Transcript of Trump's Bluff Went Nowhere (Iran War Update) | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

I think inertia is a good word to use to describe what we see happening right now, because if there isn't a change in policy, if it's the same policy just amplified or reduced, it's, it's the inertia of the operation continues moving in the same kind of general direction, which is the hardening of Iran's regime, the weakening of US influence in the region, the growth of Saudi Arabia as a power regionally, the decline of Israel as a power in the region. And one thing on the horizon we haven't talked about is the growth of Turkey also in the region, because Turkey has always had the dream of returning to the Ottoman control over these, these places between today's Turkey all the way down to Yemen.

All right guys, hey, welcome everybody to another episode of Eyes on Geopolitics. I'm here with Jack Murphy, Jonathan Hackett, and Mick Mulroy. A lot happening as usual, uh, throughout this past week. We had been striking Iran. That had stopped. And then, uh, there was talk more and more about a bigger hit, uh, potentially hitting like energy infrastructure. Um, CENTCOM Commander General Bradley Cooper briefed, uh, President Trump about a bigger campaign that would roughly take about 2 weeks. I feel like we're living this war 2 weeks at a time, frankly. Um, Another interesting thing I saw from Axios that the Trump officials basically were giving, were saying how they were surprised about Iran being so aggressive in terms of like the negotiations, which is like, I don't know how they can be shocked by that. They've been getting pummeled for 4 months and like they're still around. And as the week was leading on, It was— you hearing more and more about a bigger strike, bigger strike, or a bigger campaign, essentially, probably within— in conjunction with Israel. At least that was the talk. Um, and last night, basically, it was paused. I, I don't know if Trump put out a statement or a tweet or whatever saying that.

Oh yeah, he did. It was like ridiculous. You guys can go ahead and read it. I'm not going to read it for you. Uh, it was, you know, one of Trump's regular ridiculous kind of tweets that he writes. A lot of stuff happening in the background too that I was reading about, like Saudi Arabia, MBS called up Trump to, like, I guess, you know, to have Trump like kind of exercise restraint and stuff like that because Iran had, you know, warned and told everybody supposedly too that they hit up like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey that if they helped us in any way with this campaign or this bombing that they would be in line for some sort of retaliation. So ended up last night, late, like not even late last night, probably like 9 PM Eastern, Trump releases that tweet, says it's not gonna happen and that there's a possible deal on the table. This is shit we've heard before many, many times. I don't know what the fuck's gonna happen. You guys tell me. It's beyond frustrating to live this over and over and over again. It's like Groundhog's Day. So I'd love to know what you guys are tracking with this.

Uh, Mick, you go first.

So I was, I mean, all week, uh, as in every week, uh, talking about this on ABC, talking about trying to isolate the regime economically, etc., sanctions, secondary sanctions. And then I see Brother Jonathan talking to Brother Jack about how that shit isn't gonna work. I was like, damn it. And then maybe, I don't know if you guys, I mean, obviously they, those two know what I'm talking about, but maybe it's a good thing that Jonathan kind of does a summary of that again. I still, I'm still gonna advocate that we have to do something. So, but I think it's important the points that he had in that of how the regime is kind of figured out their way around that and essentially they still become rich, that it only really impacts the people. Uh, so I think we need to take that into consideration, but I'll leave that for Jonathan to explain, uh, even more. But so what did we see this week? We're in a situation right now where we obviously can't leave it at the current, um, state or we have failed. And I always look at this as we— I don't look at it as a partisan thing because I'm not.

Uh, so I want to figure out a way out of this that's— that, uh, is successful for the United States, which I think also translates to cesspool for the region and the world, right? So we can't leave it like this. Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz. That's unacceptable. Um, they are likely going to go for a nuclear weapon now. So we haven't, uh, ensured that they will never get a nuclear weapon. We probably have in part inspired them to. I think Midnight Hammer did degrade it, but now the people that are in power And I think could make a very good case that if they would've had the nuclear weapon, which some of them have been advocating for the whole time, they wouldn't be getting attacked right now. And I think even if, you know, you're any American who despises the Iranian regime, you can still put yourself in their position and say, so would I, right? I would rather be, you know, North Korea than Iran right now. So we have not met that objective. We have to figure out a way to meet that objective. The objectives that we came close to, like degrading their ballistic missile capacity, manufacturing capacity, etc., um, are going to be replaced.

So they are going to be replaced. So within 6 months, I don't know what the assessment is, but whatever the assessment is, we will get to a point where they have replaced it, maybe exceeded it, and now definitely aren't going to restrict themselves on, uh, amount and range. So we're going to get in a place where even that wasn't a success, at least at the time that they reach it. So what are we going to do differently? I really— and I know this might be difficult for the current administration, but they're going to have to do a little humble pie with the international community, talk about the fact that even though none of them may have agreed, or very few of them, with the US going to war with Iran, this is impacting the the world. It's impacting their people. This is a global trade issue. International waterways shouldn't just be the responsibility, even if, you know, we had a potential cause in it, uh, of the United States, whether it's military coalitions. I know we talked about this last time, political coalitions, how to isolate the regime, how to find IRGC commercial infrastructure around the world, seize it, stop it, affect it.

I don't— I know this isn't going to be the be-all answer to any of this stuff, and it's probably going to take a long time. But something needs to change their perspective. The current situation, other than a major escalation, is not going to change their mind. And the assessment of at least the CIA and DIA is even the massive escalation isn't going to change their mind. So where do we go from here? I think that is at least part of the answer, but I do think Jonathan's point to Jack earlier in the week, I think, I think it was this week, I don't know, needs to be addressed as well. Yeah.

