Transcript of Negotiations with Iran Fail & Trump Announces Naval Blockade | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS New

Welcome to another episode of Eyes on Geopolitics. I'm here with John Hack and Mark P., Mick Mulroy, and myself. I think Andy's going to come through at some point. A lot going on. I'm sure everybody's been watching the news and stuff like that. Negotiations are happening in Pakistan between the Iranians and us. Leading it was J.D. Vance, Vice President, and I guess Jared Kushner and Steve Wickoff were both there. I don't know what, taking notes in the corner. Um, nothing happened, no deal was reached. It seemed like we were very, uh, very far apart in terms of like what everybody wanted. Um, everyone has since left Pakistan, and over the last week, you know, the ceasefire kicked off. We did the live stream. Um, the first day of the ceasefire didn't look great. Iran was still bombing people, Israel was still bombing Iran. Israel started really pumping Lebanon too. Initially there was talk that Lebanon was included in the ceasefire. That turned out not to be true. Messaging is incredible. Um, really everyone's really sounds like they're on the same page here. Uh, Lebanon got smoked too. I think they— 200 plus, 250 plus people died in one day, plus 1,000, over 1,000 injured.

Um, I don't know, uh, where we're at now. Oh, President Trump just tweet— uh, tweeted about a naval blockade like literally probably 30 or 40 minutes before we started recording this. So there's a lot to look forward to. Things are really looking up. What's going on, guys? How are you guys?

What the hell?

Oh yeah, happy Easter to the Greeks.

Happy Greek Easter. The best kind of Easter, I have to say.

You're alienating all of our—

Yeah, sorry. I'll drop some Greek too. Christos Anesti.

Nice. Yeah, there you go. Mick is definitely not Greek.

I really try to be. I really try to be. I'm not lying to my audience. If you ever want to be in a really cool place for Easter, it's absolutely Greece.

Yeah, but D, I mean, what the heck? You should have led with that.

Yeah, I guess you're right. I know my Greek supremacy is lacking nowadays.

I got to—

I got to bring it back hard, hardcore. I'm going to wear my grandfather's, like, F-Zone outfit, like he used to be an F-Zoner and he fought in World War II. Really?

Yeah.

I'm going to dig that out and just wear a fucking skirt for you guys. A tutu for you guys, because that's what they would wear.

No underwear, the skirt. I like it.

Yeah, I mean, that's the only way to do it.

That's a connection between the Irish, Scots, and Greeks there. Yeah, we all wore dresses.

I mean, I even sent you this morning the clip from My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

Oh yeah, that's right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, I'm gonna be eating a lot of lamb today actually, so our group chat's gonna get a lot of pictures of lamb on a spit.

Nice.

And there's Andy Milburn. Hi Andy, we're recording.

Excellent. We used to do that. We used— my dad, when I was growing up in Jersey, all of his Greek buddies who all, you know, came from Athens and all immigrated, they used to get a lamb and cook it for 13 hours in our garage on a spit, just drinking all day.

That's where I'm going right now at like 3 o'clock.

And you got Mick, you'll remember this too, kokoretsi. Oh, come on, it's lamb intestine.

It's disgusting. All right, yeah, yeah, it's disgusting, dude. It's like a— it's like a stew.

It's—

oh, well, it's not a stew.

It's like jerky type stuff.

Kokoretsi is the little pieces. Magiritsa is that inside in a stew, like a soup. And it's— they're both fucking disgusting.

Come on.

That's fucking gross.

Stefan, what's the big gigabean thing?

Gigabean? Higades, they're called. Yeah, that's what we— yeah, that's what my cousins call it. Gigantes. Because they're huge. They're like big beans. But they call you, he got this.

He's got some good food.

Soon, be back soon. Heading there for a month soon, this summer.

What a life, retired life. All right, so what do we got? Is the world ending or what?

No, I don't think so. But okay, if I'm kicking it off, I'll start with the negotiations, right? So, and I think the guys will back me up on this. This isn't really normally how we do negotiations. We usually have them staffed, right? So the old version of the NSC where you had senior career people from State, the military obviously, and the agency and other intelligence services are generally the people who staff these type of negotiations. They begin with them. They try to set the framework, obviously with guidance from above. They try to work out the details. They try to get to points of agreement. And then when they get to something that they all think is worth agreeing to, then they bring in the principals, right? The principals are supposed to like solidify the deal. They're not supposed to go and start the discussion because there's no way to go from there. Right. And they can, they can, you know, basically when you think about how negotiations work, if you're not the principals, you can concede things, you can argue about things without it turning into just like, let's flip the table and walk off.

I'm not saying that's what happened, but it sounds kind of like that. So that's a bit unusual. I would suggest it worked better. I would suggest that starting with the vice president, you got nowhere to go if it doesn't work out the way you want it to. But obviously I'm not making the call, but this is how we did it for both parties since I can remember. So I'd suggest that maybe they might want to do that so that it isn't like, you agree with everything I say or I'm going back to the United States, because that's not how— especially with the Iranians. The Iranians are used to, and actually all of you can correct me if I'm wrong. They're used to long-term, they're used to long negotiations. They're fine with it. That's how they operate. They're not gonna change. They sent a lot of people to this negotiation, probably for that purpose. So I just rethink about how we're going about this because the alternative to a diplomatic solution is probably a major military escalation. And unless you think that's a good idea, which most people do not, even especially in the military, then we need to try harder on the diplomatic side.

So I'd start with that. And by the way, if your adversary tells you they want a specific person to be your representative, then don't send that person. Nothing against vice president, but they don't— that's them setting the stage before we even get to the theater, right? So also probably not great. The other points, and I'll be brief 'cause we got a lot of smart folks that need to talk on this, uh, the strait itself. So it's unclear to me whether Iran really did— I imagine they did set mines, or whether they really can't find them, or this is just an effort to shove everybody into Iranian territorial waters, which of course then gives them the ability to charge and all that stuff. That can't be the case. In fact, the idea that we're even negotiating, the idea that they might have some control of the strait, is just starting on the wrong principle. It's an international waterway. It's not up not only for Iran, it's not even up for the United States to negotiate it away, right? This is where the international community needs to go timeout. Yeah, nobody's gonna control this. That's just not part of the negotiations.

And really enforce that, 'cause that can't be the case. And if it is where Iran is going to drop the rest of their 5,000 sea mines in the strait, then the international community does need to come together as a coalition The best way to do that is after the United States stops attacking Iran, because it's a different discussion. Other main things we heard the vice president talk about, really the only thing he talked about, which was we need to ensure that they don't have aspirations for nuclear weapons. We had that under the JCPOA, right? So we're going to have to be more stringent than JCPOA, or there's gonna be a lot of legitimate questions of what the whole point of this was, right? If we're just gonna get back to essentially what we had in 2018 when we decided to leave it, then this is gonna look like an exercise in complete futility that's brought the world to the brink of, you know, a regional conflict that's damaging the international economy when we're essentially trying to get back to what we left, primarily left because it was political. I don't like it because it didn't do it.

