secretary Bessett is going to announce all the new secondary sanctions. And from anything I'm hearing, it's going to include what they call the teapot refineries in China. That's going to be the primary ones. It's not the government, but it's close. And it probably will piss China off. And it's going to be all of the mechanism that goes into the shadow fleet. So the ports, the ships, the insurances of the ships, the captains, the crews, the financial institute that transfers money. And it's going to really push on other countries, including Pakistan, to do everything they can to not allow the companies in their country to facilitate the trade of the energy so they can raise money.

So I think it will have an impact. Right now, Huge economic pressure on the regime. They've even admitted that they're not really exporting oil anymore, and they get about 55% of the revenue from that. I think inflation writ large is around 66%, and food inflation is around 120%, 130%. So they're going to get a really pissed-off population. They don't have guns, so they can't do much, but it's also going to put a lot of economic pressure on the regime. So if this is the way we're going and it's already been announced, we'll have to see how effective it is. But to not just to be the person that sits back and pokes holes in every plan, this is a plan and we'll see if it works. So, you know, I'm hoping it does.

Reginald?

Yeah, I was just actually, I was hoping you'd pick on John because he always has so much more intelligence than I do about sanctions.

I just missed the sound of your voice.

But I was reading up actually yesterday because I had to talk on TV here about sanctions and how to do it better. And so I learned not at John Hackett's fault, but a good deal about Teapot Refineries and what they've been doing in Shandong Province, right, with Iranian crude. And the US, just I think probably because I didn't know this in a wider audience, I mean, the US started naming these refineries directly. First of all, these are very focused sanctions, right? So I think hopefully what we're seeing, I say hopefully from the perspective of US effort here, we're seeing more focused sanctions and hopefully too we're seeing rolling sanctions, right? Rather than being released in tranches, Iran gets a chance to adapt, the US releases another tranche. You know, hopefully at this time OFAC and Treasury, as names pop up, they're targeting these names right away. So, but But here's a question for John. You know, I mean, the announcement is that these are the harshest sanctions ever and that they're the most focused. But I'm wondering why China's Commerce Ministry hasn't even— I'm sorry, I'm wondering why China has issued a formal prohibition order against US sanctions.

I mean, that's unprecedented, right? It's a— by doing that, I mean, it's kind of a legal nullification of US sanctions on Chinese soil. It's not just a diplomatic objection. And if it's backed by real leverage, which it is, I mean, China buys more than 80% of Iran's total oil exports. So, you know, Beijing has far more ability to simply shrug off these individual refinery designations, right? I mean, why— how— I guess this is a ham-fisted way of saying, how can we make these sanctions bite if China just chooses to ignore them?

Well, the thing is, sanctions alone can never solve a problem. So if that's all we're leaning on, we can just probably expect them not to be effective for the reasons we've already mentioned and for other reasons too. For example, China is a major world power. China in some ways is probably expecting the US to blink. They're saying, "We're going to not only internationally interfere with these sanctions processes by ignoring them, we're also going to direct our state-owned industries and state-controlled or linked industries like the Teapot Refineries. We're going to instruct them not to follow these domestically too, and we're going to see how the US reacts to that." Can the US actually handle that? Because the US is getting most of their stuff from China. So if, if China says, well, what are you going to do about it? And the US says, well, I guess we'll kind of back off a little bit or we'll carve out this or we'll carve out that. China's winning there. And I think China is trying to see, are they at a point now economically where they can do that? And I think the answer might be yes, because especially if you look at— you mentioned 80% of Iran's oil exports going to China.

That does not correlate to China's imports of oil. Totally. China gets less than 50% of their oil from Iran. And in the last 3 years, China has been dramatically increasing non-oil things, non-oil sources. For example, coal, solar. They have a huge northwestern China coal, uh, refinery operation going on where they're actually converting coal to crude oil. They're converting it to gasoline. They're converting it to other precursor products used for manufacturing. So they're finding a way to get domestic independence from foreign energy sources generally. Iran, of course, is a big component of that, but that's from all foreign, including Russian. They energy sources, not just energy too, but also manufacturing. Because remember, crude oil precursors are things that we use to manufacture plastics and other objects that people purchase. And a lot of those are sold in the United States through Amazon to consumers in America purchasing that stuff from China. So that whole supply chain or logistics system is, is changing dramatically in a way that I think most Americans don't understand. They just look at the Iran war as oil sales to China, and it's a lot more about Chinese energy independence. After the war with Iran, that it's going to be a much bigger problem to us as a nation than the Iran war is right now.

And it's especially true because you look at these sanctions, how they're designed. If anyone listening, I encourage you to go to OFAC's website and look up a sanction, see how it's written. What does it look like? It names the name of a company. Let's say if it's about a company, it will say, you know, Iran Sunshine Lines, which is a ship. And it will have the name of the ship, it will have where it's ported at, it'll have what it's accused of carrying, from where to where, who owns it by name. So Iran knows how to do this. They just look at that sanction, they say, okay, here boys, here's a bucket of paint, go repaint the side of the vessel, call it the Sunshine 2, and we're going to port it in this other port right next to the one it was at, and we're going to take the boxes of oil that were on there, the crates that were around there that said rice, and we're going to change it to sorghum, and now we're transmitting sorghum illegally, which is oil, and we're going to use that, and we're going to make new false bills of lading, and we're going to make new documents that are also false, just like the previous false ones.

And the thing is, they'll get caught, but they'll get caught so slowly that it won't even matter because the whole process will continue. That is one issue. But I encourage people to read that and understand, like, why are these sanctions so easily escaped? And it's because the way our sanctions are designed, they're designed for good actors, basically, for good people to see and say, okay, I won't do that trade because that's not allowed. But it's like having guns illegal and saying, well, the criminals won't have guns now because it's illegal. It's like, no, they're still gonna use the thing they wanna use to get the thing accomplished they want to accomplish. They're gonna find a way to do it, and they're gonna do it in a way that's faster and smarter than the way that we're doing it. And that's why I go back to the original statement I made about sanctions alone. They're not effective alone. They have to have some other instrument of national power behind them. Diplomacy is a great add-on to the economics. If you can have an economic diplomatic combined effort, the chances of a positive outcome dramatically increase, not just in a correlative way, but they actually have like a synergistic improvement at the end because of how diplomacy and economics work together.

And unfortunately, our diplomatic instrument seems to be a bit weaker than it needs to be.

Sorry.