And the thing that you're mentioning, Mick, about what Jack and I talked about, we did like an Iran deep dive, like a special episode, like a historical kind of, you know, narrow focus talk. I think that was this past week came out. So for listeners, if they missed that, they can check that out. It was like off schedule. But basically we were discussing all kinds of things about Iran, but in particular the sanctions, because that's a big hot topic in the West, not just the United States, But even back when the JCPOA was being negotiated, that was a question of how do we fit sanctions into the JCPOA as part of it, as a, as a, you know, a response to them breaking parts of the JCPOA, plus separate US sanctions and separate EU sanctions that could be relied upon to influence behavior. Because that's the whole point of using the economic instrument of national power is to influence the outcome of another state's behavior in a way that's beneficial or at least neutral not negative to us. And that big question is, do sanctions do that? And I argue that no, they don't if they're alone, if they're used as a single insular tool to affect a country that's an authoritarian state, no.

And the reason is sanctions are designed to harm capitalist countries. For example, in a democracy like America, if another state that was powerful like China, for example, sanctioned America in some way, let's say on car manufacturing parts or Amazon items at their point of origin or crude oil production that produces plastics, which the US relies heavily on, like somehow affecting this massively so it touched a lot of Americans, Americans would go to the polls and they would vote and change the political representation in a way that would modify that and that would be something that China would benefit from. That's how a sanction would work in a democracy. Unfortunately, countries like China, North Korea, Iran, and others are not democracies at all. And they're actually designed to separate the small kernel of leaders from the rest of the population. And Iran is an excellent example of that, where the small kernel of elites are extremely resilient and they have dense real estate portfolios in London. They have money in banks all over the world. They have Swiss bank accounts with billions of dollars. That's why there's been all this discussion about unfreezing assets in, let's say, South Korea, for example.

There's like $6 billion sitting in a bank account that doesn't belong to the Iranian people. Well, I mean, it does technically,, but it's not accessible by them. Instead, it's the regime alone that has control over this. And that's, that's a big problem with sanctions is that, okay, you sanction an authoritarian state, they're just going to ignore the sanctions. They're going to further oppress the people. They're going to squeeze every dollar and cent out of those people. They're going to continue working in the black market. And it's important to remember, even in the United States where we have capitalist economy that is free, most of our economy is actually in the private markets. It's not public. There's a whole shadow banking system in the United States. For example, you can't go and open a bank account at JP Morgan. Or at Morgan Stanley. But that's where most of the assets in the country sit, is in these non-bank banks. Iran has non-bank banks too. So does Russia. So does China. That's how all these transactions are happening every day, billions and billions of dollars a day moving between these countries despite these sanctions. So there's a lot of arguments for sanctions and a lot of arguments against sanctions, but I think it's something that's not debated enough and understood from the perspective of the ones being sanctioned.

Not from American consumption of, you know, voters who say, oh, it's good we did something. It's good to do something, but maybe there's other things to do as well in conjunction with that. Right now we're using a military instrument, which we're using in Iran. We're also using an economic instrument. We're attempting to use a diplomatic instrument, attempting here and there, and it's very haphazard compared to the other two instruments. But there needs to be some more unification across these different instruments so that they're all going toward the same objective. Like you mentioned, Mick, there are certain objectives here. They have to be unified. You can't have 3 different objectives for each of these instruments going after the different objectives. They have to be the same objective with little components that kind of all lead to this larger grand objective.

So we could still go after the IRGC commercial infrastructure, seize it to affect them since they are not insulated from their own means of raising.

Absolutely. And actually a great example of that is, and I mentioned this before, like Audi and Mercedes, for example, they're not allowed to ship completed vehicles to Iran. So what they do is they just separate the pieces by several inches and put styrofoam between them in giant box and crates, bring them into Iran, take the little pieces out, put the vehicles together. Now you've got a complete vehicle because the way the law is written, it cannot be a completed vehicle shipped to Iran, but pieces can be. Both sides are very smart. Both sides have an economic interest in evading this law, right? Same thing in London. There's certain rules about how foreigners can own assets in the UK. The IRGC commanders read this and they're like, oh, I can just avoid this by incorporating a new business in Companies House, which is the UK's registry for basically like LLCs in the United States. I can just incorporate this with a different person's name on a different, uh, little identifier here, but keep the address the same, same building, same bank account, same postal address. All of it's the same, but because the way the law is written, I'm allowed to bring my hundreds of millions of dollars in here and then I can go buy all the real estate down in this very expensive area in Mayfair in London, which they do.

They actually just bought a house, uh, Mostaba, from his coma bought a, uh, huge mansion across the street from the Israeli embassy in London a couple of months ago during the, during the war while the war was ongoing, you know? So it's like they see these laws, we wrote these laws, they know how to avoid them. And it's like anyone who's wanting to get something done, they're gonna look at it and be like, how do I go over, around, under, or through this obstacle? Just like any survivor would. And I think it would be a mistake for us to think they would look at that and be like, oh, I'm not allowed to do it. No, of course they're going to find a way to do it.

How do you even know that? Is that public?

It is public.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Probably because the laws in the City of London are totally different.

Well, you got a ton of Russian money too in London too.

Yeah. London's a great target because they left the European Union. So a lot of the rules in the EU that prevented a lot of this activity do not apply in the UK, or at least they apply loosely.