So it's going to have to include ballistic missiles. It's going to have to include potentially restrictions on ballistic missiles and some kind of addressing of proxy support, you know, to US-designated terrorist organizations in the region. If it's just getting back to the nuclear issue, then this was— this will go down in history as a WTF, to be honest. So I, and again, as our listeners know that listen to our regular, I support the objectives. I just want the United States to come out ahead. I don't really care who's in office, Team America, so to speak, but that's important. And then the last thing, in addition to the fact that we're probably gonna have to forcefully open the Strait of Hormuz, because that'll be viewed as a strategic failure of the United States if it closed, we're gonna have to now address the nuclear material that's left. Like, we've put ourselves in a position where that has to be addressed. Either they turn it over or we forcibly go get it. If not, then the whole question of the, well, if the nuclear ambitions is a primary issue of the United States, we can't leave almost 1,000 pounds of highly enriched uranium there.

So we're in a position where this is just based on our own objectives, we're going to have to escalate this if it's not addressed diplomatically. So, and that to me means we got to put way more effort into the diplomacy of this, and we need to get professionals involved that understand the issues and that can work through really complex, high-pressure negotiations so that we can get to something we can all agree.

All right. Demonic, let me just Jump in a couple of things, Mick. I think a great point on how unusual this was in terms of a principal kind of taking the lead before it was staffed. I mean, in every diplomatic negotiation, any kind of, let's just say, I mean, this is the first such high-level meeting between the US and Iran in 5 decades. So a huge deal. But let's say even if it was just a bilateral meeting, you have all the underlings setting the stage with talks with Iranians, and then you bring in the principals to kind of close the deal. So you're 100% right on that. I was trying to be very clever in the media last week, and of course I usually blow it with a line, but I said this was Vance's Daytona 500. And I guess maybe it was, what happens? It was a rainout. I mean, no one won, no one lost, nothing happened. I guess storming off would be something akin to, and maybe someone gave them advice, this is what you do in Middle Eastern negotiations. We've all spent time in the region. This is like going to buy a piece of gold in the souk and you don't like the price and you storm off.

And so maybe there's the idea that the Iranians will come back, but I think their three kind of red lines or asks are in some ways existential. It's the nuke program, it's reparations because their economy's in the shitter, and then it's proxies Lebanon-ish. I mean, the idea is to get the Israelis to stop in Lebanon. And so, you know, the two sides are just too far apart. On that. I think that the one thing to look at now, and that's why this, and so, I mean, everything's moving so fast. So we were going to talk about the negotiations not going anywhere. Now we're talking about the naval blockade, but this is, I was joking, I don't know if I sent it to you guys, maybe I did, or some other folks. I mean, my time, my naval experience is working with naval special warfare and then doing one trap landing on the George Washington. I mean, I don't, so I don't know naval strategy, but it would seem to me that a lot of people have war-gamed this and have talked about the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. And so Trump, of course, tweets there, puts out a Truth Social.

What does it really mean? Someone just pinged me and said, okay, we understand they're going to blockade ships. Are we really going to be interdicting boarding Chinese vessels? There's supposed to be a summit coming up soon. I mean, that seems— And do we have enough firepower in the region? I guess a third carrier is on the way, but I just listened to Admiral Stavridis on CNN. He said that you need 2 carriers and what, 12 destroyers and frigates. There is a risk to force here. I mean, there's so many things that go into this, but I guess the question for you guys who, former military in particular, I would imagine, Mick, you probably saw this, can't talk about the details, is that I assume this has been war-gamed out a billion times with CENTCOM. And I guess the second part is, can we do this on our own or do we need allied assistance to do so? Trump hinted that there might be some allies who are going to assist with this, assuming this is less risky than taking Karg Island. I mean, I think you can probably do this in areas, we don't have a map here, but it's not as dangerous.

And then maybe the last point too, and Dee, you're our resident political expert here, is, You know, this is, you know, it's a weird time. Jonathan and I were talking about it in our little green room before is, you know, Trump announced this on Sunday, markets open tomorrow. This is not going to be good for the US economy, for international markets. People are going to freak out again in terms of the, you know, the whatever the price of gas or oil going up. And so it is kind of, you know, this is going to cause some more pain and you're going to see the, you know, the gas prices in the US stay high or go much higher. So that's kind of interesting domestically on this. Oh, last piece too. We got a lawyer here, right? Mick, this is an act of war. I mean, a naval blockade is an act of war. And Jonathan, you're in law school now. And so it's now as Congress comes back, do the Democrats say, well, we need a war powers resolution. This is now like walked right into the idea of this is an actual, literally an act of war.

And so will Congress now take an interest? Anyway, I throw all these out there for—

When is the 60-day? 60 days under the War Powers Act means they have to approve it going forward, right?

Well, we're certainly past the 1-month mark.

So yeah, it started on the 28th, right, of February. So it's probably a couple more weeks.

Ask, maybe somebody else could pick up that question.

Also, fun fact, Andy's also a lawyer or a barrister.

Andy, you're a lawyer too?

That's right.

Holy Christ. I just went to, I completed law school by the Okay.

Well, for all of us, in terms of this is something that people in Congress certainly can, I mean, obviously we're in a war with Iran, even though what did Trump call it? Like an expedition or an escapade or whatever the hell dumb thing he was saying. But this seems to be rather significant anyway. What do you guys think of the naval blockade? I mean, I know we want to talk about the negotiations, but that's almost past news now. We now have a naval blockade. How does this work? And that's some of the questions that I raised there.

Questions on that too.

But well, I mean, I think you've got to start with asking, and I assume that's what Cooper is asking because you can't assume this. What is the objective, right? I mean, is the objective to keep commercial shipping moving through the Straits? I mean, that's what I— by bringing pressure on Iran. Stopping Iran from turning it into a toll booth. And that sounds reasonable, right? Even achievable. And I suppose it is. I mean, US Navy can escort ships, they can patrol the sea lanes, they can intercept missiles, drones, and fast boats.

I mean, it's a full blockade. And so I think the idea would be to put pressure on India, China, Russia, others, who their economies now will be hurt when some of their ships were getting through. And so the idea is to now put pressure on Iran's allies, so to speak, because everything could be shut down. There's no escorting or anything. It was my understanding of this, but sorry.