So in both ways, right? I mean, if you look at it, we're going, we're trying to go after supply and demand. I mean, on the demand side, the refineries, they're the ones, you know, the Chinese buying the oil, um, by these teapot refineries. But then it has to be pushed to them, and that's what the shadow fleet does. And sanctions have, you know, I don't see how sanctions now can suddenly be effective against the shadow fleet, to your point, I guess. I mean, obviously I'm agreeing with you, but I mean, I was reading something like 2,500, 2,500 to 3,000 vessels involved in the shadow fleet, right? Um, and that's billions of barrels every year. I forget what percentage that is of, I mean, it's a, it's a significant percentage. I mean, it's less than 10%, but still significant percentage of the whole, of the global crude flows, right? I mean, it's a massive problem. And the Russians, you know, we talk about the Chinese, right, with the teapot refineries, and the Russians are the ones most heavily involved, correct me if I'm wrong, in the shadow fleet. I mean, they're, and Russian Shadow Fleet shipments actually rose.

I mean, they've risen obviously because of the Ukraine war, but they haven't been curtailed at all, right? Because of sanctions and to Mick's point, basically, I mean, they find ways around them. They turn their transponders off. And until we're willing to actually, I mean, until we can identify and strike enough of these vessels to to provide a disincentive is just going to continue. I mean, the sanctions are nothing, right?

So, but I guess the other question on this is, according to the Iranians, they're not exporting oil. So obviously that's, I mean, I guess we can trust them, right? They seem to be a pretty good source. So if that is the case, or very little, thank you, Then it's the naval blockade. So there's, there's something that's going on that's causing them. And then now they're talking about shifting from defense to offense and actually attacking us, which tells me something's going on economically there. You see what I mean? Like, they're, they're feeling some strain. They're saying it, they're saying why, and now they're talking about, you know, attacking the infrastructure, our allies in the region, all that stuff. So something seems to be working. Maybe I'm being positive today. So if that's the case, maybe we need to double down on what we're doing.

If I can jump in there too, you know, the inflationary problem domestically in Iran is huge and it has been since 2018 when the US withdrew from JCPOA and we reinstated all the sanctions and then the SWIFT banking system was disconnected for Iran. That's kind of the, the phase line that we are in now. Like we crossed that phase line. We've been in that space since then, 2018. And for example, the, the toman, which is their kind of like a dollar in Iran, was 35,000 to a dollar in 2018, and now it's 190,000 to a dollar. That's 5 times increase. So imagine as an American, if you're going to get gas, it's $5 a gallon today, tomorrow it's $25 a gallon. That would be rough. What if all of your prices were 5x in 5 years or 7 years? Right? So that's an important kind of pressure point that The sanctions are contributing to inflation, but the reason the inflation is actually so dramatic, it's because of the monetary policy inside of Iran. The Central Bank of Iran is, is, I mean, it's the epitome of a non-independent central bank. And like, if you look at studies of how central banks work generally, like theoretically, this is the example of the most like deeply controlled central bank outcome where the government directly controls the printing press for dollars and it just hits print.

That's the reaction to everything is print more, print more. And that is what's driving up the inflation to the degree that it's up. There of course are inflationary pressures of sanctions, that's true, but it's this corrupt cronyism inside the central bank, which is directly in the pocket of the Supreme Leader and his cabal around him. These guys are just printing cash and it's causing the everyday Iranians, which is around 90 million people that don't want anything to do with the regime, They're the ones that have to go pay $25 a gallon tomorrow for gas that was $5 a gallon today. And the regime isn't paying that because all their money is in sovereign wealth outside the country. It's in banks, it's in real estate, it's in London, it's in Paris, it's in Canada, and it's even in the United States. And of course it's in South Korea and the list goes on. It's in countries that they can get to, the elites can get to, that the regular Iranians cannot access. So that's another point about these sanctions that they do have an effect, but on whom? And if— look back to Prohibition, which I believe was the 18th Amendment.

After Prohibition of alcohol in America—

Yes. It was trying to keep the Irish out of America, actually.

Well, then, I mean, it dramatically increased organized crime. It created these shadow economies. It created these shadow pathways of moving goods that still were in demand. The demand did not get removed. And so the supply changed the way that it reached the demand, and it did it in an illegal way. Right? And that's exactly what these sanctions are doing. Without some other tool, which came later in the 1930s or late 1920s, when law enforcement got involved with actually like being the stick to go out and stop people from doing this stuff, and then also changing the legal mechanisms that dealt with the illegal activity, then we had a change in pro— how Prohibition was affecting Americans. But I just bring that example up because that's kind of like what these sanctions are doing. If they don't have something else bolted on to change behavior in the way that we want it to go. Because like you said, Mick, there's something going on there. But we don't really control what's going on. We don't have— we don't have the steering wheel. It's just kind of happening, whatever is happening, and we don't have a way to steer it in a direction that's helpful for us from a national security perspective, I don't think.

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I was going to sneeze. But no, I mean, Benny.

Bless you.

So going back to what you guys were saying, I was reading that my current amount, I don't know if this is accurate, that inflation rate in Iran is 350%, which sounds astonishingly high. Although we have said here, and John's very adeptly described how the regime can, for some, to some extent, isolated itself from the economic woes affecting the whole country. I mean, that, that is such hellacious inflation, and doubtlessly, you know, it's affecting them and, um, in some extent. Um, and we get back to, I suppose, you know, what can we do now? We talked about sanctions, we've talked about why they're ineffective. But John, from what you're saying, not all sanctions being ineffective, I mean, separating Iran from the SWIFT code, but more importantly, perhaps threatening or going ahead and separating or insulating anyone who deals with Iran, any financial institution that deals with Iran from the US, financial system has been relatively effective. Is that fair to say, or you— or is that—

yeah, the thing there is the secondary sanctions, and on the other side of it, something called know your customer, or know your customer's customer, which is a banking law concept. And the real kind of open sieve where a lot of this stuff has been escaping out of is in Europe, because let's say that you're an Iranian general, you send your son to Belgium You give him $100 million to invest in real estate. The son is not sanctioned. The son opens a bank account in Belgium, establishes some real estate, then sells that real estate in Belgium and gets domestic capital gains from that and gets domestic sales, and then goes and takes that cash to the UK and opens a business in the UK. It's hard for that Companies House in the UK, which is what holds the, the list of incorporated companies in the UK, to go look and see, okay, this guy is coming here from Belgium. He has legitimate money. He got it from real estate sales in Belgium. The end. So that's very tough the way these current systems are designed. So there's something called know your customers, customer, which is a secondary layer of checks that banks in the EU are starting to do.

And they're doing it better. If you just saw the UBS, which is a major bank in Europe, just got hit with hundreds of millions of dollars of fines because of money laundering problems that they were involved in because of these know your customer, customer checks. So now they're starting to like the regulatory entities inside of Europe are starting to say, wait a minute, you said you got it from Belgium. Well, where did you get it before Belgium? So this is starting to happen. It's happening a little slowly, obviously, but it's better than nothing. And it's finally—

and then what do they do if they find out it was from an IRGC general, like you said?