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Well, they could change the rules.

Yeah.

Is one of the other problems with sanctions against Iran that, you know, we've had various levels of sanctions in place against the Iranians since the 1980s. And I mean, I feel like we really tried to isolate Iran from the international economy. To the extent that we were able to previously.

I mean, that's not what we do with everybody. You know, we've done that with Venezuela, Cuba, like everybody except China. Like, we really like them for some reason.

But well, if you follow Mearsheimer's theory of international relations, which I know, D, you love Mearsheimer.

I used to like Mearsheimer a lot. I think he's lost his fucking mind as of late.

Went off the rails.

Yeah.

But the concept is basically like, OK, you've got this concert of nations and they all have their own interests. There are these black boxes interacting with each other, all out for their own interests., and if you isolate some of them, even for different reasons, they're gonna seek each other out for support. Yeah. Because these, these states need support. They need international trade. They need places to put their money, take their money, all this stuff. It's, it's, it's not crazy to think that Iran, Venezuela, China, North Korea would become friends in this context. And it is kind of what's happening.

Of course. Yeah. I think that's a fact.

Yeah. I mean, we're seeing— go ahead, Mixar.

So one, one thing I'm starting to hear more of Do you think Iran would even accept anything close to the JCPOA again? Like, could we say, okay, okay, I don't either.

No.

And especially because Hassan Rouhani was the chief negotiator for that, or not the chief negotiator, he's heavily involved in negotiations for that. He has a nuclear background. He was the president at the time. Afterward, you know, it's kind of this moment of détente where the Iranian government was kind of opening up a little bit, kind of like Glasnost in the 1980s with the Russians, kind of thinking like, okay, we need to be a little more global now. But as you can see, there's a massive backlash to that. In the regime, and they were like, no, that was, that was wrong. Look what it did to us. It harmed us. We're never going back. And even now they talk about Rouhani being a traitor. They talk about Ahmadinejad being a traitor, which is crazy because Ahmadinejad is like died-in-the-wall revolutionary Iran. So like, to hear some of these folks say that, I mean, it just shows how opposed they would be to going back to something like that, which again they said was heroic flexibility, sacrificing to even accept this deal in the first place. There was a lot of humiliation and shame within the regime decision-making body to accept that in 2015 in the first place.

And look where it got them, especially after 2017, '18 when we withdrew from JCPOA, took them out of SWIFT again, which was the banking system in the world, forced them into this shadow banking system even deeper, which then hurt us. So they see that as a big mistake and they won't go back to that.

Yeah, I know that they're like— obviously the IRGC is not a trustworthy organization. I know that. But they're obviously very cunning negotiators and just in general very crafty. Why would they ever trust anything we have to say at a negotiation table? Because the last one that was like a real negotiation that was, you know, it was going over the weekend and set to start on Monday, we bombed Iran and smoked like, you know, their top-tier leadership.

Yeah, and we had an MOU that lasted how long, right?

Yeah, I mean, 48 hours or whatever. It was short.

It seems like Secretary Rubio is getting more involved. I think that's a good thing. I think he's, uh, very experienced. And because whoever did the draft of that MOU, that failed miserably. It was so vague that it was a waste of time, and it probably, to D's point, I think it's going to make actually solving this more difficult because now they don't even— they don't, and potentially we don't, believe each other at all. Even after written and signatories and signing at— in France and all this other stuff, we're going to have to— we're gonna have to get the professionals involved in the negotiations, so we're going to have to actually stick to our agreement, or the whole negotiation process is going to be just considered window dressing. Like, both sides are doing it because it doesn't commit them to anything, and the rest of the world's eventually going to figure out it's, it's, it's simply not going to end. So whatever impact it's going to have on the international energy markets or stock markets, it's just going to have because they're going to stop listening to, on the verge of a negotiated settlement, or we're on the verge for massive— I mean, they're just going to say that's just like Charlie Brown's teacher talking right now.

It's just not— it's just noise because We get to the verge of all these things and then like, I think right now, correct me if I'm wrong, but the last I checked was we were going to do a massive escalation. We heard that he had approved it and now we're not because there's some framework that's agreed to.

Yeah, but we— so I wanted to mention that because like, that's what part I missed in the beginning. We introduced that framework last minute. It wasn't Iran being like, you know what, like, let's talk. So like this whole buildup over the last week about this massive, you know, bombardment or this campaign for 2 weeks. Frankly seemed like a bluff. And like, we— it's, it's not like it's the first time. A couple weeks ago was the same thing. Like, there was talk about a bigger escalation and stuff like that, and then Trump suddenly stopped it. Um, like, how many times can you do that before it's like, shit or get off the pot? This isn't gonna work. And clearly it didn't work this time because it wasn't like Iran was calling up and saying, hey, let's, let's talk about this. Like, we gave the Qataris a deal to give to Iran And then we pause the, you know, the airstrikes.

But also seems the Saudis played a big part in this. I mean, we all saw that MBS called Trump, but I think, you know, over the weekend, Saturday in fact, Kuwait was hit by drones. There was a ship that blew up off the coast of Oman. So there's a lot of kinetic activity that's concerning to Gulf countries, to the GCC countries. And I think it's not just MBS, it's other Gulf countries, obviously the Kuwaitis, because they got attacked yesterday. But others calling up the US and saying, hey, please tone it down, or even to Iran as well, if it's Qatar and Oman asking Iran, please tone it down because you're affecting our situation here locally. Because there's the regional concern too. It's not just an international conflict, although it is, but for the GCC countries, they're very concerned about the here and now, like what they can see right off their coastline. And that's their lifeblood, the economy that flows out of there. And the longer that there's under attack, the less they can return to the status quo, which if they ever could, I'm not sure.