Okay. No, no, that's— I mean, no, that's exactly the question and the answer that needs to— So then it becomes— Look, it's like all of these things that have been touted ground operations, amphibious landings, uranium extraction, they're feasible on paper, right? But a naval— and I'm not a rust chipper, Department of the Navy. But I do know that people are throwing around numbers of ships and everything. It's the types of ships that are important. You need destroyers, you need Aegis systems, you need a layered defense. Because you got to defend against, and we've talked about this, the biggest threat are anti-ship missiles, right? And if we are to believe our own intelligence reports, at least 50% of launchers are still intact. And I believe, and I've got to check this is true, but when you're talking about anti-ship missiles, the ratio is even higher. So there are a significant number of anti-ship missiles still out there, which means We're trolling all of these assets right within range of those missiles. So being able to sustain that for any period of time, yeah, we may be cutting off oil to China and other allies of Iran, but we're also imposing a massive economic cost on ourselves, and not to mention risk to force.

Political risk, risk to mission. And all Iran has to do, yes, it is an act of war, but arguably we are already committing an act of war. All Iran would have to do is launch a missile or a drone. And then of course there's a minefield. This is our real Achilles tendon. I thought I would use a Greek analogy, it being Orthodox Easter. And that is the fact that we are And this is common knowledge. The United States Navy, for a number of reasons, is woefully short of minehunters. I think there's, you know, you can look it up on open source. I think there's like one Avenger-class minehunter in Bahrain, if it's still there, and that is it. So we are very dependent on allies when it comes to counter-mine measures. Why is that? I'll make this brief because we have squandered money. Because if you're a minehunter dude in the Navy, just like in the amphib Navy, it's not sexy. You don't carry a lot of weight when it's arguing for money, and all the money goes to the platforms that carry people into the rank of admiral, like aircraft carriers, for instance, which as you know are massive wastes of money.

But I digress. So the bottom line is, even if you think that the objective itself is feasible, that by blocking off this artery you are forcing people to the negotiation table, and I would argue That's always a risky bet because they will find alternate routes, I guarantee. And the BAMM is still open. Secondly, you're putting all of your assets in harm's way. And as I've said, simply by imposing a blockade legally, you're already at war. So Iran could shoot at our ships and say it was in self-defense. And I think that gets back, and I'll shut up because I don't want to talk too much, but I think that gets back to a key part of why the negotiations broke down, because we made assumptions that are incorrect. Aside from the team we sent, aside from the fact that we didn't empower them, Iran didn't come to the table weak. Those negotiators weren't there in a desperate state of trying to find a deal. They were feeling fairly resilient. Iran feels as though it has not come out at the bottom of the recent campaign. It doesn't matter what kind of military attrition we have exacted.

Yes, they've sustained military pressure. We've done enough damage to force Iran into concessions, but not real concessions, not on the ones that matter, like the Straits of Hormuz and like uranium enrichment. I mean, negotiations aren't driven by what we think is objective reality. They're driven by perception. And Iran's perception is very different from Washington's, and that's why the negotiations have broken down.

Hey, what's up guys? This is D. Uh, do us a favor and check out our Patreon page. It's patreon.com/teamhouse. You get both Team House episodes and Eyes on Geopolitics episodes completely ad-free. Uh, you get them early too. You can ask us questions. You can also watch the Team House episodes live as we shoot them. So and you help support the show and support what we're doing here. It's patreon.com/theTeamHouse. Those links are in the description, or if you're listening, it's in the show notes down below so you can click it real quick and easy and it helps us keep the lights on. So we appreciate it and we appreciate you guys listening. Thanks a bunch.

The question I know to Jonathan to add into his, his comments on this So we're obviously at war with Iran, so seizing their oil, trying to prevent them from benefiting from their closure of strait makes sense. How would we legally justify seizing another country's vessel with their resources after going through an international waterway that we say should be open because it's an international waterway? Like, What legal basis would we have for doing that? And then what are we going to do with it? Yeah.

Yeah. The thing is, I mean, who's going to adjudicate? Who's going to adjudicate in the international system whether the US can legally do it or not? I know that's kind of a sensitive question, but the thing is, the US isn't part of the ICC. We're not party to some of these treaties that, that set the outlines for how people should behave in the international system. Blockade is actually not an act of war according to the Constitution. It's an act of war according to international humanitarian law, which does come out of the UN, but doesn't bind the United States to behave a particular way. And the blockade would not need to be approved by Congress. I mean, this is an argument that the administration can make pretty, pretty well that they don't need Congress's approval to position military vessels in international waters, right? Because that is certainly an executive function. This is, this is how they would frame this for sure.

International waters, they could do this.

I mean, they've got the ability to do visit, board, search, and seizure. They can do opposed and unopposed boarding if for any suspicion whatsoever, because remember, there's not normal due process in the high seas. So you don't need to first suspect a vessel of anything in the high seas. And I'm, I'm thinking back to Veracruz, 1914, when the Marines seized Veracruz. We behaved in a very similar way around the Bay of Veracruz before we actually went ashore into Veracruz and seized that port. Again, another questionable thing under international humanitarian law. Can the US do that? Probably not, but we did and nobody could stop us. And that's— there's a kind of a couple of points in there is that whether it's right or wrong is important, but is that relevant to whether we can do it or not? Because we can do it. It goes back to the Milian dialog, you know, that we've talked about before, that we can do it, so we do it. And there's no other balancing factor to pull us back into the world where different parties are on the same plane. Back when we had the multipolar world or the bipolar world with Russia, for example, the Soviet Union, where there were repercussions of us doing something like this.

You know, there was the Cuban naval blockade, of course, which was important, but there was a balance against that to reduce the tensions and break the blockade against Cuba, you know. And, and there's— there isn't something on the other side like that this time. So the US is kind of able to move in a way that is unchecked, essentially, especially when we're talking about exclusive economic zones and the international waters of the straits. Which is very small, and you could functionally blockade it without creating an actual blockade just because of how small it is. You could, you could create a very difficult area to traverse. I mean, if you look at the actual topography under the water, there's only so much space that those ships can actually traverse safely based on the, the, the hull depth. So you could, you could essentially actually create just physical obstruction rather than a quote unquote blockade to stop vessels from moving in and out. So this is another consideration that if, if you were in Trump's team trying to explain this to the world, there are explanations that could be sent forth as a facade to describe it.

Just like when we killed Qasem Soleimani, you know, according to international humanitarian law, that was clearly not allowed. But we came up with an explanation for it and then presented that very thin explanation and acted on it and then continued forward as if nothing happened and that it was justified.

How do you guys think?

Question though.

Yeah. So it's okay. Go ahead, Mick.

Yeah.