So they can close down the account, they can freeze the assets, they can force the individual out. There are criminal sanctions depending on what happened. They can also just refuse that person from using that bank account. Like if they're trying to open it, they can check and say, hey, you can't do that. Like there are a couple of banks in the United States that were doing that with cartel money recently that got fined very large fines. But of course, the bad actor's going to look for another way in, right? So it's, you're only just, you're kind of closing down things that are open now. Other things will open later, but it does help slow down the process and create some space, some breathing room for the regulatory agencies to say, okay, we've shut that down. Now let's be on the lookout for the next thing. By the way, what I described about the Belgium to London real estate to companies thing happened with the chief of Iran's, uh, Artesh, their military and cyber defense entity. His son just opened 22 businesses in London and has 22 businesses operating in London right now. The money from those businesses goes to the EU and then from the EU it goes to Iran.

This is happening currently. So I just, I use that as a real world example that this is happening. And if I know about it, it's not secret, right? So this stuff is out there. It's just a matter of— and there's so much flooded information out there. If you go on Companies House for London, for example, there are many— if you do some open source analysis or just some like brainpower on it, you can say like, that's weird that these 5 companies associated with a Bahraini militant group and a Hezbollah group and an Iranian entity are all with the same address. That's weird.

Right.

And it's on Companies House like this, but the amount of resources just are not there to go and look at that and say, that's weird, let's investigate it. Or perhaps the political will is also not there.

The political will outside the United States, right?

Yes.

I mean, for the US, it's easy enough to talk about this, but it's a massive task for OFAC and the Treasury Department to keep identifying these bad actors. Right. Well, I mean, so you're talking about 4 groups, right? You're talking, you're talking about ships and shipping companies, right? Tankers moving Iranian oil named, you know, naming them as another approach than blockades. You're talking about, I think you mentioned this, John, underground money changers, right? And I'm using the wrong term, but the currency exchanges that Iran uses. Instead of— that's right. Okay, say again. Hawaladars.

Hawaladars.

Hawaladars. Um, and then you're talking about, uh, regime insider money, which is, you know, the example that you just cited. Um, and then, and then shell companies, right? Um, Hong Kong, UAE, I imagine too. That are front businesses that kind of move money around.

Yeah.

If I could just give an example, Bank Melli, which is a state-owned— like in Iran's constitution is a bank created by the Iranian government. Bank Melli has a branch in London. And in the early 2000s when the EU was working with the United States to kind of work on Iranian illicit finance, they forced Bank Melli to close in London temporarily. Because it's an Iranian state-owned bank, right? It's fully sanctioned by the United States. Well, then Bank Melli said, okay, we'll just disincorporate and we'll reincorporate in Hong Kong as Bank Melli PLC, a Hong Kong-based bank, and we'll have a subsidiary of that bank as the London branch of Bank Melli. And that bank is now open today, and you can actually go and open a bank account there.

But isn't there now, like, new incentives for Europe to be cracking down on this, considering Iran is holding the global economy somewhat hostage.

There are, but it's like Andy mentioned with the— it's the political will problem where, like in the UK, for example, they're so focused on domestic political issues right now, especially with the prime minister turnover and defense minister issues and spending on defense. It's hard to just distribute all of your interest to every problem, as we know in the United States. And the Iran issue is not at the top of the list for a lot of these countries, especially on the continent, not the UK, but in the EU in particular. They're looking at Russia, for example, as a bigger issue.

Sure. I'd hope they could do at least two things when it comes to their national security. And this is economic, right? I mean, isn't Europe getting hit pretty hard with the increase in fuel prices? It's like one of the hardest.

And so, John, the problem being not that, and again, I mean, this is a question, right? So, for a fact, Treasury Department, you taught, used Bank Mali, right? Bank Mali PLC, new front company opens. Now, as soon as that's identified by the Treasury Department, there's nothing to stop them then going after that front company, right? But they need— but in order to make that bite, they do need some cooperation from the country in which it's set up. Is that true or not the case?

That's absolutely true. Yes.

So there's that problem. And then there's just the scale and pace, right? If Iran keeps doing this, and I was reading that Treasury Department put something like 800 new targets on the list last year alone, you know, which kind of gives you an idea of the pace at which this is happening, right? I mean, it's, that's what, 2.5 a day. And still not keeping pace. It just gives you an idea of how adept Iran is at playing this game.

It also raises the resource issue. If you say all these people are bad now, that means other countries, if they are actually interested in doing something about it, they have to somehow put assets against all of those individuals, all of those businesses. And look, and like now there has to be an Iran desk that's focusing on the deeper layers of this problem and putting resources against that. Well, what if you also have the GRU doing worse things in your country? Like, I use UK as an example because it's an interesting example of how domestic political will inside the UK is kind of resistant to doing things against Iran because they view it as a state sovereignty issue where they don't want to upset Iran. And this sounds crazy, but this was actually happening this spring in the UK during the debates about should they prescribe the IRGC. And a lot of resistance to it was no, they shouldn't, because what if Iran closes its embassy in London? This was a concern. They were concerned about losing that state-level connection. And that's just an interesting perspective because in the United States we have a very different view about this problem than what I just described.

But that also exists in Europe on the continent as well. In France and Germany, for example, there's, there's a real issue about, well, how much do we want to actually lose our relationship with this other state? Because they're seeing it from that international relations perspective of, you know, harming another state that actually they have relationships with. They have embassies with them. They have trade with them. You know, the UK does trade with Iran and, you know, Europe does trade with Iran. It's not like the US where you can't even get a carpet anymore. If you remember during the Clinton administration, there was the brief opening where you could, you could sell carpets and saffron, um, and then that shut down again. But it's very different in Europe, the view. And that's Europe. If you zoom out to Africa or to Asia, it's even more liberal toward interaction with Iran. So that's an important perspective, I think, too, to keep in mind when we're looking at, okay, we've got all these sanctions in the US, Why aren't these other states doing something about it? They have a very different perspective on the situation, even if they are being harmed by the war generally.

So maybe we could offer major increases in support for Ukraine, which I agree with anyway, right? To get Europe— I mean, right, that's their number one thing. And right now Iran's our number one thing. So we, which we should be doing anyway, but you know, we could offer major increase to support in Iran. Maybe doubling down or increasing our capacity in Europe, which I know we're kind of doing the opposite, but that's all things Europe wants to see. And we're going to need, you know, a little quid pro quo. We need you to crack down on all things Iran. Because it has to escalate, right? So we want to go down the economic. I mean, I don't think anybody thinks it's a guarantee, but what's the alternative?

Major escalation, walk away, And wasn't that with the Patriots? I think it was the Patriots where the US was going to teach Ukraine how to build their own.