So an interesting point somebody brought up on the Egypt attack, more tactical I suppose, but there's a view that it might have been launched from like a maritime platform, right? Because the Shahed, even like the 136, this person explained the travel from like Western Iran to get there would have taken hours. It would have gone over multiple countries. It would have probably— if it would have been launched by the Houthis, still same thing, would have gone like the entire length of Egypt. So where did it come from? And I'm sure, I'm sure the intelligence community is looking for the answer, but it likely didn't come from either of those two places. So are they starting to use like clandestine maritime platforms that they can launch and then skedaddle but get closer to things like Egypt, right? So there's Suez Canal there too, right? Is that going to be challenged? Is this something we should be looking at?

Well, you think about the dhows that they use already. The Houthis use these, the, you know, part of it's— and dhows are these small wooden craft, very small boats that are very hard to detect that actually make up a lot of their nonstandard maritime capability. Not only Iran, but also the Houthis and Somalia as well. There's another concern along the Horn of Africa region all the way up into the Red Sea, up and down the hundreds of kilometers of coast of Egypt there. It wouldn't be difficult to get a dhow that can hug the coastline popping along the coastline, keeping it in view about 10 miles off the coast, just moving all the way up until they get to a point where they can launch that Shahed that they had hidden underneath the underbelly of the dhow and then skedaddle out of the way or continue on as if they had just been trading up and down the coast like they have for centuries. It's very hard to track these dhows, and I think it's a major concern from a nonstandard maritime perspective.

Jack, you wanted to say something, I think?

I was just going to add that, you know, there's this sort of like, you know, wishy-washy sort of conversation that I don't think a lot of people want to have or hear. But the question of credibility and the question of hard power versus soft power. And I think this administration's approach has been, you know, that soft power doesn't exist. That's not a real thing. Everything is about hard power. It's we have more guns than you do. And there's a certain amount of, you know, that holds true to a certain point. And I think we're seeing that right now, that, you know, we need diplomacy, we need diplomatic pressure, we need all these other things. And just relying on airstrikes as a method of hard power to lead into negotiations, I mean, I think we just don't have the credibility. That's what sort of you were saying, D, that like we go back and forth and back and forth. And at a certain point, people just don't believe what you're saying anymore.

Yeah, it's kind of like that old story about Vietnam where the U.S. colonel says, you know, we won every battle. Yeah. And the Vietnamese colonel said, that's both true and irrelevant. Um, it's like, we do have the most guns, the biggest guns, and the best guns, and the best military. I think every— even Iran would probably say, yeah, gotcha. And right now it's not that relevant, right? So The issue, I think, is we got to have better policies, better policymakers make better policies. And I'm not making this partisan, but this is, this has been something that's gone through multiple administrations now, um, you know, and meaning Democrat and Republican. And, you know, when's the last time we really came out successful? Say winning a war is, uh, it's kind of hard to define, right? But being successful for having gone to war, like, for the country. Um, I, I, you know, I'm obviously biased, but it's not the military's fault. They're told to do something, they do it the best they can. They're told to expand, they're told to this. And, uh, it is the actual decision makers, whether they are— what— both sides of the aisle, uh, need to stop relying on the fact that we simply have the best military, that they can do anything they want, even if the policy itself is flawed.

It can't necessarily make up for bad policy, was I'm getting. And then again, that has been decisions over the last, I mean, when's the last time we had an successful military endeavor?

Operation Anaconda. And then we continued after October 2001.

Yeah. I was going to say Grenada.

Well, yeah. Well, I mean, I think, I think that like, if you look at Desert Storm, right, it was limited in scope, it had a clear objective and we stopped there. So I know a lot of people, "Oh, what is it in a war?" Well, that's the point. That's the point, you know. The point isn't to have a long drawn-out war where everybody gets, you know, combat action ribbons. The point is to win and be successful with our policy. So it might have been a 100-hour ground war, but that's what we want because it was a clear set objective. The military understood what it was politically, strategically, and how to accomplish it, the accomplishment, and then they were done. There wasn't no expansion, there was no mission creep. We didn't rebuild the country. Um, anyway, so that's a bigger issue that I don't, we can solve here on Eyes On, but people need, they, I guess my, my grand point is just because we have the biggest military doesn't mean we can, uh, fix flawed policy decisions.

And on your soft power note, I mean, look at China. They're, they are maximizing soft power in a way that is globally successful. And has been. And it's not a secret either. They're very vocal about, this is our goal, we will set up this stuff around here, we'll publish these documents that say these things about what we're going to do. And then they go do it. And then we're like, oh my gosh, they're setting up police stations in, uh, Solomon Islands. It's like, well, they said they were going to do that like years earlier, and they're doing it right now.

I mean, they have it— them in New York, they have like these unofficial police stations in Brooklyn.

They had one in Texas and the consulate got closed because they were doing that.

What? Wait, explain.

Uh, John will do a way better job of this than me.

So they're basically enforcing China's laws inside the United States using these clandestine police stations with actual Chinese domestic police in— out of the embassies. Um, the embassy, I don't remember if it was Houston, it was one of the major cities in Texas during the first Trump administration, was closed because of this reason. There's one in California and there's one in New York City The New York City one's huge and they're actually like going out and enforcing Chinese laws inside the United States.