Yeah. Just a quick follow on. And this is a question really, not a comment. Won't that just magnify the issue that Iran's already capitalizing on? Like, they've decided to close the strait to make this a global issue. Then if we start seizing tankers going through, like, that would reduce the amount of energy worldwide. Won't that shoot up the cost of energy? And therefore Iran will be like, yeah, now they're doing it. So I mean, it's now like, now we're almost equal in this, the issue. Just a question. Like, I mean, I'm not an economist, but.

Yeah, I mean, if you look at the statistics of who gets the oil out of the Straits, the recipients— yes, China is a large recipient. I think it's like 38% of the oil that leaves the Straits goes to China, something like that. But the others, the majority of it is going to South Korea and Japan and other allies and partners of the United States that produce a significant amount of highly advanced technical equipment all the way down to very simple items that are imported to the United States, which means there's almost like a value-added tax that's going to be de facto imposed on every single good that we get from the, from Asia, which again, reason California's gas prices are historically high is because most of their petroleum-related items actually don't come from the US. They come from the Pacific just for logistical reasons. And that also means goods coming into the Port of Los Angeles and things you buy on Amazon and other places coming from that same sea line of communication. There's going to be a step up of increased value on all those items. Everything, not just gas. Gas is the thing that people feel at the pump.

But over time, you're going to start seeing like the ripple down effects, just like when COVID stopped people from being able to cut trees down to make furniture. And suddenly that created these huge expansive costs in other unrelated areas like home building because of how, how the economics works. That's not an automatic direct increase in price. And we're going to certainly see that. It's probably even after the conflict ends, there will still be ripples of increased price that continue to go up even after the war is over, whenever that might be. And people are going to wonder, why is my stuff still expensive? And it's because of the way economics works. It's not an automatic overnight, suddenly the prices are high and suddenly they're low, like oil futures, because oil futures are speculative, whereas the price of your bananas is an absolute price. And that's how much it costs to get it on a ship, put diesel in the ship, and then sell it to the United States.

One quick question for those who have experience with CENTCOM and the military. I mean, how do you think this transpired? I mean, this was probably in the toolkit somehow, right? The closing the Strait of Hormuz, Richard Haass wrote about it last week. Other people have, you know, so clearly policymakers, Richard Haass was in the Bush administration. So this has always been out there. I'm sure there was war games. How do you think it transpired in that? Was this Admiral Cooper? Was this Dan Caine or Hegseth giving Trump options on what to do? And if the negotiations fall apart in Islamabad, this is the next step. I mean, or maybe answer the question in a normal administration. How would this have come about?

I think there's likely— these options were known even prior to the war starting by the most senior leaders, and they're looking for things that they can do to change the current situation. Even as dramatic as this would be, I just— it seems like it's just going to exacerbate the very issue we're trying to avoid because I mean, I— that was a great answer, by the way, Jonathan. But my understanding, even if China gets 38% of it, if there's just less energy out there, it's going up for everybody. So to keep saying, well, we don't get that much energy from there, is kind of like true but also irrelevant because our gas prices are going up anyway. Because if there's less— if China is going to buy energy from somewhere else, it's going to drive the supply and demand situations, drive the price up. So If we're seizing, are we going to take it? Are we going to sell it? We're going to keep the money? I mean, what is the ultimate endgame? Like, what's the potential goal?

We're going to seize a Chinese tanker.

And isn't that an act? It would be an act of war if they seized ours.

Right.

Right. So what is China going to do? I doubt they're just going to sit there and go, well, I guess the United States can do what they want.

There's a summit coming up between Trump and Xi. There's supposed to be at least.

That's going to be over as soon as they seize the Chinese tank.

Yeah.

I mean, I can't, and I obviously haven't worked at the level that Mick has, but I was at SOCSAF for 3 years. And yeah, I mean, there were naval blockades, remember, of, I mean, essentially de facto blockades of Yemen to stop the flow of lethal aid to Yemen. But imposing a blockade, a US blockade on the Straits of Hormuz, I don't remember ever being touted as a coercive because It gets back to again, what is the objective? John, no one argues those points better than you, and you're absolutely correct about this philosophy that we're no longer in the Cold War. We can essentially just do things that we need to do on the justification of national interests and get away with it. But I would argue there's a limit to that. Soleimani is perhaps not a good example because the death of Soleimani, while certain people may have said, "Hey, that's pretty messed up," it didn't impose economic hardship on a significant portion of the world. And I'm wondering at what stage we stop saying, "Hey, I don't care. I don't care. It doesn't matter if we piss the world off." I mean, there are going to be costs imposed on us.

Think about the Prime Minister of Canada's recent speech about shifting defense contracts and partnerships. We've already seen what's happening in Europe. They're turning away from us. Obviously, this isn't about losing friends in the playground. There are going to be significant costs for us that perhaps aren't seen right now. So I would say that from a perhaps more mature perspective than maybe we're showing right now, these things do matter.

So another issue that I'm pretty sure I'm going to get questioned on this week, you know, I'm up at 6:00 AM our time here in Montana for the Pentagon briefings. It sounds like the numbers might not be adding up. So I've been touting the fact that we've been getting closer and closer to some of our objectives because we're, you know, ballistic missiles, suicide drones, etc. That's going to be challenged if it turns out that the numbers that they're saying, and I don't know which is true, but there's obviously reports that we were talking about or at least texting about yesterday. So what are the actual numbers? And if we can't trust public Pentagon briefings. It's time to pull this into the Senate and have hearings that are also open on the record— or not on the record, but under oath, right? Because this is the one part of the war that we collectively, I think, would acknowledge that the U.S. is making progress. And if it's not the actual correct numbers, that's an issue. That's a big issue. So your guys' thoughts on that, because—

Mick, I'm glad you're raising that just because this is, you know, I've called it kind of fuzzy math. And, you know, there's the, and I've used this, I'm guilty as well. I've used this a million times. It's that famous World War I British saying, you know, we are, you know, lions led by donkeys. Lions being the US military, donkeys being the civilian leadership. And so, and it's fun saying that in a sense because it gives the US military a pass because we've seen how successful they've been. And let me just say everything I say on this, and you know how much respect I have for you guys who served, is this is not at the, this is at the very senior level. This is not at the junior ranks, the enlisted level. These are, you know, men and women go into combat, you do what you're told and do it extraordinarily well. This is at the Dan Cain, you know, Admiral Cooper level. And I've kind of, I've started thinking that, you know, perhaps we have all been romanced too much by these briefings. And then I started thinking back to Iraq and Afghanistan where there were senior-level briefings and a lot of it was bullshit.