Yeah.

The company that produces them didn't want to cuz Ukraine could make them cheaper and faster and that would be a bad look for a company in America.

Yeah.

It's like we already have this fucking, uh, you know, this, this tap of money coming in. Why are we gonna make it more efficient and quicker and better? That makes— that's terrible sense.

They should just reverse engineer it. You know what I mean? And just say, screw it then. Well, I mean, they're at war, right? They're getting killed every day. So, right. If a company's upset about it, then, well, you were offered a chance to do it. You didn't. I mean, they just double tapped it like a shopping center, right?

Yeah. They killed at least 16 people, probably a lot more.

Yeah. Like 23 kids got injured at least. Right.

So Ukraine's out of Patriot interceptors.

They're out. Yeah. And they offered to buy 5%. 5%. And so I think the world would be like, hey, company that makes, uh, makes these munitions, I think it's General Dynamics, help them or get out of the way. And if they reverse engineer it, make them themselves, then you're the one to blame.

Are there any European alternatives that are on the level of the Patriot? I know this might be too technical, but, um, I don't—

I mean, I, I don't know it's on the same level as the Patriot. Um, but there's, uh, there's the Norwegian— what's the Norwegian system? Nysan? Ballistic missile, counter-ballistic missile. It's supposed to be very effective, but I'm not sure. Yeah, I—

is it the Freya?

No, uh, I'm aware of the Freya too. No, um, and I'm sure someone's watching this knows exactly. The name of the system. I'd have to— I hate overtly Googling stuff.

Europe is trying to develop all the capabilities. NASAMS.

Okay. All right. What does it say?

Norway's flagship domestic system, the Norwegian Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System, built by Kongsberg Defense and Aerospace alongside Raytheon. Excels against aircraft, drones, cruise missiles, uh, but standard configurations lack active tactical ballistic missile interception capabilities.

So it doesn't replicate— yeah, that's, that's its gap. It's better at— I mean, it is better at short-range air defense and better against cruise missile defense. But so, in answer to your question, there probably isn't anything that replicates Patriot otherwise.

I mean, that's part of the issue, is that when we built these air defense systems like Patriot it was supposed to be an integrated air defense system where we provide one layer, one part of the gap. The other countries provide something else, kind of like Iron Dome, how it fits in with Patriots, for example, so that we contain, we have control over some aspect of the air defense that we don't relinquish to our partner. Similar to the S-400 with Russians. When Russians give the S-400, they have to have Russian operators on the S-400. They don't allow the partner to use the S-400. To keep some advantage over that air defense. But if we, the US, withdraw our support de facto from protecting Europe, now there's that gap because we're not providing the piece that we were supposed to, to contribute to that integrated air defense canopy.

So I'm looking it up right now. The equivalent European-made equivalent, uh, is both a French and Italian SAMP/T developed by Eurosam. That's the closest thing. And then Iris T by, from the Germans, but I don't know if they're just as good or what. I mean, it probably would make sense to integrate them. Alright, I want to see if you guys are done with this. I want to definitely talk about the defense agreement striked up by, by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey that's got people, namely Israel, in a tizzy. And there was some rumor over the over the last couple days about possibly an invitation being sent to Iran. Um, let's start with the overall agreement, um, and then we'll hit up the rumors about Iran being in there because John had some great, uh, takes on that. Um, what do you guys think? Mick, you can go.

Yeah, so you, you set it up right. These— so the Turkey, uh, Pakistan, Saudi kind of alliance. And there already was an alliance between Saudi and Pakistan, just so everybody's tracking. Um, it's got a lot of people wondering, okay, is this because the US is now looked at as a less safe security partner? And by the way, we are leaving a lot of the bases that we were at, and there's a lot of discussion— don't know if it's true— that we are not going to go back and we're not going to actually repair because these were considerably damaged. Don't know if that's true, but you can see from the Gulf countries' perspective, you know, they thought one of the biggest security they had was the presence of U.S. military. Some of them might now think that just made us a target, right? That's probably at least in part accurate. So people believe that this, uh, this agreement, defense agreement, which is supposed to be like a NATO scenario. And as we all know, Article 5 is the one part of NATO that we all talk about where we can all come to the defense of any that's attacked.

Not when you decide to attack, just so you know. Let's keep asking NATO to join a war you started is not how the alliance is set up. But, um, so this alone could have significance, right? Because Saudi has been a target of the Houthis and of Iran directly. So I guess from the Saudi perspective, this kicks back off. What is Pakistan and Turkey going to do if Saudis attacked? That could be a positive thing, I guess, if you look at it that way for the US, because then we'd have more countries involved in fighting Iran. And although we don't need it for capacity, politically, that'd be helpful. Don't know if that's the case, but that's one part. And then as you referenced, the It was Al-Mayadeen's story that an Iranian official said that the, the Pakistan chief of staff who is going to go to Tehran is going to talk about the potential for Iran either joining it or being like some part of it, which seems really bizarre to me. I'm an American, obviously, so just— but it's like, so the country that we're at war with might join in a security pact with one of our NATO allies?

Because we all know that the US might start the war. We're at war, but we might go back to the escalation, right? So what does that mean? Are we going to be fighting? So I think we don't want to get too worked up about it because it's just one report that then got repeated by other, like the Jerusalem Post and other outlets. But it's unclear whether it's even accurate or this one Iranian official is just trying to, you know, poke the bear and get us all started. Now we're talking about in our podcast. So, um, probably worth discussing because it is an alliance. I don't know the truth of the Iranian part, but if there's any truth to it, I mean, hopefully our diplomats are kind of going, what the hell's going on here?

I mean, I would highlight— oh, go ahead, Andy.

No, I would just say, I would say it just seems very unlikely to be true, right? Because, you know, how would Iranian membership function? Surely, I mean, it would require Tehran to scale back its regional proxy network, right?

Which is amazing. They're the biggest threat in the region.

There's a whole point in that. And commit to a peaceful dispute resolution, which is a tall order while the broader war is still active. And Iran's own proxies, the Houthis in particular, are engaged in open conflict with the Saudis and part of what triggered the pact in the first place, right? So it just seems very Very unlikely. I mean, Pakistan's the member most plausibly open to bridging that gap, given its mediating part in the Islamabad talks, its relatively good relationship with Iran. But that's very different from the alliance as a whole choosing to bring Iran in. And I just can't see it from a Saudi perspective at all.

Even if Pakistan didn't, they'd become a partisan, right? How can they serve as mediator when they've essentially, if the agreement is what we think it is, I will come to your defense if attacked, well, the US is likely to attack them. So, I mean, I'm just gonna throw that out there. So how could you be a negotiator? You're basically just part of the team, which would be, so maybe we're talking more about it than we need to, 'cause it's again, one report, it's probably, Yeah, well, John, uh, give us your, your whole theory that you gave us in our group chat because I thought it was very interesting.