So on Chinese citizens or Chinese Americans or what's the—

both. So they're, they're using that pressure campaign that, you know, the MSS, the, the Chinese Ministry of State Security does as well, where they'll say, hey, you're of Chinese origin or you're Taiwanese origin. You're going to either work with us or we're going to do something to your family in whichever place they are. And so on, or actual Chinese citizens who are here doing things, dual citizens or even visitors. They enforce laws against them as well.

Yeah.

That's soft power.

Yeah, it doesn't get any like— yeah, it's pretty incredible. Where do you guys think this goes? I mean, we're kind of like in this fucking, like, nebulous, like, purgatory area where the— all right, we're not going to bomb them now. Doesn't seem like there's a lot of, like, real deal talks, maybe some backchanneling and stuff like that. But frankly, We all know what the issue is. And, you know, I don't see Iran giving up their stranglehold on the Hormuz. So. Right. Where do we— where do we go from here? Is it still more— are we going to do this 2-week campaign from CENTCOM Commander Bradley Cooper, or like, that's going to go where? You know, arguably it could be, you know, hitting infrastructure could be looked at as war crimes. I know that some of them are dual use and stuff like that. But like, what does that do if we start talking about it again? If we actually go through it, what does that do if like Iran starts retaliating, hitting Israel, hitting our bases continuously? We're still at the same fucking place. And then gas is likely $10 more per gallon, you know, per barrel.

So if not more, because at some point, you know, China was doing a little bit to like kind of alleviate the global crude price, but they've since stopped doing that. So at some point, like, someone's gonna have to pay for this fucking check, you know what I mean?

Like, yeah, it does sound like we're going to focus on infrastructure targets because I imagine there they've assessed that, look, we've hit a lot of military targets and it's not changed their perspective. So, uh, I think the— you're right about the issue of international law and whether this is clear under the Law of Armed Conflict. It has to have a serious nexus to their military capacity, but say for argument's sake it does, it still doesn't negate the fact that they have a vote and they're going to counterattack, right? So if we hit— I think there's 3 main energy generate, uh, generation facilities that would have major impacts, uh, on the people as well, of course, as the regime. And they're going to, of course, do the same thing to all the Gulf allies. So imagine the Gulf countries are super concerned because power desalinization, it, it would have a bad impact on Iran. It would have a catastrophic impact on Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia. I mean, they have a population that can't necessarily exist there if they don't have the capacity to make water. Like, how long could you go without water? Was it 3 days?

What are you going to do with a population if you run out of water? And I don't know the details of how, but we do know how reliant they are on it. And so does Iran. And I'm sure they've made an assessment of how they could actually overwhelm their system. And what's the other issue on, on escalation? It's the lack of interceptor missiles, right? So it's— you got kind of a perfect storm. So we hit them, they hit our allies. Because we don't have adequate enough protection and it causes catastrophic humanitarian issues.

Just like for the numbers, like in terms of Patriots, we started off with 2,400 in the region, we're down to 800. THAAD missiles, we had 450, we're down to 250. So we have 1,000, a little bit more than 1,000. We're going to start using SM-6s from the Navy, like more $8 million, $6 million interceptors to knock down these $50,000 drones? Like, how is that cost-effective? Forget about the fact that people are fucking dying, obviously. Like, that's the first and foremost. We should think of that. But how does that make sense on our end? Especially like, we spoke about it last week or a week before, like, how many Patriots can we actually build a year? We can't resupply what we have. Not, not in this quicker timeframe. So like, we're going to this, the ice cream's running out. Well, what happens when there's no more?

Well, the other problem is that Iran is not just a static adversary. They're adapting and learning from how we are employing our air defense systems and the Kheibar Shekan, which, or Shekast, it means like Kheibar destroyer. Kheibar is a place that there was some Arab Jews during Muhammad's time. Muhammad ran them out and they've named currently this missile after that episode from the Quran., and this is what they're using to attack Israel, Jordan, and some further targets. It's a medium-range ballistic missile, and it's very advanced because it's able to actually adjust itself as it comes, uh, down on its lower trajectory. And they've actually noticed how our air defenses work, and they've adjusted that adjuster to better work inside of our air defense envelope. So they're able to actually overcome it. And that's actually the, the weapon they used in Jordan a few weeks ago, not the most recent one now that was intercepted, but before that, that actually did strike and kill Americans. I saw some people saying like, oh, you know, these, these targets have been on the map for many years. It's on Google Maps. It's like, yeah, but you don't know where the actual people are at that moment.

But if you're using SIGINT and you're using adware exploitation, which is what they actually used to strike some Americans elsewhere in the Gulf, they're using that to triangulate and figure out the 10-digit grid for where to actually strike and kill Americans. And they're doing it really well. And they're learning each time how to do it better. And it's, it's dangerous for us to view them as a static adversary that's just sitting there launching ballistic missiles. Which is part of what they are doing, but they're, they're doing it carefully and thoughtfully each time in a way that they're trying to improve casualties and harm toward Americans. And I think that's something that we shouldn't forget too.

Like, isn't this the stuff we study about asymmetric warfare, right? Like, it seems like they're winning in that right now by a lot. Because if we're spending $4 million for a Patriot missile on a $50,000 Shaheed drone, The cost-benefit analysis isn't there exactly. It doesn't really make sense. I'd love to know if, like, where are we— obviously it's probably classified— like, where are we with a lower-cost interceptor system that is actually, uh, actually makes sense in this scenario or most scenarios?