And so I think that it is fair to ask those questions. It's not condemning anybody. But, and Mick, the one part, and I know you know this, the part that's weird is because the intelligence community, there was a leak that the intelligence community is the one who's assessing that the Iranian military, the missile stocks have not been attrited enough. So it's not like we're saying it. It's not the Iranians aren't saying it, it's our own intel community saying it. So I do think this kind of, you know, this romance we have on, and of course Dan Cain sounds really good because Hegseth is a complete clown, but maybe Dan Cain's not telling the truth. And I hate to say that. He's a respected 3-star. He worked at the agency before. He is kind of, to me, the bulwark against some of the craziness. Is, you know, what if these numbers are kind of fuzzy math? But I think it does matter. And Mick, your prescription on this is not to get up and scream and whatever I'm saying now, it's exactly right, is the oversight from Congress. Where is the House and the Senate committees?

And Congress, as you all know here, is totally irrelevant anymore. It is not a co-equal branch. They do absolutely nothing on oversight. And in particular, the armed services side has always been even more of a rubber stamp than the intel oversight. But I think it's fair and I'm glad you raised it. It's okay to raise those things because so much is predicated on Okay, even though strategically things might be a little kind of off now, we have done a significant amount of damage to the Iranian military and ultimately we can kind of, if we're going to fall back on anything, that's going to be a good thing. But what if we haven't?

I mean, I don't think, I'm agreeing with both of you. And yes, I mean, and there's a platform aside from the from the committees, there's a platform too to leverage accountability on this, and that's the War Powers Act. But I don't think anyone's lying about this. I think it's— I think it's— I think it just got taken out. Oh no. Okay. All right. I don't think anyone's lying about it. I think it just gets back to the notorious difficulties in conducting accurate BDA when you're just using tech means or from the air, especially with an adversary like the Iranians who are masterful at decoying things, at hiding things, at dispersal. Rocket launchers and missile launchers are notoriously difficult things to find and destroy. So I think, you know, we probably just as in any war from when you're counting what you're doing to the enemy from pilots reporting— I'm thinking back to the Second World War, notoriously the pilots reporting their own victories over other aircraft were always exaggerated. It wasn't anyone was lying. It's part of it's wishful thinking and part of it is just the technical limitations of conducting remote battle damage assessment.

And the other part is the fact that the Iranians have been preparing for this for a while. They know we have the technical technological competence and they're good at bypassing that and fooling us.

It's a good point.

Plus, if your BDA is limited to forward-looking infrared video as the only source of BDA, I mean, all of us have seen these videos in the past, real ones, like even in high resolution. You don't really know what happened to that transporter or erector launcher. Like maybe it's still operational, it could still drive, you know. We don't know exactly where we hit it on the structure. There's all kinds of question marks, right? And it's like you said, Andy, a few weeks ago, once you start approaching that like 80 to 90% BDA, the numbers start to just fade away into idealized descriptions of what's actually happening on the ground. And Iran has had 47 years to bury their stuff underground. They've been doing it. They taught Hezbollah to do it in the 1980s. Hezbollah did it very successfully in the war in 2006 where Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon One of the reasons Hezbollah was able to survive that, that very intense war was the extensive tunnel network that Iran helped them build in Lebanon. Qassem Soleimani himself was there during that war, helping direct the war effort. You know, this is a very close link between the Lebanese way of fighting or the Hezbollah way of fighting and what Iran has.

But Iran has it on a much larger scale with a lot more resources and a lot more time and more will to survive as a system because they're a governing system of an entire country. Right. And they've been under— they felt that they've been under attack for so long. They're, they're, the entrenched position they have almost requires boots on the ground just to assess the PDA if you want actual truth on what those numbers really look like.

Yeah.

So those are all great points. I mean, I, I'm not saying anybody's, you know, falsifying information, but it, we do need to have an actual hearing that has the intelligence professionals talking about, because it's all going to come out eventually, right? You can't, you can say something now, but history is going to I think, be accurate on what we actually did or didn't do. I wish it was 100% on all the above. That's what I'm hoping. But it's not going to do any good to say it is and then we leave, sign an agreement, and the Iranians come back and say, by the way, half of our ballistic missiles are still here. And then we're going to look not good, put it that way. I just think we need to baseline the truth and figure out just where we are in our efforts to hit those objectives.

Let me throw one thing in there, and is that I also have memories of things such as the district assessments in Afghanistan where the military was putting out stuff that was just flat out wrong. You guys remember this, the degree of Taliban control. I mean, so I don't know how you define it. Is it bad analytic tradecraft? Is it lying? Whatever it is, it was just flat out wrong. And I remember the intel community came back and said, nah, we don't think so. But what about the Pat Tillman story? I mean, what about burn pits? What about Gulf War syndrome. I mean, it's okay to say that the government actually has not been truthful to us. I'm not sounding like a conspiracy theorist, but the idea we're questioning after Iraq and Afghanistan and all the stuff that went around there, the US military at senior levels said a lot of things that were not true. You can excuse that. And again, this is, you know, it's hard for me to say this because I'm not a conspiracy theorist at all, but I do think it's fair to question sometimes some of these statements because you also don't know the degree of pressure that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is under.

He's got Pete Hegseth, who's firing everybody who disagrees with him, right next to him. And so, you know, is there political pressure to— it's not cooking the books, but to say things that perhaps, you know, do you think Dan Cain, you know, deep down would be more comfortable in an honest setting saying something a little bit different than when he's sitting next to Pete Hegseth? I don't know. I think it's fair, though, to question this. And again, this is not disparaging the military at all. I'm talking about the very senior levels of leadership. Because a key point is when you talk to people, and I don't have the contacts you do at DOD, but when I talk to people inside the intelligence community, I have not found anybody at senior levels who think this is a good idea. Nobody. And even though, and Mick, I share your view on this, is that we can detest the Iranian regime, we can support the war aims, but the execution of this has been a bit of a mess. And so I do wonder if that, you know, the people we care about, kind of the rank and file, might have a different view of the way things are going.

I just throw that out there.

They can also ask for a written submission of what the intelligence community thinks right now. Oversight committees for armed services and intelligence can ask for a written assessment right now.

Yeah.

Unclass, right? You don't have to talk about sources and methods. If it's okay to give your assessment on TV, it's okay to give your assessment, the actual assessment, in a written statement that then people can read.

I think that'd be great in a functioning democracy, which—

well, I—

bit of a wrench going on. Go ahead, go ahead. Sorry.