Yeah, so the Jerusalem Post has basically said this in English. Al-Mayadeen has also said it in English, and K24, which is a Kurdish news media that's read by Kurds in Kurdistan, not by Americans in the West, so this is like a very localized, targeted audience, has also said it verbatim in Kurdish. And in Iranian media in Farsi, there is a Farsi, uh, entity that I was reading today said the same thing. Very interesting to see these four different entities saying the same thing, like especially the Jerusalem Post and the Iranian Farsi media saying the same thing, right? So to me, this sound feels more like an information operation from somebody, and I don't know who, because that's how that's how covert information operations work, is you don't know who the sponsor of the information is. But it feels more like that than an actual statement from an official government source saying that this is happening, because typically you would not get such a, a coordinated narrative across all of these media entities, which are typically opposed to each other, or at least not aligned with each other. Al-Mayadeen, I should highlight, is a Hezbollah-linked, Iran-linked media entity that's based in Beirut, right?

K24 is in Kurdistan. Iraqi Kurdistan, which is typically pro-Kurd, which the Kurds don't have a lot to win from a Turkey alliance with Iran. Right. They have something to lose. So there's some, there's a lot of interesting information in this, I think, that is separate from the actual words on the page. So that's, that's kind of what jumped out to me is that this seems like maybe a coordinated effort somehow to achieve some objective that may not be obvious right away if you're only reading one of those entities. You know, if you're reading the Jerusalem Post one only, because most Americans probably that's the one they'll see, they may draw some conclusion from that because of the source of it without looking at the other sources also that are saying the same thing in different languages, Kurdish and Farsi being two important ones. And it's true that Munir is visiting Iran tomorrow and he's bringing an official defense delegation with him.

Who's Munir?

Munir is the— he's the CHOD, the chief of defense for the Pakistanis.

Like, I'm just—

so the, basically like if you were at the defense attaché office, your point of contact would be Munir. If you were at the US embassy in Islamabad, that's who the defense attaché is meeting with all the time. So the defense attaché for Iran is bringing Munir to Tehran to go meet with the minister of defense, who's a one-star in Iran, which is actually a lower rank than the Quds Force commander. So that's important to highlight. He's going to go meet with that guy and talk to him about things. So that's just kind of important to think about how is this working diplomatically. Well, what Iran likes to do, the regime likes to do, is create these diplomatic fait accompli where they say something and then force it to happen. So it's possible they could be saying this to try to force something to occur on the multilateral agreement section here. It's like we might be just seeing some maneuvering that's supposed to be happening between these, these entities, especially Pakistan and Iran, because Pakistan is a very important partner for Iran. Turkey is also a very important partner for Iran. Saudi Arabia has had issues with Iran, but there have been moments of détente where both Riyadh and Tehran have been trying to reduce tensions with each other.

So there may be some side agreements or other agreements going on that we're just not privy to, that this may be a piece of that to force something behind the scenes on their own diplomatic, you know, channels going on there. And I will highlight that the border between Turkey and Iran is the oldest extant border in the Middle East. It was established in the 17th century. If you know about the Sykes-Picot Agreement and about other, you know, Europe-based chopping up of the Middle East, that is the only border that was pre-Sykes-Picot and that has actually survived to this day. And that's kind of important to point out because that means there's some level of stability between Turkey and Iran that both countries probably want to continue even after the war is over. That's a very old border. It's very unusual for borders to last that long, even in Europe. Or perhaps especially in Europe, borders don't last. So that means that there's some interest in Turkey and some interest in Iran, some interest in Pakistan, which also has a very old border with Iran, to remain friendly with each other, even if it's secret. So this shouldn't be as surprising that Iran is trying to muscle its way into this agreement, or that Saudi Arabia may even allow it, because perhaps from Riyadh's view, keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Maybe it's better— I mean, they share a lot, very long maritime border with Iran. It might be helpful to have, uh, some closeness to them, to be able to have channels open so that if something happens in Yemen, it's easier for Riyadh and Tehran to de-escalate because they have an open channel of communication. So there may be some state-level thought going into this that's beyond the war. Of course, the war is in their face right now, but there's always the day after, the year after, the decade after. What do we do then? And I'm sure these states are thinking about that, about what do we do to set things up so when the US leaves, which it will, What do we do? And Israel is another problem too for Turkey. I just want to point that out because this weekend, this weekend Israel struck targets in Syria, which was seen as a direct affront to Turkey. Right. And Turkey has always had designs on Syria. That's why we have someone leading Syria that's a Turkish-aligned individual, to put it softly. Right. So that's, that's what's going on there. And actually, I have a— my coffee mug today is the Achaemenid Empire of Iran.

And if you can see, it stretches from Pakistan in the east all the way to Libya in the west, or yeah, in the west. And the Ottomans also, the Turkish people, believe that they have the same claim to the land as Iran did. And Israel has an overlapping claim to a larger place of land as well that also includes Syria. So there's some very deep, deep historical interests in Syria in particular that Saudi Arabia also has, Mecca has as well. I mean, it's called the Mecca Agreement, this security agreement, right? So that's, that links back to the Ottoman period and this concept of a greater regional control, whether that's Iranian control, Saudi control, Turkish or Israeli control that are overlapping, that go far beyond the current US-Israel-Iran conflict. And that will not disappear when the conflict is over.

Yeah, I got to ask a lot about the Israeli strikes to try to keep the Turkish troops out of that airbase up in the northeast, east.

Yeah, I mean, it is clear. First of all, I think it's clear that this kind of shuts down any reasonable prospects for the Abraham Accords to be expanded to Saudi Arabia anytime soon. And, you know, to John's point, I mean, or each of those three countries, I mean, it's not, it's been, I think it's not, it's not rational to compare this to NATO or any other defense agreement. It's more, it's not a defense agreement in the strict sense each country is agreeing to defend the other. I mean, you know, when previously when it was just bilateral, Saudi Arabia was under attack, Pakistan didn't offer military, you know, didn't come to Saudi Arabia's aid militarily, but did provide advisors, did offer material support. And I think that's, you know, each country has its own rationale for being in this, as John pointed out. John, what's the phrase being used for Turkey now? Erdoğan's drive for, it's like Asia, Asia anew or something, projecting—

Oh, I haven't heard it.