So how's the Iron Beam work?

There's, there's all kinds of counter-UAS systems and things that are being developed and all sorts of different technologies. Like, it's a huge endeavor, but this is like the basic problem that the US military has had since 9/11 is that we were built to have these big slugfests with the Russians. And then we end up fighting counterinsurgencies or another state actor like Iran that uses asymmetric tactics. And we have this bespoke military gear that costs billions of dollars that's countering, as you point out, a drone that costs $10,000. And so the ROI just doesn't really make sense over the long run. You know, in a protracted conflict, there's like—

aren't— weren't Patriots designed to shoot down fucking MiGs and Sukhois?

And no, Patriots were designed to shoot down like ballistic missiles or other ballistics.

Yeah, but at least ballistic missiles are like expensive. So most likely they're going to be like dollar for dollar, at least close to it.

That's why the equation used to work, right? And we have like— so I mean, folks that follow the show, we have Lobo as a training facility, training testing facility in Montana. I know that the DOD, because they have a hub at Montana State University and they're working with us, are basically looking for companies that claim they can do this and testing them. Like, this has become like the Manhattan Project, I think, of today. Is what Jack is just talking about. Like, we gotta figure this out fast, uh, because this isn't gonna work. The current, uh, basically, uh, dynamic is not acceptable. So, um, I will at least hear about it because we're not— we're not the company that does this stuff, but we're a company that hosts the testing. Uh, hopefully it happens really quick, but I throw it back to you guys. I mean, we know that Iron Bean's in operation now, right? Is it— how's it— if you know, if you don't, sorry for asking. How is it being rolled out? Is it being successful? Is it the kind of what we hoped, that you could use a relatively inexpensive defensive system to shoot down even, you know, more expensive incoming threats?

And are we exploiting it? Is there a US version? And what are we doing to maximize it?

The thing with air defenses is if you look at— usually in the military, you'll see a chart that has different air defense intercept points at which, which tool can intercept which air defense item at which altitude and which speed. And the problem with Iron Dome and Iron Beam is that they actually are designed for a very narrow intercept envelope. They're, they're different. Not only that, but it has to be coming at a specific trajectory. So for example, if you have a weapon that is too fast, like a hypersonic missile, it won't even detect it. Or if you have a weapon that's too low and slow, it also won't detect it because the radar cross-section doesn't make sense to it as far as what is an adversary item and what is not. So it can actually target specific, like kind of pie piece, right? So you need other tools. That's why the THAAD is important. That's why the Patriot is important. And actually Patriot and Iron Dome work well together because they cover very different sections of the air intercept space without getting too technical about it. But if, you know, people can just look it up online, there are these graphs that show you, you need like 5 minimum different types of air defense systems to actually cover like 80 or 90% of the sky.

That still leaves a 10% gap. And that's not even counting for asymmetric uses of these weapons and new tools that are used in different ways than they were initially expected. For example, the anti-ship missile that the Houthis have, that's a direct fire weapon that's supposed to go from a launch pad on the earth to a ship. That's not designed to be an air weapon. Coming down, right?

Right.

But the Houthis are using it as that. So that's something to think about when these, when these tools are designed, they're designed for specific weapons at specific times and altitudes and so on. So it's a concern that we just can't cover the sky enough. And that's true. I mean, even with a SeaRAM, if you've seen video of SeaRAM, it's very good at shooting stuff down, but doesn't shoot everything down. And you don't have an unlimited supply of munitions there on the ground. Maybe you've got stuff in theater, but if the enemy knows what your actual saturation point is based on their, testing of your air defenses, they can figure out that, hey, we can actually oversaturate you. And Iran did that when they attacked Israel a little while back. They did get weapons inside and hit the ground, hit targets because it was a saturated air defense environment.

Jack, you're a journalist. Give me a— ask a question.

Well, I mean, I'm not to be like unhelpful or unconstructive, but like we've done certain things here in this campaign against Iran that cannot be taken back or undone. And I feel like we have kind of run ourselves down into a cul-de-sac from a policy perspective. And it's an imperfect example, but Vladimir Putin did the same thing in Ukraine. He ran his country down into this kind of cul-de-sac that he can't return from. And as Nick pointed out, maybe we have to eat some humble pie on this one, but then there are personalities involved in all of this. And this administration doesn't particularly do humble very well. So I have, you know, I wish I had answers. I wish I could like give you some sort of prognosis of like where all of this is heading. But unfortunately, I suspect it's a stalemate that's probably going to run through the rest of this administration and the next guy is going to have to figure it out, come to some sort of peace treaty or something.

That's probably the case. And, you know, and I agree, like this isn't about just throwing mud, right? Like, it's easy to, you know, any war to just throw mud. It's super easy. So it is about, at least I think our discussion always is about how to advance US interests. So it isn't just poking somebody in the eye, but it's really difficult to see a way out of this that's not just a stalemate. Like escalation doesn't seem to be, just if you listen to the reporting on the assessment, an option, even though we might do it. So, but we can't accept failure. Like, we're not, I don't think.

Right. Well, your point about the Strait of Hormuz and the highly enriched uranium is correct. Like, I don't think we can accept that as a country to just like leave things as they are.

Yeah.

And so maybe the other next administration, be it, you know, Republican or Democrat, gets a new crack at this. But That's a long time to wait in the current circumstances.

Yeah.