No, I think Mark— I mean, Mark brings up a good point. I don't— I'm not giving a pass to the military. I think What I hope happened— I'm always disappointed when I hear politicians on either side or civilian leadership make these grandiose statements about victory, overwhelming victory, mission accomplished. And I always hope that behind the scenes their military leadership is talking to them saying, "Hey boss, I recommend you hold up before saying this because here's a quick primer on BDA." and here's why. Because these guys, you know, at the 4-star level obviously aren't stupid. They know, they understand what's going on. So I can't answer to why maybe they have said these things, but we have seen grandiose statements come out of military leaders, and that disappoints me even more. And I don't feel sorry for them because at that level, that's when you make 4 stars, in my opinion, you get treated like a viceroy, you get treated like a god. I mean, you are treated, you have to be in the military to understand the hierarchical organized institutionalized sycophancy that takes place around a four-star. I mean, it's quite sickening. Every single, I'll stop, but there's a downside.

Keep going, keep going, keep going.

No, the downside is you're expected to show courage when that courage is needed for the sake of the Constitution, sake of the nation. And a reminder again, that when officers take that oath of office, they don't promise, they don't swear to obey, right? They promise to carry out all their duties to the best of their ability. But the enlisted guys do. Having been both officer and enlisted, I understand that the oath is different. So you have an obligation to all the enlisted men and women in the armed forces who have sworn an obligation to obey you to ensure that when you tell them to do things, it's in good faith. right? So all that, you know, all these cascading effects, all of which is to say there's more to having a commission than I think sadly a lot of people realize. And there's more certainly to, to having, holding flag rank at the nexus between policy and strategy, uh, and they, there's more of an obligation than simply offering military advice. I'll stop.

Yeah, actually, when General McKenzie was still the CENTCOM commander, I was at the Defense Attaché Office in Jordan. And, he was coming to— Yeah, he was coming to visit, to do some Syria-related stuff. And we were instructed by his team— this is the Defense Attaché Office. Like, we're supposed to represent the SecDef in the country. We have high-level policy issues to take care of on a daily basis. We were pulled off of what we were working on so that when General McKenzie came, he would not touch a single doorknob in the embassy. And we had to have people from the Defense Attaché Office, from the colonel level, everyone all the way down, standing at doors throughout the embassy. To ensure that his hand would never touch a door handle. And this is exactly what you're talking about, Andy, about the viceroy behavior of these generals.

Why? Just because someone's got to open the door for them?

Couldn't be bothered to touch a door handle. Got it.

I'm sorry. I have two good Petraeus stories. I'm sure he's not listening to this because he doesn't like me very much. When I was the deputy station chief in Amman, he hated our station chief. and he was the CENTCOM chief and I was the acting, the chief is gone. And so he came for a brief and he said, hey, I want to go see the head of Jordanian intel service. And I responded to his staff, I got to take him. Like, that's my role. I mean, he can't go alone. That's just, you guys know this from an embassy, like the CENTCOM chief can't go to that. And he said, no, I'm going alone. I said, you can't. And I'm a GS-15 and I'm like, I'm going to get creamed in this down the line. But ultimately he agreed, but then he showed up 2 hours early. So the head of the Jordanian service spent and then they called me from GID headquarters. So then I went running over there, but it was 2 hours late and the head of the service had spent 2 hours briefing Petraeus on the history of the Yemeni tribes, 'cause he knew that I was supposed to be there.

So Petraeus was just furious with me right there. And then Petraeus asked to get the PDB in his hotel room and I refused to bring it over. I said, you gotta come read it. And so all of this didn't matter until he then gets named director. So, my career is totally fucked. So I see him down in the gym and I'm lifting and he comes down there and I was on the weight bench and he kind of looked at me and I think he remembered and he basically wanted me to get off the weight bench and I'm like, I'm not done. Sorry. That's, I mean, it's, the agency's kind of a different place. So I just kept lifting and I think that, you know, until he was removed, my career was on a hold a bit. But one of the great things I did see, there was a Syria briefing and a GS-12 analyst told him in the briefing, sir, you're wrong. And he almost fell over. That's just not done. You guys know better, but that's not done to a four-star. But anyway, the imperial—

Well, you know, true story though, and I'm surprised that the general that you just mentioned didn't think about this. And this was actually in the military times. In Iraq, there was a— I'm so sad to admit this— a Marine two-star whose aide used to go down and sit on the gym like his next station in the gym so that he could like fully, fully in full camouflage, you know, full uniform utilities, all that, that little piece of equipment holding it down.

Yeah.

Yeah.

As I found out when I said to her, are you, are you using the bench? No, sir.

Right. Mick has these stories too, but he's not going to tell them.

Hey, I work for Mattis. He's the opposite of everything you're saying.

Yeah. Yeah, you're right.

Right. I'd go down and to take a spot on the bench, right? I'd take my, my suits, my seersucker suits into the dry cleaner, and he'd be in front of me in line.

That's awesome.

I mean, these are stories that are all over the place because it's true. He gets haircut at the barbershop.

That's how you gain the loyalty of the people who work for you, right?

Yeah.

Oh yeah, but he was exactly what everybody's unusual.

Yeah, but you know, we do this to ourselves, and, um, because at some stage in those officers' careers They were not like that. Maybe they were, but they couldn't get away with it, right? When they were lieutenants, captains, majors. But we as an institution let them get away with it, and foreign militaries make that observation about us. The Brits call their general officers by their first names. It's Brigadier Mike or Joe. There isn't that same— I mean, they show them respect, but it's not that same. It's not that same idol worship that we show. And, you know, again, so the cost to that, which isn't commonly understood, is that, yeah, you may lose all of that in a heartbeat by speaking truth to power. That's a risk they run, right?

So, Going back to the war, um, what's the next step? I mean, if there's no plan for further negotiations, the 11th MEU, I believe, has already departed Hawaii and headed over. The— what's the George Bush's en route? That would be the third. Um, we already know that JSOC's there. I mean, that's been pretty obvious with the rescue of the pilot. So the next stage is starting to seize terrain to open the strait, or does this actual blockade the alternative to that?

I mean, what you mentioned earlier about flowing forces into the Gulf is probably what you exactly mentioned. Prepositioning for further action is unrelated to a blockade. It's probably the blockade is used to describe it so it's more palatable to the public, but in fact, it's prepositioning ahead of time to gain that, that, you know, force of time, the shortening of the timeline between getting from ship to shore because you're already there. Which was the problem before the ceasefire was announced. We couldn't get through the straits to get in there. And that was our big problem with the Karg Island seizure question because it was so far away. But if you're right, if you can see it from the vessel, big difference.

And the IDF chief of staff just announced today that he's prepping, they're prepping for resumed combat.

That's right.

So I think that, you know, so, so maybe a way to say this too is, you know, who fires the first shot now again? Is it going to be the Israelis or is it going to be Iran? I mean, and don't forget that one of the things that maybe we can raised too is the kind of the use of proxies. Wasn't there an attack on our diplomats in Baghdad?

Yes.