Turkish influence, as you said, across the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, and South Asia beyond its traditional borders, which is something that Turkey's, you know, this alliance in a sense, this pact is a hedge against Turkey being overly boxed in by its NATO-Western relationships. Turkey's never wanted to feel bound by those relationships. And then as you point out, the increasing friction with Israel over Syria, East Mediterranean, and then Israel in turn building ties with Greece and Cyprus. You know, not too traditional friends of, uh, of, uh, yeah, I mean, of Turkey, Erdoğan. Um, so it gives Ankara kind of a broader coalition. And then, and then for Pakistan, clearly economic, right? I mean, this, uh, it gives— Pakistan's economy basically runs on external assistance and bailout programs. Um, and so this pact gives financial support, energy supplies, investment from Saudi Arabia, defense technology training, um, from, from Turkey. And I suppose, you know, a deeper look, also a kind of a strategic hedge, a strategic partner partnership, a network of strategic partnerships that Pakistan doesn't get anywhere else as a hedge against India. You know, now with Afghanistan to the west. But, you know, India is always going to be foremost in Pakistan's mind.

And then, I mean, for Saudi Arabia facing threats now on two fronts, I mean, Hormuz and then from the Houthis, this gives— the Pakistanis provide a lot of advisors here. You know, I think that's— I mean, that's open source, right? Huge number of Pakistani advisors in country. Manpower, military experience. In that sense, there are Pakistani instructors in Saudi schools. Turkey provides advanced technology, especially drone capability, which the Saudis are keen to expand. So, I mean, there's, there's clear— there's a clear rationale for each one of these countries. They can get something from this pact that they can't get from any type of partnership with the United States. But I don't— I wouldn't— I just don't see where Iran would fit into that.

Maybe Turkey shouldn't have sided with the Germans in World War I. They'd still be the Ottomans, right?

They're not gonna bring the sick old man of Europe. But the Ottoman Empire was crumbling then, right?

Yeah. That just led to it to down.

But Atatürk, victor of Gallipoli, right? I mean, he brought Turkey into the 20th century. He shook off all the kind of the rotten debris of the Ottoman Empire and gave, I mean, I know Atatürk, I mean, he's a very controversial figure in Turkey now, but for a long time he was regarded, Atatürk, father of the Turks, right? I mean, he's a national hero. Pictures everywhere. Interestingly, he banned the veil. You know, this was 100 years ago in this effort to bring Turkey and make it more Western, professionalized military, implemented reforms across Turkish society. You know, I'm not saying he was a great human being. He was also peripherally involved in the Armenian massacre. But he was a Turkish hero. And it's interesting that Erdoğan doesn't even mention Atatürk. In fact, it seems to be kind of a recidivist view of Atatürkism and a return to the glory days of the Ottoman Empire is what Erdoğan is focusing on.

Well, even the party that he leads, they are a more Islamist party. They are not a secular party like Atatürk had championed previous to Erdoğan's ascendance. And it's important to notice too that Atatürk, when he came up, was also coming up with Reza Shah, who also had changed the old Qajar dynasty, the monarchy in Iran, at the same time in the 1920s. Both of these leaders were friends. And actually, the Shah in Iran, Reza Shah, copied a lot of the reforms that Atatürk brought in to Turkey. And that's why the veil was removed in Iran as well, because they saw what was going on in Turkey and how that was actually helping society to remove Islamism from the government and make it a secular government. Still let religion happen but not be part of the government. And you see a lot of the backlash to— in Iran is very similar to the backlash in Turkey, but Turkey's is happening in a way that's more friendly to the West, or it's harder for us to see it every day. They're not forcing the veil, but the veil is coming back. If you go visit Turkey, it looks different than it did 20 years ago, very different.

And, and not just from Turks, also there are a lot of Syrians that stayed in Turkey, that the refugees that went on to Europe, the ones that stayed in Turkey are far more Islamist than the ones that were there 20 years ago. And it's a very interesting thing to see change. And it has a lot to do with Turkish identity. I remember about 6 years ago when Russia gave the S-400s to Turkey, this was a Turkish move to be independent of NATO, to say, we can do it, it's our sovereignty, even though the US has very important weapons in Turkey that, you know, are challenged by these S-400s. And Turkey was kicked out of the F-35 logistics stream because of that S-400 acquisition. But to them, they saw it as more important to them to be to say what weapon systems they get to have than to stay with the F-35. And it was a thing about sovereignty. And that's still what's going on now with this agreement. It's about their sovereignty as they see it.

Yeah, so it's going to be interesting. Uh, boys, John, you wanted to talk about Russia, right? You wanted to like—

well, I'm not an expert on it, so I just, I thought it might be interesting to hear others talk about it.

Yeah, I know. We know you're not an expert on it, but you do know a lot about it. Stop it.

I have to go soon, just so you guys know.

Okay, Mick, yeah, whenever you got to go, just run on. So it's all good.

Well, maybe Andy, you can talk about a little bit why Western Europe might be concerned now more about Russia than they were, let's say, last year or the year before.

Um, yeah, I, I, I don't know what particular angle you guys are talking about, but I did listen to a really interesting interview with the Estonian defense minister the other day that was arguing, uh, he was arguing that Western Europe was more at threat now, or, or with the prospect of the war coming to an end, um, between Ukraine and Russia, uh, because his point was, number one, regardless of the outcome, Putin will survive. He was very confident in that. Number two is that Russia needs to do something with the estimated million, I think it's a million and a half Russian veterans of the Ukraine war, many of whom were released from prisons. Um, you're probably reading in the, in the media about a lot of problems that, that is causing social fabric, Russian society. These, these criminals now heroes of the Ukraine war returning and, and, uh, having almost license to do horrendous things within Russia itself. Uh, anyway, the Estonian foreign minister claims, I think credibly, that there's a plan to unleash this, this army of veterans on Western Europe, um, and, and not even waiting until the end of the war, but to push them across the border.

That was number one. Number two was his point that Putin, of course, it seems like a very obvious point, like most people in his position needs an external threat to focus on. The Ukraine war has provided him with that. But he has always couched this as a war against NATO, a war against the West with portraying Ukraine as a proxy of the West. And so the actions that Russia has been taking against the West throughout the war— sabotage, assassinations, all of these things— and indeed preceding the war are all part of that continued war. And that Putin is ready to amp this up to the next phase. There's nothing to stop him from doing that.

Yeah, and I was thinking about cyber as well because there's the kinetic aspect of ground forces and so on, but I was actually asked this by a journalist us, you know, what do you think that cyber activity will increase against these targets? And my thought is that they already are. They're already there. They've been long embedded. They've been long developed. There have been operations that have been set up for years in advance that the Russian intelligence entities will use and activate throughout this conflict more than they are now.