I think it's time for America and our— whoever's following this to kind of understand, like, kind of come to the realization that we've broken it kind of beyond repair. And, you know, I would argue, or there's some people that would argue, because it's arguable for sure, that like, is even being involved in this thing with Iran right now in America's interests. Thankfully, you know, we live here, so our gas prices are higher, but it's not like— it's not to the point of like what you see is going on in Europe and everywhere and Southeast Asia. But, you know, it does affect our, our economy in some sort of way. And would it make sense to like disengage? I'm not saying completely, you know, still be around to whenever ISIS pops their head out to fucking chop it off.

But But what would that do though? Like, they still control the Strait of Hormuz.

Yeah, that's going to be the new reality on the ground. I mean, unfortunately, like, I hate to admit it, but, uh, you know, we knew this was going in like for 30, 40 years that this is what likely would happen if we attacked Iran. And it's happened pretty much probably to the book, maybe, maybe a little bit more, uh, like people were a little bit more surprised that they were attacking our bases and our allies in the region as much, but we knew Hormuz was on the table. That's why George W. Bush, when he probably had the most political capital ever, when he went into Iraq, those— or that early first 6 months maybe could have pushed it. But, um, that's why no other administration ever did that, like attacked Iran, because they knew the fallout would be rough. And even it would— I would argue it would have been rougher for them to go in because we weren't so energy independent at that time, but Now we pretty much are, even though it's a global market and everything like that. But yeah, I think unfortunately, I mean, I don't want to say like, I know Iran's going to win this one, but they probably will go toward a nuclear weapon, right?

Of course. I was going to mention that. Yeah.

So we can really—

if you read John's incredible book, Iran's Shadow Weapons, their number one thing is not exporting revolution. It's not any of that. Regime security. And the ultimate regime security is having, you know, a dozen nukes. No one's going to say shit to you ever again. You see North Korea, the guy's a fucking lunatic.

You know, something I would like to ask you guys about that I've read and heard. And but, you know, it's a fascinating kind of thing to think about and to look at because it's not something that they really— it's not a theory that they teach in college. This idea that the administration is waging this war in a manner to, I guess you could say, game the markets, that they're doing these weekend bombing campaigns when the stock exchange is shut down and then calling them off. And I mean, do you guys feel that that's true, that that's the approach that they're taking? And if so, I mean, how does that impact our war? I mean, I don't think we've ever fought a war quite like that before.

I think one thing to recognize is that even if it— whether it's true or not that they're doing this consciously to exploit the market, the market is an efficient organism and it's going to adapt in ways that make the most benefit out of the situation. So every time that this occurs, the market as a whole general information collective adapts to the situation and there are new benefits to be created and extracted from that behavior. Like for example, this weekend, the announcement that this will— that the attacks will happen, and then the de-escalation. If you look at after-hours trading, you can see the market responding to this as an organism, which is many, many people's different decisions, including institutional investors and, you know, quote unquote, dumb money, which is everybody else, retail investors, all reacting to this situation in a way that creates value for some people to extract the value. So whether it's intentional or not, there are people that are looking at this and saying, how can I make the most out of this situation? And there are a lot of people doing that. Some of them are inside the administration, like the teleprompter guy that just got outed for making insider trades based on things that he saw on the teleprompter that Trump was about to read minutes later.

So there are actors out there, whether that's intentional as a policy or not, who are saying, hey, this is my shot to make some money. And that is insider information, and it's very difficult to go after when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the CFTC are—

God.

—regulatory capture. With the current, you know, way of thinking about the economy.

John, you're getting me fucking crazy saying these things right now. You said just consume. Don't get the— don't get the fucking lefty out on me because they fucking gutted that fucking agency.

Yeah. So like Polymarket and Calshi can't really be regulated very well because those like CFTC and CFPB and FTC, first of all, they can't figure out who's the one that's supposed to regulate insider trading on those markets. Right. Like they're infighting with each other about that. And there's also not a lot of political will to answer the question. I'm not saying stop it from happening.

You get me? All right. So, and frankly, like a ton of— a dozen states or more have filed fucking cease and desist lawsuits against Cauchy and Polymarket, the betting exchanges, because all— like DraftKings and FanDuel, they've gone through the state legislature to get approved for— to operate in that state. And Cauchy and Polymarket just because it's a prediction market bullshit, is, uh, can do it anywhere federally, right? So they— a lot of states file cease and desist or file charges, and the DOJ is actually fighting on, on the side of Caution Poly Market against the states. Like, it's fucking crazy. It makes no sense. John got me triggered. This is John's fault, everybody. Um, and also happens to be a strategic advisor or whatever, somebody like on the board getting paid from this is Donald Trump Jr. Like, shocking. Yeah, so okay, that's it. That's my lib rant for the week.

When does it— the statements, whether they're manipulation or not, just simply not work because they're, they're known on the market?

It's a good question.

Market and on the energy market, right? Because yeah, at least— and I'm not in financial guy, but like, if you're looking for futures on the energy market, you actually need to be accurate, right? Like, you can't just take a false statement that's designed to manipulate you and go with it, is my question. More like a point.

Well, I think, I think like for the insiders, most likely, like the last week there was a short position that was taken up on oil, right? Uh, right before the 13 days of bombing were going on and we stopped. And like somebody knew obviously that we were going to stop at a certain time. They took out a position and oil went up or dropped, or I think it dropped 7%. So in that 7%, somebody made a fuck ton of money, especially if your bet's big enough.