There was an ambush when they were trying to bring the reporter back. They ambushed that convoy. Yeah.

That was after the ceasefire was announced. And so there's also the asymmetric. So how does this kick off again, I guess is a good way to ask. That's the point.

We could use a Gulf of Tonkin type of framing where it doesn't really matter who actually fires the first shot as long as our narrative describes it a particular way that it was somebody else's fault and that's why we're doing it now. Well, the ceasefire—

We all know how well that worked out.

Opening the strait, right? So isn't the actual premise of the ceasefire already folded? Like, do we have an obligation? Or is this just—

Right.

Right?

We don't.

Why did we do that anyway? I mean, do we really think Trump— I mean, so, okay. So at best, I mean, if you want to be very kind, you know, we want to give diplomacy a chance, diplomacy a chance, both, you know, I think the Trump administration did want it, does want to see this end. Iran agreed to it for some reason. I suppose they saw the US maybe in a weaker position, but did anyone actually think this was going to work? Did someone next to Trump say, hey, this might actually work? Or, I mean, why did we even do this? What was the point of Islamabad? I don't know. Because the sides are so far apart. Or was that just the Trump administration just giving a bit of a breather? Domestically because he was getting, you know, he's getting so hammered on this issue. I don't know.

I'm curious if it was a way to get the Straits open to get those vessels into the Persian Gulf without being opposed to get in.

Yesterday, we did see two US warships transit the Strait, and they stopped and pulled back. I guess they were probably, you know, dipping their toes, see what was going to happen. So, and now we have a naval blockade announcement today.

And if we do an anti-access area denial technique, kind of like what China does in the South China Sea, then Iran can't really do much to stop us from flowing additional forces into the Gulf because we'll actually control the waterway.

And what about the Houthis, guys? You know, is there— is there a— you know, we kind of— we talked about that in the past, but is that now— now that there is a naval blockade and presumably— and you all tell me what they're going to— there's going to be more naval assets, including And Trump hinted in that Truth Social post, allied forces, you know, do the Houthis now come into play again as part of, you know, potential strikes against, uh, uh, uh, not just the U.S. but other navies or even, you know, international shipping?

Probably, right? I mean, they certainly can. And I think it's the Iranians have been holding back probably for an indication that we're going to seize territory or in this case start blocking everything coming out of there. Why aren't we just trying to seize the ships that are associated with Iran? Like their energy. This is a complete blockade, right? I know it happened right before.

Yeah, it's everything, everything, including—

I thought— I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

I thought, just, and I don't know at all, just from my knowledge is from reading tweets. But I thought the intent was to prevent friendly nations from getting charged a toll for passing through the Straits of Hormuz.

Yeah, so in his tweet he did mention that, like it was a long rambler, so in that whole rambling about the naval blockade he does mention protecting boats that have already paid the toll or will be paying the toll, like that can't happen, that was a big part of the tweet as well.

You know, diplomacy, international relations by true social is probably one of the most frustrating things. I mean, you know, there's, don't forget the ceasefire, there's no, even the ceasefire, there's no written agreement. I mean, all of this is so, you know, I mean, I guess defenders of the administration, defenders of Trump say unorthodox is his kind of mantra. But I mean, so much stuff goes on here that you're just, you know, literally we're talking about foreign policy based on a post on social media.

Are we gonna let go of Mick? Mick, see you later. He threw on his jacket, he was ready to go and talk to the legacy media organizations, which I call the enemy. No, I'm just kidding.

The competition.

Yeah. Might have potentially criticized the military leadership. That's a, that's a big, big step for him.

Yeah. I wanted to touch on like a little bit of like the confusion with the ceasefire, right? Because initially it was a 10-point plan the Iranians had proposed, which was like insane. I mean, but frankly, they're in a position of strength if you ask me. We look like shit strategically. And if it's true that they still have half their ballistic missiles and half their drones left after a month and, you know, more than that, like almost a month and a half or, you know, of us bombing the shit out of them. We are not in a strong position for negotiations. Also, I want to ask, like, why did it— why did they just sit there for 21 hours, negotiate, not come to a deal, and like everyone just went home, right? Like, these things are supposed to be negotiated over the next 2 weeks, at least in theory, until the 21st. Um, why is it now that like, we're all just going home now? Like, shouldn't this be a long, drawn-out thing?

The 2015 nuclear deal. I mean, we've heard stories about John Kerry and Jawad Zarif, foreign minister, taking like long walks at night together by the Lake Geneva for days, you know, without talking about the negotiations at all. And like, that was an integral part of the actual outcome where they spent a lot of time building trust because especially, I mean, we just, we just had our own war of choice against that country. It's going to take some time for them to actually sit at the table and believe what we have to say. It's not going to happen in 21 hours, you know, especially if they just got there. They, like, as you mentioned, Mark, the principals at the table the first time, that's, that's the reverse order it's supposed to go. And as you also mentioned, Mark, the diplomacy by tweet, what we end up doing is putting ourselves in these untenable public positions that we've told the world we're doing. And it's impossible to come back from that at that point. Whereas traditional diplomacy, it's all happening behind closed doors until the very, very end. And there are some strategic leaks that do come out to kind of sample the environment and see what's going on.

But nobody's actually putting out their positions publicly because by doing so, you're actually committing yourself to that position. And it's embarrassing or impossible to step back from that. And both of those issues, putting the principles first and then airing our diplomacy publicly, is actually— it's taking the air out of our sails and our ability to have momentum in any negotiation, even if it was a quote unquote normal one, not one between the US and Iran that we were just at war with after we, we started the war against them in the past 2 months.

You know, Sometimes we try to make sense of what this administration does, and I'm not sure that, you know, if there's some rationality there. I mean, everything as you just, Jonathan, and what Mick said before was backwards. You know, the idea of principles going first, but JD Vance, someone who the Iranians wanted because they don't like Kushner and Whitkopf. I mean, at the end of the day, it is Trump does have agency. It is gonna be his call. But, you know, then you start thinking about where does 2028, fall into this. Marco Rubio was literally at a UFC fight with Trump yesterday in Miami. I mean, that's the Secretary of State slash National Security Advisor. That's his role. He shouldn't have been there because no principal should have been there. But if a principal should have been there, it should have been him. And he's yucking it up in Miami at a UFC fight as the vice president is playing bizarre merchant and storming off after 21 hours. I mean, the whole thing is just so weird. And I mean, at some point I was thinking like, is this all just performative theater? Why did we— if you had Iran experts, we used to, I don't know if we do anymore.

Again, they did— that some people did go with—

Retired.