Yeah. I mean, the, what was the case in Estonia, the Bronze Soldier? The case where the, when the Estonians moved a statue of the Russian soldiers of World War II memorial, forget all the details behind it, but basically Russia shut Estonia down. This was about 20 years ago and since then has just been obviously building their cyber capability and it's not afraid to use it. Especially against financial institutions. You know, that's, there's kind of a, this kind of brings us back to the comment that we, you know, when we're talking about sanctions against Iranian financial institutions or their financial network, right? One thing that is not being publicized, we publicize what the United States has done in the cyber realm militarily, I think to a surprising degree. You know, I've seen open source reports about what was done to go after Iranian command and control networks, air defense systems using cyber tools. Nothing about going after financial networks, although there is clearly an Israeli group called Predatory Sparrow that has done that, right? Has gone after all of these nodes. In the Iranian financial network that we've talked about. The Israelis have started to go after that.

And the Russians are clearly positioned to do that. I mean, I can see them causing very severe infrastructure damage throughout Europe and also financial damage using cyber tools. And there's nothing to stop them because the beauty of cyber, right, is, you know, it's plausible deniability. And even, you know, even if it could be traced back to Russia, even if everyone knew that it was, that these were coming from Russia, I think there's a limited, there isn't a concerted will within Europe to deter Russia. I think that's fair to say, right? And so even if these cyber attacks could be pinned on Russia, it's hard it's hard to arrive at the conclusion that NATO, or the European Union, or European countries go after Russia to the same extent, to the extent that it would truly be a deterrence, or even have the ability to do so.

Yeah, and I think when people think of cyber attacks, they're thinking of their computer getting shut off or the electrical grid going down, but it's so much deeper than that that Russia can do to really physically harm Europeans. That could be derailing trains, that could be making dams explode. That can be, you know, infecting supervisory control and data acquisition, which are SCADA systems, which are these kind of closed network systems that, like, when we say infrastructure, it's literally everything. I mean, France gets 25% of its energy from nuclear power plants. Those are wired systems that can be exploited and destroyed or used as weapons against the people in Europe. And this is the kind of cyber activity I think people need to understand more about how, why is it a threat? And we haven't seen Russia do that yet. That doesn't mean they can't. And in fact, a smart cyber actor won't use such a weapon until, just like a nuclear weapon, until it's absolutely necessary because there's no going back once it's been let out into the wild.

I have a question on what—

go ahead.

Sorry, I have something.

Yeah. I mean, please. Rail corridors, ports, telecom systems, LNG terminals, undersea cables. Uh, yeah. I mean, it, You could bring, without exaggeration, you could bring— I'm sure Russia has the ability to bring parts of Europe to its knees, at least temporarily.

Are there any European countries that are willing and able to be the deterrent? Obviously you have a lot of the former Soviet bloc like Estonia, Latvia. Estonia is gets pretty busy cyber, like cyber-wise, like Andy mentioned, but like Poland, countries like that, are there any of them like taking real steps to be like a little bit of a check on Russia or it's just like not in the cards as of right now?

It seems that Germany and Poland are the two countries that are kind of increasing from their baseline to deter Russia. The challenge is how much can they increase? They need help. They can't do it alone. Poland, of course, has its own existential reasons for being concerned about Russia historically. Poland's sovereignty has been threatened every single time there has been a war on Europe. It's been Poland that's been crossed over and chopped up on the way to the end of that war, whatever war that was. Germany also is increasing its defense industrial base independently of the rest of Europe. And you can kind of see a growth on the eastern part of the European— of the EU driven by German defense industrial base increases. So it's only— I mean, it makes sense to think that they'd also increase their cyber capabilities as well, because Germany has a very well-developed multidimensional concept of war that would include cyber against Russia.

Love it.

Andy, what do you think about— we missed out on a great episode last week because we were talking about aircraft carriers. Really wanted your input on that. What do you guys— quick before we go, quick because it's over an hour— what do you guys think about the scaling back of the exercises with South Korea last week? I think they ended like about over a week early. We don't have any carriers now in the Pacific either. We all know that the THAAD missiles have been moved to the Middle East theater, to Iranian theater. What kind of signal does that send to our partners in the South China Sea and Asia broadly about how serious we're taking their security?

Yeah, I was disappointed. Actually, that's a silly word to use. Not surprised. I was surprised, not surprised, disgruntled that it was portrayed as kind of a fit of pique, right? Hey, you're not going to help us with Iran. By the way, we keep saying we don't need help. And so we, we're going to say we don't need help, then we need to stop saying we needed it. We asked for help publicly, right? Um, it was portrayed as a fit of pique against South Korea. Oh, you're not going to help us, and we're not going to participate in, you know, in, in, uh, this major military exercise. I, I think couched in different terms, it could be viewed positively. I mean, we could say, look, South Korea is now 24th largest economy in the world. Massive military, well, very well equipped, well trained, increasingly capable to shoulder the burden of its own defense and deterrence. That's number one. So, you know, we could have said that's why we're scaling this down because we have commitments elsewhere. And, you know, there's also the fact that a lot of these exercises really don't, you know, big shows of force, but they, they really don't achieve much and they don't exercise the things they're supposed to exercise best.

Um, so perhaps we could just have said, hey, and we're going to take a more targeted approach to these exercises, focusing on, um, key critical capabilities, command and control being one of them, uh, that don't involve a lot of troops and assets and moving around the Korean countryside. So we could have done all that because, because yes, we are obviously don't have the capacity to, to, to be involved in these exercises everywhere and they probably fall lower down on our list of priorities. And I think that would have been okay. I mean, I don't think that would have been too alarmist. But it's just embarrassing, frankly, when we start acting like kids in a sandpit. Oh, you're not going to let me play with your toys? Well, you can't play with mine. So yeah, bottom line is, I mean, I think there's good reason to talk about scaling down our exercises in Korea. You know, we can go back and forth on how much of a real threat North Korea is, uh, and but, but the bottom line is this: South Korea is infinitely more capable. And, and as we have seen, you know, the— by, by maintaining a huge presence, visible presence there, uh, it's not a question of threatening provocation with North Korea so much as we, we were arguably We're not needed and we're not even wanted there, right?

I mean, if you're watching the news, we're not wanted to the same extent. The requirement for US troops to be on the Korean Peninsula in the numbers that they are now is clearly not something that is as widely accepted by the South Korean public as it was a generation or two generations ago. It's okay to be sensitive to that, right? Because it suits our national interests too. All of these things could have been handled very diplomatically and announced as such. Um, sorry, go ahead.

I was just going to say that a goal of security cooperation is to work yourself out of a job eventually. And if we are there training them to do, like, I think about like a less sophisticated partner, let's say we're going to the range and we're teaching them to fire, we're teaching them how to use their weapon properly and so on. And we just keep doing that on every deployment. We just go to the range. We just go to the range. We just go to the range. That's not really an effective security cooperation mission.