The other thing is these oil futures that you mentioned, typically if you compare oil futures and the bond market, there should be some correlation between how people think about the future for bond returns because bond returns are based on future U.S. government decisions and futures, which are private decisions but also react to public choices that the U.S. foreign policy makes, and they're divergent in a way that is unusual right now. And they're actually converging back again. In other words, the market is ignoring what the government is saying to some degree and thinking it's less dangerous than it sounds, which is interesting. It's like you're saying, Mike, it means that the economy largely is basically adapting to this rhetoric and saying, it's not as bad as it sounds, so we can just kind of continue on as usual. And if you look at the harmonics of the market, of the, of the futures reactions to all the statements that have been said since February 28th, there's a dramatic decline in the reaction to those statements as time goes on.

It's because how many times can you possibly make the statement, right? Like, you know, cry wolf. Like, yeah, you can only do it so many times before like the market really like jumps or go, goes up or down, right?

Dramatic. I mean, it's like Kim Jong-un back in 2006 when they first, or Kim Jong, uh, Yeah, no, Kim Jong-il. Sorry, Kim Jong-il. When he first in 2006 successfully launched a nuclear weapon test, huge market reaction to that. But as time went on and the Kim family made more and more statements about nukes, there was less and less reaction globally in the markets to those statements because we realized that, well, they're probably not going to launch nukes at anybody. It's just testing and it's rhetoric. And it kind of dramatically declined even during Trump 1 when there was a lot of changes in our relationship with North Korea that were being expressed. The market still kind of put less interest in that and you saw slower reactions to those statements, both positive and negative statements.

All right, so what happens next, guys? You guys are the smart guys. Tell me, Jack, you first.

Didn't I already say I can't really predict what's going to happen?

I didn't hear that part. It's hard to predict.

Predicting the future. We'd be on Kelsey, right? I mean, I don't even know. I don't even know how to get on that thing.

Well, it's quite easy now. You could do it anywhere.

And that's what I think. Anybody listens to us and then tries to predict on Kelty.

I mean, they should listen to John. He's predicted some stuff. I should, I should have bet some stuff John was saying. I mean, he called it, but like, I think as when maybe we were leading up to it, not before the bombs started dropping, like the mosaic thing's going to happen. IRGC is going to take control and there's not going to really be much central control over anything, really. It's going to be commanders in the field. Deciding what to do when they want to do it. He called that, you know, you called it on the fucking button. I don't know how you could have made money on that. Oh, we did text a little bit while I was going on who was going to be the next whoever. And you called it and I should have fucking bet it and I didn't.

I was also on an interview with somebody else and they asked me 2 days before the conflict started, they're like, what do you think's happening? I said, I think we're gonna go to war in 2 days. And we did.

Hell yeah. We're gonna start charging for—

we should. Predictions. Yeah, like and subscribe. Yeah, for your pound that like button.

Yeah, get rich on KALSHI and, you know, from our predictions. Um, all right, quick before we get out of here, are we just going to keep doing this over and over again for the next, uh, 2 years?

That's where it's going. To Jack's point, that's where it's going. I mean, there's— I don't think we're gonna accept failure. And if there's a way to come up with a success, I hope we find it. But it's very difficult to see from here.

I think inertia is a good word to use to describe what we see happening right now, because if there isn't a change in policy, if it's the same policy just amplified or reduced, it's, it's the inertia of the operation continues moving in the same kind of general direction, which is the hardening of Iran's regime, the weakening of U.S. influence in the region, the growth of Saudi Arabia as a power regionally, the decline of Israel as a power in the region. And one thing on the horizon we haven't talked about is the growth of Turkey also in the region, because Turkey has always had the dream of returning to the Ottoman control over these, these places between today's Turkey all the way down to Yemen. They have always wanted that back. Erdoğan thinks that he's Atatürk too, and you're going to see that expansion as well, especially vis-à-vis Israel. As Israel loses power in the region, Turkey will fill the vacuum, not Saudi Arabia. It's mostly going to be Turkey. So I think we should look out for that, especially in Syria. Jolani was not put there by accident. That was heavily supported by Turkey, right?

Yeah. And you're going to see that with the Kurds across north Iraq and also in Syria, the way the Kurds have shifted position vis-à-vis Turkey. These are things that, you know, Iran takes our attention, but it's important to have the context of what's around Iran and what comes the day after, whatever, whether that's a treaty or whatever it is. But the day after that thing happens, what's next. You know, nobody just like stops moving. It's like musical chairs. They're going to continue rotating around, and it's important to keep focus on what are the things next.

Always a pleasure as always. Uh, I want everyone to do us a favor, like and subscribe if you're following us. If you're listening on, on, on audio, you could subscribe and like there. Jack Murphy's got a new book out called The Most Dangerous Man. It's an incredible book. That link's in the description. Uh, of course, uh, John's books, The Theory of a Regular War in Iran, Shadow Weapons, incredible. Those links are in the description. We're waiting for Mick's memoir to come out. I'm excited about that. It's not gonna happen. Uh, Mick, uh, the Whitefish Security Summit. Yeah, I would love a tell-all, fucking inside GB, inside ground branch. Mick Moroid tells all. That's fight club, man. The Whitefish Security Summit, check that out. That's happening end of February next year, 2027. And his new podcast, Pup on the Porch: Applied Stoicism. All those links are in the description. And check us out on Patreon, patreon.com/theteamhouse. Guys, love you. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Hello, everyone. If you're hearing this, you are not a member of the Patreon. You can get your hands on ad-free episodes that come out early, and you can ask us questions. Maybe we'll answer them.

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