No, I know. But I'm saying some people did go with the traveling party. So there were some quote experts from somewhere, they said from the State Department. So I suppose that's a good thing. But did anyone really anticipate this was that there would be any progress because, as you said, it took a year and a half for the JCPOA to be negotiated with. And so I don't know, some of the times I have gotten more distrustful of government in my older age. And so that's why I was saying before about the US military, but it's the same thing for, in terms of for the Trump administration now, was this all just designed for what? Chance of this. Why did we even do this? The Islam— and then the media, now I'm going to kind of support D, like literally there was, I couldn't believe this. There was a CNN reporter who said she had chills. She had tears in her eyes watching the Islamabad thing. There was a New York Post reporter too saying this, the great, the Pakistanis were so— what are we doing?

Yeah, that's like so fucking cringe.

I had tears in my eyes too.

Yeah. I was thinking if I got diarrhea in Pakistan every time I went. I never failed to get the shits going to that country.

I had tears. They weren't in my eyes though.

I ate 107mm rockets for a year being fired at us from Pakistani military positions. Separate issue.

Who said that on CNN?

Can you name her? I could find it.

All right.

It was just people had chills from this.

Fuck off. That's so cringe, dude.

So were we all kind of mesmerized by this? I mean, it is a big deal. The first kind of high-level contact in 50 years. But I mean, you know, Jonathan, this is your thing. Like, you follow the Iranian-U.S. relationship. But was there ever any chance? Like, why did, you know, why did we do this? I'm not quite sure. Because, by the way, a lot of times people would say in a normal world, don't have a summit with your adversary if there can be no chance of success. You know, you don't actually show up when you know it's going to fail. So anyway.

And they took maximalist positions, which means you needed to have a long period of time to moderate those maximalist positions to reach that kind of place on the playing field. Where you can actually start throwing the ball back and forth. Because right now they couldn't agree on even which field to play in. You know, that's going to take time to frame those starting points before they can even get to the actual issues they want to negotiate. Um, and that's that difference between zone of, uh, primary agreement and best alternative to negotiate outcome, the two important negotiating, you know, frameworks where there weren't even agreements on what to agree on yet, which will eventually come. But you first have to hit those. And it seems like they just want to cram this in to make a kind of a show that they were trying— the US, I mean, a show that, hey, we're doing this. They didn't accept it. We're going back to work or back to war kind of concept. That's what it really feels like, more of a pretext to say that it's okay, we're going back to the conflict now because we tried.

And I mean, you saw like February 27th, there was like a real path to like maybe figuring this out diplomatically. And it was reported that Wyckoff and Kushner were like, "Oh, that's gonna take months." It's like, yeah, no shit, you dumb fuck, it's gonna take months. Sorry, I know I hate Steve Wyckoff and Jared Kushner, I'm sorry. Like, 'cause it's just Dumb and Dumber. And frankly, I don't blame the Iranians for not wanting to go anywhere near those guys. They spoke to them the last time, and both times they got bombed. Like, what are we talking about? Would you take them seriously?

You know, in negotiations, at the end of the day, you know, wars are gonna end in a messy fashion. And so the US maximalist positions, which are legitimate positions, but if there's going to be a diplomatic solution, unless we have regime change, we are going to have to cave on some stuff. That's just the way diplomacy works. At some point, we're going to have to say to the Iranians, yeah, you can have some low-level civilian nuclear program. And even more so, there's going to be reparations— not reparations, there's going to be sanctions relief. Reparations would be politically impossible. Possible. But the maximalist position in the United States, and I'm saying if you want an agreement, if you don't want an agreement, go for full-on regime change. Because I don't see that, and you guys jump in on this. I mean, I don't see how there's any other way to look at this. It's the same thing with Israel and Hamas, like this idea of the demobilization of Hamas weapons. It's never going to happen in the history of the planet. That ain't happening. Thus, there's no agreement.

Same with Hezbollah, with the UN Security Council resolution that was supposed to disarm Hezbollah and allow the Lebanon Armed Forces to come into the south and reoccupy the south and all this. That's what the blue line is for down there. Hezbollah will never give up their weapons. You know, the only way Hezbollah gives up their weapons is if there's no more Hezbollah hands to hold them. I mean, this is their position.

Andy, thoughts?

Yeah, I, you know, I'm, I'm sinking into depression quietly here and, and because I don't have the answer to what you guys are saying. And what really hits me every day, and I know it hits you too, Mark, and John, and Dee too, is just the loss of confidence. It's the fact that the world is ridiculing us and our former allies. In my case, a lot of friends in the UK. I'm seeing what former chads there are saying about us, about the special relationship. And it's painful. I don't think how anyone who understands history, who is educated, can say that doesn't matter, that we can alienate the entire world and continue just as though nothing's happened. It's going to affect everyone to some extent.

Yeah, we haven't even talked about like the rhetoric that has been coming out the last couple weeks with, uh, against NATO, uh, from the administration, um, as well as like, you know, the buddying up with Orbán, who is clearly, at least his regime is a, seems more and more like a Russian proxy.

Uh, it is. Hopefully he's gonna lose in several hours.

Yeah, that's coming up, the election there. So And Mick said something in the chat as well. The 60-day, you know, 60-day clock should expire on April 29th.

Well, yeah, good luck on Congress doing anything.

But yeah, Congress is, you know, gelded, just eunuchs walking around.

All right, you went mute. You're muted.

Sorry, sorry. I said Andy, Andy had to leave us. He was going to go do push-ups. He just texted me on the side.

All right.

What do we expect the next few days?

Yeah, no, you know what? I was hanging around just waiting for you to say something like that. I'm learning from the Iranians.

Yeah, just final quick thoughts.

For me, I'm looking at the market. I want to see what happens when the market opens at 9:30 tomorrow because I know how sensitive the administration is, Trump specifically, is to this. And I'm curious to see how that tracks with what comes out. And of course, I'm going to look at Polymarket and look at announcements over the weekend and see how insiders are faring, because this is a growing, growing problem over the last 60 days where people in the DOD and at the White House are certainly profiting privately, independently off this conflict, trading in material nonpublic information. And I think that people should be more aware of that and look at that themselves.

I would agree on the markets. That's going to be—

They should go to jail.

Everything, everything is political now. So Trump really responds to that. And if the markets kind of tank— again, I'm surprised this announcement was made on, on a Sunday. Usually doesn't happen.

All right, guys, we'll see you next week. Don't forget, all the links to all the guys are down in the description. Check them out right there. And the best place to support the show is patreon.com/theTeamHouse. You get TeamHouse and Eyes On episodes ad-free and early. Guys, as always, thank you and happy Easter to the Orthodox people. I'm excited for my Easter.

Send pictures of your lamb.

I am. I'm— the group chat's going to be filled with it.

All right.

All right. Bye, guys.

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