And it—

we've worked with the South Koreans so much, the South Korean Marines, the ROK, uh, they're, they're so effective that it's almost not necessary for us to go and do the less sophisticated work with them anymore. Although it's helpful from a partnership perspective to know who your partner is and sit in the command center with them and actually develop those relationships. There are more precise and targeted ways to benefit both sides in— from a military perspective than just repeating the same exercises all the time, like you were saying, Andy. And especially if you look at Japan to the Japanese, the JGSDF, they're developing offensive capabilities for the first time since World War II now. So soon they're going to be able to basically defend themselves without the use of the United States. And many Japanese don't want the U.S. in Japan, especially in Okinawa. The Okinawans are out protesting against the military presence there every day. In an organized fashion. So the question of, you know, what kind of relationship should we have in the future that might look different and smaller than it is today. But to your point, Andy, the way that we advertise that should be more thoughtful, probably because it's hurting more than it's helping to make it sound like, well, you can't play with my stuff anymore because of how you're behaving.

And especially the Japanese who have their own contribution to Maritime Task Force in the Middle East. And are defending against piracy. They're helping with the blockade. They have a military presence in Djibouti, which should be something people understand, that Japan, an island nation in the Pacific, has sent its forces to help in the Middle East. And we should not treat them badly because they're doing that, you know? And I think that was part of the narrative that Trump had about South Korea was that they're not helping in the Middle East. Well, it's a pretty far away place and there are many other security guarantors between them and the Middle East that are helping now, you know, do you really need South Korea to go send an armada to the Red Sea to help balance against the conflict that we are managing? You know, um, so a lot of those things kind of come up in this and there's definitely a better way to advertise that partnership is changing and it is changing.

Yeah. Also like sending out like, uh, you know, not even subliminal, but you know, love yous to Kim Jong-un exactly isn't, you know, their fucking ultimate enemy. Also, I did see somewhere that South Korea always wanted a kind of nuclear deal that like Saudi Arabia seems to be getting. And we've kind of like PP-whacked them and cock-blocked them on that. What happens now? Let's say, you know, we do reduce forces in South Korea, you know, from— it's like 25,000, 26,000 soldiers. To a nominal number and they're like, yeah, we want nukes now, or we just want to enrich uranium as much as we want to enrich. Like, will we have an issue with that?

Well, we have a framework for that already in Japan, where Japan has its own nuclear energy production. And I think the same thing could happen in South Korea. And that probably would be an exchange that would be agreed in the background, that especially a 123 agreement, which is a certain kind of nuclear agreement the US has with foreign states about how they can structure a nuclear program. That's the agreement we just struck up with Saudi Arabia, a 1-2-3 agreement. And these agreements are always different between each country. So like the one we have with Saudi Arabia is different than the one we have with Japan. But these agreements outline all that stuff and it's, it's a negotiation. So there's no guaranteed outcome of how it's going to look. But depending on what we're willing to give up in exchange, we may let them do that or they may demand more and we may give it anyway because we want out. So it depends on what does the US want out of this in addition to what does South Korea want out of this. And if South Korea is good at demonstrating their value in that negotiation, they might get more than we normally would have given them.

Interesting stuff, boys. Where can people find you? You guys do your own links?

Well, I'm on Twitter now. I've started Twitter since March, so people can see me on there sometimes. But most of my time I'm on LinkedIn.

I have those links in the description. Andy, Andy keeps putting out chapters from his upcoming book. I'm very excited about it. I can't wait. It's on his Substack. You do yours. You do your own thing. I'm doing your— I'm doing yours. Your shoutouts.

Yeah. Substack. Also, I've been sending it out on LinkedIn and on Twitter.

You can find all those links down in the description, including for their books as well.

Yeah, actually, I reposted Andy's chapter that he put out and someone said that I was glazing Hamas because I reshared that, which I thought was kind of hilarious that Yeah, the reaction is that, like, that just tells you, like, why some of these conflicts exist. This is me on a kind of a soapbox, because if people refuse to understand the totality of a conflict, we will just continue having the same conflicts over and over again.

I, I got—

we kind of seem to be doing that, uh, John.

I, I got accusations of that too. It's like, hey, if you don't understand your enemy, you're going to keep repeating these mistakes. All I'm doing is explaining how the attack was carried out. Both from Hamas's perspective and the IDF's perspective. And I do that throughout the book.

That's what Sun Tzu said.

I'm accused by both sides of over-portraying the other side, which is absurd. You know, I, and again, this isn't a plug for the book, but of course it is. I've yet to read a credible account of how the attack was planned. Why it was planned, how it was carried out, and the gaps that allowed it to be carried out, gaps that have not been addressed. You know, I mean, there's been no real day of reckoning on the Israeli side. And if you read just the latest, you know, couple of chapters, you'll understand the depth of those gaps and some criminal negligence. Again, the investigations have kind of glossed over. No one— there's been a few people relieved. No one was seriously punished. No one was punished for what happened. And there's—

I think that—

on the Israeli side too. I'm sorry.

I was going to say, I think that every counterintelligence professional should read that book because that is what counterintelligence is, is understanding the other side's perception of you so that you can harden yourself against them. And if you don't do that, you will just never know what gaps actually exist because you'll make assumptions about your own self. That are totally different than how the other side assumes you have gaps. You have to read these other sides. Same thing with like Vo Nguyen Giap, the general in Vietnam that designed the Easter Offensive in 1973, the Tet Offensive. I mean, this guy was pretty good at understanding the US side to develop ways to defeat the US side. And he didn't care that he lost every engagement on the ground because his idea of victory was something different than what we had. But he understood that and exploited that. And if we had been humble enough to read about that, then we could have perhaps stopped some of the loss that we had.

If we'd read about Dien Bien Phu.

Yes. Yes.

Which is also—

that's where Roger Trinkier was. And then Roger Trinkier went off to write a counterinsurgency book that we developed as if it was the Bible. This dude lost, France lost at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. And then we incorporated all of their losses as if they were victories into our counterinsurgency techniques later, because we didn't read the other side.

So counterinsurgency's bullshit is what you're saying? Is that the— and David Petraeus fully shared—

you gotta read both sides. You can't just assume that you know because you're from the West and you went to the war college and blah, blah, blah. And like, no, you have to understand the other side to be able to harden yourself against them.

Yeah, it was a Hamas's intelligence collection operation was some— it provides a master class in how an organization like that, using just open source methods, can learn so much about its enemy.

Yep. So guys, uh, keep a lookout for the book and check out the chapters of the, you know, like the, uh, pre-release chapters on Andy's Substack. The links are— all the links are in the description. And if you want to support the show, go to patreon.com/theTeamHouse. You get both episodes of Team House and Eyes On completely ad-free and early, and you help support the show. Guys, I love you. Thank you.

Thanks, guys.

Bye, guys. See you next week.